It’s uncharitable and probably ultimately incorrect to posit anti-religious bigotry behind the state and local government actions cracking down on the exercise of religion. Instead, we should point to the irrationality behind those rules.
After Maryland’s governor recently lifted rules that banned church services for the past 10 weeks, Howard County, a wealthy county near D.C., published rules that were clearly written to ban Holy Communion in Catholic Masses.
“There shall be no consumption of food or beverage of any kind before, during, or after religious services, including food or beverage that would typically be consumed as part of a religious service,” the rules state.
The centerpiece of the Catholic Mass is Holy Communion. The faithful are called to consume bread and wine that has been transformed, at the hands of the priest, into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. And as I understand it, the Mass is not valid if the priest himself does not take Communion. A rule barring “consumption of food or beverage” is a rule barring Catholic Mass.
Howard County’s rule was clearly tailored to ban Holy Communion — there’s no denying it. However, that doesn’t mean it was motivated by anti-Catholic animus. Howard County officials might have believed that Communion was especially dangerous since it can involve hands touching or sharing a common cup.
But anyone who has followed the Catholic Church’s reaction to the virus knows that U.S. bishops, who get to tell the parish priests what to do, have been incredibly cautious. The Baltimore Archdiocese (such as many other dioceses) canceled all public masses in March even before governments would have forced them to. U.S. bishops have issued strict rules on how Masses must be conducted.
Specifically, only priests would take Communion from the chalice, and if multiple priests were celebrating a Mass, no chalice sharing would be allowed. As far as reception of the Communion bread, the bishops also published detailed rules, including requiring hand sanitizer for the priest to use. “The faithful must also wear a facial covering when coming forward to receive Communion,” the rules also state. “They will lower the covering just prior to reception of the Eucharist.”
In other words, many priests and bishops who have proven themselves to be more cautious than the government spent weeks figuring out how to have Communion safely. That makes it an irrational overreach for a county government to ban it. Howard County has wisely withdrawn its Communion ban.
The District of Columbia, such as other municipalities that are opening up a bit, has a universal 10-person limit to gatherings. This applies to church services, no matter the church.
So if you hold a Mass in the Upper Church at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in D.C., which has a capacity of 6,000, you are still allowed to have only 10 people. That’s obviously absurd. No rational understanding of how this virus spreads would dictate that you limit a gathering in a massive indoor place to 10 people. A rational capacity rule would be proportional to normal fire safety rules.
Again, this isn’t likely anti-church bias from the D.C. government, but it’s a failure of the government to think, “How can we rationally accommodate religious worship, which is very important?”
I haven’t been to Mass since March 13. Before this spring, I had missed only 2 or 3 Sunday Masses (as far as I can remember) since I entered the Catholic Church as an adult in 2004.
My (secular) liberal arts education helped me become a Catholic because of the way I saw faith and reason were compatible and complementary. And so it’s not surprising that government measures that restrict the exercise of faith are themselves contrary to reason.
