Breaking News: Minnesota’s Bishops Are Catholic!

 

Finally, finally, FINALLY, some Bishops remember that they are our shepherds, and start acting as Catholics.

The Bishops of Minnesota have decided to defy the orders of the local authorities and allow masses with attendance limited to one third of the usual capacity, rather than the absurd 10 people limit of their own earthly masters.

The quote below is such common sense that it should not have needed to be written, ever:

“It is now permissible for an unspecified number of people to go to shopping malls and enter stores, so long as no more than 50 percent of the occupancy capacity is reached. Big-box stores have hundreds of people inside at any one time, and the number of goods that are being handled and distributed in one store by many people—stock staff, customers, cashiers—is astounding. Workers are present for many hours per day, often in close proximity. There is no state mandate that customers wear masks in those malls or stores, wash their hands consistently, or follow any specific cleaning protocol,” the bishops wrote.

So let us get this straight: a huge Costco can work at 50% of capacity. A huge church can only have 10 people in. Really, in order to even think that this is acceptable one has to be studying very hard for reprobation.

The Bishops further state, and ask:

“An order that sweeps so broadly that it prohibits, for example, a gathering of 11 people in a Cathedral with a seating capacity of several thousand defies reason”

and

“In these circumstances, and given the well-researched protocols that we have proposed (and that are being followed successfully elsewhere in our nation) how can reason require us any longer to keep our faithful from the Eucharist?”

Ah, the Bishops should be aware of a small detail here: reason is nowhere to be found in all this!

What started as a one-off, temporary, very time-limited exercise in avoidance of a big emergency (something from which the economy could have fairly easily recovered in a handful of months; the beers you don’t buy at the end of March you can buy in April, the holiday money will be spent in June…) has now become a full-on

“full emergency until we are sure that no one dies E.V.E.R. A.G.A.I.N.!!!

madness!

Let us be frank here. The Bishops (all of them, even those who are still asleep) should have woken up earlier. They should have recognised, at the beginning of this, that it is exactly their duty to be at the forefront in the fight for religious freedom and the access to the Sacrament – both out of respect for Christ and the Church’s Sacraments and in order to care for their sheep – rather than playing the bossy old woman who goes on ruining everybody’s life, or trying to look good with the Karens of the world. I also cannot avoid the sensation that these bishops are not leading, but following their sheep, after noticing the amount of outrage out there.

Still, I commend this development, and invite my readers to pray for these bishops, and that the others may open their eyes, too.

A bit at a time, we will see the end of this.

At that point, there will be a lot of reflections to make about how Catholics our bishops are, and how cowardly our politicians.