New 'Phase 4' Guidelines

[keitha]

Latest guidelines from the England & Wales Bishops Conference:

https://www.cbcew.org.uk/covid-guidance ... ve-worship

In addition, the Bishops are hoping to reintroduce the Sunday obligation on the First Sunday of Advent.

[quaeritor]

. . . the Bishops are hoping to reintroduce the Sunday obligation on the First Sunday of Advent.

I had rather hoped that this mediaeval approach might be allowed to fade quietly away. I have never really understood why those who believe themselves to have been granted the keys to the kingdom of heaven by The One who came to earth and lived and died to ensure that all human kind might pass through those gates should choose to use the power thus granted to erect hurdles to divert them instead to eternal damnation - or indeed why they would expect to enjoy the approval of That Same One for so doing.

Just wondering.

Q

[quaeritor]

Quite disappointed not to have generated any discussion of this - have I blundered into one of those things that we just don't talk about - "more honoured in the breach" and all that?

Q

[alan29]

Maybe its just a case of fatigue. Or people just accepting the guidelines.
I have to say that I find the idea of Sunday Obligation an odd one. If you are only going because you HAVE to, then ........

[Southern Comfort]

Re "obligation", here's Gabe Huck writing in 1997:

On the first/eighth day the baptized people come together and the church thus assembled does eucharist. Even when this practice took on an oppressive tone ("Sunday obligation" understood as church legislation about being present at least from this moment to that moment at the Sunday Mass), Catholics had it fairly straight about Sunday, assembly and eucharist. (And in my reading, Sunday obligation means this: you have to be there because without you we can't do what this church — that's us — needs to do.)

[My emphasis]

That's a very different and to my mind much healthier way of looking at obligation than a legalistic approach. And I think many of our people have got that. Time and again I have heard people during the past 16-17 months saying that what they have really missed about Sunday Mass is the sense of community, the sense of belonging. Without realising it, they are articulating part of what it means to understand that you are part of the Body of Christ.

I would go further, and say that without that sense of community we are lost. But with it we can at least try to put up with significant amounts of sloppy liturgy, bad reading, appallingly self-indulgent presiding and preaching, music that would be more appropriate in a different (secular) context rather than being forced into a worship straitjacket, etc, etc. My worry is that now that people have experienced something different online, it's going to be more difficult to persuade some of them to return to the community, where they will have to relive some of these awful things on a weekly basis or more frequently. They are more likely to stay online where they have found some fulfilment and nourishment.

We need to work at tightening up what we do, big time.

[Hare]

I agree absolutely, Southern Comfort.

[alan29]

I agree S.C.
But I think it is the missing sense of community that will entice people back.