Coronavirus Essentials: How the Church Is Applying Public-Health Directives

National Catholic Register, 26 March 2020

A global pandemic is hardly the time for acrimony and accusations in the Body of Christ. It is better to extend the benefit of the doubt and attempt to understand why such decisions were taken.

One-quarter of the population on planet Earth is living under some kind of state of emergency or lockdown, advised — or mandated — not to leave home except for “essential” services.

It is a clarifying point in the culture. In much of the world, gathering for worship and prayer in churches has been judged “not essential.” Even keeping the churches open for private prayer has been determined in some places to be “not essential.”

This has caused some to criticize bishops who have suspended public worship and others who have closed their churches.

A caveat is in order: A global pandemic is hardly the time for acrimony and accusations in the Body of Christ. It is better to extend the benefit of the doubt and attempt to understand why such decisions were taken.

Bishops and pastors are being asked, in a matter of days or even hours, to make decisions that no one alive has ever taken before. In such an environment, the more prudent option — for civil and ecclesiastical authorities — is to take the most severe option sooner rather than later.

For example, shutting down public transit may be aimed at the crowded London Underground or New York subway and may well be overkill for the bus through rural Cambridgeshire or upstate New York that may only have two or three passengers on it. But there is no time for all those relevant distinctions, and so the shutdown of everything is applied.

Mass Gatherings and Gatherings for Mass

In the first days of the restrictions, it was mass gatherings that were prohibited. That’s why most sporting events were canceled quickly. In many places that meant also gatherings for worship.

That’s why many bishops made a distinction between Sunday Mass and weekday Mass. Sunday Mass would tend to gather more than the threshold — at that time, 250 people in some places — while weekday Masses would not. There was no suspension of gathering for Mass, that is, but of mass gatherings.

It would be incorrect to accuse, for example, Virginia of now making it illegal to attend church services. A church service — as of March 25 — of six people could go ahead. A bachelor party of 11 people could not, given the Virginia order; and if they wanted the party in a restaurant, it could not be held no matter how few friends the groom had.

As the gathering threshold ratcheted downwards — to 100, 50, 10, five and, in Germany and the United Kingdom, even two(!) — weekday Masses also were suspended with the participation of the faithful. Private Masses, of course, could continue. Some such Masses streamed online show that there are one or two people present, leading the responses or even music — all the while observing the recommended social distance.

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