Our Sunday Best
Timothy P. Carney

Around 11 p.m. on a Sunday night in May 2009, I stood outside Dahlgren chapel at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., with a few other misinformed men and a sad realization: There would be no “last chance” Mass on campus that night because the academic year had ended a week prior.

That evening 11 years ago was the last time I missed Sunday Mass, until I missed three straight this March, all four in April, and kept missing in May.

Sunday Mass, for practicing Catholics, is the mooring of our week. Going to Mass regularly is arguably what defines one as a “practicing Catholic.” Among our many rules, doctrines, and dogmas, and despite our reputation for ignoring the Bible, the Ten Commandments are primary. Only one of those commandments conveys to Catholics a concrete mandate to do a very specific thing.

“Remember to keep holy the Lord’s Day.”

The Third Commandment imparts an obligation to attend Sunday Mass every week. Missing Mass through your own fault, whether laziness, anger, misplaced priorities, or negligent lack of planning, is a grave sin.

Now, thanks to the coronavirus, almost no Catholics in America have been to Mass in two months.

For a faith built around communal gatherings, in which the faithful drink from a common cup and eat from the same hand, the lockdowns in all 50 states have been a shock.

We’ve lost the thing that most sets the rhythm of the week. We’ve lost a major occasion for regular run-ins with neighbors, friends, and priests. We’ve lost choir, altar-server duty, and lectoring.

And we’ve lost Holy Communion.

A Catholic Mass is not a mere gathering. It’s more than a prayer service. In every Mass, the priest performs a miracle: At his hands, bread and wine become the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ. And then, from the priest’s hands, Catholics (as long as mortal sin isn’t on our souls) receive Jesus by eating this bread and drinking this wine.

Millions who normally receive Communion every week or most weeks have now gone two months without it. Many Catholic bishops barred public Masses before state governments did. (Priests are still saying Mass every day, but they are private Masses, with only brother priests or seminarians in attendance.)

And so, the coronavirus has been the time of TV Mass, or YouTube Mass. Many Catholics prefer a streaming Mass, so they’re praying at the same time as the priest. Others prefer a recorded one, so you can start Mass whenever you want.

Pajamas and dogs are now acceptable at Mass. But my own pastor, Father Dan Leary, scolded us to make sure we weren’t lazing on the couch, instead doing the proper kneeling and standing. One Catholic mother, Sheila Cole, told me she had her children dress up for Easter Mass.

Here’s the weird part: Stuck at home, some folks are getting hooked on church. While Catholics are obligated to attend Mass on Sunday and a few other Holy Days throughout the year, Mass is offered every day. It’s only a few stalwarts who typically attend. At my own parish, St. Andrew Apostle in Silver Spring, Maryland, probably fewer than 100 people attended Mass on the average weekday. But it’s different now: Father Dan’s weekday Masses are averaging about 1,200 views during the lockdown.

Some priests are gaining serious popularity. Bishop Robert Barron of Los Angeles, a popular and ebullient priest, has 303,000 YouTube subscribers now, as Catholics around the country, now totally unconstrained in which Mass they “attend,” choose him.

Parking lot confession is a norm now. The priest and the penitent sit 6 feet apart in folding chairs, while everyone in line stays in their cars, windows up, maybe with some music on to ensure you don’t overhear anything.

Parking-lot adoration, in which the faithful pray before the exposed Eucharist (bread that has become the Body and Blood), is common.

For those Protestant churches where Sunday service has long been more tech-heavy, the switch to online was more seamless. The church already had audio and video technicians, and the cameras and video distribution networks needed to become, in effect, Church TV.

Simply paying the rent during all of this is tough. At the typical Christian church, most worshipers donate by dropping a few dollars in a basket passed through the pews every weekend. While online giving has been an option for a long time, it’s not the preferred one. So, empty pews mean less money.

For Christians, disasters are an opportunity to live out Christ’s commandments to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and house the homeless. The coronavirus outbreak has provided plenty of opportunity to serve, as has the newly found free time some people have as their work, or at least commuting time, has been trimmed.

The D.C. area’s McLean Bible Church, for instance, launched a collection for all sorts of household necessities. As unemployment hit unprecedented levels, and people are afraid to go to grocery stores, the church started collecting canned foods, baby wipes, bar soap, and similar products. Church members have been volunteering to pack, deliver, and donate goods and money.

It’s not only the pastors and the ministers who are challenged to rise to the occasion. For me, my service to the parish has largely been twofold: (1) supplying bodies (we have six children) for altar serving, reading, singing, attending the school, and so on; (2) coaching baseball and T-ball.

My T-ball season (partly an excuse for a weekly parish picnic) has been suspended. But my priests and my Catholic friends are now pushing me to do something much harder. I’ve got to learn how to be a Christian at home, alone.

Jesus said the two great commandments are to love God and to love your neighbor. Loving one’s neighbor is the easy part for an extrovert with a shed full of baseball equipment. But when everyone’s quarantined, it’s harder to avoid the other great commandment.

To borrow a Protestant phrasing, the lockdown, and this separation from other people, challenges us all to deepen our personal relationship with Christ.

We Irish fathers are not known for contemplating tender personal relationships. So, this lockdown is challenging a Catholic like me to address the part of my faith I’ve kept at arm’s length. Pray for me.

Timothy P. Carney is the senior political columnist at the Washington Examiner and a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He is the author of Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse.

Tradition!
Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll

The Orthodox Jewish world is not one that readily embraces change. There’s a reason that Tevye, the father in Fiddler on the Roof, screams “Tradition!” every time he’s hit with something he can’t answer or refuses to explain.

Tradition is what binds us in the present, connects us with generations past, and is the foundation on which we seek to build the future. “Tradition” for us isn’t a mere slogan: We have laws that have been in place since Moses stood at Sinai and shouted them down at us.

Changes are only instituted by great rabbis, Torah scholars who have the faith and respect of the Jewish community at large. But that has changed.

As an activist who loves her community and is not afraid to point out where things need fixing, watching the changes wrought by the coronavirus on our religious practice is nothing short of fascinating. It has fundamentally altered the way people practice religion, individually and communally, and even has us daring to ask: Will we come out of this better, spiritually, than we went in?

Orthodoxy is based on community. We go to school together, celebrate together, and mourn together. On Shabbat, Friday nights and Saturdays, men, women, and children are in synagogue. We eat (lavish) meals at one another’s homes and dress in holiday attire.

It is precisely because we are a communal religion that we were so severely affected. The coronavirus first hit us on the holiday of Purim, in which families bring gifts of food to one another, have festive meals, and drink in celebration.

As more and more Orthodox Jews fell ill or were quarantined, innovative rabbinic rulings were published to find ways to maintain the spirit of the community from a distance.

For example, if one is in quarantine and needs to say the Kaddish, the mourner’s prayer, he may do so on an online minyan, whereas previously, an in-person quorum of 10 men was the immovable obligation.

Normally, electricity may not be used on the Sabbath or holidays. But now, if one is known to be suffering from depression or isolation and may be at risk of taking his or her life, it is imperative to call that person on the Sabbath/holiday to check in. Similarly, if one fears for the mental health of elderly parents or others who will be spending Passover alone, a video app may be used to have a Seder “together.”

Judaism’s overriding concern for life has always driven Jewish rule-making, but the novel coronavirus has presented some novel avenues to explore and expand that principle. And while rabbis have always dealt with cases on an individual basis, it is unusual for a published decision by mainstream Orthodox rabbis to focus on mental health, human suffering, and extenuating circumstances.

Beyond these innovative rulings, the community found itself in new territory, when as part of lockdown rules to contain the virus, synagogues were ordered shut.

The center of Orthodox life was suddenly closed.

Prayer is the most frequent ritual Orthodox Jews perform. We have prayers for everything, from eating an apple to going to the bathroom. In addition, many people, especially men, pray three times a day in a minyan.

With synagogues closed and everyone on lockdown, communal prayers, even outside in the open air, were impossible.

“Minyan is a fundamental part of a man’s religious life. It’s a commitment and provides structure. It defines your day, and though you may miss it here or there, at a certain point, when you miss it for a significant amount of time, it starts to fundamentally affect your life,” said Nachman Rosenberg, 44, a neighbor and friend who started a minyan from his porch. “Ashkenazim, Sephardim, Haredim, National Religious — people who normally don’t pray the same way or in the same place, were suddenly all in the same situation. We started working out details of how to pray together, each from his own balcony. So we didn’t break the quarantine.”

Suddenly, in this “porch minyan,” not only did former strangers pray together, but entire families were praying together. Elderly couples sat together to pray; single mothers and daughters now had front row seats.

Almost all of Orthodox ritual life is gender segregated. Now, the coronavirus has put men and women in each other’s shoes. Women are experiencing communal prayer, and men are experiencing individual or even familial prayer. Many who can’t or won’t participate in a porch minyan pray at home with their families.

As one woman says: “For the first time, I get to actively participate by leading prayers or reading the Torah portion, which I’d never be allowed to do in my shul, and that’s been empowering.”

One father, a rabbi, told me he will miss hearing his daughter read the closing prayer on Shabbat morning as they pray as a family. Rosenberg says in addition to missing the special unity, he will miss having his girls near him. “It’s been a unifying and healing experience,” he said. “How do we preserve this unity when real life returns? It’s something I’m thinking about, and I think synagogues should too.”

Seder night, the first night of Passover, is a major part of Jewish life. In Israel, where 60% of the Jewish population considers itself religious or traditional, over 95% participate in a Passover Seder. Israel was totally locked down (with police checking and turning back motorists).

But the country couldn’t bear to think of people alone for the Seder, a lengthy, ritual-filled retelling of the Israelites’ march from slavery to freedom that is structured around provoking questions from those around the table, especially children. TV stations broadcast celebrity Seders, and an initiative by anonymous individuals had thousands of Israelis stepping outside in their holiday finery to sing the “Ma Nishtana” song together — what is otherwise the starring role for the youngest person at the Seder. It was a huge comfort in a lonely and uncertain time; it truly felt like we were one community.

We have been alone, together, for over six weeks now, and the restrictions in Israel are starting to ease up. The efforts have been successful in flattening the curve, may it continue.

Many of us are already asking how our community will emerge from this. We have much to decide. Can we keep the unity we found with others not exactly like us? Can we make room for women’s participation in communal ritual life? Can we extend the flexibility found in this time of crisis to others who are in crisis, such as women stuck in marriages due to recalcitrant husbands? Will we work harder to make singles feel like full-fledged members of the community?

Is our community strong enough to meet the challenges we face? I think so. In fact, after what I’ve seen, I’d say it’s tradition.

Shoshanna Keats Jaskoll is a writer and activist, co-founder of Chochmat Nashim, promoting moderation and women’s voices in the Orthodox world. She lives in Israel with her husband and five children.

Ramadan Without Reinforcements
Siraj Hashmi

While a central tenet of religion is belief in a higher power, that belief (or faith) is oftentimes sustained and reassured by the presence of a community full of others striving to believe.

My father likens an individual practitioner of faith to burning coal. When surrounded with other coals, the fire lasts longer and burns more intensely. And so it is with our faith.

That’s how important the community is to Muslims. Having a forum that provides consistent support and feedback and brother- and sisterhood is integral to personal and spiritual growth. Without community, the burning coal of faith would fizzle out.

Enter the wet blanket of the novel coronavirus.

What started as a few individuals isolating themselves to prevent the spread of the virus quickly turned into federal, state, and local governments shutting much of society down. Passover Seder meals had to be experienced through Zoom video conference calls. Then came Easter Sunday, during which families celebrated at home, while some attended church in parking lots, as if they were about to catch a show at the drive-in theater.

To cap off the Abrahamic trifecta, the Islamic holy month of Ramadan began on the evening of April 23. With the United States, at the very least, set to begin reopening parts of the country gradually, there’s still a chance that Muslims will get to observe the holy month in some close fashion to what we are used to.

For 30 days in Ramadan, Muslims abstain from food, drink, sex, and smoking from sunrise to sunset. It’s the month that Muslims believe Islam’s holy book, the Quran, was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad in the year 610. In addition to fasting during the day, Muslims pray together at night in what is called “tarawih,” which literally means “rest and relaxation” in Arabic. During tarawih prayers, the entirety of the Quran is completed in the span of the month.

In President Trump’s initial proposal for a first phase of reopening the economy, churches, temples, mosques, and other places of worship will be opened so long as social distancing guidelines are observed. That’s where things might get tricky, seeing as how when Muslims pray, they have to stand shoulder to shoulder in small, confined spaces.

During the evening Iftar, when Muslims are allowed to break their fasts, plates of food are shared and passed around among practitioners. This instills that sense of community that no matter where anyone comes from, we all come from the divine creator, who bestows his blessings in the form of an evening meal together.

Observing Ramadan is difficult. Doubly so during a pandemic.

Nightly tarawih prayers are either conducted through Zoom (with just the Quran being read with no ritual prayer) or canceled altogether. If you’re living alone, plans to observe Ramadan will remain just that, solitary. There used to be a time when you would sleep through most of the day to get over the fatigue of abstaining from food and drink, only to pull an all-nighter with family and friends that began with Iftar in the evening, followed by praying throughout the night and eating breakfast together at a diner at 4 o’clock in the morning. Some might find this routine mundane, but to many Muslims, it’s a unique experience and sets Muslims apart from Jews and Christians. A time of our own, like having the world on our clocks.

In some ways, Muslims have it easy. Passover and Easter don’t feel like holidays without the big family gatherings. When it comes to Ramadan, the spirit of the holiday is still present, even if observed in isolation.

During a global pandemic in which hundreds of thousands of people have died, it’s difficult to find a silver lining. Even making an admission like that can come across as tone-deaf or morally reprehensible. If there is a silver lining, it’s that of being reminded that not everything is in your control; it’s in Allah’s. There is something oddly comforting about this, and freeing. Our weakness has been to rely on strength in numbers, but it’s difficult to do that without diminishing the all-encompassing role God plays in our lives. The lockdown has reminded us that so much is beyond our control — but not beyond any control.

In lieu of social gatherings, families can bond with one another and reflect on their faith together if they share a home. For Muslims confined to living alone with limited social interaction with other Muslims, it can inspire some to get creative, to use the newfound spare time to read and learn more about their faith and spiritual connection to God.

While everyone’s employment and financial situation is different, there’s value in creating time for yourself to read the Quran, the Hadith, and even expand to reading the Torah and Bible.

The younger generations actively promote self-care, emphasizing how important it is to be selfish every now and then for your own happiness.

It might not seem like much, but putting the extra effort in for spiritual self-care can do wonders to put your mind at ease, not get frazzled by trivial matters, and remember the big picture and your purpose in life.

Siraj Hashmi is a commentary video editor and writer for the Washington Examiner.