ROME — After an outcry from the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops, Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte says he has signed an accord with church officials to allow resumption of public Masses during the pandemic.
Italy Will Resume Public Masses
Mass deaths to follow.
It was interesting as this all began: here in NM we were having a bad flu year anyway.
First no shaking of hands at the Kiss of Peace; then no holding of hands at the Our Father; then they turned off the Holy Water Fountain. Then the churches were closed.
.
I have been watching Mass on tv.
I miss going to Mass, but I don’t know what I will do when they open Maybe like most Georgians I will stay home ‘still’ and just wait.
I know a lot of you ‘here’ do not understand what people get out of religion. It would be hard for me to explain,
I think the US Catholic Bishops have acted responsibly by closing all churches at this time. I just don’t know when it’ll go back to regular.
It has been a long time since I’ve been to church but isn’t the usual protocol for Priest to either hand the wafer over or in more traditional rituals to actually place wafer in worshiper’s mouth?
Either way, well within 6 feet?
Do I have this right? Because if that’s right, it might be fatal.
The priest hands the wafer OR the priest puts the wafer into the mouth of the Congregant.
That is why they cancelled services ‘for the duration.’
It’s the deep inhale in crowded interior spaces that bestows the covid upon you, not the praying.
No public mass. No donations.
Remember, just because they don’t pay taxes doesn’t mean they aren’t a business.
I don’t want to seem irreligious, but some extra long salad tongs could maintain religious integrity and save a few million lives. Priests and laity alike.
It’s not. I understand that you don’t see it like I do. For a Catholic this is not a symbolic act; it is ‘real’ and handling the Eucharist in this fashion ‘is’ improper.
But I recognize that you meant no ‘disrespect’ just a solution to a problem.
Oh the ‘first thing’ to go was Communion wine because that is always problematic. EVEN wiping down the lip of the chalice is not really doing any ‘cleaning.’ I wonder if we will ever go back to receiving the wine again.
Definitely meant no disrespect. I grew up Dutch Reformed, which did Communion, I believe once per month, although it might have been more often. I remember my mother telling me years after she switched to Quakerism, that the one thing she missed after switching was Communion.
I consider myself a believer, but in a field of being, inner light kind of way. It never occurred to me that a just God would trouble about details when His/Her children were at risk. Still friends, right?
Of course. I get that Catholicism is a ‘mystery religion’ to most people who never partook in it. AND for most Christian religions the Eucharist is a symbolic act. For us it’s not. An actual mystery and miracle. But only if you ‘believe’ so.
I miss Mass in all its ‘strangeness.’ I am old enough to have gone to High Latin Masses and boy, ‘they’ were something else!
It’s like every day there is something else that is cut back, today there was very little meat in our Smiths. I feel like I am living thru the Fall of the Roman Empire…
I don’t get the implicit threat; I am still donating to the Church and to other food-bank operations. I have medical issues and cannot go out myself to deliver food so donate that others can. I truly believe we are all doing what we can to help our neighbors.
I admire the Bishops for shutting it all down taking the financial hit; I know other religious groups did but I am not sure who did what when.
ETA: they sure did not cover themselves in glory during the molestation crisis.
I’m just glad it’s not soccer games yet.
Way more Italians go to soccer games than go to mass. Sadly, mostly elderly people still go to mass.