Denver, Colo., Apr 7, 2020 / 05:46 pm (CNA).- In the wake of the coronavirus epidemic, the nationwide shutdown of Catholic churches has halted regular Mass attendance and impeded access to other sacraments for the Catholic faithful. Now, some Catholics have endorsed an open letter asking the Catholic bishops to do everything possible to make the sacraments more available.
“We don’t absolutely need to have the Eucharist, but we want to be in the presence of the Eucharist, we want to have Mass said. We want adoration, we want processions, we want all these things,” she told CNA April 2, describing the goals of the open letter and its supporters.
“We’re putting our emphasis on the last rites, the Anointing of the Sick, and Mass and Adoration,” said Smith, a retired professor of moral theology at Detroit’s Sacred Heart Major Seminary. For her, the greatest concern is what she says is “the failure to work extremely hard to make certain that those who are sick and dying can receive the anointing of the sick.”
“Most concerning is the refusal by at least one bishop to permit his priests to give the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick,” Smith told CNA. “I am impressed with one order who offered to make it more available even to those who are not terribly sick. The sacrament does have the power to heal and strengthen.”
Amid the pandemic, some American dioceses have allowed pastors to administer some sacraments and devotions in conformity with government rules banning large assemblies of people. Some priests have implemented “drive-through” confessionals or “drive-in” Eucharistic adoration and benediction.
Some bishops have regularly livestreamed messages and Masses, or adore the Eucharist in public view on cathedral steps.
Other bishops have had a more cautious reaction. Some have locked all church buildings in their diocese, and have attempted to bar the administration of all sacraments except in danger of death, even if not required by law or public health recommendation to do so.
“The precipitous closing of the churches is very concerning. In Rome within 24 hours after they were closed, they were reopened. In those places where the law has decreed that people must stay home, we should abide, but if churches can be open, they should be. Surely we can ensure that for private prayer and adoration, people can remain 6 ft apart,” Smith said.
“The one size fits all policy seems very wrong headed. In small rural communities with no outbreak of the disease, more freedom to gather should be permitted than in urban communities that are being devastated by the disease,” she added.
For backers of the open letter, more needs to be done for the laity.
“Bishops, we, your faithful flock, implore you to do everything you can to make the sacraments more available to us during this crisis. Something is terribly wrong with a culture that allows abortion clinics and liquor stores to remain open but shuts down places of worship,” the open letter says.
“While safety and cooperation with civil authorities is necessary, we must do everything we can to have access to what is essential for our spiritual lives. We should certainly not voluntarily deprive ourselves of the sacraments.”
Smith said the bishops’ response to the coronavirus pandemic has been about about “trying to protect human life,” and the letter endorsers “share completely” that goal.
“We don’t want anything to be done that isn’t following the guidelines,” she said.
The open letter encourages bishops to do everything possible t o provide some form of a public Mass, especially for the Easter liturgy, including offering it themselves.
It is unclear whether some gatherings, like “drive-in” Masses offered in parking lots while attendees sit in their cars, would comply with government bans on large public gatherings, a local bishop’s ban on public Masses, or public health experts’ recommendations on social distancing.
The open letter asks bishops to “demand that civil authorities permit events such as offering and attending a Mass in a parking lot, if they are currently prohibited.”
Smith said if a state or local government ban on large public gatherings includes people going to a parking lot in their car to hear Mass, “that has to be fought.”
“We want the bishop calling up the governor and the mayor and calling up the legislators and calling up whoever, and saying ‘No no no, this is freedom of religion that we have to be allowed to do’,” she said.
“We are not asking for anything that would put our neighbors in danger. All due precautions would be observed. How can a parking lot Mass where everyone drives there in their cars and stays in their cars and where there is no distribution of the Eucharist put anyone at danger? That is one of our chief requests to be put under consideration.”
“There is absolutely no way that this relates to the spread of the virus,” Smith told CNA.
Asked if letter organizers had consulted with public health experts on their proposals, Smith said:
“We didn’t consult any, although we have heard from many who have provided more good ideas on what can be done. We are not proposing anything specific but are asking the bishops to do everything they can to provide the sacraments within the parameters determined necessary by experts.”
Smith herself raised and then answered the question of whether organizers should have gone directly to the bishops. She said “it’s not possible.”
“They’re busy with meetings, and it’s hard to get through,” she said. “But if you do a petition that we hope thousands will sign, then I hope we get their attention.”
The open letter advocates that civil authorities recognize religious services as “essential services,” a move which some states have done amid stay-at-home orders.
Referring to emergency declarations’ distinction between “essential” and “non-essential” employees and businesses, Smith said she is concerned “the Catholic world does not seem to understand that it is simply wrong to concede that religious services are ‘non-essential’.”
“Yes, we can dispense with them as virtually everything can be dispensed with in certain conditions,” she said. “But the conditions we are in right now do not, at least as far as the experts tell us, require all that our bishops have done and have allowed to be done.”
In Smith’s view, “the bishops are missing in action in clearly responding to the spiritual needs of their people.” She acknowledged that almost all bishops are streaming Masses on Sunday, saying this is “a good thing” but “not the most important thing.”
While she has seen many priests doing “very innovative things” to make available the sacraments and ensure the spiritual needs of their people are being met, she others are not visibly doing enough. Some, she said, were “almost denying sacraments before they needed to.”
“We need bishops who are trying as hard as priests are to attend to the spiritual needs of people,” she said. “They are making decisions that impact our spiritual lives and we need explanations of them. We need them to tell us how we can keep our spiritual lives alive.”
The “We are an Easter People” open letter said that if the government prohibits priests ministering to the sick in the hospital or their homes, bishops should “make a personal and formal request of civic leaders to permit such ministry with assurances that all due precautions will be taken.” They should find ways for priests to provide the anointing of the sick, “especially to those at risk of dying.”
While priests who minister to the sick are encouraged to take precautions like wearing personal protective equipment, such equipment has been the subject of a nationwide shortage. Smith acknowledged the shortage and said health care professionals should have priority for their use. In many places, she added, there is not a shortage. She added that an increase in manufacturing could eliminate a shortage before long.
The open letter lists more than 20 project endorsers, including Catholic commentators, video bloggers and others. More than 24,000 internet users had signed the letter as of Tuesday afternoon.
Project endorsers include Thomas Farr, president of the Religious Freedom Institute; former abortion clinic manager Abby Johnson; Phillip F. Lawler, editor of Catholic World News; and Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, founder and president of the Ruth Institute; Catholic speaker Mary Beth Bonnaci, a Catholic speaker; podcaster Matt Fradd; author and movie producer Steve Ray; and Daily Wire columnist Matt Walsh.
In mid-March 2020, after the coronavirus had begun to devastate Italy, Farr told CNA that bans on religious gatherings due to high rates of deadly infection can be justified, but may not target a particular religion or religion in general. They should be based on “overwhelming evidence,” with clear time limits.
“Speaking as a Catholic for whom the sacraments are not optional, and are necessary to health and welfare, however, I would hope that the Italian Church, or the Church in any jurisdiction would do everything it could reasonably do to make the sacraments available in ways that would be consistent with just authority,” Farr said.
“We invited people who have large followings in the Catholic community who would have an interest in having the sacraments and having their bishops explain their choices,” Smith told CNA.
One open letter endorser, Peter Kwasniewski, is an independent scholar who signed a 2019 letter accusing Pope Francis of heresy. Another endorser, YouTube video caster Patrick Coffin has expressed skepticism regarding of media reporting and the government response to the coronavirus.
In a March 28 YouTube video titled “The Truth About the Commie Virus,” Coffin discusses “media-fueled hysteria” and “hyperbole” about coronavirus models. They are “misleading, because they are incomplete,” he said in the video and its description. After presenting his interpretation of a medical journal article co-authored by Dr. Anthony Fauci, Coffin declared “We are burning the house down to kill a termite.”
A March 24 video from Coffin is entitled “Did Pope Francis Help Cause the Covid-19 Pestilence?”
Project endorsers have “a wide variety of views,” Smith told CNA. “They are endorsing us; we are not endorsing all their positions.”
Both expert opinion and public opinion about the coronavirus response have changed in recent months. Two separate surveys from a Public Agenda-USA Today-IPSOS and ABC News-IPSOS suggest a vast majority of respondents now support canceling large-scale events. Most Americans now say they are avoiding large gatherings or crowds, and a significant minority now say they avoid religious services.
The letter’s request, Smith told CNA “is one that helps us grow in the virtues that enable us to do all the good things we should be doing now. We should speak of our love for Jesus and our need for Jesus. Our belief that He is truly there in the sacrament and just being close to him is a powerful experience of intimacy with the divine.”
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When Haley gets trounced in South Carolina- the State where she was governor – she will finally be consigned to the dustbin of history and seen as the fraud she was and the tool of the Wokes in the Republican Party.
But she will have served the unintended purpose of making Donald Trump a hero in the eyes of that many more voters who hadn’t totally lost their minds.
Trump owns the GOP. The religious right regards him as some sort of messianic figure, which is laughable but strangely true. The Republican Party has become a cult, much like the Peoples Temple with their very own Rev. Jim Jones.
The old guard Republicans like Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney are gone, replaced by sycophants who are almost robotic in their devotion to Trump. It’s bizarre how the GOP has become a personality cult like North Korea.
I don’t disagree. But the exact same thing could be said, say, for the Democrats and Obama, who was undeniably viewed as a sort of messianic figure (“which is laughable but strangely true”). Further, it could be argued, I think, that this messianic aspect has long been more pronounced in the Democrat party (FDR, anyone? JFK, anyone? Bill Clinton, anyone?). Meanwhile, that same party is surely controlled and populated by sycophants who are entirely robotic in their devotion to abortion, homosexuality, and transgenderism. So, certainly, keep on beating on the “Trump is X, Y, Z” drum, but bear in mind that the real problem is not This Party or That Party, but what has become the basic American approach to politics.
Let’s not assume that because a voter supports Trump that he’s looking for a messianic figure. I have but one Messiah. He alone is the Christ. I have no illusions about the foibles of candidate Trump or anyone else for that matter. If a candidate promises to go after Deep State and dismantle it, he or she will get my vote every time. The same goes for those political pundits online who call out Deep State. They get the most traffic on their sites. The problem as I see it is out of control bureaucracies that conspire to tred on the inalienable rights of the citizenry.
I have voted for both Democrats and Republicans. I do not regard either of them as messiahs. Indeed, the best thing that can be said about Joe Biden is perhaps (not certain) he might be the classic “lesser of two evils.”
Perhaps we need to be a little cynical about politicians, you are correct,the Democratic Party is too beholden to gays, transgenders, abortion, etc. unfortunately, that is where they get much of their funding. The Republicans have been a little too welcoming to white supremacists, Neo fascists and others who do not deserve respect.
I wish that I had an answer, but our politics are a mess and neither party really represents the vast majority of the people. So, we are forced to hold our nose and vote for the lesser of two evils.
Name a single white supremacist or neo-fascist for whom the Republican Party has ever “welcomed”. Just one single individual in any town, state, or public forum. Just one. Are you even aware of the hard core left-wing reality of fascism, or do you simply accept left-wing projections of their own evil, reinforced by a subservient media and academia?
Will, go forward and vote once more for your abortion-loving Biden.
“The republican party has become a cult”???? LOLOLOL!!!Thats just hysterical. Meanwhile, by my observation, it is the democrats and the left who are attempting to impose DEI, have tacitly approved anti-semitism in our colleges to witless students,have tried to eliminate the use of gas stoves and gasoline cars by average citizens, and allowed open borders to a flow of burdensome illegals who threaten to collapse our cities one by one under the financial burden they represent. In Bidens US, illegals come first. To the point of recently forcing NYC high school students to vacate their school so it could be used to house illegals who dont belong here in the first place. What about those crickets you hear from the Dems about the problem of more than 100,000 annual American fentanyl deaths and the sex trafficking which accompanies the wide open border? What about the needs of veterans and American poor in Chicago who are forced to the end of the line for services being prioritized for illegals. The bogus ploy of blaming republicans for this problem of illegals is an outright lie, since Trump managed to greatly reduce the problem while in office and in the face of DEM opposition who refused to fund the wall. BIDEN rescinded those rules and STOPPED building the wall on his FIRST DAY IN OFFICE. Every fentanyl death, every sex trafficked child, every homeless American denied services, every poor American aced out of a job in favor of an illegal has Biden and the dem party to thank. The blood is on their hands. It is a FACT that life was better when Republicans were in charge. Trump put AMERICANS first, as should every US President who is not bought and sold to the globalists or on a chinese payroll. And finally, it is always LEFTISTS Who feel a need to delete history and tear down statues and change history to suit their own new narrative. And to destroy those who refuse to go along. Think Hitler, Stalin, Mao. And , under WHOSE influence was the statue of Teddy Roosevelt removed from the Museum of Natural History for being “offensive”??? Average Dem voters should think long and hard about how their personal vote has damaged the country, our history and our national security and suppressed the freedoms we have been able to have—until now. Oh honey, if you think the Republicans are a cult, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
I seem to have hit a nerve. Quite a parade of right wing claptrap.
Log. Splinter. Eye. Etc.
Most of the posters seem to think that Trump should be canonized. Really?
The polarization and extremism on both ends of the political spectrum predates Trump by decades. Trump, in many ways, is only possible because of what the radical Dems (known now simply as “Democrats”) were doing for many, many years. That’s not a pro-Trump statement, but simply a fact. If Trump didn’t exist, he would have to be created, because the Bushes, Doles, and Romneys of the world proved that they were not going to ever doing anything to push back in any real sense.
Clap trap?? REALLY? Please provide any facts or proof of which item I mentioned is untrue. I won’t hold my breath. Leftists always limit their bomb-throwing to accusations or innuendo. They never HAVE any facts. Its too bad that so many Americans are gullible enough that they are sucked in by such tactics.
Will,
Is it that all “claptrap” is equal, but that some claptrap is more equal than others?
My own view of broad-band claptrap is shaped by the Spring of 2020 in Seattle when protesters seized several blocks of central Seattle for several weeks, even occupying a police precinct station. Fire and emergency aid trucks were unable to break through and there was at least one shooting, and a few deaths. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest
During the first morning in Seattle, the ultra-liberal mayor was heard over the radio likening the insurrection to a “block party” and appealing to the mobbed client group: “We gave you free college education; what more do you want?!” (a reference to free junior college in Seattle for all high school graduates, except those from Catholic schools).
Our Entitlements culture? And worse? A microcosm of the Liberal mindset as at least half of our national polarization?
In several liberal-mayor cities all hell broke loose in the Spring and Summer prior to January 6, 2021 in DC. My QUESTION is this: without these media-splashed precedents in liberal-mayor America, would January 6 even have been thinkable? As Congress then began its investigation of meltdown America, Speaker Pelosi ruled-out a broad-angle vision on the big picture and, instead, isolated January 6 for deserved but narrow-band attention.
Regarding candidate personalities, however, I do largely agree that what’s left of our Nation is faced with the choice—as Russell Crowe explained in “Master and Commander”—between “the lesser of two weevils.”
So you don’t like claptrap? Why not take the trapdoor out? Cannot find it? Try glasses. Watch for the twinkle of sense and glimmer from God above. Read Aquinas and grow.
Will, please. The anti-religious left embodies a robotic cult-like faith in inevitable progress and demands that every depraved idiocy they present as a “new idea”, leading to a greater liberations of humanity, for their betterment, thanks to their presumed superior insights. So presumptuously superior they believe themselves to be, every opponent to their elitist conceits becomes a target of unrelenting mendacious propaganda until all domains of human culture are forced into submissiveness, a tyrannical drama that has demonstrated original sin on a large scale for thousands of years. Trump, an anti-elitist and threat to their conceits, is currently a convenient target. For the religious left, evil is not personal. It is not sin. Leftists cannot conceive of the thought of their own sins. So they demand that everyone accept schemes of eliminating evil from the human condition through social engineering, not through religion. And many religious pretenders there are, who are robotically willing to side with them and join their cult.
The old GOP was not a really party of the working class and that’s what’s changed. The Establishment GOP is trying to hold on with a death grip but voters just aren’t buying it.
Party of the working class? They still push for more tax cuts for the rich. Oh, they beat up immigrants and gays to placate the populist right, but the primary goal is tax cuts for the rich.
The populist right gets bamboozled again and again by the GOP. The GOP is clever. Rant about transgenders, gays and immigrants, but be sure to cut taxes for the rich before anything else.
The culture wars are a bright, shiney object meant to distract the working class from the fact that their pockets are getting picked by the billionaires. So go ahead, rant about transgenders and Confederate statues and other distractions, but see how wages have stagnated fir 40 years and billionaires continue to get richer and richer. You fell for the big con.
“You fell for the big con.” And you have not?!?!? How do you not see both sides of a bigger picture? How old are you? Are you a Catholic?, Pro-life?, Believer in the Real Presence??
In three paragraphs you repeat the propaganda, five times, contrived to exploit hatred and¬ economic illiteracy regarding roll backs of unconstitutional confiscatory government taxation of employers and investors as “tax cuts for the rich” whenever those who already pay most of the taxes are not excluded from tax cuts for everyone.
Those who the willfully ignorant malign and slander as “the rich” ignore that they pay most of the taxes, but in the thought of amoral Marxist banditry this is never enough, even while it forces numerous businesses into bankruptcy. The slothful always conceive of employers as among “the rich”, even when the middle class and lower middle class who are employed by business and invest in them, along side “the rich”, are economically damaged as well by ever expanding economically crippling government tyranny.
Yawn. Nice DNC talking points. At least Republicans aren’t the ones grooming kids in our public schools, for one example.
Working class people understand there are more important things than money. And they understand disrespect and spin whether it comes from Democrats or the Establishment GOP.
With Trump one need separate the narcissism, bluster, insults from the incredible effectiveness in getting the job done as it should be. Our alternative is the continued corruption of America’s morals, life under antiChristian fascist despotism, death of a constitutional republic.
Furthermore while the incumbent is a disjointed bore, Trump is at least entertaining.
St. Donald of Mar A Lago, pray for us….Amen. “Incredible effectiveness?” In your own words you confirm the cult like status of the GOP.
Obviously, you’re a pro-abort. Were you not, you would not have allowed your thought to be so willfully ignorant of the simple reality that it does not require a deification of a personality to recognize the indisputable facts that the actions of Donald Trump, in court appointments, and fiscal appropriations, both domestic and foreign, including extensive reapportionments of existing expenditures, had the effect of saving more lives than the actions of any individual in human history. It requires moral cowardice to allow one’s self to be manipulated by the constant drumbeat of disinformation that characterizes Marxist pro-abortion legislation as child welfare legislation and moral opposition to them as “attacks against the poor.”
Trump is entertaining for a fact. So is Boris Johnson.
US politics are very changeable but some objective perspectives, from a non-US friendly observer, that will sustainably lend some balance, can be offered and be put in order.
The Democrat party has become one thing very exclusive and fixed; change here is for all practical purposes, not happening in time for the election or any time soon thereafter.
They feel both justified and adamant about this because it “represents” what they would say is “the great majority” and “the nation’s best interests”. Maybe they mean “the best majority”.
An earlier vision the Democrats would have had in its most ideal form, would have many laudable just aspects; however, these do not stand any chance with the party the way it is now.
Overlaying and inter-penetrating everything with the Democrats is the entrenched socialized policy of death-dealing in general along with abortion in particular; and inculturating of anarchism.
They are shielding death activists and anarchists.
Change-ups are possible in the Republican circuits and this party offers possibilities for representing many sides effectively. Can it make this into an good reality?
Trump’s public presentations set up instability. He conciliates homosexualitas privately at Mar-a-Lago but he can throw away Haley and dump on McEnany, at the drop of a hat, in public.
Trump had earlier ruled out Christie and got Pence as VP. Pence brought down the House in one fell swoop. Christie has now decided that homosexualistas are his group buds, just like Trump’s.
Some will thus always have an advantage with Trump knowing when to bow in or act and others will always be suffering slights and setbacks still not seeing where the blows will come next.
He wants to be credited with vanishing the Roe bogeyman but the result so far is that States rights have been confirmed yet still with no criminality on abortion -not even mentioned in Dobbs.
Not normal.
Kellyanne Conway is a formidable politician yet Trump has only ONE like her -her. What does he do? He attacks her husband.
There are many formidable politicians like her, men and women; but they are dumbed down among the Republicans. So it seems as very obvious. Glaring.
Conway is not pro-life but she excelled under Trump. If there is to be a true pro-life agenda these types of men and women must be pro-life and they must populate everything.
The ones I am talking about are pro-life and they come in great numbers. Where are they?
It’s true that it might not be possible to codify abortion into a federal law. At least not right now. But so what? What are you waiting for, for them to codify abortion!
In general, huge chunks of US policy are how they go because of a for-profit military complex, enormous debts, a monopolistic federal reserve structure, an established abortion complex. Etc.
Abortionistas.
And according to President Biden, because everyone should be Zionists. Zionistas.
Republican consensus of the recent past hasn’t proven to be CONSISTENT, even under President Trump. Or, there is some formidable consensus but even Trump ends up squandering it.
It could be he gets into such a dizzy centrifuging everything off from his place of conditioning, that he can’t identify the strong and weak points he has to capture from the real threats.
This morning I discovered that the REPUBLICANS in the South Carolina General Assembly were seeking to appoint James Smith, a Democrat and a friend of Biden, as circuit judge. You read that right, Republicans. At one time in South Carolina Republican meant prolife. No more. Mr. Trump made the Dobbs decision, which reversed Roe v. Wade, possible and for that reason I will vote for him in the SC primary and in the general election.