I was chatting with a cross-country friend this morning, and when I asked what she was doing, she said that she and her kids were waiting for online mass. This frankly shocked me, and my question was, “I thought mass was on-demand, not live-streamed.” So after our talk, I decided to do a little Sunday snooping into the world of on-line Sunday liturgy.
First of all, by way of disclaimer (if it wasn’t apparent by the introduction) I have yet to “attend” an on-line mass. Given my somewhat nebulous relationship with “analog” masses, I certainly wasn’t missing it, and I figured that I would spend most of the time texting or purchasing things from Amazon. But the joy of at home attendance is that I can duck in, take a quick look, and duck out without disturbing the congregants.
It does appear that there are two divergent approaches to webcasting the liturgy. Most parish sites that I checked out posted a video of mass that was clearly shot earlier, and this video remains on the site all day and for the following days. Most of these videos appeared to be “one take” single or multi camera productions, though there was some evidence of editing in one (one might picture a director shouting, “Cut! Let’s take it from the consecration again!”). A few parishes are offering a live feed of mass, which I assume is archived and available later in the day. I’m sure the philosophy of this second approach is to capture the immediacy of the event and to maintain the illusion of routine. I must say that I had a great deal of difficulty with the “live feed” sites. I could see why people might get irritated and switch over to a pre-recorded site.
Which brings to another point. Parish identity has been dying, particularly in urban areas, for years. Most families have a variety of local church schedules posted on the refrigerator to make a weekly choice. This choice has now become even simpler as the viewer (participant) can quickly scroll through the available services to find the best music, prayer, and preaching. Instead of “Oh, darn, it’s Father Blank!” it is a simple switch to move to the next channel to other parishes in the diocese, in the country, or in the world. One also wonders how often (at least for the video sites) attendees are hitting the fast forward button. I’m sure that this is discouraged, but what Father can’t see…
In the few masses that I sampled, I was struck by how conventional they are. The usual parts of Sunday liturgy including congregational singing, inviting people to greet each other (one place encouraged attendees to text greetings to their friends), and the regular parts of mass all are done in the usual places and ways. I’m not suggesting that churches should be employing CGI to have dramatic effects, but there is an awkwardness and emptiness to watching what is meant to be a live performance on tape. It’s like watching a video of a stage play. Somehow it just feels wrong, or watching late night comedians broadcasting from their homes and pausing during the monolog for unheard laughs. It just feels needy.
Now, some of my more theologically inclined friends might say that this is the point, that we should feel bad that we can’t be together and liturgy without a congregation should feel incomplete. OK, then maybe we should be doing something else.
Be safe, be strong.