Sunday Masses

March 2020. Sunday Mass was held virtually in accordance with local health policies. Bishops worldwide suspended Sunday Obligation. Some dioceses canceled or prohibited priests from performing sacraments such as penance and anointing of the sick while other dioceses allowed it in accordance with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations and local health directives. Some churches were open for individual prayer(Miller et al, 2020).

March 29, 2020. In the UK, the priest of St Wulstan’s Catholic Church specified in the parish bulletin that “Although there will be no public liturgies, for the time being, I shall continue to celebrate Mass for the Parish at 9.30 am on weekdays in the house and on Sundays at 10.30 am in the church”. The church attendees were provided with websites of two churches that were live streaming Sunday Mass(Bryson et al, 2020).

In Poland, drive-thru confessions were conducted by a “Catholic Priest who sits in the church parking lot while wearing a mask”(Xiong et al, 2020).

In the Philippines with 81% Catholic Faithfuls, Catholic Churches had taken action to provide the public with  “online-based Church masses, community prayers, spiritual recollections and retreats, and eucharistic adoration and processions”(del Castillo et al, 2020). 

In New Zealand, Lyndsay Freer of the Catholic Diocese of Auckland explained;

“Because our churches are in lockdown, we are attempting to provide recorded daily Masses to our Catholic people via our diocesan website and the Bishop’s Facebook…we are negotiating to have some television time during this period, and are very grateful that this is likely to be a possibility”(Oxholm  et al, 2020)

In Italy, Bishop Nerbini allowed the group of Doctors attending COVID-19 patients to distribute communion, and read prayers on their bedside (Eliverä, 2020).

To creatively worship, there is a need for further research on privatization of religiosity and secularization, asynchronous religious rituals, technologically mediated religious innovation and distribution, and civil engagement(Baker et al 2020).

References

1. Miller, A., Castro Bigalli, A., & Sumanam, P. (2020, April 1). The coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic, social distancing, and observance of religious holidays: Perspectives from Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism. International Journal of Critical Illness and Injury Science. Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications. https://doi.org/10.4103/IJCIIS.IJCIIS_60_20

2.Bryson, J. R., Andres, L., & Davies, A. (2020). COVID-19, Virtual Church Services and a New Temporary Geography of Home. Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie, 111(3), 360–372. https://doi.org/10.1111/tesg.12436

3.Xiong, J. J., Isgandarova, N., & Panton, A. E. (2020, March 20). COVID-19 demands theological reflection: Buddhist, muslim, and christian perspectives on the present pandemic. International Journal of Practical Theology. De Gruyter Open Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1515/ijpt-2020-0039

4.del Castillo, F. A., Biana, H. T., & Joaquin, J. J. B. (2020). Correspondence churchinaction: The role of religious interventions in times of COVID-19. Journal of Public Health (United Kingdom), 42(3), 633–634. https://doi.org/10.1093/pubmed/fdaa086

5.Oxholm, T., Rivera, C., Schirrman, K., & Hoverd, W. J. (2020). New Zealand Religious Community Responses to COVID-19 While Under Level 4 Lockdown. Journal of Religion and Health. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-020-01110-8

6.Eliverä, E. S. (2020). Life and Churchlife During Pandemic: Bioethical Issues and Church Response in the Time of COVID-19. In MST Review (Vol. 22, Issue 1). https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/03/25/

7.Baker, J. O., Martí, G., Braunstein, R., Whitehead, A. L., & Yukich, G. (2020). Religion in the Age of Social Distancing: How COVID-19 Presents New Directions for Research. Sociology of Religion, 81(4), 357–370. https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/sraa039

8.Priest offers drive-thru confession during coronavirus pandemic – ABC News. (n.d.). Retrieved May 12, 2021, from https://abcnews.go.com/US/priest-offers-drive-confession-coronavirus-pandemic/story?id=69726217

9.Participating in Mass from home during the coronavirus quarantine. (n.d.). Retrieved May 12, 2021, from https://www.dioceseofcleveland.org/news/2020/04/04/participating-in-mass-from-home-during-the-coronavirus-quarantine