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May 18, 2020
Nicholas Wolfram Smith
Public liturgies in the church might resume in two weeks if the Bay Area continues to successfully manage the coronavirus pandemic, Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone said.In a May 12 letter to the archdiocese Archbishop Cordileone wrote, “The next two weeks will be the critical test: San Francisco has 'flattened the curve,' and if this trend continues, it will be safer to loosen some of the current restrictions on day-to-day activities.”
The archbishop said California’s bishops have held weekly meetings to discuss how to reopen in line with public health protocols. A committee of priests and laity has also been established to draw up safety requirements for when public Mass resumes.
Archbishop Cordileone cautioned that when Mass is celebrated in public again, it “will be different from what we are accustomed to.” Numbers will be limited because of distancing requirements. How Holy Communion will be distributed has been another topic of discussion.
The archbishop stated, “I look to find a way to accommodate the greatest number of people possible for Mass while in no way compromising the safety restrictions necessary to protect our people from contracting and spreading the virus.”
After reopening, the dispensation from attending Sunday Mass will remain in effect, and those who are vulnerable to coronavirus should continue to stay home, the archbishop said.
During a Zoom webinar hosted by the Benedict XVI Institute on May 13 on church and state issues in light of the pandemic response, Archbishop Cordileone offered further considerations about reopening.
In response to a question about whether all California dioceses would open at once for public Mass or whether they would proceed county by county, the archbishop said “we would like to move in unison but it’s rarely possible.”
Even reopening churches within a single diocese can be complicated because most dioceses contain more than one county, he said. If the counties within a diocese differ in how they restrict public gatherings, following each county’s rules could create a situation where the bishop issues different regulations for churches in the same diocese, which could create the impression that the government can determine where Mass can be held.“We’re trying to do this together but I think it's going to be at different times over hopefully a restricted time,” he said.
Guidelines for reopening churches published by a task force at the Thomistic Institute in Washington, D.C., have been a touchstone for the California bishops conference, he said. The archbishop called them "detailed and thorough," and the bishops conference had sent a copy of the document to Gov. Gavin Newsom as an example of how churches can reopen while keeping congregants safe.
The archbishop said government leaders do not understand the steps churches can take to protect congregants. “When they think of a worship service they think of something like a megachurch, 1,000-2,000 people jammed in a crowded area,” he said. “They don’t think that we can have distance in our churches, or that we can have outdoor services.”
Across the country, dioceses have been targeting the last two weeks of May as the time to resume public Masses and issuing guidelines on how they will do so safely. In Oklahoma, public Masses resumed May 18 with churches limited to a third of their normal capacity. The weekend of May 24 will see the first public Sunday Masses in two months.
Among the guidelines for reopening drawn up by the state's bishops are roping off pews to maintain physical distance, encouraging mask wearing, removing missals or worship aids, omitting the sign of peace and having hand sanitizer distributed throughout the church.
"Patience and a spirit of charity toward ourselves and our neighbors, particularly the vulnerable, will greatly assist in a well-ordered transition back to public Mass," Oklahoma's two dioceses said in an announcement.The Archdioceses of Baltimore, Louisville and St. Louis and the Diocese of Richmond will also return to celebrating Mass publicly the last two weeks of May. Other dioceses, including Portland, Ore., Denver, St. Petersburg and Austin reopened their churches' doors to Massgoers at the beginning of May.
During the webinar, Stanford Law School professor Michael W. McConnell spoke about the religious liberty aspect of reopening churches after shutdown orders.
McConnell, a former federal judge and the director of Stanford Law School’s Constitutional Law Center, said government has “significant regulatory authority” over religious activities, especially during a public health emergency. On the other hand, any regulations the government imposes have to be neutrally enforced, so religious activities cannot be treated more strictly than other similar activities, he said.
As state and local governments have eased their restrictions on businesses, the continued restrictions on church gatherings seem to indicate an unequal application of public health restrictions.
“The real problem, and what I think is quite disturbing, is that many governments think religious activity can be banned because it's essentially voluntary, like going to the movie theater,” he said.
According to McConnell, if a government’s orders reflect a belief that “religion is ‘less essential’ than, say, hardware stores, I think that is impermissible, unconstitutional and will be struck down by most courts,” he said. “On the other hand, if the state is making an assessment on the basis of public health risk, then I think it is another story.”
Roughly a dozen lawsuits nationally have been filed by churches protesting their treatment, McConnell said. Those filing at the beginning of the shutdown tended to lose but cases filed recently have found a more sympathetic ear in court.
McConnell said that was due to the difficulty in justifying church closures when other comparable activities are allowed to open, and the recognition that with shutdowns being a continuing feature of public life, " we have to come to some kind of accommodation with respect to important rights like the free exercise of religion.”Ultimately, he said, “The more things that are open that are risky, the less justification for keeping churches closed.”
Several hours before the webinar Archbishop Cordileone spoke at, about 50 people gathered in gusty weather on St. Mary’s Cathedral plaza to pray the rosary and implore the resumption of public Mass.
Organizer Eva Muntean emphasized the gathering was there to support Archbishop Cordileone and the state’s bishops so they would open Masses to the public with due safety precautions.
“We’ve been without the Mass for long enough and have done everything we can, social distancing, the curve flattened, so it’s really time to open up,” she said. “There are so many of us who are ready to have our Masses given back to us.”