Newsweek recently ran an item in Lisa Miller's Belief Watch column about online communion-the participation in communion over the internet. Apparently it works like this: After some preparation people watch a celebration of the Lord's Supper online and improvise communion at home. You can see an example at www.holycommunionontheweb.com, a ministry of Rev. Dr. Tom Madron of Nashville's Trinity United Methodist Church. The site makes a point of saying it "is something of an experiment with web-based worship."

Miller says this kind of thing is a manifestation of how the internet is redefining and creating community, even when it comes to worship. Some, like Christian musician and preacher Zeph Daniel, see online religious community as an alternative to institutional religion. "Leave religion," he says, "and find God."

Of course it's easy to see how this arrangement would not work for Catholicism. Consecration and communion comes from the hands of priests and then eucharistic ministers; there's no way (yet) to send it electronically. Another big issue is how you see community: Can you really have a celebration of the assembled body of Christ if you're not physically with other people?

Madron, a former CEO of a tech company, acknowledges this difficulty and does not see online communion as a substitute for attending a service and bringing your body along. "There's a communal aspect to the eucharist," he told Lisa Miller, "that's difficult to satisfy on the Web." But, he says, "There's a whole long list of people who just simply can't make it regularly to a church-for example, people in the military, or people whose I jobs require them to travel a lot, or students. . . . how we can provide authentic worship experiences through the Web for people who are not part of the institutional church?"

(BTW, Mass on TV has been around a long time-any Chicagoans of a certain age may remember the famed Mass for Shut-Ins program. The U.S. Catholic bishops even issued "Guidelines for Televising the Liturgy" in 1997. You can read that one at www.usccb.org/liturgy/current/tv.shtml). Also, I seem to recall a Vatican instruction on the issue of online liturgy from some time ago, but I cannot find it on the Net. So if anyone can track that down (unless I'm imagining it), please let the rest of us know.
-Joel Schorn, Managing Editor