An episcopal encyclical arrived with yesterday's emails, detailing carefully the measures and safety procedures which will need to be implemented when public worship can be resumed. Already a few chaplaincies of the diocese in Europe have this prospect approaching quite soon. Sadly, not while I'm in Spain, I think. More than half of the chaplaincy members I won't get around to meeting let alone celebrating with, live in church. The state must first decide it's possible to manage a modest degree of free movement, and resume select business activities to get the economy moving, then conditions may be safe enough to start risk minimised public worship.
Once congregations are given permission to gather again publicly by government and the Bishop, Churchwardens and sides-persons will have their work cut out to plan and make arrangements for a sanitized liturgical environment, complying with social distancing. What will hit congregations hard is the extreme restriction if not actual banning of collective singing, even in socially distanced environments. This is to minimise exhaled air vapour carrying coronavirus particles far enough for another to inhale them. Bio-security clearance certificates for worshippers wanting to gather is also contemplated, along with several smaller services with people more spread out. With many people getting used to watching on-line services, and finding they have a choice of offerings to suit their taste, deterrents to traditional forms of church service are fast stacking up.
Preparation for any church worship gathering will be a really big effort that no cleric could manage on their own. This was often the norm before covid19 when priests regularly took several services a day, supported by a minimum of church officers, either in the same or other venues, so the faithful could conveniently be served with Word and Sacrament. That's just how it was, the status quo coram plaga. It'll be quite a while before things could be the same again. Maybe they never will be the same again. The impact on how Christians worship and share faith is now changing at a pace unimaginable in the fifty years since churches worldwide were rocked by radical liturgical change and innovation for the first time since the Reformation five centuries ago.
At the same time we face again the same kind of issues as were current then. Fear of contagion even before law enforcement has prevented people from attending public worship and receiving Communion. During lock-down, watching services on-line has served as a replacement, and people have had to get used to the idea of receiving spiritual communion instead. That's how it was before the Reformation, watching services performed up in the sanctuary behind a screen from the distance of the nave!
Frequent reception of Communion may have started to wane when Christianity became a religio licita of the Empire in Constantine's day, and worship in public buildings on a big scale became the norm. Plagues happened in those days too, and Communion in the form of wine from the chalice began to be restricted or modified by using intinction instead, before eventually Communion from the Cup was limited to officiating clergy.
Preparation for any church worship gathering will be a really big effort that no cleric could manage on their own. This was often the norm before covid19 when priests regularly took several services a day, supported by a minimum of church officers, either in the same or other venues, so the faithful could conveniently be served with Word and Sacrament. That's just how it was, the status quo coram plaga. It'll be quite a while before things could be the same again. Maybe they never will be the same again. The impact on how Christians worship and share faith is now changing at a pace unimaginable in the fifty years since churches worldwide were rocked by radical liturgical change and innovation for the first time since the Reformation five centuries ago.
At the same time we face again the same kind of issues as were current then. Fear of contagion even before law enforcement has prevented people from attending public worship and receiving Communion. During lock-down, watching services on-line has served as a replacement, and people have had to get used to the idea of receiving spiritual communion instead. That's how it was before the Reformation, watching services performed up in the sanctuary behind a screen from the distance of the nave!
Frequent reception of Communion may have started to wane when Christianity became a religio licita of the Empire in Constantine's day, and worship in public buildings on a big scale became the norm. Plagues happened in those days too, and Communion in the form of wine from the chalice began to be restricted or modified by using intinction instead, before eventually Communion from the Cup was limited to officiating clergy.
Withholding the chalice from the laity may be less to do with the presumed assertion of clerical privileged status than an early health and safety precaution. At the Reformation, however, restoring the Cup the the laity was regarded by some as a key issue, along with restoring frequent Communion as in the primitive church. Changes in the pattern of worship to facilitate easier access to Communion in both kinds took place, but it didn't result in a resumption of the ancient church status quo, despite the exhortations of many reformers.
Rather than celebrate the Eucharist with only a priest and maybe his assistant communicating, a service of the Word became the Sunday norm for reformed churches. Several Communion Sundays were designated in the year, and these were made obligatory to attend by state if not church law. This didn't work either. The idea of the sacrament expressing the 'sacred in the ordinary' which had been part of its Jewish origins had been corrupted by a persistent pagan idea of sacred things with magical powers. Biblical and historical scholarship made possible a return to ancient practice in the 19th century. First the Roman Catholic Church began an movement encouraging more frequent Communion, then Anglicans followed in the early 20th century with the introduction of the Parish Communion as the Sunday worship norm. After four centuries of delay the reformers' ambitions were finally realised.
By the 1970s radical demise of all services of the Word set in, not just due to the desire for more frequent Communion. Evening telly put an end to Parish Evensong, Matins was replaced by the Eucharist. Ironically, at the same time, decline in vocations led to fewer priests being obliged to take more Communion services. This is still the case, despite non-stipendiary and women clergy redressing the balance to some extent. The law of unintended consequences led us to a point where the church is over dependent on clergy expertise and sacramental liturgy.
Now the pandemic has put us in a position where churches have to revert to services of the Word without sacramental communion being possible or just making people spectators of liturgical ritual, as happened before the reformation - as it may have been for maybe the greater part of Christian history. What a strange turn of affairs! Where do we go from here? If desire to attend frequent public worship and receive sacramental Communion is supplanted by habitual consumption of worship services on-line, where will this lead God's people? "In the 21st century" said Karl Rahner in my youth "Christians will either be mystics, or they will be nothing at all." I wonder what he would have made of internet consumer religion?
Well, pondering on these things and writing about them on a warm sunny day meant that it was gone three when I finally stepped out on to the terrace to start my day's walk. With more interruptions and an unexpected spell of snoozing mid-afternoon, it was after sunset before I finished. I hope I can summon enough energy to stay the course and get home. It's a bit like hitting 'the wall' when running a marathon. I've been there twice before. Glad it's forty years since then, and not my next challenge!
Well, pondering on these things and writing about them on a warm sunny day meant that it was gone three when I finally stepped out on to the terrace to start my day's walk. With more interruptions and an unexpected spell of snoozing mid-afternoon, it was after sunset before I finished. I hope I can summon enough energy to stay the course and get home. It's a bit like hitting 'the wall' when running a marathon. I've been there twice before. Glad it's forty years since then, and not my next challenge!
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