[h_r]

This made me laugh out loud. Early this afternoon I walked by a local church on the way to do some shopping and there was a group of 8 or 9 people kneeling in front of it praying. They were holding signs with various slogans, one of which said exactly that: Churches are vital business.

I should mention this is a Catholic church that serves the Eucharist during every mass where multiple people hand out wafers to eat, using their bare hands. [edit: grammar and additions]

[true_religion]

Catholicism has a long storied history, so there are provisions for almost everything.

I remember in school learning that if you were on shipwrecked on a desert island, you or anyone else could perform sacraments yourself and they would count just as well as if they were done by a priest.

This is the practice of “spiritual communion”. In modern times, it has most notably been used where a person is sick, or otherwise inaccessible to a priest (e.g. stuck in a mine shaft or on an oil rig or in space). This is currently what the Catholic Pope is promoting.

There is also a happy debate going on about if you can perform sacraments via the internet. There is nothing liturgical about distance to the participant. The rules regarding sacraments are more about intention and who is performing it. Some priest believe that physical presence is always unimportant, but our slow moving Papacy takes a more conservative stance.