The Catholic Church is selling “the Eucharist” and people short and is making a mistake by turning Mass into a YouTube experience, according to a UK theologian. Thomas O’Loughlin, emeritus professor of Historical Theology at the University of Nottingham and Director of Studia Traditionis Theologiae, said: “There are some things Zoom and YouTube just won’t do because real experiences are whole human experiences.”
“Can you send an apple by email?” he asked.
He said he will accept doing Mass online when people give up going out to dine with others and when people dine alone at home with pre-packaged food and say it is as rich an experience as it is eating and drinking with friends.
People wanting to have Mass on their TV or computer at home and priests supplying it sounds a warning about the real nature of the community, he said.
“Eucharist makes little sense without a community.”
Challenging the meeting, O’Loughlin posed the question as to whether the Church had stopped being a real community and is being reduced to religious ideology.