The Pros and Cons of Virtual Masses and the Nature of the Mass

Below are two current articles on a debate begun by Pope Francis on April 17, regarding virtual Mass attendance and the nature of the Holy Sacrifice. One is by a theologian and the other a lawyer on the present state of the question. Plinthos translation.

Masses without people. What about the Church in Italy? The opinions of a theologian and a jurist.

(Sandro Magister) The note by Leonardo Lugaresi in the previous post and the protest of the Italian episcopal conference against the decree of the head of government Giuseppe Conte which postponed "sine die" the return to the celebration of the mass with the faithful animated all the more the debate on the future of that constitutive act of the Church which is precisely the Eucharistic celebration and therefore on the future of the Church itself in Italy.

(But, curiously, speaking of the decree at beginning his mass at Santa Marta this morning, Francis invited to pray to the Lord "to give us all the grace of obedience to the dispositions," the Italian bishops are doubly humiliated, first by the head of government and then by the pope).

They wrote us from two distinct points of view, theological and juridical, Professor Pietro De Marco and the Attorney Mauro Barberio.

Here are their letters one after another.

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FROM FLORENCE, PIETRO DE MARCO

Dear Magister,

I take the liberty to add a few comments to the fine statement by Leonardo Lugaresi. In the slow and unsure development of the ecclesiastical response to the epidemic, there has also been lacking a clear distinction between the emergency suspension of the mass "cum populo" and the holy mass as such, which nothing prevents the priests from celebrating, in a healthy and valid way, even "sine populo."

Days ago, I asked a bishop friend that the distinction be more clearly marked between the factual limitation of the gathering of people that accompanies a liturgical celebration and the celebration itself, between an empty church, on the one hand, and the intact reality of the liturgical action and its effects, on the other.

Every liturgy ("leitourgía," service of public affairs, from "laós," people, multitude, and "ergon," work) is a sacred service provided for the public good by religious experts. The Umbrian Episcopal Conference produced a document - courageous for this strange time of the Church, - signed by the Archbishop of Spoleto and Norcia, Renato Boccardo, in which it is recalled that "the essential" matter "of the mass is bread and wine, just as the 'form' is given by the celebratory act presided over by the priest.” So "when a priest celebrates the Eucharist 'with the intention of doing what the Church intends to do,' that mass objectively actualizes the paschal mystery of Christ." This is the classical and constant doctrine of the Church, without, I add, any other validation being required.

The Eucharistic liturgy is above all a memorial mystery and an action of praise to God. Celebrated by the priest "in persona Christi capitis" it has value in itself "pro multis." It is not an expression of immanent sociability nor much less does its supernatural reality come from below. This is what Lugaresi recalls: "Unfortunately a good part of the post-conciliar liturgy has misunderstood and betrayed that perspective, mistaking it for an invitation to liturgical activism, that is, for the promotion of the human protagonism in the opus Dei". I am grateful to him for that.

But to the bishop I allowed myself to add that the faithful must consequently know that they are participating in the mystery even if they are distant, provided that they are internally disposed according to the intention with which the Church ordinarily convokes them in the liturgical spaces. This could have limited both the disorientation about what to do and the concentration on the "domestic" liturgies, in which the shift to the celebratory "everyone is free" is easy.

We have always known that mass goes beyond the walls that are erected to protect and inscribe holy action: the temple. Given the temple, and also by virtue of the symbolism of the temple, mass is a cosmic mystery event. The absence of people does not degrade the temple, just as the temple does not fear the absence of people. Each mass participates in the eternal mass celebrated by the Son, celebrated, in fact, by the Father in the oblation of the Son, as pointed out by a great French school of spirituality of the seventeenth century (de Condren, Olier); vertiginous as the link between heaven and earth may be, of which the liturgy consists, the distance from the temple should never give way to substitutes, but rather to keep mind and heart firmly fixed on the places and acts in which the paschal mystery is brought up to date.

In conversation with the bishop, I did not deny that presence is above all corporeal. And, since one might ask how many meters define the presence with respect to the fulcrum, the altar, and that a certain modern spiritualism makes us feel more Presence and those present in a small church than in Saint Peter's or in a huge square, there is phenomenology of the sacred precincts, sacred spaces, not only buildings, for the great praying assemblies, as for the Israel of Exodus around the sanctuary tent. Therefore an immense cathedral or a circumscribed open space is equally a place of Presence/presence; with caution the latter, for the subtle constant "panic" or pantheistic risk of a contemporary communion with nature, even to the Teilhardian misunderstanding of the "mass on the world," a pancristic visionary world.

There are therefore thresholds also for our case, brought better into focus by an emergency. The threshold or katastrophé crises are constitutive of human practices, all the more so in the interpretations and actions of the sacred: limits beyond which an order of intention and action becomes something other than itself. Hence the discipline of the rite, the rubric. Only the principle, the supernatural hope, of the "supplet ecclesia" consoles us in these months.

I add something about the distinction between spectacle and ritual. The patristic reminder outlined by Lugaresi is essential and healthy, in years during which even quality liturgists seek in the theatrical model a re-foundation of the liturgy, with the additional temptation to import into the liturgy that subversive lack of distinction between actor and spectator that has tempted the avant-garde for decades. I believe that the bankrupting results have produced the conviction that there is no "mimesis" without a spectator, because it is not in the actor that "mimesis" takes place; the actor represents, "fingit."

I would distinguish, however, the show - as a theatrical or cinematographic "fictio" - from the spectacularization, which is the in-formal trans-formation (an interesting play on words) of a public event, or one made such by radio and television media, on a stage before the world .

We know that, under the eyes of the cameras, every opportunity made public, as heads of state conversing in a drawing room, imposes on the actors some studied behaviors, for example the gradation in the smile. But those actors are not real actors: the communication turned into spectacle - that is made visible, "exire ad spectaculum", to go and see - is that of the protagonists themselves: the chagrin of a head of state, or of a Jorge Mario Bergoglio, does not end when the curtain, it persists as a political action. So: the television broadcast of a rite does not make the rite a show, a "fictio;" it is the visible rendering of an actor and an event that is not mimetic but sacramental. The past abuse of the term spectacularization - understood as alienation of the authentic event - risks, in my opinion, the deterioration even today of the "res" to which our judgment refers. Just as a public handshake between sovereigns has consequences according to reality, so the Mass has consequences, in its proper order of realism.

Is it then irrelevant to recover the sacred space, the "templum"? Absolutely not. The occasional and internal reproduction of the "templum" in itself contains all the risks of non-Catholic de-realization that accompany interiorizations. The space within the individual soul does not contradict, it does not receive within itself and make true neither the temple nor the priesthood nor the "plebs sancta." During the contagion the soul experiences a separation and an extreme anachoretic poverty, more that that imposed by things, unsolicited. It is right, therefore, to reintegrate. But it will be important to return to the churches with this clear awareness: it will not be our presence that will legitimize the rite again, which was never interrupted. The rite and the "plebs" will confirm and complete us.

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FROM CAGLIARI, MAURO BARBERIO

Dear Magister,

on the question of masses televised or streamed, we have heard a bit of everything, in the theological and pastoral fields. However, very little has been written with reference to the very sensitive juridical aspects.

I cannot but point out how the breaking of the balance between what belongs to God and what is due to Caesar was - through the serious and flagrant suspension of the kingdom of holy masses and of the free participation in the sacraments by the faithful. And, of course, since the March 8th first decree of the Prime Minister, and certainly not only since yesterday, April 26th.

Given these events, it can only come as a surprise to hear the Italian Conference of Bishops (CEI) now make its late complaints about the violated "fullness of its autonomy" and the compromise of the "exercise of freedom of worship."

The real "vulnus" occurred, in fact, with the first Prime Ministerial Decree of March 8: "All organized events are suspended, as well as events in public or private places, including those which are cultural, recreational, sporting, religious or exhibitional, even if held in closed places but open to the public."

On that occasion, one of the few critical voices, in the sepulcral silence of the episcopal conference, was that of Andrea Riccirdi who with an intervention in the "Corriere della Sera" stated: "It is not clear why worship and prayers are forbidden, if celebrated in safety. Perhaps not all decision makers penetrate the peculiar sense of the mass for believers, of whom the ancient martyrs said: 'Sine Dominicum non possumus".

Few have pointed out the intangibility and absoluteness of religious freedom vis-à-vis the State and, above all, the marked violation of the 1984 Agreement between the Holy See and the Italian State, whose article 1 states: " The Italian Republic and the Holy See reaffirm that the State and the Catholic Church are, in their own order, independent and sovereign, committing themselves to full respect for this principle in their relations and to mutual collaboration for the promotion of man and the good of the Country." And article 5 specifies that "the buildings open to worship cannot be requisitioned, occupied, expropriated or demolished except for serious reasons and after agreement with the competent ecclesiastical authority." It follows likewise that, without the agreement of the church authority, suspend the religious functions could not be determined.

Unfortunately, however, the situation on the "structural" side also has been even more serious and mortifying. To proceed in the aforementioned terms, a totally inadequate tool was used, namely the aforementioned DPCM that has no value or force of a normative source. It is, in fact, a trivial administrative measure which generally has an organizational function. The appropriate tool, or rather the only one to possibly affect absolute rights, could and should have been that of a decree of law.

It is important to be aware of elementary principles that even a student of the second year of jurisprudence knows well. The DPCM has no legal force and can be challenged before the administrative judge, where a decree of law - an act of the government having the force and value of the law - is subject to being converted into law (with all the guarantees of the parliamentary passage) and can be subject to scrutiny of the constitutional court only.

In short, the damage is upstream. What happened yesterday, April 26, therefore, repeats the most classic of the déjà-vu.

The biggest problem, however, in my opinion, is found in the fact that the right to religious freedom and freedom of worship - until February 2020 absolute and untouchable - has become something else: something inferior and dispensable by Caesar, to whom some absent-minded and naive shepherd has conceded and delegated, with guilty carelessness, even what should be of God.

The Pope Against Masses on TV: "This Is Not the Church," April 20, 2020

For and Against Mass on TV. A Letter from the United Kingdom, April 22, 2020

“To Be Or Not To Be.” The Capital Question of Masses on TV, April 27, 2020

Messe senza popolo. Che ne è della Chiesa in Italia? I pareri del teologo e del giurista, April 28, 2020