Some recent articles in the Catholic press criticize the large Catholic outcry against the closing of our churches and the apparent total banning of the laity from the sacraments by our bishops, our "shepherds," who have all but relegated the entire Catholic flock to follow the Mass on a digital screen, "until further notice."
The typical caricature is that those who are critical of such draconian methods by our Catholic leaders are inciting civil disobedience or encouraging priests to disobey their bishops. And the writers of the articles present themselves as saying something novel or otherwise insightful when they are generally repeating the going narrative of the propaganda machine, blind obedience to "the experts" without using the sensus fidelium as our guide. Cf. Father Thomas White's response to Rusty Reno's article "Say "No" to Death's Dominion."
The intelligent conservative Catholic critique of these extreme measures is not at all a call to buck the system or to deny science. Many of them are scientists and politicians themselves entirely committed to the civic cause. They are simply demanding reasonable access to the churches and to the sacraments. They are not demanding huge Sunday Masses! That is a straw man. The rebuttals ignore the just and reasonable demand of the faithful of leaving our churches open and giving them reasonable access to the sacraments, while respecting all of the recommended protocols. Here is a quick list of reasonable proposals which would promote our Catholic faith while not present any challenge to the civil norms.
While fully promoting, following and respecting the civil social-distancing recommendations on avoiding crowds, hand sanitizing, etc....
1. All Catholic churches and chapels should remain open for private devotion, small private masses, communion and confessions, etc.
2. Priests should be encouraged and even required to spend time every day in their open churches to attend to the needs of the faithful, saying masses on the side altars of the churches and cathedrals, etc. Being there, in prayer, available, while keeping three feet distance as the norm.
3. Priests should be encouraged and even required to do daily processions (small, sparse and devout) through their parishes, to publicly pray for the people under their care. That should be encouraged and facilitated by the civil authorities.
4. Priests should immediately be called and respond to any Catholic with a life-threatening illness and administer the sacraments of the last rights, now as ever. That is one of the principle functions of the priest and of the Church, to assist the sick, the dying and the dead. We cannot shirk that sacred duty.
All of the above should be allowed. Most people in the present circumstance are freaked out anyway and will not want to crowd into any place, never mind a church. So why forbid the pious Catholic among them from coming to the churches to visit the Most Blessed Sacrament? We are not Protestants. We need the sacraments. Open the churches!
The guidelines of most bishops on this give the impression that priests cannot rightfully administer any sacraments to anyone during this time. However, if one carefully reads the diocesan directives, the vagueness and the canonical imprecision of most of them seems to leave much to the discretion of the pastors and priests regarding individual cases; so it is not a matter of disobedience for a priest to continue, even in this quite repressive climate, to exercise his zeal in his sacramental service of the laity, following all the governmental norms and the apparent wishes of his superiors. To say so, and to say that those who encourage the priests to discretely exercise their public ministry, even in this climate, are encouraging them to disobey their bishops, is largely another straw man.
The Italian government does not forbid any of the things I have listed above, but rather seems to encourage them. It has most recently said that going to the neighborhood church is a legitimate reason to leave one's house during this epidemic and that priests can go to the churches with their assistants for their private functions, freely leaving the churches open! But then, doctors, nurses, civic officials, etc., the laity, when they approach the church, they find it locked! That's the problem. Open the churches!
We are not calling for civil disobedience. We are calling for Catholic zeal with full respect for the rule of law. And that zeal is far from evident when we are completely closed for business, or give the appearance of that, which is far beyond anything the civil law expects or can rightly demand. To forbid all Catholic sacramental worship to all of the faithful is historically unprecedented and wrong because that goes against the jus divinum. That would be the violation of the inalienable rights and duties of the faithful, and of the priests.
Private religious ceremonies should not be interpreted as meaning that no laity are allowed, but that is what most people seem to think, especially when the churches are required to be locked and people are entirely forbidden from attending mass or receiving communion. Consider, for example, that at his Easter Mass today at the Vatican Pope Francis had more than fifty people present. Or the Easter Mass at our National Basilica Shrine had at least twenty five people present. There is no reason why every parish and cathedral every day can't have multiple private masses with people attending and participating in small numbers and the churches open for people to come and pray before the Lord all day every day. That is essential to our Catholic faith and an essential need for the world, especially in crisis, the public display of Catholic devotion.
Open Letter to the Bishops to Facilitate Greater Access to the churches and the sacraments.