No virus restrictions at Mass

  • Thread starter Thread starter Sunbreak
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Rau said:
Clearly that is far too implistic.
Click to expand...
True. Most simplistic statements are full of caveats. For example:
Rau said:
More important - they have the responsibility to do the right thing. Almost all obey public health orders in the midst of a pandemic.
Click to expand...
The “right thing” is not always to obey public health orders. As a rule, the value of life makes it critical that public health orders be obeyed, and if everyone just did what they thought right, then there would be little protection. However, this too is overly simplistic. Some health orders are binding civilly only, and the violation of some is not a criminal matter, though they still should be obeyed… usually.

It is like traffic laws, also designed for public safety, though passed through the legislative process. They need to be obeyed, but they do not always need to be enforced. Police have the leeway to help a speeding motorist who is transport someone to the hospital, or some other emergency. They may choose to ticket, or not, anyone else for any reason. Likewise, while blatant disregard for safety in a violation of one of these pandemic orders might result in a need for enforcement, other violations might simply be ignored.

A good example of this was the ten person rule. That was arbitrary, yet some number was needed. A preacher who is packing his Church like a snake handler might be closed down, where as one who wants 20 people in a Church for a thousand so that all the loved ones of a deceased my mourn, safely, would not. We had a rule here that no order was going to enforced against a church unless it was actually unsafe, or flagrant.
 
Glennon_P said:
Actually they don’t. They have the obligation to pray the Liturgy of the Hours but are not required to celebrate Mass. Encouraged, yes…but not required.
Click to expand...
You are probably correct. In our diocese the bishop has lifted the obligation to attend Sunday mass from the people, but not from the priests.
 
Rau said:
40.png
Glennon_P:
Actually they don’t. They have the obligation to pray the Liturgy of the Hours but are not required to celebrate Mass. Encouraged, yes…but not required.
Click to expand...
You are probably correct.
Click to expand...
No ‘probably’ about it. Glennon is quite right.
 
That’s the whole argument. The bishops can do that, not the state.

I’m saying the sole authority for that belongs to the bishop.
[/quote]

Authority doesn’t make a minister God Himself with arbitrary powers. As a human being he is still required to serve his flock not just spiritually but with regard to their physical wellbeing.
 
I guess we can ask the Martyrs about that, right?
[/quote]

Can you give me an example of a bishop who required martyrdom from their flock?
 
The value of life is part of Church doctrine. Our spiritual well-being is not benefited by abandoning pro-life values. That is why the Church will not only offer the sacraments, but also teach pro-life values.
 
Last edited:
I agree, but the value of life includes eternal life, which supersedes this life.

So when the two are in conflict, eternal life > temporal happiness.

Health is part of temporal happiness.

That is one reason Christ said, “ He that loveth his life shall lose it; and he that hateth his life in this world, keepeth it unto life eternal.“
[/quote]

Jesus was all about healing, not death. So many people who came in contact with Him were converted when He restored their physical health.
 
I’m an older Catholic. I know that you are ideologically inclined but I exist because an Irish bishop hid and advocated for my ancestors to escape ‘martyrdom’ and live to bring the faith abroad and generate another generation of Catholics to evangelize. Your nihilistic view of Christianity is foreign to me.
 
And yet bishops the world over have relieved the people from the obligation to attend mass.
 
Were there many bishops in the US who instructed priests to continue their Sunday Mass routines in defiance of public health orders?
 
And are too few to count, and bend rules so slightly…

We both know that the Bishops have very largely chosen to abide by the public health restrictions. You see those bishops as having weak faith. I see them as having done the right thing.
 
Last edited:
The Bishops in the Philippines where I live are following the instructions of the Government.
 
No I wouldn’t. If you think it’s a problem then don’t attend that parish. It is the priests responsibility to regulate his parish and if he has discerned otherwise as he has in all likelihood read the pages and pages of material sent out by his Bishop implement the rules and then it will affect his parishioners to some extent as they have a right to bring their concerns to him in the first instance, to discuss and or question. Also it sounds to me like it would be speculation and gossip, which is never something to act on.

I live in a city and attend regularly 3 different churches. They all interpret the Bishops instructions differently. I spoke to one of the priests when I bumped into him strolling along the seafront as you do and he said they were given several options on how to proceed in the 20+ page document of guidelines to adhere to. Another priest at another church I go to may have appeared to stretch some of the rules a little as he’s 20yrs younger than the other priests by visiting people in their homes and starting sacramental programs quite some time ago… but was this with the Bishops permission or not, one doesn’t know as he mentioned the other day he’d been asked to visit another diocese’s sick patients in hospital. My point is just that don’t assume the Bishop isn’t aware of individual priests behaviour just because it isn’t well publicised. If it’s your parish ask the priest and then see what his response it, otherwise it’s just gossip and don’t put people down when you don’t know the full story.
 
They obey the health instructions because they care for the health of their parishioners.
 
But that is not really the case here. I know @Rau keeps offering more and more extreme cases that do not apply, like the child sexual abuse comparison, but spinning up the other side where people are going to Hell because a priest is not saying Mass, or limiting how it is said with restrictions has the same problem. Even the post you responded to clearly said “he is still required to serve his flock not just spiritually.”

That is what Jesus said He was doing when He healed the paralytic, but the Scripture also said he fed the hungry and healed the blind because He was moved with compassion. Most powerfully, Jesus wept and the grave of Lazarus. Do you forget where He taught about the lilies of the field and how much God knows and cares for our physical needs.

Not nice. It is also a little self-serving. People tend to read those saints who agree with them. Another saint wrote of the value of life:
Life is entrusted to man as a treasure which must not be squandered, as a talent which must be used well.
Click to expand...
The body, in fact, and it alone is capable of making visible that which is invisible; the spiritual and the divine.
Click to expand...
Respect for life requires that science and technology should always be at the service of man and his integral development.Society as a whole must respect, defend and promote the dignity of every human person, at every moment and in every condition of that person’s life.
Click to expand...
St. John Paul

So again, I say that we cannot have a false dichotomy where our lives here do not matter simply because we are also spiritual beings.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top