Online liturgy does not work for me. I’ve tried and I cannot pray with it usefully or happily. Some of this is very possibly because I am a bit of a techno-moron. But some of it is not. Some of it is because of my location.

Online liturgy does not work for me. I’ve tried and I cannot pray with it usefully or happily. Some of this is very possibly because I am a bit of a techno-moron. But some of it is not. Some of it is because of my location.

Like many other rural dwellers in the UK I cannot access full high-speed broadband – and this makes some normal programmes, like Zoom for example, unusable: if I can connect at all I get broken blurry images and sounds. (The lack of proper broadband, and of a mobile signal in many cases, including mine, is a national disgrace.)

And some of it is personal. I have talked about it to a number of people and responses to online liturgies clearly vary enormously: some love online Mass, some don’t; some think it is better than nothing, some think it is nothing – it is not (psychologically) the sacrament, it is not “real”. I have tried to work out the reasons why I have reacted this way and have not reached any definite conclusions.

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