STOP THE MASSES FOR AWHILE, BUT KEEP THE CHURCHES OPEN

3/22/20

Yesterday, all of us parishioners of Sts. Peter and Paul in Naperville received an e-mail notifying us that, by order of Governor Pritzker, the church would be locked at 5:00 PM that evening until further notice.   Fortunately, I received the e-mail in time to get over to church for the last half hour of its being open.  We don’t know what “further notice” means at this juncture, but since Masses and other public liturgies are cancelled for at least for the rest of Lent and the Triduum and maybe much longer, it will be awhile before we can get back into any church.      

To say that last half hour was moving would be to put it far too mildly.   To say it was sad would be to commit the same mistake.   There were only five of us in the church, which surprised me; I thought that, especially in the wake of the e-mail, more people would come for their “last chance” opportunity to be in the house of God.   But five is a good number and made social distancing easy.   We all prayed silently; Sts. Peter and Paul, with its ornate sanctuary, nearly medieval, in a very positive sense, architecture, and pervasive, for lack of a better term, “Catholicness” is especially conducive to silent prayer.   As 5:00 approached, Father Tomy, one of the parochial vicars, which one supposes is the new, or resurrected old, term for “assistant pastor,” came out silently to lock the doors.  He didn’t have to say anything; we all knew the hiatus, which felt like an end, however temporary, was near.   One of the women praying asked Father Tomy if he could give us a blessing.   He did.  And that was it.  No more church, not even for silent prayer, until “further notice,” whatever that is.

So far, yours truly has been in near complete agreement with the Church’s responses to the coronavirus pandemic.   The Church was right to remove holy water fonts.  Holy water fonts are pools of stagnant water into which people with varying degrees of health and dedication to personal hygiene dip their fingers.  I stopped using holy water fonts long before covid-19 was even heard of. 

The Church was also correct to bar actual shaking of hands in favor a simple nod, smile, and/or wave during the sign of peace.  There are few better ways to spread disease than to shake hands, especially given our society’s lack of enthusiasm for proper manual hygiene.   See my already seminal post at Mighty Quinn entitled RANDOM THOUGHTS ON CHRISTMAS, CRUISES, KARAOKE, PERSONAL HYGIENE, THE RIGHT TO VOTE, ETC.  

The Church was absolutely right in ending the sharing of the common cup of the Precious Blood.  One of the few better ways than shaking hands to spread disease is sharing a communal cup.    Most of the Protestant faiths who share Communion dispensed with the common cup a long time ago.  While we are a more sacramentally oriented Church than any of the Protestants, it’s time we Catholics investigate an alternative to the common cup…and not only because of the coronavirus.

The Church was not at all right, however, in initially continuing to allow reception of the sacred Host on the recipient’s tongue rather than in the recipients’ hand.   Taking the Host on the tongue is a practice that has never made sense to me, certainly not scripturally, and not logically, not spiritually, and definitely not hygienically.   One has to be a Eucharistic minister, like yours truly, and consequently have had one’s fingers licked repeatedly, to understand how unhygienic this practice is.   And for what?  Is the Eucharist somehow besmirched by coming into contact with our hands while retaining its sacredness when coming in contact with our tongues?   Are our hands unworthy while our tongues aren’t?    Did Jesus say “Take this, all you, and eat of it, for this is My body” or did He say “Open wide while I place this on your tongue because you are so unworthy of Me”?   As you can see, yours truly is not objective on this matter, but even those who don’t share my objection to, or at least utter confusion regarding, Communion on the tongue, and especially those who are Eucharistic ministers, have to concede that this practice is at least as conducive to spreading disease as is sharing a cup or shaking hands.   So I was beyond delighted when the Church finally stopped offering Communicants the option of receiving on the tongue.

The Church was correct to cancel weekend Masses when it did.   Despite the above prior precautionary measures, weekend Mass had to cease because it nearly necessitates close contact and also attracts people who are sick, at least partially because some misguided quarters of the Church have convinced such people that they will go to hell if they miss Mass, even when they are sick.

The Church was right to continue weekday Masses until the state effectively barred such Masses by prohibiting gatherings first of 50, then of 10, people or more, and the Church was right to discontinue such Masses when the edict was released.   This prohibition was on the state, not the Church, but that didn’t diminish the degree of common sense displayed by ending weekday Mass.   That this decision was especially hard on yours truly and those of us who especially enjoy weekday Mass for a variety of reasons, it was a good call by the state and an unavoidable response to the state mandate by the Church.  

So, yes, I was in agreement with all the measures the Church has implemented in response to the coronavirus pandemic.   And I was in agreement when first weekend, and then weekday, Masses were cancelled and with the state mandates that necessitated those cancellations.  

But…

Locking the church doors?    This has gone too far.   What purpose does it serve?   Yes, the state has a profound interest in keeping the populace healthy, and one of its ways to further that interest is to ban, or sharply discourage, really, gatherings of now five people or more.   But the chances of five people being in church at any given time when a Mass or other service is not going on are slim, and certainly not as great as five people being in a grocery or liquor store, which are allowed to remain open.   Further, while not every church is as large as Sts. Peter and Paul, even the smallest parish churches are sufficiently large to make social distancing easy even in the unlikely event that more than five people at a time are praying silently within their walls.   Finally, most churches are locked under normal circumstances when Mass or other liturgies are not being celebrated.    Why make the few who normally keep their doors open lock up for little, if any, discernible public health benefit?

Praying at a church is not essential; we can pray anywhere and God is certainly not contained in the walls of a church, or of the Church.   But, even according to the restrictions issued by the state of Illinois, which are similar, if not identical, to the those issued by other states, there is no danger in opening churches for silent prayer.   If churches are suddenly overrun by people wanting to pray silently in the special presence of God, that would be either a source of great rejoicing or an indication that our problems are far more serious than we currently contemplate.   In either case, the problem of a sudden dash to church is one we are highly unlikely to face and, if it somehow becomes real, could be dealt with at that time.

Finally, the image engendered by the state’s ordering the doors of churches locked is one that is not in line with our history of church/state relations.   The optics are beyond horrible, and all but a very few on the extreme fringe of the separation of church and state argument should or would be comfortable with the images of a Stalinist purge of religion such an order could conjure.

So, yes, postpone Masses for awhile in the interest of public health and safety.   And, when the churches are re-opened, re-examine some of the practices that some consider sacred tradition in light of the dangers such practices entail for public health.   But why forbid people from even entering churches?   How do the public health benefits of such an action exceed the religious, spiritual, and societal costs of that action?