Father Non-Essential

[PetraG]

It makes sense if you think about it.

Social distancing can be maintained in those businesses, not necessarily at Mass.

And there’s no way that the Eucharistic Body can be received while maintaining SD, nor with a mask on.

ICXC NIKA

That, and the priests need to be able to administer Last Rites in homes with a vulnerable caretaker or caretakers without being a Catholic Typhoid Mary. There have been too many families already who have lost both grandparents within the span of a week as it is. When it is a matter of 2-3 months, it is better to suspend large intimate gatherings, even Mass, in order to save so many lives. The difference between a place with a large widespread outbreak and a place with only small ones represents a substantial number of people who could have lived another 10, 20 or even 30 years (as the highest mortality rates start somewhere in the 40s).
Let’s also think about how much of the work of running a parish is typically done by those whose children have left for college or who have retired altogether. This backbone that keeps so many parishes going is the group most vulnerable to COVID-19.
It can’t go on indefinitely, but the epidemic and the public health blindness about the extent of local outbreaks and immunity levels will also not go on indefinitely.

 

[PilgrimMichelangelo]

When it is a matter of 2-3 months, it is better to suspend large intimate gatherings, even Mass, in order to save so many lives as the difference between a place with a large widespread outbreak and a place with only small ones.

We ought not fear death as Christians, but rather look to the Lord and Giver of Life to guide us through these fear filled times. Holy Communion is for the healing of soul and body. You cannot get sick from Holy Communion except for receiving it unworthily.

Further SD is the totally wrong approach to containment. We ought not to be sealing ourselves off into little sanitary bubbles but rather we ought to be outside, no masks on, digging in the dirt, sunning ourselves, talking to one another, receiving each other’s germs to strengthen our immune systems. People die all the time, death is simply part of living in a fallen world, something our world under the influence of modernism has tried to put away from our minds especially with rise of the funeral home industry and cremation.

Fr. Josiah is right on the money. The lack of backbone as exhibited by the Hierarchs, clergy and faithful in standing up for the rights and place of the Church in times of crisis is disappointing to say the least. The lack of faith in the Real Presence in the Eucharist is also made apparent to all by the people who would rather not risk physical death to receive spiritual life. “And fear ye not them that kill the body, and are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell.” --Math. 10:28

 

[ziapueblo]

With the exception of communion with Rome, there should be no difference between the Eastern Churches, whether Catholic or Orthodox.

ZP

 

[George720]

The Eastern ORTHODOX Churches are their own communion.

Indeed so, from New Testament times when Paul founded the Church at Antioch, and Thessalonica, and Corinth, and Rome, etc… His Apostolic Epistles to these Churches always addressed them as: The Church at Rome, or the Church at Corinth, etc etc… When Peter was then called from the Church at Jerusalem, he also helped found the Church at Antioch etc, being martyred in Rome, as was Paul, establishing the Church in their blood at the center of the Roman Empire… The Christian Church has always been its own Communion…

The Eastern CATHOLIC Churches are in communion with Rome.

Indeed so, in the Ecclesiology of the Latin Church… My own Spiritual Father began his Christian life as an Eastern Catholic monk in California, and was told to simply read the Eastern Orthodox books to learn their theology, because they had the same theology as we do, with the sole exception being that they also have Communion with Rome…

They did not have their own books all that much…

And he asked himself: “Why be ‘just like’ the EOC when I can BE an Orthocox Catholic?” And after a year or so, he left and went to the Holy Virgin Cathedral in San Francisco…

They are two different bodies of Churches.

Indeed they are, yet they both claim catholicity… One with Rome, and the other with all the other Sui-juris Churches…

geo

 

[GEddie]

Is that theologically true, that one does not become physically ill from the worthy reception of the Sacrament?

Anybody have any history on how this was handled in previous epidemics? (1918, smallpox, diphtheria)

In any case, I may be willing to trust my own antibodies, but I live with elderly folks. I am NOT breaking quarantine as long as SD is in effect, as I cannot risk them getting C19.

What we are going through in the Church is hardly unprecedented. Mexico was under a general interdict for 3 YEARS during a governmental persecution. And Judaism has been without its Holy Sacrifice for 95 generations.

No-one expects the C19 interdict(?) to approach even the first of those durations.

ICXC NIKA

 

[ThomasMT]

Unlike the original quote, against a devout Orthodox priest.

 

[PilgrimMichelangelo]

Is that theologically true, that one does not become physically ill from the worthy reception of the Sacrament?

Yes. This is the theological position of the Eastern Orthodox Churches, and as Bp. Athanasius Schneider has said, also the position of the Catholic Church since time immemorial.

What we are going through in the Church is hardly unprecedented. Mexico was under a general interdict for 3 YEARS during a governmental persecution.

Just because interdict has happened does not mean that it was right.

And Judaism has been without its Holy Sacrifice for 95 generations.

At the risk of derailing this thread, Judaism’s sacrifice was a type of the True Sacrifice of Christ on the Cross and the continuous Sacrifice of the Holy Mass/Divine Liturgy. The rites of Judaism were superseded and fulfilled by the rites of the Church. The Church is the New Israel under the leadership of Her Heavenly King, Jesus Christ our Lord, God and Saviour. Temple Judaism has been fulfilled and passed away at the Revelation of the Gospel and the foundation of the Church.

 

[AlbMagno]

Argumentum ab auctoritate

 

[Beryllos]

My post was not against the priest, but against his rant.

… just as I did not see your post as being against me personally.

 

[ThomasMT]

My assessment is based on the content… the fruit of the “authority”, in this video. It is, after all, the only way to discern a good shepard.

 

[ThomasMT]

Respectfully, I suspect that if I worded a reaction the exact same way against a lecture from our pope, you wouldn’t see it that way.

 

[7_Sorrows]

David_Catholic:

Eastern Catholics are in communion with Rome.

The Eastern Orthodox Church is the Eastern Orthodox Catholic Church… It is not a non-Catholic Church in any way… So too is the Oriental Orthodox Church…

There is a huge difference between understanding catholicity as one’s Communion with Latin Rome vs one’s Communion with one another as Sovereign (Sui-juris) Churches…

geo

I just wish we were one again both benefiting from what each offers - West and
East.

 

[George720]

I just wish we were one again both benefiting from what each offers - West and
East.

Me too…

geo

 

[PilgrimMichelangelo]

I just wish we were one again both benefiting from what each offers - West and
East.

Agreed, 1000%.

At the risk of getting pounced on by pretty much everyone, I would argue that the Catholic Church needs the Orthodox Church (she needs the focus of an ascetic life for everyone, deep piety in liturgy, the prophetic gift of Holy and Godbearing Elders, strong sense of discipleship, with focus on monasticism as the heart of the Church, lack of legalism, the Patristic mind) and the Orthodox Church needs the Catholic Church ( the Petrine Primacy as locus of unity, the cataphatic definitions of the later Western Councils, the standing up for marriage as a one-time sacrament, a more rigorous appreciation for canon law, clear teaching about abortion, birth control, etc, and the ability to see that the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church transcends ethnic boundaries and can be made up of various rites.)

 

[7_Sorrows]

Excellent post @PilgrimMichelangelo

 

[PetraG]

We ought not fear death as Christians, but rather look to the Lord and Giver of Life to guide us through these fear filled times. Holy Communion is for the healing of soul and body. You cannot get sick from Holy Communion except for receiving it unworthily.

The Church does not teach that the consecrated species cannot be vehicles for transmission of disease. To the contrary! Consecration does not remove or inactivate any of the accidents of bread or wine, including that one.

Further SD is the totally wrong approach to containment. We ought not to be sealing ourselves off into little sanitary bubbles but rather we ought to be outside, no masks on, digging in the dirt, sunning ourselves, talking to one another, receiving each other’s germs to strengthen our immune systems. People die all the time, death is simply part of living in a fallen world, something our world under the influence of modernism has tried to put away from our minds especially with rise of the funeral home industry and cremation.

Gardening is healthy and I highly recommend it, but it isn’t going to confer immunity to COVID-19, HIV, tuberculosis, or any other communicable disease. The suggestion that we ought to all just transmit communicable diseases indiscriminately and the devil take the hindmost is a weird kind of Darwinism, particularly when a vaccine might be available within a year or two, whereas COVID-19 will rob many people of 10, 20 or even 30 years or more of life.

Fr. Josiah is right on the money. The lack of backbone as exhibited by the Hierarchs, clergy and faithful in standing up for the rights and place of the Church in times of crisis is disappointing to say the least.

Christians don’t “stand up for their rights” at the price of spreading epidemics. Where did you get that this was the history of the Church? That just isn’t the case. Yes, front-line people go out to tend to the sick, but everybody else does what they can to stop transmission. We know how that happens now! Good grief, how hard is this? You’re willing to give brave doctors and nurses COVID-19 and kill some of them because we think that true faith in the Eucharist somehow implies we must show indifference to the lives of others?

 

[PilgrimMichelangelo]

The Church does not teach that the consecrated species cannot be vehicles for transmission of disease. To the contrary! Consecration does not remove or inactivate any of the accidents of bread or wine, including that one.

I have already pointed out the contrary witness of the Eastern Orthodox Church as well as the patristics trained, highly erudite and traditional Catholic Bishop Athanasius Schneider. You may believe as you wish, but there are contrary views that cannot be so summarily dismissed.

Gardening is healthy and I highly recommend it, but it isn’t going to confer immunity to COVID-19, HIV, tuberculosis, or any other communicable disease. The suggestion that we ought to all just transmit communicable diseases indiscriminately and the devil take the hindmost is a weird kind of Darwinism, particularly when a vaccine might be available within a year.

This is not only myself who sees that containment is the wrong treatment for infectious disease, but there are many Doctors, nurses, and virologists who dissent from the politically correct and approved version of Panic-demic that we are force fed by the Government and the Media.

On a side note those who believe the mainstream media tend to believe in the virus, those who distrust the media (and government) also tend to dismiss the virus as a clever ploy to gain political control over a fear-paralyzed population. This world is not our friend. To trust so blindly governments and media who so often in history have betrayed their people is to be totally taken unawares when the next wave of Stalins or Maos come to power.

 

[PilgrimMichelangelo]

cont’d

Christians don’t “stand up for their rights” at the price of spreading epidemics.

Again, there are differences of opinion about the correct way for Christians to handle such an epidemic, and depriving the faithful of the sacraments, especially Last Rites is a far crueller fate that the actual separation of the soul from the body. Death is not an enemy for those who believe, as Christ has trampled down death by death. I am not suggesting that Christians go about spreading epidemics, but rather that they do not A.) Fear death and B.) Trust in God that in the receiving of Himself in Holy Communion they receive not merely spiritual life, but physical. God is certainly able to protect those who worship Him from the disease, but even if He decides not to, dying with the Sacraments is far greater martyric sacrifice than dying in fear, apart from Holy Communion.

You’re willing to give brave doctors and nurses COVID-19 and kill some of them because we think that true faith in the Eucharist somehow implies we must show indifference to the lives of others?

There are risks in everything my dear, risks which Father Josiah said could be mitigated by the priest wearing a mask and gloves while visiting the sick, but declaring that the Divinely instituted priesthood of Christ is non-essential is blasphemous, and we risk far greater condemnation and a worst crisis falling upon us than a measly little virus if we further the spiritual disease of indifferentism to the holy things of God.

 

[Beryllos]

We ought not fear death as Christians

We certainly should not fear our own death, but we should protect the lives of neighbors, strangers, non-Christians, and non-believers. That’s a Christian perspective on social distancing. We give up our privileges for a time, in order to save the lives of others. With God’s grace, it may give them another opportunity for conversion. That is love.

 

[PetraG]

…there are many Doctors, nurses, and virologists who dissent from the politically correct and approved version of Panic-demic that we are force fed by the Government and the Media…

OK, well, I live with someone in pre-hospital services, so I didn’t get my opinion from “the media.”

I will be very frank: what I see is that most people who say they “distrust the media” actually have a lot of trust in any source of information that confirms their own biases. That is blind trust in what you want to be the truth, and I don’t know what is more dangerous than that. Trusting the Roman Catholic Church when she says what you want to hear but choosing to “trust” the Orthodox Church when she says what you want to hear is not trust. That is thinly-disguised willfulness. That is only another form of cafeteria belief, isn’t it? Who does that leave with ultimate authority over you, after all? You, that’s who.

The “medical professionals” who don’t believe in containment don’t tend to be those who have to contend with the failure to contain an epidemic. They’re not looking at getting the disease themselves by going to work. They’re not acting like they couldn’t get very sick or die. I choose to believe them and I choose to think we owe them the recognition that they aren’t the only ones who have a duty to face the measures that need to be taken to face this epidemic.