Can ou Zoom a Eucharist? (20210918)

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Contemporary Catholic Belief and Action

The mission of ARCC is to bring about substantive structural change within the Catholic Church by seeking to institutionalize a collegial understanding of church where decision making is shared and accountability is realized among Catholics of every kind and conditio n.

Once people start to believe change is possible,

the drive to achieve it accelerates.

- Patrick Sullivan, ARCC President

Can You Zoom a Eucharist?

Susan K Roll

Professor Emerita - Saint Paul University, Ottawa

Specialization in Liturgical and Sacramental Studies

Susan serves on the ARCC Board of Directors

When I brought home the three-month-old, black and white kitten, he was easily startled by sounds and images on the TV. He’d flinch, crouch and stare at the screen. This lasted about a month. The bright little fellow figured out quickly that even if he heard an animal sound from the TV, there was no other animal in the room.

Odo the cat is now 15 years old, and never even looks up at animal sounds on TV. He knows very well that what appears, or what makes noise, on screen, is not real.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to an explosion of interactive meeting platforms such as Zoom that make visual images and dialogue possible in real time -- no time-consuming and expensive travel, and totally in the convenience of one’s own home (for those who have home Wi-Fi.) Parishes, faith communities and church-related organizations were fairly quick to adopt the new technology – you only needed one adept host and some persistent mentoring to get the other participants started (“You’re muted!”) And in fact a great deal of shared spiritual interaction can be carried out on such a platform: meetings both in plenary sessions and breakout rooms, Bible study, book club gatherings, even prayer groups. Planners learned early not to use too much unison speaking, and certainly not unison singing, because of the multiple time lags resulting in utter cacophony. Some acts of prayer can be shared by participants online, although they may involve awkward private gestures (I still have spilled candle wax on one laptop.) And at least in theory, an online meditation could involve a little breaking-of-the-bread together.

But is it Eucharist? Is it a sacrament, theologically speaking? Can a sacrament be mediated electronically? Where do the participants in Zoom Eucharists draw the line between subjective perception of a powerful and much-needed spiritual connection mediated through the screen and its audio feed, and the objective nature of a sacrament?

A background issue raised by some liturgical theologians has to do with whether Zoom Eucharist amounts to a radical privatization of liturgy, directly contradicting the liturgical reforms of Vatican II that engaged the People of God actively as the Body of Christ in liturgical celebration. With only electronic images on a screen and no real people present, or even avatars and no real people visible at all, as well as no shared sacramental elements, how would this differ from private devotions?

This privatization is more clearly evident in broadcast Masses, whether on television or via YouTube. A well-done broadcast Mass with fine music and quality preaching can be a wonderful pastoral resource for shut-ins, for hospital patients or nursing home residents, or for those who live in geographic isolation. But in this case viewers are invited to “spiritual communion” at the time when communion would normally be distributed, often with a suggested prayer appearing on screen. It is not home Eucharist and does not claim to be.

Yet some grassroots groups are inviting participants to gather before their screens with a bit of bread and wine, to celebrate together with others imaged in squares on screen.

Is it Eucharist? By classic criteria arising from sacramental theology and liturgical studies, no.

And yet an almost unprecedented level of pastoral need coupled with, for some, impatience with the pace of church reform, has given rise to online experimentation. The need is driven by prolonged isolation, loneliness, fear bordering on terror, the disruption of almost every aspect of normal life, and for many, loss of their health or loss of loved ones to Covid-19. In tandem with this pastoral crisis is a split the size of a chasm, metaphorically speaking, between the responses given to the question of the legitimacy of Zoom Eucharist by bishops and most theologians, and the enthusiastically received online celebrations carried out by alternative faith gatherings.

If you think that the main issue is whether the words of consecration are going to “take” when pronounced via an audio feed, you might be surprised. A primary concern is the nature of the assembly. In the early church the ecclesia gathered to hear the word of God and to break bread in a shared event, even if the consecrated bread was later carried elsewhere. One could speak of the living Word, and the life of Christ present in the bread and wine broken and poured, because it took place as a live event in a shared space. What happens when the Word may be shared by electronic means, but there is no way to share bread and wine through a machine? If each square on the screen shows a real-time image of individual participants sitting at home with their own private bread and private fruit of the vine – but everyone receives at the same time – is the Body of Christ truly receiving the Body of Christ?

The very idea of Zoom Eucharist presents an earthshaking challenge to traditional categories of sacramental theologizing because the very nature of interpersonal “presence” has been radically altered by digital “presence” – and there is no going back. For many participants, Zoom and other meeting platforms represent a gift of the Holy Spirit to the church today, all the more so in the face of a global public health emergency. Can we say with certainty that God is *not* present when two or three are gathered digitally?

In a time of great disruption we find new ways to build community, across the globe. Or, alternately, we might curl up at home with a furry friend who’s not impressed in the slightest.