Brooklyn church looks like ‘crime scene’ with police tape cordoning off pews and warning signs everywhere. News article during coronavirus times

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https://www.reportdoor.com/brooklyn...e-scene-as-it-reopens-with-social-distancing/

Photos showed the house of worship plastered with bright yellow police-style “CAUTION” tape, sealing off pews and chapels so that the maximum of 10 worshippers allowed in at any one time can be kept safely apart.

“No mask, no entry,” other signs cautioned, with numerous yellow warnings reminding parishioners to “maintain social distancing” of at least 6 feet.
 
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Haha yeah, mine looks the same. I was just thankful to be back inside it though! And attending an in person Mass for the first time in weeks.

Police tape, screened at the door, mandatory hand sanitization, enforced distancing in the pews, maximum limit on worshippers present at one time… but still. Deeply grateful to be back receiving Christ in the Eucharist, whatever the circumstances. 🙂

(It was genuinely amusing, actually. Wandering through the whole rigamarole, thinking ‘This will be quite a memory! What a process, Mass during a pandemic.’)
 
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It doesn’t look like a crime scene to me. I think of police tape and caution tape as being different things. Caution tape was used, I associate “caution” tape as being used in places like construction sites. I don’t associate caution type as being related with police crime scenes
 
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If they had used tape that was labeled “Police Line do not cross” then that would be tape that looks like a police crime scene
 
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The church I attended this morning didn’t use tape but had all these “Pew Closed” signs in the (many) closed pews and had yellow X’s in the open pews that at first made people think those pews were the closed pews and then not know if they were supposed to sit on the X’s or not sit on the X’s.

And we had all the mandatory hand sanitization. The church even installed automatic sanitizer machines at the entrance door and the (different) exit door.
Also, nobody’s going to be allowed to be late for Mass because past a certain time the door is blocked off and nobody else can come in.

Oh well, hopefully this will only be temporary.
 
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Tis_Bearself said:
The church I attended this morning didn’t use tape but had all these “Pew Closed” signs in the (many) closed pews and had yellow X’s in the open pews that at first made people think those pews were the closed pews and then not know if they were supposed to sit on the X’s or not sit on the X’s.
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Ahaha, that’s so funny! My church must’ve learned from other regions who already reported back confusion about X’s (or just thought about it in advance: Go Bishop!) because we had big green checkmarks on our pews.

✅

Also yup, pre registration so only the fixed number of people who have booked that Mass of the week get to enter (there’s a lady with a clipboard checking you in). And the doors are locked and no latecomers allowed. And communion is received through a hand slot from the other side of a plastic screen.

Anyway, I don’t know if some people will be upset about this, but honestly it seems to be going smoothly. And it’s a fascinating experience in the meantime.
 
Caution tape? I’m surprised. Our church had ribbons. Honestly, Catholics know when a pew has been cordoned off, don’t they? It is done for funerals on a regular basis, so the family of the deceased, coming in last, will nevertheless have enough room to sit. It is also done for First Holy Communion and many other such times.

Here is the church in Missoula, Montana; they elected to mark the pews where it is OK to sit. It looks like a wedding.
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(Mind you, Montana has had literally 100 times fewer COVID-19 deaths per capita than the state of New York.)
 
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You’d think people would be scattered left to right, rather than being all next to the center aisle.
 
27lw said:
You’d think people would be scattered left to right, rather than being all next to the center aisle.
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Everybody on the aisle. Nobody in the front pews.

Yep, that’s a Catholic church!

Seriously, though, when I went to Mass, people did tend to be 6-8 feet in from the center aisle or else staggered away from those nearest to the front and back. You have to remember that there is very little transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in Montana, though. They have 486 cases and 16 deaths per million residents, even though they’ve tested over 38 k per million. Their risk is very low so far.
 
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Well, that is how churches all over the place look. Including the ones I’ve been to.
 
I’ve always thought you guys had a pretty nice cathedral too! (Not to derail the thread too much!)

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🤨

I guess this is why my archdiocese was emphasizing that Churches use “painter’s tape” to tape off closed pews.
 
One church nearby has been using some nice quality thick cord/ rope. I realize not all churches have the budget for that sort of thing, though.
 
The churches in our diocese were open but without public masses when the limit on gatherings was at 10 people; our bishop decided it would just be too difficult to try and accommodate such a small number of people. The only real benefit was it allowed online masses to involve more than just the priests celebrating them. Now we’re at 100 it’s still complicated and each parish is basically adopting its own solution. Almost all have extra masses; some require pre-registration by email, website or completion of a detailed “mass card”; while others (myself included) leave it up to parishioners to sort themselves out. For our smallest mass centres - it was simply business as usual! Some churches remain closed, mostly because their size means that extra masses wouldn’t make much of an impact.

What several churches found when we celebrated public masses for the first time on Sunday was that a lot of people stayed away - people are still concerned about the health risks, particular older parishioners.

Aside from that, posters asking people to sign in, sanitise their hands and stay 1 mentre apart no decorate my church! No police tape but I do know of parishes which are restricting seating with these posters:

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Typical media…that looks nothing like a crime scene. But whatever gets the readers. Looks reasonable to me.
 
Members of a local parish made their own markers to designate which pews were off-limits. Kinda looks like stoles on each pew. (This is the same parish that built a new church in recent years and the parishioners built their own pews - cut down the trees, planed the wood, built the pews. And the pastor was right there with them while they were building them.)

 
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My thoughts were “hyperbole much?”

However, headlines like “Thanks be to God, we may again participate in the Mass!” just don’t generate enough traffic 😦
 
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