Catholic social media is all abuzz this morning over news that Bishop Peter Baldacchino of Las Cruces, NM, has become the first U.S. bishop to lift the ban on public Masses.
“We need ALL bishops to follow his example,” wrote one exuberant gentleman in response to the wonderful news. “Finally,” another well-meaning commentator said, “a bishop who really cares about his flock!”
Certainly, let us assume that Bishop Baldacchino really does care about his flock, but let’s not make plans for his canonization just yet; in the present case we’re talking about a “flock” consisting of a maximum of four – count them, four – individual faithful at any given Mass.
As reported by Catholic News Agency:
The announcement came days after New Mexico’s governor banned gatherings of more than 5 people, a restriction Baldacchino said priests must observe, even as the bishop expressed his objection to it …
To comply with the governor’s directive, guidelines issued to all priests limit attendance at Mass in church buildings to 5 people, including the celebrant, and insist that a minimum safe distance of six feet be observed and all seating sanitized after Mass ends.
At this rate it would take half-a-dozen Masses just to include all of the Las Cruces priests who have been credibly accused of sexually abusing children, and that’s with the molesters vested and concelebrating.
Got a family of five? Sorry mom and dad, you’re gonna have to split up.
The reality is that Baldacchino is not the least bit heroic; rather, he’s just one of hundreds of weak-kneed prelates who behave as if the State has dictatorial power of the Church, taking a I don’t agree with the civil authority, but I have no choice but to follow approach.
Evidently, he like so many others has neither the spine nor the sensus Catholicus to invoke, or even express, the Sovereign Rights of Christ the King as made manifest in the eminent freedom of the Holy Catholic Church in matters pertaining to her salvific mission.
Baldacchino has been in the news in recent weeks, and receiving plenty of conservative attaboys, for offering “parking lot” Masses with the faithful remaining in their cars.
Sorry folks, this isn’t the behavior of an intrepid shepherd, it’s the cowardice of a man who is determined to bend over backwards in order to obey the secular authorities, regardless of how egregiously they happen to encroach upon the exclusive jurisdiction of the Church.
In the end, this is far from breaking news; the real story here was written more than half-a-century ago when Vatican Council II uncrowned Christ the King.
Louie, question, what if they had Mass and that church and town turned into a hot spot because of it. I can’t stand the political tyrants and the bishops are modernists we don’t even pay attention to anymore, but how would having Mass in spite of this virus help anybody, and what if it turned that town into a contagion site and it spread exponentially. There should be a viable compromise in there somewhere, Mass is held, but outside and use social distancing and masks, no Communion for the laity, for example. They could set up chairs 10 feet apart, I don’t know.
The idea of the church being beyond or under the jurisdiction of the state, it’s an important concept, but does it apply when it obviously works against public health in such a way as this virus has? This time it’s Covid-19, but next time it could be bubonic. What then? I do not know the answer to this.
“The idea of the church being beyond or under the jurisdiction of the state, it’s an important concept, but does it apply when it obviously works against public health in such a way as this virus has?”
You’re basically saying that it’s important until it inconveniences us and then it’s not important any more. In that case, it’s just plain not important.
Mr Verrecchio, I’m not quite sure why you expect a from clergy who are not Catholic. As you’ve said yourself, the NO is quite clearly not the Catholic Church, so expecting any sort of Catholicism from its clergy is like expecting Catbolicism from Anglicans. Not going to happen.
If a bishop would celebrate a public Mass in his cathedral and invite a hundred or more people in, I might be happy with him. This bishop? Big deal.
Evangeline:
You may not have the answers, but you certainly seem to imply that it’s impossible for Mass to ever occur in public again.
I, for one, am sure that all the hysteria surrounding the Covid cold is unwarranted. It is unchristian to look at your neighbors, not with love, but with fear and suspicion and I believe it’s coming straight from the pit of hell.
Keeping Novus Ordo churches closed is truly a blessing. The less people are exposed to the Novus Ordo, the better.
The N.O. sect is not Catholic. We should not be concerned with what they do or don’t do. It’s irrelevant.
Good point.
Good point.
I fail to understand why everyone can’t look at the stats from this virus and see that if it is a cold, it is a lethal cold. I just got off the phone with my friend, an RN, an educated, very smart woman, and she is dead serious about this virus, and feels nobody should be walking into a building without a mask and gloves. She said what makes it different is it’s airborne quality, that it hangs around in the air much longer than flu virus, and lasts on surfaces. I mean, the data on need for ventilators is there. I hate to say this, but either people are just taking what naysayers are saying as gospel and not checking it out, or they have never had a significant respiratory effect that really got their attention. If you think it is unwarranted, that would be one thing if it only affected you, but it isn’t like that. We shouldn’t care right now about how we look at our neighbor, we should use precautions for now if we love our neighbor enough not to hurt them with a virus we might be carrying and don’t know it, in particular our over-60 vulnerables.
Holy Mass happens without us, the sacrifice of the Mass to Almighty God, the sacrifice of His Son, happens on the altar whether or not we are there. If we hold off until June, say, what is the harm. Saints only received the Holy Eucharist only a few times per year, often, from what I hear.
Since very early on, when this virus was brought to the Americas and Europe, there have been ongoing news articles and doctors, who were ignored by the big Talmud Media outlets, stating that approximately between 75% and 90% of the deaths being attributed to this virus, were false. Overwhelmingly, any illness could have caused these deaths, because most of these people had horrible diseases: cancer, liver disease, lung disease, severe obesity… many had several severe diseases. Add to this that numerous people who died were 82, 85, 92… Add to this, the deaths being completely lied about. For example, one local news station in a north central state, (i forget which one) interviewed a doctor who’s patient died of pneumonia, he was told by the managers of the hospital to write in his report that it was a covid 19 death, the doctor refused to do so, to lie.
Add to this that the Big Media bellowed out shortly before Good Friday-Easter, that the worst two weeks for the northeast were at hand, and then two days after Easter, they said now there is some signs of stabilization. BIG MEDIA IS PREDOMINANTLY OWNED AND MANGED BY TALMUD JEWS, AND THEY USE IT AS A WEAPON.
In this world we will have difficulties, yet we are to be at peace, for Jesus our Salvation has overcome this deceitful world.
“Trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not on thy own understanding….”
The virus does NOT hang in the air for hours. The hype is unwarranted. You can believe it is all political. 30,000 deaths? Pshaw! The flu killed 80000 this year! My church has been serving communion on the tongue to 270 parishioners in groups of 10 from 630 am – 230 pm.
Nobody has contracted Covid 19.
Trust in the Lord not man. You’re being bamboozled.
https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/modes-of-transmission-of-virus-causing-covid-19-implications-for-ipc-precaution-recommendations
Well, one good thing to come out of their viral cowardice is that the novus ordo church people and their Trad Lite people won’t be tripping all over themselves this Sunday to go worship them some divine mercy. Ya know, the false mercy we now have to worship or else face damnation. Or so a wound-less christ told an unstable, exempt-from-final-Judgment, juicy-sweet-grape, fragrant-rosebud-at-morningtide, God-can’t-be-happy-without-her-and-thirsts-for-her, snuggle-in-my-heart, holds-back-the-hand-of-God, Polish nun.
Happy Low Sunday!
I would rather be exposed to germs and infected with germs that can only kill my body, than be exposed to the errors and heresies of V2 and the Novus Ordo which can kill my soul.
Evangeline, you will be interested to know there is a treatment for COVID 19, which has been withheld in many countries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hvkq-R1QGU
How low today’s standards for heroism have fallen. Just plain pitiful.
Oh you utter, ridiculous, pathetic and miscreant fool prisca Ann. Surely even your sorry rookie attempt at irony cannot hope to be anywhere remotely near as saucy as would please the almighty Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose glorious Church ceased for all time to exist immediately upon the election of the heretical capellini consumer Roncalli, that blasphemous Milanese defiler of all that is sacred to our pastian overlord. Remember that you, too, if you dare to presume to accept any “pope” since 1958 as the true and visible head of Spaghettitology, you, like them, will endure all eternity in the volcanoes of boiling tomato sauce in the wretched bowels of this flat earth. Amen and alleluia, period and end. I pray only that the Flying Spaghetti Monster have mercy on your poor confused wretched miserable deluded miscreant soul.
With all the charity that I can hope to muster, Inn Caritas.