[Catholic Caucus] “To Be Or Not To Be.” The Capital Question of Masses on TV

The discussion had been germinating for some time. But the April 12 homily in which Pope Francis “retracted” his concession for the television broadcast of his morning Masses at Santa Marta has brought it into the light of day.

In that homily, the pope said that “this is not the Church” if it decays from the real to the virtual. It is a “gnostic” Church with no more people or sacraments.

There is something contradictory in this "j'accuse" of Francis delivered precisely during one of his televised Masses. It is known that at the beginning of the pontificate he refused both the live broadcast of his morning Masses and the public posting of their complete video and audio recordings. But since the March ban in Italy and the Vatican on Masses with the faithful present, because of the coronavirus pandemic, he has allowed them to be televised. And it is expected that when the ban ends in May he will continue to have his Masses broadcast on TV, once again with the presence of the people.

But the question is now open. In an increasingly digital society, what would happen if even the Mass, "culmen et fons" of the Church’s life, were to be caught up in the online cloud? If from event it were to decay into spectacle? From reality to theater?

It is a question that the Fathers of the Church faced in their own way, as Leonardo Lugaresi, a scholar of the first Christian centuries, shows in the letter below.

You have opened, on a problem of such vital importance for the Catholic Church as that of the “tele-Masses,” a discussion of great interest to which I would like to try to make a small contribution, from the point of view of one who has long studied the judgment of the ancient Church in regard to the world of entertainment.

In the conception of the Fathers, theatrical or competitive performances are characterized by the paradoxical presence of a “fullness” of emotional power and a “void” of real substance.

Spectacles, in fact, on the one hand have the power to excite the spectators and sometimes to move them even to a state of exaltation (one might think of certain excesses among sports fans or the intense emotion that can seize the audience in the presence of a particularly strong theatrical performance) but on the other they are by their nature “fake,” in the sense that they have no real substance or, if one prefers, they belong to an order of reality completely different from that of the ordinary life of men, as shown - and this is a crucial argument of the Church Fathers - by the impossibility of a true relationship between the spectator and the actor.

In this regard Augustine - in a famous passage from book III of the “Confessions” - makes a very acute reflection, when he observes that “at the theater man wants to suffer in contemplating mournful and tragic incidents that he would not however want to endure himself.”

Wanting to endure, as a spectator, a “sorrow” from which pleasure is obtained seems in fact to Augustine a “mirabilis insania,” an astonishing folly, because in real life in the face of man's misery the only adequate answer is mercy, not the pleasure of indulgence; and the expression of mercy is “subvenire,” assistance, not “spectare,” contemplation.

“But what is,” Augustine asks, “the mercy [that one feels] in regard to the fictions of the theater? The spectator is not urged to assist, but only invited to commiserate, and all the more does one appreciate the actor of those scenes the more one suffers. And if human misfortunes either removed in time or imaginary are performed in such a way that the spectator does not suffer, he goes away annoyed and protesting; but if he suffers he remains [in attendance] attentive and weeps for joy” (“Confessions” III 2,2).

Going to the rescue of the actor who “suffers” on the stage would obviously be absurd. The only thing we can do - indeed, that we are institutionally called upon to do, as spectators - is to “enjoy” the emotion that this suffering elicits in us. But this is exactly what we do every day by watching the world on television. In this way Augustine thus provides us with a good criterion for distinguishing the logic of the entertainment performance from that of real life. And it is the criterion of responsible relationship.

What does all this have to do with televised Masses? Much, in my opinion, if we set our minds first of all to that which the Mass is in its essence: an event and not a performance.

To be more precise: the Mass is the event par excellence, “the very sacrifice of the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus.” Every Mass, in fact, “makes present and actual the sacrifice which Christ offered to the Father on the cross, once and for all on behalf of mankind. [...] The sacrifice of the cross and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one and the same sacrifice" (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 280).

Now an event involves participation, not the attendance of spectators. To participate in it one must be present at the time and in the place where it happens, because otherwise there is no real relationship with it. And to be present, one must be there with the body. This must be reiterated today, in a cultural context in which the unity of the spiritual-bodily human experience is increasingly brought into question by our habituation to exclusively virtual places and relationships.

The representation of an event in the media entails per se - regardless of the intentions of those who set it up and those who take it in, as also of the “format” that is used - a showbizification that is to a great extent incompatible with the nature of the event itself. Without entering into the dramatic place within which it is carried out, that is without consigning oneself to the time and space that delimit it, one always remains, to a great extent, a spectator.

Just think, to give a single example among many, of the fact that every event is by definition unique and unrepeatable. The hundreds of thousands of Masses that are celebrated every day in the world are not “reruns” produced in batches from a prototype, but each of them constitutes the actualization of the one sacrifice of Christ, which takes place once and for all. The logic of media representation, instead, is that of repeatability and serialization: in this perspective, there is no real difference between following the Mass live or recorded.

The fathers of Vatican Council II had seen correctly when they had identified in the “actuosa participatio” of the faithful one of the main values to be promoted in the reform of the liturgy.

But unfortunately a good part of post-conciliar liturgics misunderstood and betrayed that indication, confusing it with an invitation to liturgical activism, that is to the promotion of human protagonism in the “opus Dei.” And now, after decades of improper emphasis on the “assembly” dimension of the Mass, the ecclesiastical response to the coronavirus health emergency risks, in a sort of mocking heterogony of ends, effectively eliminating the people from the liturgy, downgrading it to a television audience that feeds on religious emotions.

The Mass watched from home can certainly constitute a useful exercise of piety, on a par with others, but it would be fatal for the Catholic faith to overlap it or even confuse it with participation in the sacrament. In the past, ecclesiastical authority was very attentive to this distinction, and today I would not like it to be less so.

The gracious reader who wrote to you from the United Kingdom, citing five examples of “Masses at a distance” that would constitute a precedent for the future online liturgy, I believe has expressed, with typical British empiricism, a feeling now quite widespread among Catholics all over the world.

It matters little that, as you have already objected, the first three examples are rather irrelevant because in them the unity of time and place of the event is not broken, but only adapted to particular conditions, and that the fourth simply presents a situation in which one must choose between undertaking a bit of effort or favoring comfort.

(s.m.) It could be illuminating to reread this 2011 contribution from Leonardo Lugaresi, on Christian criticism of entertainment society, from the Fathers of the Church to Benedict XVI:

While on Pope Francis’s ability to bring up to date the pedagogical theater of the seventeenth-century Jesuits, this commentary was published in “L’Espresso” of April 15, 2016:

Many saints unable to attend Mass because of sickness were allowed to participate mystically. Catherine of Siena, for example, and IIRC Mary of Agreda. I do believe that a live-streamed Mass is not merely “viewing” as if it were a play, but participating in the re-presentation of the sacrifice. The main thing that is lacking is Holy Communion. After all, we believe that the Mass is not confined to time and space, and that all angels and saints are present in the one timeless sacrifice of Calvary.

The author is correct in saying watching a Mass on TV on on the internet is not being present at a Mass. It is a different exercise in piety. That’s fine. But he article would make more sense if there was an option between real Mass and TV Mass right now.

It would be interesting to see a different author address whether, in the absence of any opportunity to participate in a real Mass, it’s better to pray or read the gospel for an extra hour on Sunday, or watch a Mass on TV or the internet while praying?

If the author thinks it’s not, he should say so. If he thinks it is, he should urge every priest to begin ever TV Mass with a short explanation that people should realize that the Mass being an event, merely watching it on TV is nice but not real participation.

I do believe that a live-streamed Mass is not merely “viewing” as if it were a play, but participating in the re-presentation of the sacrifice.

One has to be physically present in order to participate in the Mass.

Without a doubt, there is salutary benefit in following a live Mass virtually (either on television or on a computer) when one has a valid reason to not attend Mass (such as a serious illness or church closures tied to a pandemic), but following a Mass online or on television in no way fulfills our obligation to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation.

Many saints unable to attend Mass because of sickness were allowed to participate mystically.

But it was never because their own bishops/priests had locked them out of their own churches while Masses were being offered.

My local novus ordo pastor, who keeps his church locked up like Fort Knox and refuses to offer the sacrament of confession, was boasting this Saturday that he's getting 10,000 hits on his tele-Masses, some from out of state. He now thinks he's some sort of missionary.

Fortunately, I was able to attend a TLM Mass today, with confessions before Mass, socially distancing, and Holy Communion at an altar rail. Can't do that sitting on the couch watching TV.

The live-streamed mass goes further toward the erroneous idea of the liturgy as a “service.” God, not the minister, is the author of the divine in the mass. We participate not by being a “community” but by adoring, praising, thanking and offering ourselves to God thru sacred mysteries that are real in the present.

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