Experts say Catholic Church is appropriately handling COVID-19, public mass suspension necessary

Gatherings of more than ten people have been halted in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic. These stay-at-home orders have caused the suspension of public religious services. The Catholic Church has been especially affected, as it requires a personal presence in order to celebrate the sacraments that cannot be fully adapted to a virtual meeting space.

Rev. Luke Dysinger, a professor of church history and moral theology at St. John’s Seminary in Boston and a Benedictine monk, said he thinks the suspension of Catholic masses is essential for public health reasons.

“It is precisely the most vulnerable … who are at greatest danger,” he said. “It’s not just a question of isolating those individuals, it's a question of trying to avoid spreading the disease to those individuals.”

During past European plagues, the Catholic Church did its best to make accommodations for public health, Dysinger said, which often meant the suspension of public liturgies.

“In those days, the disease model was very different from what it is now,” Dysinger said. “People didn't know about the transmission of viruses by bacteria, but there certainly was every effort on the part of the Church to avoid unnecessary death by adapting as necessary.”

He said the requirements for receiving the Eucharist have changed and that the sacrament has become increasingly valued since the Liturgical Movement of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

“In general, certainly the people were disappointed at not being able to participate,” Dysinger said. “[However] the idea of participation by the people was not one of frequent communion… Since the late 1900s, there has been an increasing emphasis on frequent communion by the laity.”

Rev. Michael Witczak, a professor of liturgical studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington D.C., said Catholics were also unable to practice their faith during times of religious persecution, notably Irish Catholics under English rule. Yet he said they continued to celebrate the mass.

“People were hungry for the mass, so they would have secret hiding places in their homes in case the house was searched,” he said, “even at the risk of their own lives.”

But now, amid the pandemic, bishops had to make the difficult decision of balancing people’s physical and spiritual welfare, Witczak said. There is a necessary ban on group gatherings, he said, but there is not a ban on worshiping.

“Practice of religion [is] not being impeded. The health and welfare of people was something that outweighed right to assemble,” Witczak said. “The church wants to minister to everyone, but [it] doesn't want to put people’s lives in jeopardy.”

William Barbieri, a professor of ethics at Catholic University, said the Church is encouraging people to continue to care for those who might be struggling the most.

“The Church is not only concerned with religious observances [but is] hugely involved in healthcare,” Barbieri said. “They're not encouraging people to violate the law, but they are saying, ‘Check on your neighbor [and] take action to try to help.’”

While Dysinger acknowledged that the right to practice religion is “very real,” he said he believes America’s founding fathers would not have agreed that the right to gather persists when it means spreading a plague.

“Does the right to gather and worship mean that people have the right to do something that’s going to destroy the health of their neighbors,” Dysinger said. “You have the right to worship, you have the right to proclaim your faith… but you don't necessarily have the right to do something that's going to kill somebody else’s grandmother.”

While some individuals might have criticisms of the way bishops and the government are handling circumstances, Barbieri said most are understanding.

“I think that Catholics on this particular issue are not as aggravated about government restrictions as other religious communities [are],” he said. “The Catholic community as a whole acknowledges that these are reasonable requests.”

Barbieri said the pandemic is a challenge for all, but said he believes it also poses an opportunity.

“[This is] a big experiment that we’re all a part of right now… A lot of things are going to be rethought, a lot of people's priorities reconsidered,” Barbieri said. “Whether people experience this just as suffering or really as an opportunity… that's going to be a mark of people's character and of the character and resilience of communities, universities and religions.”

Because churches are spaces filled with hundreds of people for often more than an hour, Dysinger said parishes will have to follow the guidelines set for other large spaces such as sports arenas and movie theaters. In the meantime, he said people can take this time to strengthen their personal relationship with God.

“To reopen the parishes to regular masses means that we would have to be at the point of being able to have large gatherings of large numbers of people,” Dysinger said. “Until that time, I think people will have to recognize that God is always close to us. If [someone] can't physically receive the sacrament, that doesn't mean [God] isn’t going to find another way to be personal.”

Dysinger said it is important to trust and respect the advice of religious leaders, and noted Psalms 74:9 as a source of comfort and support for those struggling.

“I have the utmost respect for bishops doing what they can to try to navigate these very difficult times,” Dysinger said. “Because the Psalm says we have no one to tell us how long it will last.”