Sunday Go-Not-To-Meeting Post – UPDATED

Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

Friends of the Decanter may recall Ol’ Robbo’s anticipatory excitement last Sunday over the announcement that his diocese would start offering public Mass on a limited basis today?  Well, almost immediately after I posted that, Kommissar Northam put the kybosh on it, extending the lockdown in NoVA until the end of this month.

I’ll bet you dollars to donuts he does it again, too.  Because It’s For Your Own Good, kulaks.

Meanwhile, Ol’ Robbo is beginning to see articles to the effect that the People shut themselves down and the gub’mint was merely playing catch-up.

The implication is that the People will open things up again despite the gub’mint.  I happen to think that’s right but let’s just hold on a minute about that initial premise, Action.

Back in mid-March when things were starting to get hinky, my diocese came out with specific guidelines for the continuance of public worship:

• Dispensation by the Bishop from the requirement to attend Mass for anyone who was sick, thought they might be sick, or otherwise felt at risk.
• No sharing of wine during Communion.
• No “passing the peace” or other touching among the congregation.

There were one or two other items which I don’t recollect, but this was the gist of it.

I thought then that these were perfectly reasonable precautionary measures and I’ve seen absolutely nothing in the two months since then to suggest that we could not have carried on right through operating under them.

Here’s the thing:  It wasn’t Bishop Burbridge or “the People” who then within a couple days decided that worship was non-essential and that churches needed to be shut down, it was Kommissar Fargin’ Northam who did so.

Do not, do not, attempt to minimize the gub’mint’s arbitrary overthrow of our Constitutional liberties in this matter. Do not make excuses.  Do not let Big Brother off the hook.

Because if you do, it’ll just come for you again.

(Of course, one may criticize the Church for not telling Big Brother to go stick its head in a pig when the diktat came out, but that’s a separate rant.)

UPDATE:  First, Ol’ Robbo apologizes for being such a Ranty McRantface about all this. I’m sure it gets tedious for you lot.

Second, I see now that my church actually started Communion services yesterday: Very short, outdoors, no more than eight people at a time.  I swear this nooz wasn’t posted when I checked on Saturday.  I did see a FB post about another church in teh diocese doing this yesterday, and damme if the first comment wasn’t a Karen ranting about the padre offering Communion on the tongue.