Where I am, after the county said that churches could open up to 25% capacity, like many businesses such as gyms and movie theaters, they then reversed their rule and will now force churches to have only 50 people, no matter how big the church is. It was the only sort of building for which the policy was reversed. That means that churches were purposely targeted for persecution.
Churches are threatened with fines of $1000.
In gyms and theaters, people hang out for a couple of hours. In gyms they breath heavily and sweat and move from place to place, touching lots of things… potentially shedding virus widely. But in churches? People in general aren’t within that long and, with restricted singing, they aren’t huffing and puffing.
This is bad, friends. This is open, targeted persecution and entirely unconstitutional. This is a clear violation of the 1st Amendment.
Government watches. County STASI. Fines. I don’t know how they would collect, but I suspect people would help to pay the fines, if fines were imposed.
We must resist.
What would really happen if more than 50 people showed up at churches on Sunday and simply went in?
What would be next? Arrests?
I want video taken of the County STASI taking mothers of children into custody. How would video of them hauling the priest away in his Mass vestments play on TV and the internet?
Would they do it? I wonder.
Maybe not in a first step, but perhaps in a second or third.
¡Hagan lío!
For those who live in the Diocese of Madison, which covers 11 counties, I have an ACTION ITEM. Especially for residents of DANE COUNTY (which includes Madison).
The Diocese has made a request via a statement:
The Diocese of Madison suggests and urges disappointed Catholic faithful in Dane County, and all county residents of good will, to immediately contact Dane County Executive Joe Parisi (608-266-4114, parisi@countyofdane.com), Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway (608-266-4611, only email is through a form), and Janel Heinrich, the Director of Public Health Madison and Dane County (608-266-4821, health@publichealthmdc.com) asking that all religious entities of Dane County be treated with the same reasonable capacity restrictions placed on other institutions under Phase 1 of its Forward Dane plan. It may be beneficial for Dane County priests to communicate this request (i.e., for the faithful to contact civil officials in protest) directly to those Catholic faithful who unfortunately will have to be turned away from Masses taking place in Dane County due to the 50-person-or-fewer restriction.
NB: Dane County RESIDENTS! Not enthusiastic residents of of Bexar County, Texas. Dane County, WI.
However, it may be that people from other counties are driving into Dane County to go to church on Sunday. If you get my drift.
And this…
It was made clear that government watchers would be present at parishes, in order to cite offending churches.
Madison Catholics to rally the Rosary today at the Capitol after city/county threatened $1000 fines for churches if more than 50ppl attend services. Madison will station spies in churches to force compliance. @foxnews @WKOW @dailywire @FatherHeilman https://t.co/95AC7GCioX
— Vicki McKenna (@VickiMcKenna) May 29, 2020
However, it may be that people from other counties are driving into Dane County to go to church on Sunday. If you get my drift
My county identifies as Dane County. Is that okay?
This is outrageous. I saw this too late to be able to go to the rosary, but I did hurry over there on foot and there was no one there anymore so I tried to physically go to the City/County Building in Madison to approach the offices there, but it is all closed up and you cannot go in. I came home and called and emailed all of the relevant offices prior to their closing time. My communications to them emphasized that Mass is necessary to our practice of religion and we believe Jesus is really present and that you cannot phone in to a liturgy, our actual participation requires presence.
I can’t believe the diocese didn’t send out an email alert. They had been going to ramp up a network of all the parishes’ “flocknote” contacts to let the diocese send “flocknote” messages to the Faithful. I think I might have received one such message from the diocese, but that was all. I hope they will start to use that effectively. I want to hear from the diocese by email. There isn’t anything about this on the diocesan website that I can see. How would I have known if I didn’t look at this blog? Nor did the parish send anything but when I called they said they may be sending one out soon.
I am glad that the diocese did finally call for Catholics to speak up to the civil authorities (where? on facebook? I never would have seen that) and I would like to see some more diocesan effort to organize people to speak out about this. The civil authorities do not deserve to be allowed to suppress worship of God.
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Here in OR one little Church that holds maybe 200-250 people, max, is allowed to have 25 people in the group attending Mass INCLUDING the priest and any other minister. A husband wife and baby count for three .
Our local Cathedral, easily capable of seating several times that number is also limited to 25.
A new rule, though, to go into effect here next month, can allow a doubling of that number via a satellite Mass–in a basement or side hall or such– where the people can attend the Mass as live-streamed but also will have the priest come there to give Communion. The same thing is often done for overflow Masses–say heavily attended priest ordinations.
So, are getting back slowly to normalcy, even if some rules along the way make…. well, charitably, no sense at all.
All of these elected scoundrels need to be tossed out of office permanently in the next election if nothing else forces them to me more reasonable.
If I were making the decision, I would have the same capacity at Mass as allowed businesses and include in that number a news crew and my very sharp attorney to note the citation given me. I would then let it be known that I am not paying the fine. If arrested for nonpayment of the fine, I would max out the news crews present for the event and start the lawsuits against anyone and everyone involved in the enforcement of the fine and arrest. When the dust settles, I would then seek damages. Who knows? You might get a new rectory or something else needed out of all of this.
We’re maxed out at 50. I’m hoping that large families will be considerate and tag team with their children so more people can go to Mass.
Governors (mostly of leftist states) demand Mass attendance be limited, but yet they utter not a peep about the swells of people not wearing masks or social distancing while rioting and looting.
Since Home Depot is allowed to have 500 people in their facility, Mass this Sunday will be in the Plumbing Section.
Where I go, we can have about 120. I do feel a tingling in my spidey sense that a number of people in power would permanently close churches if they could.
Fr. Dulli and Fr. Heilmann led the procession and protest at the capitol square. There was a report and photos in “Catholic World Report”: HERE
One of the sad parts of this is that one has to make a “reservation” to attend holy Mass. Crazy!
I’m too far east of you to be believable that I would drive to Dane County for Mass. I’ll pray that your police / sheriffs have a conscience and don’t go after the priest and faithful out there who attend Mass. In my neck of the state, we have a dearth of backbones among the clergy / hierarchy. While they don’t have the “50” limit, they have the 25%, along with three pages of small type regulations including no communion on the tongue at all and a limit to the number of Masses a priest is allowed to do. Everybody is falling in line.
The “Catholic” Chief Justice of the United States, disappoints, yet again.
With Roberts’ Vote, SCOTUS Shoots Down Challenge on Church Service Limits During Coronavirus Lockdown
“He does not ration his gift of the Spirit.” John 3:34
We must not ration attendance at Pentecost Mass. I am bringing $1000 cash to Mass for fine.
I kinda hope the city and county authorities do cite a few parishes and individuals. That would provoke a legal challenge which they are sure to lose.
Can I say I am very concerned there is a new sin being invented of disobediently coming to Mass on Sunday at one’s own parish when you are not on the invite list. Can there be a bad spirit that makes people come to Mass anyway on Pentecost? I don’t believe it.
Our unity is in the Eucharist.
The huge riot right by our historic church (to my surprise) did NOT damage our church (which had Perpetual Adoration going on throughout the situation) though they burned fires in the street right by there and there is grafitti all up and down the opposite side of the street and 75 businesses on state street (right around the corner) were vandalized or looted. A horde of people came out this morning cleaning up and erasing grafitti. They did take off tons of grafitti. Plywood already up in the zillion shattered windows. I saw the mayor today on State Street after she was giving a press conference and asked her for churches to open to at least 25% capacity like stores can, she was not really friendly. There is a very nice deputy mayor named Linda who turned out to be Catholic and has been watching local Mass videos. She insisted she thought it would get relaxed more next week, and the week after (i’ll believe it when it happens). They say any “mass gathering” is limited to 50 people not just churches. Apparently that order came the day after the bishop rolled out his plan to re open churches to 25% on Pentecost but we didnt know of it. I was actually told this morning that someone (from the county?) called and said there would NOT be watchers in the churches to enforce the thing this morning as had been threatened. I do not think the bishop should be ordering cooperation with whatever the civil authorities deciede about Mass.
People going to church is all the more exactly what is needed when the situation is that there are riots, looting and burning police cars.