Liturgical Lockdown: Covid and the Absence of the Laity...

Liturgical Lockdown. Covid and the Absence of the Laity. A New Zealand Perspective describes Covid-19's impact on liturgy and parish life in New Zealand.

In 2020 and again in 2021 liturgical lockdown brought our sacramental system to a grinding halt. Because of physical and social distancing requirements Catholics lost their sacred physical gathering space and the absence of the laity at Sunday mass. Clergy went online with their masses while the laity looked-on. This behaviour suggests that the dominant understanding of the liturgical community is still priest-centric, where the laity are not an essential element of the liturgical act.

Covid responses to worship have taken us backwards to pre-Conciliar thinking and practice. Mass has become, again, about the priest and not about the gathering of the People of God.

Virtual mass, spiritual communion, drive-through confession and walk-up communion all featured during lockdown as ways to keep priests busy and feed the Catholic consumer-culture. J.P. Grayland shows how these are not innovations but a return to pre-Conciliar thinking. By recounting one parish's story of disruption and innovation. J.P. explores the dominant responses to Covid-19's Liturgical Lockdown in this narrative of pastoral and liturgical change.