INTERVIEW: Fr Conor McDonough OP on challenges and opportunities for the Church during coronavirus

In our very first CV Connect Webinar we were joined by Fr. Conor McDonough OP. This webinar took place right after the UK went into full lockdown (23rd March) and in it Fr Conor talked about how the the Church should ‘seize the digital continent’, whether the Bishops were right in cancelling public Masses and what St Thomas Aquinas would have understood by spiritual communion.

Fr Conor McDonough OP is Dublin-based and Galway-born member of the Irish Dominican Province. He ministers at St Saviour’s Church in Dublin’s north inner city, where he teaches in the Dominican House of Studies.

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Catholic Voices (CV): What challenges and opportunities are being faced by the Church during this crisis?In particular how can the Church, as the Master of the Dominican Order has recently urged, ‘seize the digital continent’?

Fr Conor: A major challenge is just the fact that so many people now are experiencing anxiety and uncertainty, and even panic. I think that something that is a real problem. People can give into that, if they're scrolling through the news feed all the time – even if they are Christians and people of hope – they can become almost fascinated by disease and by death. 

We feel that chaos is approaching us, but there's an opportunity for us as people of faith to ask what we really believe about this: do we really believe that chaos is going to take over, do we really believe that death is going to be victorious, or do we recognise that Christ is Risen and that that changes everything, that we are not subject to 'panic' but are people that receive daily the peace that Jesus breathed on the apostles in the upper room. I think that's a challenge and an opportunity, an opportunity for real spiritual growth.

I think as well, there's another opportunity for evangelisation. I think this is really something we should keep an eye on for the coming weeks and months. So many people who have no faith at all or who are basically living as if they are materialists, as if all there is is matter and energy and there's no ultimate spiritual meaning to life – a lot of them now are asking themselves ‘what is life all about?’ And a lot of people who don't have any fixed beliefs about the purpose of life and so on are finding themselves just asking the questions ‘What am I here for? What's life about?’

I've got to say, [early in the Covid-19 lockdown] I was a bit more on the street – we're totally locked in at the moment – and was able to hear confessions in a semi-outdoor environment, and I've never seen so many people smiling at me and waving, including many local people who never come to our church. They saw me there in the habit, they saw a queue of people on the street, and they engaged in a really positive way. So I think that suggests there's an opportunity for evangelisation after all of this. At a time of crisis for people the non-essential things fall away, the things that distract people from God fall away to glimmers, and there's an opportunity then to let go of the glimmers and to find the true light.

 I think for ourselves as well as Christians, we don't have the opportunity to gather – we usually go to Mass and we just pray on autopilot and are supported by the community, and that's a good thing, but now that support has been taken away and withdrawn – and we find ourselves alone in our rooms. If we actually think about the Gospels, that's one of the things that Jesus said about how we should pray: go into your room, close the door, speak to your Father.

I think there's  a real opportunity for us as well to say, well, when we can't come together, when we don't have the support of the community, what do I do then? Do I really personally have a relationship with Jesus? Am I really a follower of his? Can I have a conversation with him? Am I ready to leave aside all the Martha business and become Mary of Bethany, just staying at the feet of Jesus? So that's a wonderful opportunity for us, I think. 

As well, I think it's an opportunity to think about all the things we put on the long finger. So often we say we're too busy to pray, too busy to read Scripture, too busy to do spiritual reading, and now for most of us – not everybody – we're not too busy to do those things. It's a great opportunity to really try. Do an hour of meditation – why not? Light a candle, look at a cross for an hour in silence, and just see what happens. Or say 'I'm going to read the Gospel of John, the whole thing' – why not? Give it a go! I think there's an awful lot of opportunities for us.  

CV: Should the bishops have cancelled public Masses? Have they done the right thing? Does the decision suggest a lack of faith? Pictures have been going around on social media of St Charles Borromeo going out and giving Communion during plague times, and they wonder whether the bishops shouldn’t have gone along with Government advice and instead given a counter-cultural witness?

Fr Conor: Certainly people of faith should be giving a counter-cultural witness, and I think maybe that one of the most important ways people of faith can give a counter-cultural witness just now is not by spending a lot of time complaining online about this that or the other decision, but simply accepting in a spirit of peace this is what has happened.

But I think it's worth all the same thinking about why the bishops made this decision. Just from my own perspective I can see the reason in it.

For many elderly people who are particularly susceptible to coronavirus, they're very much creatures of habit: they have their routines, and I know for many of the people in our neighbourhood the only time they see other people is when they come to Mass. It's really, really important to them. 

In Ireland it was slightly different to England and Wales: it was left up to each bishop to decide what to do and in Dublin public Masses have not been suspended, but most parish priests have decided to suspend Mass and although we've [now] been told by our Provincial to do so. But for the few days when we had Mass continuing to be celebrated with the church doors open, there were many elderly people, many people we knew to be very sick who just kept coming. They just kept coming even though we were announcing it was not safe for them to come.

They kept coming, and for that reason I can see the value in suspending public participation in Mass, although it's really important to emphasise that the Mass is not being suspended. Every single priest is offering the sacrifice of the Mass every day and that includes the intentions of all the living and all the Dead, so the Mass is not being suspended. The sacrifice of the Mass continues to be offered and that's a really important point to make. 

I'd say the thing about St Charles Borromeo, because I've seen some people referencing that with the implication that back in the good old days priests were brave and went into situations that were dangerous, but now priest are wimps and are afraid to do this, that they're cowards. I've heard one or two people make that accusation, and it's deeply unfair; I think in fact these decisions are motivated by charity for the flock entrusted to the bishops and to priests. 

If Charles Borromeo knew that from ministering to sick people and then being in contact with healthy people that he was thereby spreading the plague – and if he did that willingly – that would have been a really irresponsible act, imprudent and uncharitable. I think especially in the context of the Eucharist, which is a sacrament of charity, to perform such an uncharitable act – to be so negligent – would be very much at odds with the sacrament of the Eucharist. 

I think it's not quite fair to say that priests are afraid in these circumstances. I think they desire not to become – as people have said – super-vectors of infection, to use the medical term, where they would be spreading this dangerous infection among the vulnerable members of their flock. I really think the decision was right.

I think it's also worth asking how we can make sure there's a priestly presence for those people who are suffering from this coronavirus, this very infectious disease, and that's a question I haven't seen resolved yet. It remains an open question and I'd really ask people to pray for wisdom and courage for those who have to make these decisions about how to make sure that people don't die on their own.

But in the meantime, what we really can do is to really pray for the dying. I've been struck so much by how so many of the prayers the Church prays anyway, like the Hail Mary for example and many other prayers we pray in the Divine Office, mention the dead and the dying, and they just take on such relevance it seems to me in these days. They've just become much more fervent on my own lips and the lips of my brothers here. I think we need as a Church to re-double our prayers for those who are sick and dying.

CV: The phrase 'spiritual communion' is being spoken of more and more in these days. What would Aquinas have understood about spiritual communion and its relation to the economy of the sacraments in general?

Fr Conor: St Thomas, when he uses the term 'spiritual communion', means something slightly different. An 'unspiritual communion' for him is when somebody receives the sacrament without faith and charity. Now, that's an unspiritual communion for him, and a spiritual communion for him is when someone receives the sacrament with faith and charity.

But there's another term that he uses, and it's used more generally in his theology of the sacraments, and that's the idea of receiving the sacrament 'by desire', or 'in desire'. I think there it's worth asking what the sacraments are for. The sacraments do something, they effect things, they produce spiritual realities in our lives. They're means of salvation, they're physical tangible instruments by which – for example in baptism – God forgives our sins and joins us to the Body of Christ, or in the Eucharist when we receive Communion, that union with Christ that begins with baptism is strengthened, and when that union is broken by our serious sins, that union is restored in the sacrament of Confession. 

So these sacraments, they do something. Many Protestants would deny that the sacraments can do or effect these things within us, they would say 'well, no, purely spiritual things happen and maybe sacraments can kind of be an expression of something that has happened within us spiritually'. We believe they do something, they effect something, and so they're so important for us, and it's so important that we offer them generously and courageously.  

But in the very early Church, theologians began to think about many people who died, for example Christian people who believed in Christ but had not yet had the opportunity to be baptised before they were martyred, and they asked well, what about these people? Are they members of the Body of Christ even if they haven't been baptised?

And very early theologians began to say yes, we can speak of another kind of baptism; a ‘baptism of blood’ or ‘baptism of desire’. There are other ways of participating in the sacrament that Jesus offers us as the normal way to be Incorporated into him. And later theology extends that to many of the sacraments, so for example, with Communion, Thomas would say that the res – so the goal or the aim – of the sacrament of the Eucharist is not just the presence of Christ, the real presence of Christ under the species of bread and wine. That is kind of an intermediate reality, but its ultimate aim is that we be united with Christ in the mystical Body.

But it is possible for God to produce that apart from actual reception of Communion, and the same is true of Baptism and Confession. God uses these means of salvation but he is not bound by them; he is free to act outside them.

I think it's really important that we emphasise that, because I've seen some Catholics often presenting themselves as presenting the traditional view, saying things like – on one video I saw, directly quoting – ‘the churches must remain open because it's there that people access God's saving grace’, as if grace is kind of locked up in the church, and if you lock up the church people are going to be condemned or they're going to cease to be living members of the Body of Christ.  

That's absolutely not the case, and it betrays kind of a misunderstanding of God, and of God's power to save us, his power to work in all of our lives. Think of Jesus as the good shepherd: he doesn't stay in the middle of the field with those who are there in the field, he goes out, he goes out to look for the lost sheep, those who maybe do not have access to the sacraments – he goes out and he brings them in.

So I think it's important for us to have a lively sense of God's saving work, even apart from the sacraments, which is not to say the sacraments are unimportant at all; we all feel the agony of being separated from the sacraments, but God's work extends far beyond the sacraments. 

And so, generally meaning about spiritual communion you could say that any time a Christian performs a good deed, or prays or makes an act of faith or hope or love or whatever it may be -- whenever a Christian does that they are performing a spiritual communion. They're deepening their union with Christ, and that can be in any kind of context.

Now, you can have moments where you particularly, in a very focused way, make an act of spiritual communion, and anyone can find an 'Act of Spiritual Communion' online. It can help when we do this to be in a church or to be watching Mass online, for example. If we can't do that, it can be helpful for us to read a little bit of Scripture, to light a candle or whatever it might be, to have an image of the Lord in front of us, and just to enter in union with him.

He's not distant. It's not like we have to jump through hoops to try to get to him: he's the one jumping  through hoops to get to us, he's the one, as Revelation 3 says, who's knocking at the door, and it's up to us to open the doors of our hearts. We can do that in any context at any time. He's ready to be there and to welcome us.