Spiritual Communion II

The day after I wrote my blog on spiritual communion last week, the Pope addressed it. I don’t claim there was a causal relationship, but it’s clearly an issue that deserves examining again. I also appreciate the comments I received on and off-line, especially those of my sister, who spelled out the way the Archdiocese of Milwaukee explained this phenomenon, as well as her own experience of it.

Francis clearly gets the problem, as quoted by Robert Mickens in LaCroix International: “A familiarity without community, a familiarity without the bread, a familiarity without the Church, without the people, without the sacraments is dangerous.” He worries about “viralizing” the Church—and the sacraments.

What is to be done? It fascinates me that this week more practical and less theoretical articles have been published. Right away Joe Ruane responded off-line to me with a way to use the way actio in distans allows priests to concelebrate from the pews to recognize true sacramental participation to those attending Mass virtually by receiving communion.

In contrast, J.P. Grayland argues that communal in-person “body-memory” makes “anamnesis, or living-active remembering, … central to the concept and practice of sacramental mediation and liturgical prayer articulated in Vatican II’s theology,” and goes on to explain the roots of that teaching.

Thomas Reese in NCR goes to a most dystopian place in describing how today’s strict social distancing rules might be implemented, with this consequence: “Not only the recalcitrant but also the inattentive and sloppy will have to be banned from church.” My goodness! Fortunately, he wanders around to this: “The pandemic may make the U.S. church more sympathetic to the changes desired by the Amazonian church, and allow women to share their gifts with the church in a way previously not seen in the States.”

Bill Grimm anticipates the joys and sorrows of gathering together again. He also anticipates much smaller parish communities.  Grimm outlines three categories of worshipers: those for whom Mass is a locus for their personal prayer; those who “seek and find a community of faith, worship, and service within the framework of the Church community”; and those who “go to church because they have gone to church.” I’d bet that you understand what he means by the last – and where you’d place yourselves. He concludes: “If the community had been marked by general mediocrity in liturgy, preaching and service, it is doomed. Parishes that had not fostered a real sense of community in prayer, liturgy and service and thus had a weak or no ‘second group’ are likely to be worst hit.”

If he were reading this blog, Justin Stanwix might notice the number of times “community” is repeated in the previous paragraph. He provides ten brief and specific suggestions of ways parishes can deepen “communion with God and one another,” from “ongoing adult formation” to imaginative celebratory events. He promotes “home Masses” and marriages “on the beach or in a park…The alternative often is no sacramental marriage.” I am cheered by his Australian openness to engaging the people of God even on the beach, and sharing sacramental grace where they are.

Now, do you notice that the above practical comments are all by men? I do, and I wonder if it’s because men have official leadership responsibility for our parishes. NCR’s editorial staff writes, “Are we asking big enough questions?” They note: “The old parochial model of church that had established itself as immutable in the popular imagination has been disappearing for decades…The focus should be not on what the pandemic will cause, but what it might accelerate.” They quote Carol Zinn, the executive director of the LCWR, speaking before the crisis: “It is not a journey of change that we’re looking at, it seems to me. It is a journey of transformation. And the kind of letting go that has to happen in a journey of transformation is absolutely profound.” They are not exactly enlisting Pope Francis in that, but they do quote him saying once on a plane that a question “seems too small to me.” Maybe he can be moved beyond his worries.

Virginia Saldanha provides one large answer. She experienced an international liturgy on Easter with 215 online participants with Catholic Women’s Council. She concludes:

“But for a significant number of Catholics, things will change. They will probably stay with that which gives deeper meaning to what it means to be a Catholic with a living faith. No, they are not leaving the Church, but they will remain with groups that nourish their Catholic faith so that they can make the Reign of God, inaugurated by Jesus, a reality on earth.”

What is to be done?