By Modesto P. Sa-onoy
Yesterday, I quoted from LifeSiteNews the statement of New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy who said that he “wasn’t thinking of the Bill of Rights when he banned religious gatherings. That’s above my paygrade.”
For a governor to admit that he did not think about the Bill of Rights when he ordered the closure of churches and prohibited religious gathering is unbelievable and if true then he could not have finished grade school. But he completed college education so that his claim of “not thinking” can only be interpreted that he makes decisions arbitrarily and, as an ROTC instructor once kept shouting “without thinking.”
Indeed, if it was a washroom security guard who claimed that the Bill of Rights is “not on my paygrade”, that we can understand but he is governor and his pay grade is higher than a classroom teacher, or a policeman who knows that one of the provisions in the Bill of Rights is freedom of religion.
Moreover, ignorance of the law excuses no one, but sadly many hide behind ignorance as the village in Dachau where Nazi prisoners were starved and cremated and the entire village “did not know”.
On the other hand, “the governor defended keeping liquor stores open while closing churches as important to his citizens’ mental health. Shutting down liquor stores would have led to ‘unintended mental health and addiction prices to pay, unintended consequences.’” Now he knows the rights of the heavy drinkers who could pose danger to the community, but not of the lucid and prayerful ones.
As expected, a rabbi and a Catholic priest are suing Murphy over his order. Lawsuits in other states have been filed as well.
Trump emphasized, “I call upon governors to allow our churches and places of worship to open right now. If there’s question, they’re gonna have to call me, but they’re not gonna be successful in that call. These are places that hold our society together and keep our people united.”
Trump thanked the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and said the CDC would be releasing guidelines for religious gatherings soon. He said he trusts faith leaders to take proper steps to protect the health of their congregations.
“The ministers, pastors, rabbis, imams, and other faith leaders will make sure that their congregations are safe as they gather and pray,” said Trump. “I know them well. They love their congregations. They love their people. They don’t want anything bad to happen to them or to anybody else.”
He concluded, “The governors need to do the right thing and allow these important essential places of faith to open right now, for this weekend. If they do not do it, I will override the governors. In America, we need more prayer, not less.”
The panic reaction to the pandemic and the order of the governors for lockdowns had influenced the church leaders to comply without a complaint. While many Protestant churches have responded to the coronavirus panic and subsequent shutdowns with “parking lot” services, every single Catholic diocese in the U.S. cancelled public Masses and some even banned the Last Rites.
However, after an initial, perhaps shocking closure response, the dioceses around the US are slowly beginning to open their churches back up, although Holy Communion and other sacraments remain inaccessible to millions of American Catholics. The Catholic bishops of Minnesota along with Lutheran leaders announced last week that they will resume worship services on May 26 despite Governor Walz’s current COVID-19 executive order which allows retailers to operate at 50 percent capacity but caps church worship services at 10 people. The bishops are backed by the lawyers at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.
In California, hundreds of pastors plan to defy Gov. Gavin Newsom’s ban on religious gatherings on May 31.
The Philippine bishops have also started to open churches and public worship as I wrote earlier and as of this writing, Information says that more churches will open but for health reasons the attendance will be staggered and the physical distancing will be observed as well as some health protocols.
The recent moves at least reduce the complaints of why malls are opened but churches are not. Any way we have learned a lot from this closure, not just the prayerful but even our pastors who had become ingenious and found new ways of teaching catechism.
