Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone is urging San Francisco officials to ease restrictions on public worship, saying the city’s “excessive limits” limits to curb Covid-19 are unfair and a deprivation of religious organizations’ First Amendment rights.
No outbreaks have been linked to U.S. Catholic churches that follow safety guidelines, the archbishop said.
“I am grateful that the mayor and other government leaders in San Francisco acknowledge the importance of mental and spiritual health to the overall well-being of our people, in addition to physical and economic health,” the archbishop said in a Aug. 31 statement directed to Mayor London Breed, public health director Dr. Grant Colfax, and health officer Dr. Tomás Aragón.
“I am therefore calling on the mayor and her public health officials to, at a minimum, remove the excessive limits on outdoor public worship,” he said.
The archbishop said that, particularly for us as Catholics, “attending the Mass and receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in person is the source and the summit of our faith, and we have shown we can celebrate the Mass safely.”
He cited a recent article by three infectious disease specialists that “over one million public [M]asses have been celebrated following guidelines to prevent the spread of the virus…for Catholic churches following these guidelines, no outbreaks of Covid-19 have been linked to church attendance.”
The article by Thomas W. McGovern Deacon Timothy Flanagan and Paul Cieslak, “Evidence-Based Guidelines to Celebrate Mass Safety are Working,” was posted Aug. 19 on realclearscience.com. The writers are physician members of the Thomistic Institute Working Group on Infectious Disease Protocols for Sacraments and Pastoral Care.
San Francisco is the only government in the Bay Area that restricts public gatherings to 12 people out of doors.
“Ours and others’ faith is being treated as less important than a trip to the hardware store, or a nice dinner out on the patio,” the archbishop said. “This denial of access to safe outdoor public worship is a serious deprivation of our rights as Americans under the First Amendment and our spiritual needs as people of faith. One million public Masses without any Covid outbreaks demonstrates that it is just as safe in San Francisco as in other parts of the state, such as San Mateo County, to permit large gatherings for outdoor public worship with reasonable safety precautions.”
Most Covid-19 safety indicators in San Francisco are trending in a positive direction, city data show, although the daily rate of new infections is at a relatively high level. The rate of positive Covid-19 tests is 2.4%, a low to moderate level under state guidelines.
San Francisco is flagged “red” under a new color-coded scheme by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to give more discretion to counties to reopen their economies based on local Covid-19 data.
Red is the second most severe of four levels under the new system and indicates that Covid-19 spread is termed “substantial.” However, counties with a red designation may allow limited reopening of many of the most severely impacted activities under stay-at-home orders imposed last March, including indoor worship services for up to 100 people or 25% percent of capacity whichever is fewer.
The above comes from an Aug. 31 story in Catholic San Francisco.
As long as the call is for outdoor masses with 100 or fewer people, all masked, chairs spaced 6 feet apart, people not allowed to mill about before or afterwords, I think Archbishop Cordileone’s request is emminently reasonable, and I would sign a petition in support.
(I would suggest a semicircular configuration with the congregation at least 15 feet from any speaking or singing role). 100 people would fit in 2-3 rows easily, so the entire thing would only require a space of less than 50 feet by 50 feet, easily doable for any Church with a parking lot or basketball court.)
If the call is for indoor masses of any size, I would be opposed at this time, but I don’t think that is what the Archbishop is asking for.
YFC, you are either ignorant or in agreement with the ruling class to use scamdemic as tool to rule over us. I suggest you go to your beloved CDC website which states the deaths from actual COVID infections was around 6000 nationwide.
bohemmond, to be a little more accurate, as of this morning they are reporting 6,047,692 cases of covid-19, 184,083 deaths from the virus and an increase of 295,039 new cases in the last 7 days.
Wrong, Bob One, the scam has been exposed.
bohemond, tell me about the scam. I don’t know what you are talking about. The numbers I posted ystdy were from their website. Were we looking at different data? Thanks.
Look at the quiet way the CDC released the much lowered numbers, they had to expose their own scam. New York Times even says it’s less lethal or contagious than they said before.
OK bohemond. You are referencing the finding that 6% of COVID deaths mentioned no co-morbidities.
I will be kind and assume that you are not using that for political purposes but genuinely don’t understand what the CDC data tell us.
Everyone dies with comorbidities that are listed on death certificates. That doesn’t mean that the person didn’t die of the principal cause of death.
If an HIV positive man gets hit by a BART train, the man died of HIV, right? That’s how corona death numbers got so high and don’t forget the facilities got more money from a corona death than a run of the mill heart attack death.
Incorrect. A death certificate of a man who died by impact with a BART train would not indicate that he had AIDS unless he was somehow caused to fall onto the tracks by something related to his AIDS diagnosis.
This is not a difficult concept to understand. We all have health issues. We all have relatives who have one thing, but die of another thing. Death certificates don’t list all the moles we have, all the allergies we suffer with, all the psychological neuroses we suffer with. It MIGHT list a problem with low blood pressure that causes me to lose balance and fall onto the BART tracks. This is not difficult to understand.
If I die of a heart attack, my death certificate wouldn’t list the fact that I have athlete’s foot. If, however, I die of a heart attack while drinking and smoking, it migh tlist alcoholism and tobacco addiction, if they were causative factors in my cardiac infarct. Why is this not obvious? This is not difficult.
If an HIV positive man is hit by a BART train, he dies by blunt force trauma. As his death certificate would show. Unless his HIV somehow caused him to become lightheaded and fall onto the train tracks.
WOW Cal Catholic edited my response for no apparent reason. I went on to give the example that if I die by the fires in California, my death certificate might list asthma as a comorbidity. I wouldnt have died by asthma, but asthma made me more susceptible to death by wildfire smoke. The same is true of COVID. I might die of pneumonia induced by COVID, but I wouldn’t have had pneumonia if I hadn’t had COVID. Let’s be clear. Just because only 6% have COVID as the only cause of death on their death certificate doesn’t mean that only 6% of the 185,000 COVID deaths were caused by COVID.
Still waiting for the benefits of the Marian consecration in May to kick in…
Do you want them to?
He thinks it is an incantation with magic powers.
Hello Kevin T, are you there? Hello?
Kevin T. Our Lady is waiting for us to turn to her Son. Have you? Completely and totally? We all got work to do. get to it and stop complaining.
It would seem that with the current huge mix of different situations it would be time for Archbishop Cordileone to inform Catholics that the fact of the matter is that Mr. Biden, in accordance with Canon Law, has self excommunicated himself from the Catholic Church by virtue of his giving himself over to supporting abortion. This of course also applies to Mrs. Pelosi. If our church leaders don’t explain true Catholic teaching then who will ?
What does this post have anything to do with this article?
Anonymous ??? If you don’t know explaining it wouldn’t do any good.