Vaccines push the question: Are you going back to church?

The call to return has concrete heft in the Catholic Church, whose canon law says Sunday Mass “must be observed in the universal Church as the primordial holy day of obligation.” When the pandemic began last year, bishops offered a dispensation — a divine pass from coming in person. In recent weeks, however, some bishops across the country have been withdrawing the dispensations, including on Wednesday in Washington, Baltimore, West Virginia, Richmond, Northern Virginia and Wilmington, Del... Yet in 2021, simply welcoming people back isn’t simple. Catholics, like Americans in general, are divided about the continuing danger of the pandemic and how well vaccines will protect them indoors. Congregations in some cases have been places of division during this intense year of disease and protest. This is happening as the number of Catholics who said they belonged to a parish is shrinking. That figure dropped from 76 percent in 2000 to 58 percent in 2020, according to a Gallup poll released in April, a faster rate than for Protestant denominations. The year also accelerated the move into a virtual world, which for the spiritual leads to questions about where exactly is the divine present (or absent, for that matter)? Some find the return of the “obligation” motivating and encouraging and long to be together in person. Other Catholics say the language is a turnoff, judgmental and not in tune with powerful online communities that have been created this past year.