paperwight:
Our faith is not dependent on the churches being open for Mass.
Our faith is fundamentally dependent on church being open for mass and administering the blessed sacrament to the faithful. We are a sacramental faith; our very God is bodily present the Holy Eucharist, which is the source and summit of the Christian faith.
Actually our sacramental faith also relies on the sacrament of Holy Orders, including pastor, and bishop, who is a successors to the apostles.
There’s this Consumerist movement that has found its way into the Church. One local proabortion politician complained to the media that his family has belonged to this parish for three generations, so he has “full rights” as a parishioner.
People regard pastor and bishop as functionaries whose job is to make sure I get all the stuff I’m entitled to. (“Is everyone having a good time?”)
But one way we are
recipients of the
sacrament of Holy Orders is when we receive guidance we don’t want to hear, in Confession or in other ways.
When pastors and bishops fail to exercise any authority, when they are rubber stamps for popular demand and the media, the Laity are sacramentally shortchanged.
Bishops sometimes have to urge their flocks to defy secular authority, sometimes not, sometimes make unpopular decisions for health reasons…but I leave it up to their sacramental judgement to determine that in a given case.
The evangelical view is that every layman is same as a bishop, this may be where the Consumerist view of sacraments come from.
