@ Worship Goes Viral: Catholic Liturgy Online in a COVID-19 World - Teresa Berger

The following blog post is an edited excerpt from an essay appearing in the Network’s eBook Project entitled Digital Ecclesiology: A Global Conversation. The eBook includes 11 essay where authors reflect on the realities of the church revealed through moving from offline to online worship during a time of global pandemic. The eBook is available for FREE download at: https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/188698.

@ Worship Goes Viral: Catholic Liturgy Online in a COVID-19 World

Teresa Berger

Questions about virtual or online communion have received heightened attention since the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown. Over the years before the virus emerged, a good number of Catholic practices of prayer, worship, and devotion had begun to migrate into digital social space, often developing online expressions in parallel with traditional offline forms and practices. Prime examples are various forms of daily prayer, from the official Liturgy of the Hours to personal scripture reading, spiritual reflection, and meditation. Boundaries between liturgical practices in the hands of ecclesially authorized ministers wedded to scripted, officially sanctioned texts on the one hand and those devotional practices considered “popular” and in the hands of laity on the other hand have long been porous in Catholic life. This porousness, too, has migrated into digital social space.

In a sense, then, nothing so far about the pandemic-driven migration of Catholic liturgical practices into online territory seems particularly surprising. Surprises await, however, when one steps back to consider different Catholic rites in their own right.

Baptism
The sacrament of baptism has never been practiced via digital mediation in a Roman Catholic context, as far as I know. So-called internet baptisms—as they might be performed in a multisite nondenominational community—do not exist in the Catholic ritual repertoire, as broad and varied as this repertoire is. The main reason, in all likelihood, lies in theological convictions and pastoral provisions already in place, particularly those concerning baptism in cases of emergency.

Rites around Dying, Death, Burial, and Remembering
The Catholic ritual process around dying, death, burial, and remembering was deeply affected by the COVID-19 lockdown, as ministers struggled with identifying adequate digitally mediated forms. Once again, specific theological understandings and liturgical traditions were at the heart of this struggle. Catholics experienced ritual constraints in ways particular to their own theological-liturgical tradition. While some priests in other ecclesial traditions responded by seeking to accompany dying parishioners with prayers via a smartphone or Skype, the particular sacramental needs of Catholics at the end of life were harder to meet.

Communion/s
Catholic communities discussed communion practices, but this discussion was not about the possibility of digitally-mediated eucharistic sharing. The consensus on that point principally remains what Katherine Schmidt described as the “hard truth” at the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown: “our technology cannot (yet) support the fullness of sacramental life when it comes to the Eucharist.” (Schmidt, 2020). This consensus, however, did not preclude lively discussions about digitally mediated eucharistic celebrations in Roman Catholic circles.

With mass suddenly widely available in forms of digital mediation, and with eucharistic consecration not deemed possible across distances by current Catholic convictions, the age-old practice of “spiritual communion” suddenly flourished. However, Catholics schooled in Vatican II liturgical theology were quick to worry that these medieval scholastic interpretations and practices would undo the gains of post-conciliar liturgical reforms. In some other quarters, arguments against the disembodied, non-participatory nature of online worship were revived; and some raised concerns about reducing worship “to an experience of convenience and efficiency” (Zsupan-Jerome, 2020, p. 92). Some Catholic communities also experimented with new liturgical forms offline, for example distributing a “Eucharist to-go.” Catholic belief in the real presence of Christ in the eucharistic elements—a presence that remains—enabled these elements to become highly “mobile” after the mass in which they were consecrated. Meanwhile, some Catholics normally in the pews of their local church discovered a whole new world of Catholic liturgy in the availability of livestreamed masses, and not a few delighted in participating in eucharistic celebrations from around the globe.

Catholic Liturgy Online in a COVID-19 World—Beyond Diminishment

Catholic communities have also witnessed a plethora of liturgical adaptations and ritual inventions, from drive-through confessions to an Easter blessing with a squirt gun. At least one Catholic wedding I am aware of was performed “by proxy,” that is to say, with the bride in one place together with a priest and a proxy bridegroom, and the bridegroom in another place, all digitally joined via ZOOM.

As brick-and-mortar sanctuaries gradually reopen under post-COVID-19 conditions, a whole new world of worship practices will be seeing the light of day. A host of liturgical changes and accommodations are being enacted across the varied ritual repertoire that is the Catholic liturgical tradition.

Conclusion
As I hope to have shown, the diversity of liturgical practices of the Roman Catholic Church forbids generalizations about the migration of “Catholic worship” into digital social space. This migration, especially under the accelerated pace due to the COVID-19-pandemic, has been uneven. The reasons for the unevenness are largely to be found in the specific theological and liturgical understandings of each rite as it became affected in distinct ways by the norms of social distancing and physical isolation in response to a virus.

Teresa Berger is Professor of Liturgical Studies at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music and Yale Divinity School, where she also holds an appointment as the Thomas E. Golden Jr. Professor of Catholic Theology. She is the author of @ Worship: Liturgical Practices in Digital Worlds (Routledge, 2018).

Sources
Berger, T. (2018). @ Worship: Liturgical practices in digital worlds. New York: Routledge.

Schmidt, K. G. (2020, March 29). The pain of the uncommuned [Web log post]. (DT) Daily Theology. Retrieved from https://dailytheology.org/2020/03/29/the-pain-of-the-uncommuned/.

Tan, M. J. P. (2020). Communion in the digital body of Christ. In H. A. Campbell (Ed.), The Distanced Church. College Station, TX: Digital Religion Publications. Retrieved from https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/187891/Distanc....

Zsupan-Jerome, D. (2020). Is it real? Mystagogizing the livestreamed service. In H. A. Campbell (Ed.), The Distanced Church. College Station, TX: Digital Religion Publications. Retrieved from https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/bitstream/handle/1969.1/187891/Distanc....