1. Our Church can recognise and offer much more resources to support family/ home worship as a vital framework for parish worship to make sense. House church celebrations of MEALS OF THANKSGIVING (Eucharists) conducted by Mum or Dad - as the foundation for the Church as a wider community of service.
2. The parish community can be a network of communities serving the needs of the wider community: e.g. parish groups able to organise practical support for food banks; for asylum seekers; for the sick; the elderly; schools.
3. Our diverse, gifted parish communities are relevant in a multi-cultural society.
4. Many Parish Priests are older and shielded so lay people have organised themselves to help others and have also used existing organisations like the St Vincent de Paul Society .It is relevant to know that in our parish lay people can help to keep the parish going pastorally: phoning older people and others, shopping, delivering parish bulletins and other kinds of pastoral care, working alongside SVP and other groups. Use of Facebook and zoom for parish coffee and other meetings looking at developing pastoral plans for the future.
5. Continue to make greater use of social media as a communication/evangelisation tool and in the same way make use of facilities like Zoom for webinars to educate and inform on key social/moral issues as well as for discussion and debate.
6. Use of Zoom or like to run Bible Study and other adult formation sessions and sacramental preparation.
7. Suggested liturgies, poems, prayers that can be used at home.
8. Suggested reading with reviews.
9. A greater sense of service in the parish community and wider.  Our parish bulletin (distributed by email) has regularly featured Local Authority and other community support links (e.g. Foodbanks) as well as church-based support (e.g. SVP and CAFOD). On-line bulletins have made access to these links easier.
10. Sunday live-streamed Masses. These have served parishioners and ‘visitors’. Their presentation has varied widely. Some have been particularly inclusive, for their own parishioners and for visitors from other parishes. This may be achieved through an introductory welcome, the sermon, and parish notices at the end. Technology has also played a significant part in making some streamed Masses participatory experiences (e.g. close-ups at appropriate points, pre-recorded readings involving women parishioners, provision of hymns and text on screen). For non-Catholic visitors these experiences might provide the ‘nudge’ needed to make enquiries about Catholicism.
11. On-line spiritual support for those who are immobile, otherwise housebound or vulnerable. Some prayer/Gospel study groups have met on Zoom for reflection during lockdown. We are now far more aware of loneliness and mental health issues. The Church may have a key role to play here.

1. We are learning to value and become aware of the ‘Real Presence’ of Christ in each of us, and how we can access this with the help of the Church’s tradition of contemplative practice. We are ‘sacraments’.
2. We have become more aware of the ‘Real Presence’ of Christ in everyone else and in the whole of creation. This realisation fuels our determination to heed the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth. We join CAFOD or Pax Christi or J&P. We blossom! The whole of creation is a ‘sacrament’.
3. The Seven Sacraments reflect, sum up and enable us to gather as community (the Body of Christ) to celebrate this wider sacramentality instead of replacing it and limiting access to it through the gate-keeping of a male clerical elite. They are freed up to fulfil their rightful priestly role.
4. Streamed Masses have given many the opportunity to choose the type of liturgy and homily they find helpful and reflect on new ways of Eucharist and the role of women and men involved more, sacramentally.
5. Many have talked of Eucharistic famine on the horizon with the shortage of priests. We are now finding other ways to think of the Eucharist and be nourished by it spiritually. We can build on this experience. Our daily life can be sacrament e.g. see Donal O'Leary's books and others by many women writers. 
6.  People have creatively developed liturgies e.g. Table Eucharistic liturgies; and. for Good Friday with Stations of the Cross linked with what essential workers were doing at the height of Covid 19.There are many lay talents that are unused. How can these be developed more widely?
7. An example of good practice is the Growing Old Gracefully (GOG) booklet specially prepared during lockdown which was distributed to parishes in the diocese via the SVP and others. It contains practical and emotional information, resources, prayers and poems. It is also on the Growing Old Grace-fully website www.growingoldgracefully.org.uk and small sections are reproduced on our parish bulletins and are relevant to all age groups.
8. Our parish has started to think how parishes can memorialise those who have died during this time. There will be Requiem Masses after churches open for Mass but meanwhile perhaps we can remember people with a book of memories (on paper as well as the website), photos, support for the bereaved.
9. People have really appreciated the phone calls from other members of the parish - it need not only be the priest - as well as having the bulletin/newsletter delivered for those without internet facilities. Developing 'clusters' of parishioners to carry on this type of outreach would seem like a good way forward.
10. Need for an up to date database to communicate with parish
11. The importance of Mass availability on-line
12. Keeping in touch with people and sharing news
13. Need to visit/telephone those without internet Need to help the older members of the community understand new policies, e.g. regarding Corvid 19 and movement etc.
14. Our faith may have been tested like at no other time. We have experienced a universal withdrawal from collective worship. We will have been asking ourselves what it means to ‘go to Mass’. The Act of Spiritual Communion will have prompted us to think about the meaning of the Eucharist in our lives. Suddenly, through our screens, the celebration of the Eucharist is in our living rooms……and it’s available when we want! Yes, it really does transcend space and time. What will we, as individuals with differing needs and circumstances, chose to do when church buildings re-open? We will need meaningful guidance and support in developing our ‘personal theologies’.
15. Parish Priests have had to re-define their roles and priorities during lockdown. How were lay people involved? (IT technicians?). Some, through phone calls and zoom meetings, will have got to know their parishioners well. Others may have felt a lot more isolated by not being able to see them after Sunday Masses. Where well established parish networks (Pastoral Councils, liturgy groups, finance committees?) have supported parish clergy effectively during lockdown, good practice should be collectively learned and shared widely within the Church. A topic for Diocesan Pastoral Councils? The full involvement of lay people in parishes cannot continue to be a post-code lottery.
16. Other parishes/churches have different ways of doing things.  Most Catholics (if internet connected and bothered), will have found another parish for streamed Masses. Should it be a nearby parish? Abroad? The Vatican? This ‘shopping around’ will now be embedded in our collective church experience. People may want more to participate where they feel they ‘belong’. For visitors, parish websites are outside windows on what make that parish community ‘tick’. Future ‘geographical’ parish identity’ will be viewed through different prisms in a post-virus world.   

Worship beyond lockdown – how much does Mass matter?

J&P GATHERING

Wednesday 24 June 2020 at 7:30pm on Zoom  

Join us for our alternative  AGM!

Join us online using Zoom. The whole event should last about one and a half hours.

Our keynote speaker will be Christine Allen – CAFOD Director.

Plus updates and the opportunity to join in breakout groups to help shape our key priorities. To receive the joining details for this event please register using our Eventbrite page.

Register Now!

[Apologies for very short notice of this event]