German bishop urges small scripture gatherings before resuming Mass
Bishop Heiner Wilmer has decried lockdown fixation on Eucharist as limited view of Christian faith
Catholics in the Hildesheim diocese in Northern Germany will be able to hold public liturgies again starting this Saturday (May 16), but their chief spiritual leader is urging them not to begin immediately with Mass.
Bishop Heiner Wilmer is asking them to hold Services of the Word for just a small group of people at a time until the threat of the coronavirus has further subsided.
"We will gather and gain new experiences with new and familiar forms of praying together. I am convinced that these new and familiar forms of prayer will carry and strengthen us just as they have done over the past weeks," said the 59-year-old Wilmer who has been bishop of Hildesheim for slightly less than two years.
"Gradually and very carefully, we can get back to celebrating the Eucharist at our own discretion," he added in a letter he sent last week to Catholics of the diocese.
Bishop Wilmer, who is the former international superior general of the Priests of the Sacred Heart ("Dehonians"), underlined the need for extreme caution when planning any public church gatherings or celebrations of any kind.
Hildesheim is one of the last of Germany's twenty-seven Catholic dioceses to end a liturgical lockdown that went into effect on March 16.
Live-streamed Mass and "fixation on the Eucharist"
And during that time Bishop Wilmer made headlines by expressing his "uneasiness" about live-streamed Masses and what he called an unhealthy "fixation on the Eucharist".
"At the moment people are behaving as if their entire faith will break down if they cannot go to Mass and receive communion," he said last month in lengthy interviews published on deutschlandfunk.de and in the Cologne-based daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger.
He pointed out that there have always been times in the history of Christianity when people could not celebrate the Eucharistic, but belief in God did not cease.
"I don't think it a good thing that at the moment Masses are being streamed from every little chapel or sitting room, as it shows how poor (in faith) we have become," he said.
Bishop Wilmer made it clear he was not downplaying the importance of the Eucharist.
"Of course it is important, but the reaction of some of the faithful (to the coronavirus crisis) is to overestimate the Eucharist (and behave as if) there was nothing else," he said.
Praying together with the Word
"According to the Second Vatican Council, the Lord is not only present in the Eucharist but also in the Scriptures and the Bible. We should take seriously Christ's words, 'Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in their midst'," he recalled.
And he said he had no objection to people praying together "over the internet and with the help of the modern media", but not in a Eucharistic celebration.
Bishop Wilmer said he sensed Catholics most missed being together and worshiping as a community.
"No-one believes alone. Our faith is based on community. Someone or some others are with me on the way. We need others. We human beings are ordered towards our fellow human beings and that is what has been taken from us at the moment," he explained.
He said he also believed that the empty churches all around us at the moment were perhaps a foretaste of a future that was none too far away.
"They are possibly a reflection of something which we should be dealing with far more quickly than we are prepared to admit," the bishop said.
Life is unpredictable and God remains a mystery
He also criticized those Catholics who have insisted that the coronavirus is a divine message or that holy water has healing properties.
"For me, faith without reason is suspect," Wilmer said.
He also challenged Catholics to let go of their static and preconceived notions of God.
"We have put God in a box, tied a red ribbon around it and now think 'That's it. That is what God is like. That is my picture of Him.' And that won't do," he said.
"The present crisis has shown us that life is unpredictable and, above all, God remains a mystery. He is not someone we can placate with sacrifices," he added.
The relatively new bishop said he's spent the COVID-19 lockdown doing the best he can to be near his people, despite the required social distancing.
That's included keeping in close contact with folks by telephone, Skype and WhatsApp.
Reflecting on the past couple of months, he said: "It has never been so important to be alone together."
Christa Pongratz-Lippitt writes from Vienna where she has spent many years as a reporter and commentator on Church affairs in the German-speaking world.