Religion during Covid-19 pandemic

 Initially during the pandemic when the country was locked down, places of religious worship were closed with the Church of England even prohibiting ministers from entering its churches by themselves. Quite why the CoE took such a line is unclear to me  as using web cams for people to see ministers undertake services does help many. Indeed there are reports that more people are today visiting the websites of places of worship than ever before although this now happily includes the CoE.

The Sacred Heart Catholic church Wimbledon opens its doors daily for private prayer with masses on Sundays and weekdays at various times, subject to a maximum of 72 people attending inside the church at any one time having also had a webcam for its principal services for some while. As there is now no obligation on Catholics to attend mass on Sundays, attending mid-week is more personally convenient. Usually there are over 50 other people present  on say a Wednesday, though I believe, not quite at the 72 person limit - yet.

Walking early this morning through Wimbledon Village I paused to take the free local paper The Wimbledon Times from the usual box outside a small newsagent. There were no local papers inside but there were two copies of the Catholic Herald:

As the monthly edition of The Catholic Herald is usually priced at £5  I entered the shop to ask the proprietor if he was aware of what was in his Wimbledon Times news box this morning. He came out to see what I referred to and said that his wholesaler must have made a mistake and was quite happy for me to take a free copy as pictured above.

My recollection is that The Jewish Chronicle, which is the oldest Jewish newspaper in the world, went into liquidation in April 2020 following the pandemic lockdown. Thankfully it was rescued and continues to publish. However possibly many other religious newspapers and magazines, are in financial trouble.

The Catholic Herald used to be a weekly newspaper although became a monthly magazine some years back but I suspect that many of its sales occur from the back of churches as church goers buy copies while  exiting after holy mass. The same probably applied to other church publications like The Universe and The Tablet. Doubtless sales  of such publications have been affected by the pandemic in much the same way as has the circulation of that secular but free newspaper The Evening Standard which was usually picked up by passengers at railway stations leaving for home after a day in the office. Many more people now working from home presumably makes such free newspaper arrangements more difficult.

Reverting to religion and the pandemic: Perhaps much is changing for religious adherents, for example the paucity of numbers seeking to enter monasteries, convents or religious orders. Indeed I understand that the Benedictine  monks at Downside where they have been for over 200 years;  see an earlier blog post at  Downside Abbey; are to leave the School and Abbey to set up their community elsewhere, presumably because of the paucity of  applicants to consider monastic life these days.

Yet Christian life will continue  but new ways and forms will be different and perhaps more striking, for C21, than those of C20.