This past weekend, amid the broad coronavirus shutdown, you nevertheless could buy your Mad Dog 20/20 at your liquor store. You could pick up your shiplap and wood stain at Home Depot. Dozens of people could congregate under one roof, as long as it was a Big Box store.
But you couldn’t go to church for Easter services.
This is irrational and un-American. It needs to change. Starting today, Easter Monday, government officials and religious leaders need to start crafting plans so that people can be back in the pews as soon as this weekend.
This will take innovation by religious leaders and accommodation by political leaders. It won’t be simple, but it will be fitting. The three major Abrahamic religions, like many others, have throughout history overcome deadly obstacles in order for their faithful to worship.
Governments, which have a primary duty to keep people safe, also have a duty to accommodate religious worship. In fact, accommodating religious worship is far more important than accommodating people’s desire for liquor, hardware, or clothing — all of which, to be clear, are also important.
Instead of accommodating worship, though, government officials have been specifically targeting church services. Instead of innovating in order to open, church leaders are either issuing blanket shutdown orders or recklessly trying to go about business as usual.
Most states have banned any church gathering of more than 10 people. Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear explicitly chose Easter weekend to announce that folks attending “mass gatherings” would be added to a special registry of untouchables who would be, in effect, subject to home imprisonment for two weeks. Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer, a Democrat, went further and tried to prevent drive-in church services.
Greenville, Mississippi, did ban drive-up church services. The banning of drive-up church services was, it seems, a bone-headed literal application of a ban on mass gatherings — a ban that did not explicitly exempt situations where everyone stays in their car. This highlights what we need: reasonable efforts to enforce the essential rules that slow the spread of the virus without placing an undue burden on worship.
For instance, in North Carolina, big retailers are allowed to have far more than 10 people in their stores. They can have one person per 200 square feet or 20% of the normal maximum occupancy.
This is more tolerant than the “no-mass-gathering” rules that currently apply to most gatherings. The per-square-foot rule, though, should apply equally to houses of worship. If the fire code normally sets a legal maximum occupancy at a church, synagogue, or mosque at 500, we should be able to allow the church to accommodate 100 people during the coronavirus threat. Let the church close every other pew. Maybe allow only one family per pew. Pastors could bar socializing, hugging, and shaking hands and instruct every family or individual to stay at least 6 feet away from every other family or individual.
A well-spaced mass, shul, or worship service in the church building could be far safer than it is currently to shop at Home Depot. Since we allow shopping at Home Depot, let’s allow worshiping at church.
This wouldn’t be easy for pastors. Father Bob doesn’t want to tell Mrs. Johnson that she can’t come in because it’s already full. Who’s going to be the bouncer? The simple and flat bans on public masses that American Catholic bishops have imposed make it clean and easy for ministers.
But as a Catholic, Mass is important enough to me that I think it’s not asking too much of my priests and bishop that they adapt and innovate and deal with the headaches and griping in order to get us back in the pews.
My parish has five Sunday masses. If each allowed 100 people — who signed up online, who won a lottery, etc. — then a lot of us could attend every Sunday. Bishops could temporarily change rules and perhaps could allow for Sunday liturgy on Saturday mornings or Mondays, so as to increase the opportunities to attend. Let “Sunday” last for three whole days, and maybe you could get in everyone who wants to come.
If governors, local health officials, pastors, and bishops all worked together with the joint goals of (a) getting people back in the pews and (b) keeping them safe, we would see innovation and adaptation. Thanks to social media, the best practices and cleverest adaptations could spread widely, just as parking-lot confessions have spread widely after a few priests launched the idea and tweeted it out.
Slowing the spread of this virus is important. To that end, we’re currently socializing and gathering as little as possible. Yet, we’re still accommodating other necessary activities. It’s time to accommodate religious worship.
