Is there salvation outside the Mass?

Should we add to the shameless protests and demands circulating in society and in the Church?

Perhaps yes, considering that some Catholics have been incensed enough to obtain an exemption from lockdown, which other religions have accepted.

This is how we take our part in the cacophony and confusion surrounding the defense of freedoms.

To each his own religion. There is also a secularism whose ambiguous flagship would be the right to blasphemy. Then there are those who, quite simply, defend "worship" with accents of indisputable piety.

Catholics are making it known that they have the right to "go to Mass", a non-negotiable freedom. It is so non-negotiable that they have taken the matter before the courts, to confuse a French state, which they declare is at war against the Catholics.

It is a serious inconsistency at a time when we must come together -- all of us -- to defend a rightful secularism against the threat of communitarianism.

It is as if a form of Trumpism was insidiously winning over people's minds, dividing society, deepening distrust of the other and making people barricade themselves in an identity that they claim is being threatened.

A position that leaves one pensive and worried

How can we truly assume, that is to say in an evangelical way, our mission as Christians in the world? 

How can we do this in a world agitated by fear, anger and frustration? 

Where the plague of misinformation and manipulation of minds is as active as the virus. Where radical Islamism cheerfully recruits to sow terror. 

And where the daily life of many French people, against the backdrop of an endless pandemic, is full of the fear of unemployment, poverty and unrest, which tragically leave young people struggling with a tomorrow that has no future.

Bearers of hope

It is precisely in this context that there is a question about how to live as a Christian. 

How to be bearers of hope against all hope. How to be witnesses of the Risen One in the face of much despair and a rising death toll.

Who will dispute that we must draw our faithfulness and our energy from the source, that is, from Christ? Who will dispute that sacramental life is the most natural way of this relationship?

But provided that we do not allow this truth to be contaminated by those who are narrow-minded, who would like there to be no Christian life except by attending church according to the protocols of ordinary times.

And who would claim, in particular, to assign the relationship with Christ to a devout participation in the Mass celebrated by priests, face-to-face or virtually?

Perhaps it is time once again to hear the story of Jeremiah who, in an hour of peril, received the divine command to go to the temple to challenge those who have turned it into a protective talisman.

Stop invoking the "Temple of the Lord". Another type of faithfulness is required of Israel at this hour of crisis! 

And this is not unrelated to our present situation.

Certainly, it is the Eucharist that makes the Church when the Church celebrates the Eucharist.

But it is wrong to claim that the Eucharist is the only means by which a Christian shares the life of Christ and is a part of his mission.

This is the same rationale the institutional Church has used to help explain its reasons for denying the Eucharist to divorced and remarried Catholics.

The Word of God, table of life

The temporary deprivation of the Eucharist could be a salutary opportunity for all to regain the awareness that the Word of God is, in an equally necessary way, the table of life.

It is also enough that two or three be gathered together in the name of Christ and open the Scriptures together, so that the anonymous traveler on the road to Emmaus may be present to them to illuminate their hearts.

This should be the prerequisite for all the breaking of the bread that the Church celebrates.

This is a good opportunity to experience the Church as a community of discipleship in a new way.

It is a chance to remind one another that one is not Christian by curling up inwardly, but by coming out as Christ came out of the Gospel.

For the mission that Christians have been given has a name. As Fratelli tutti reminds us, it is fraternity! Brother- and sisterhood!

Far from being just a humanistic ideal it is -- as the First Letter of St. John teaches us -- the verification of God's love. And it is, therefore, a Christian reality with mystical density!

It is also the antidote to our withdrawal, which only reinforces the relegation of religious belief to the private sphere.

Let us not delude ourselves, true faithfulness today is not in the tense defense of practices that we legitimately hold dear, but which, in their traditional forms, are collapsing.

Rather, it has to do with a trust and generosity that makes us creative in new forms of community life.

It also takes place in solidarity with a society full of emergencies, which is the place where Christians meet with the One from whom they receive their life and mission.

Monique Baujard is a former director of the National Service for Families and Society at the French bishops’ conference and is currently pursuing a doctorate in theology. Anne-Marie Pelletier is a biblical scholar and in 2014 was the first woman to win the Ratzinger Prize in Sacred Scripture.