Denver Newsroom, May 29, 2020 / 08:00 am (CNA).- As dioceses across the United States start to reopen public Masses, the scientist leading the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic recommended that Catholic Churches ought not resume distribution of Holy Communion. But other medical experts told CNA there are ways that Communion can be distributed safely amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told America magazine May 26 that he does not consider the distribution of Holy Communion to yet be safe— even if distributed in the hand.
“I think for the time being, you just gotta forestall that,” Fauci said regarding Communion, calling for “common sense” measures to protect worshippers and the wider community such as masks, social distancing, and prohibiting singing.
“As many times as a priest can wash his hands, he gets to Communion, he puts it in somebody’s hand, they put it in their mouth…it’s that kind of close interaction that you don’t want when you’re in the middle of a deadly outbreak,” he told America.
Fauci’s recommendation on the Eucharist came a month after he said it could be possible for Americans to connect with people through dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, or Grindr.
“If you’re willing to take a risk…you could figure out if you want to meet somebody,” Fauci told Snapchat’s “Good Luck America.”
“If you want to go a little bit more intimate, well, then that’s your choice regarding a risk,” he added.
Deacon Robert Lanciotti is a microbiologist and the former chief of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s diagnostic and reference laboratory in Fort Collins, Colorado. Lanciotti told CNA that Fauci’s call for “common sense” measures to mitigate the risk of infection does not exclude the possibility of distributing Communion.
“The primary way that this virus is spread is by direct person to person contact; droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes that land on another person and then enter the respiratory tract,” Lanciotti told CNA in an email.
“Maintaining a 6-foot distance or wearing a cloth mask are both methods that disrupt this process. Utilizing one of these measures in a group setting where infected symptomatic people are not present should be a sufficient level of risk reduction.”
Lanciotti, a graduate of Loyola College, was ordained a deacon in 2017.
He took issue with Fauci’s concerns regarding Communion in the hand.
“With the use of hand sanitizer immediately prior to the distribution of Holy Communion, and being careful not to directly touch the communicant, there is virtually no risk in the distribution of Communion,” Lanciotti told CNA.
Deacon Lanciotti pointed to an April 28 document from the Thomistic Institute in Washington D.C., written by medical professionals, researchers, and theologians.
That group recommended that out of respect for the Mass, the priest ought not wear a mask or gloves during the Mass, and neither should anyone distributing Communion.
Under the group’s recommended guidelines, those who wish to receive could approach the altar, spaced six feet apart; if the priest believed he touched the hands or mouth of a recipient, he could use hand sanitizer sitting on a table next to him.
According to the Thomistic Institute’s recommendations, the Precious Blood ought not be distributed at Mass.
To date, dioceses that have developed Church reopening plans have called for suspension of distribution of the Precious Blood. The Catholic Church teaches that reception of either the host or the chalice is a complete act of Eucharistic reception.
The Thomistic Institute’s document, distributed to bishops by the U.S. bishops’ conference, also recommends— as did Dr. Fauci— that singing ought to be discouraged.
It also states that it could be possible to receive Holy Communion on the tongue “without unreasonable risk.”
The document recommends that the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions ought not attend Mass anyway, as they are at especially high risk.
“I completely agree with this statement…In the setting of a church service, the single most important safety measure is for symptomatic individuals to stay home,” Lanciotti told CNA.
“I would argue that having sick individuals stay home, followed by adopting one more measure— masks or social distancing— is a reasonable approach. Utilizing both masks and social distancing represents a safety redundancy that is excessive and counter to ‘common sense,’” he said.
At St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, Masses resumed May 18, after more than two months of closure amid Italy’s coronavirus lockdown.
Visitors are advised to keep two meters apart, hand sanitizer is available at kiosks in the basilica, and, at the church’s entrance, the body temperatures of visitors are checked with scanning thermometers, by two attendants wearing hazmat suits.
The Eucharist is distributed during Masses at the basilica.
Fauci, a Catholic, attended a Jesuit secondary school and Jesuit university.
In 2015, he told C-Span that he is no longer “a regular church-attender. I have evolved into less a Roman Catholic religion person to someone who tries to keep a degree of spirituality about them. I look upon myself as a humanist. I have faith in the goodness of mankind.”
He similarly told America that he appreciates his Catholic education, and especially the values he was taught at the Jesuit institutions he attended.
“I identify more, much more, with that than the concept of organized churches, religions,” he told America.
Other Catholic medical professionals have weighed in on the question of whether Holy Communion can be distributed safely.
An ad-hoc committee of seven Catholic doctors and medical school professors released on May 12 a document entitled “Road Map to Re-Opening our Catholic Churches Safely.” That group of doctors concluded that the safest recommendation is to receive Communion in the hand rather than on the tongue.
The document calls for Mass to be held with social distancing, and for the use of masks and hand sanitizer. Singing should be avoided, and those who are ill or believe they may have been exposed to the virus should stay home, it says.
One member of that committee is Dr. Andrea Baccarelli, chair of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University’s School of Public Health.
Baccarelli told CNA that he agrees with and appreciates Fauci’s suggestions, and that there is a risk to the distribution of Holy Communion.
“Our committee wrote a plan to minimize the risk to distribute communion. That doesn’t mean that there will be no risk nor that we advised on whether it was safe to do it now or in the future,” Baccarelli added. “We just provided a document to guide masses and distribute Communion whenever it will be safe enough to do so.”
“If Dr. Fauci suggests it is not time yet to distribute communion, I think we should listen to him and wait before doing that again,” Baccarelli said.
Another member of the committee told CNA last week that he believes Catholics can attend Mass safely, and sacraments can be administered with appropriate precautions.
“I think that if we just use common sense to compare apples to apples for metrics that we know matter – like density, for example – then there’s no real kind of objective scientific reason why Mass is any more dangerous than going to the grocery store. I think the difference here is a perceived risk,” Dr. Andrew Wang, an immunobiologist at the Yale University School of Medicine and one of the plan’s co-authors, told CNA.
The plan calls for confessions to be held in outdoor or well-ventilated indoor areas, with the use of masks, an impermeable barrier between the priest and penitent, and frequent sanitization of surfaces.
Wang said that distributing Holy Communion on the hand, rather than on the tongue, represents an appropriate precaution for churches, especially while some things about the coronavirus spread are not yet completely understood.
Acknowledging that some people may object to that recommendation, Wang said that in his perspective, “it boils down to, is it better to not have communion at all – and by extension not have Mass at all?”
Ultimately, Wang said, going to church at this time is not risk-free, just as any other public activity is not without risk during a pandemic. He noted that dioceses throughout the country have granted dispensations from the Sunday obligation for those who are unable to attend or are not comfortable with the risk involved.
Deacon Tim Flanigan is a member of the Thomistic Institute’s working group, an infectious disease specialist who has battled Ebola outbreaks, and a professor of medicine at Brown University. Flanigan also told CNA that Catholics can return to Mass and the sacraments safely – if they observe CDC protocols.
“The question is: can I follow the CDC guidance just as carefully, in each setting, in order to decrease transmission of coronavirus? Can I maintain safe distancing? Can I maintain good hand hygiene? Can I ensure that I am not ill?” Flanigan told CNA last week.
If CDC guidelines are followed, “There is no reason to prohibit church services when you don’t prohibit other gatherings,” Flanigan said.
“The CDC gives us that guidance to decrease the rate of transmission. It’s just as important that guidance be followed at a house of worship, as at a conference, as at any other gathering.”
“If somebody makes an arbitrary judgment that a church is not going to follow that guidance, without any evidence, that is biased and there is no evidence for that,” he said.
Flanigan questioned the categories of some governors who classified religious gatherings as “non-essential,” compared to more “essential” activities like grocery stores.
“Being able to come together and pray together, being able to receive the sacraments, to encounter the Lord, right there in the sacraments, is so important,” Flanigan said.
Mental health is just as important as physical health, just as important as spiritual health,” he said. “We are a whole self, which has a mind, a body, a heart a soul. To be able to pray together, to be able to support each other, to be able to worship together, to be able to receive the Lord in Communion, is so important for us to be healthy and to thrive.”
“That is why our churches are essential,” Flanigan told CNA.
[…]
And so here we are.
Our devoutly Democratic Catholic president has effectively made it illegal to affirm the Catholic faith.
And half of Catholics will, no doubt, respond by continuing to vote for Democrats.
I mean, come on. With Catholics like this, who needs atheists.
Only half?
The irony is that one of the more noted atheists, Richard Dawkins, recently said he was a cultural Christian and wanted to live in a place dominated by Christianity (as opposed to Islam).
The other half Republican? Do the hypothetical votes cancel each other out and amount to nothing in the end? If we were all to stay out of politics and expend out time and energy on spreading the light in this dark world, perhaps it would be a better place. Won’t happen though! 😂
Your placement of the word “devoutly” before “Democratic” says it all!
I think that too many Democratic Catholics, especially older Catholics, are still voting for Pres. John F. Kennedy, who was a fairly good man and a fairly good President. But there are also too many Democratic Catholics who honestly and naively believe that the Democratic Party helps “the little men”–the poor, the working people, the minorities, the immigrants, and the women and children, while the Republicans are all rich fat cats who use “the little men” to enrich their own pockets. How sad, and I hope that local Catholic parishes will be unafraid to provide educational opportunities for people, especially younger people who might be more open to learning truth, to learn about political REALITY in our country at this time in history! People don’t read books much nowadays, so I hope that Trent Horn’s book will have a strong online presence so that it will actually get read.
The first time I became consciously aware of the words Democrat and Republican was during the Kennedy-Nixon race in 1960. (I was seven at the time.) Born and raised in a blue-collar city in eastern Massachusetts, I assumed that the whole world was made up of Democrats. One evening I said to my father, “We’re Democrats, right?” — “That’s right,” he answered. — “Well, who are the Republicans?” I demanded to know. Without hesitation, he said, “Rich people.” I realized the irony only years later. Between Nixon and Kennedy, who grew up with wealth, limousines, summers abroad, fancy boarding schools? Who, in short, was one of the “rich people”? Hint: It wasn’t Nixon.
JFK was a pervert and a serial womanizer. The press covered for him. He was not a good man.
Things change Mrs.Sharon. Back in the day everyone where we live were Democrats. Rich or poor alike. Now many working class people vote GOP.It keeps evolving.
Who are the most dangerous people presently who can over turn this nonsense? They’re ARCHEOLOGISTS! Since by looking at skeletal remains can easily state who was a woman and who was a man!!! Biden is a pathetic wreck of a catholic whose continual showing of “St” beau’s rosary beads has become a rite, that we could all do without!
I’ve thought pretty much the same thing. Despite contemporary rhetoric to the contrary, gender is not assigned at birth; sex is recognized at birth, after having been indelibly established in the womb. If one is male (or female) in the womb, one will be male (or female) until the moment of death, and if archaeologists dig up that person’s bones in the future, they will still be recognized as having been those of a male (or female).
Also, how many “biological female” athletes are bucking to compete in men’s games? I wonder why not. 🤔
There are a few women who have been admitted to men’s football teams as place kickers or holders. And both women and men skate together on synchronized skating teams (12 skaters on the ice performing a program that includes many of the figure skating elements such as lifts, spins, and jumps, along with team elements such as wheels, intersections, lines, circles, blocks. And Kaitlin Clark recently broke the record for baskets (basketball) long held by Pete Marovich. As a woman, I think most women have too much common sense to try to compete with men in professional sports. And now that workplace sports teams (baseball, volleyball, broomball, etc.) appear to be part of the Baby Boomer generation, I don’t know that we’ll see women competing with men very often.
Archeologists are now being cautioned not to identify human remains as male or female despite skeletal and DNA evidence–because they don’t know how the dead “identified.”
Won’t this new executive order also outlaw same-sex schools at any level?
I predict that in three to five years “dudes” will be winning nearly all women’s events, and that should put an end to this nonsense. It is unfortunate that until that happens a lot of dedicated women athletes will be missing out.
It’s schizophrenic. The reader likely knew immediately what that refers to. That someone can live in two different worlds, as does Biden, worlds opposed to each other, seemingly unaware, convinced there’s no contradiction. But the fact is it’s, I believe, more of a moral disease than clinical that afflicts many, particularly clergy. However, clergy disguise their immoral disease, and are aware of the malice, Biden flaunts it.
What President Biden’s immoral conceptualization of Christianity really says is that he believes what is evil is good, and that good is evil. How so? Well, isn’t that the moral theology that teaches there are evil behaviors, although there are also circumstances in our concrete reality that diminish the evil? A mitigation that corresponds between degree of difficulty and conscience, although contrary to this form of ethics, is the availability of grace, the gift won for us by Christ on the battlefield of the cross.
However, Title IX gender identity discrimination is an entirely new species of moral degenerative disease. Different from mitigation and undue burden. No need for grace here because what the Biden Administration now affirms, is the justice protected freedom to profess whatever gender description for themselves people wish regardless of their biological identity. This is an entirely new freedom based morality that overrules any personal conviction or religious belief. Joe Biden had said previously that he disbelieves what the Catholic Church officially teaches on this and other vital issues. And of course most know the rapport between the Vatican, a number of hierarchy, and Biden, strongly suggests that this is what the Church holds to be true. Should there be wonder why so many are leaving, when the Easter Vigil Mass this year had 17 attendees at a local parish when just a short couple of years past it was in the hundreds?
Local parish where?
My parish baptized/confirmed more than 17 people at Easter Vigil. The overall statistics seem to indicate a significant increase in people entering the Church.
I rather suspect it depends mainly on whether the parish in question believes what the Church has traditionally taught, or at least is struggling in that direction and against the prevailing current. There’s no point in going to Church if the prevailing culture is correct, so the person must be somewhat counter-cultural to even bother showing up, and the parish must be counter-cultural to attract those people.
Where? Anywhere small town USA. Why does a parish in the same vicinity flourish? Is it the priest who lives a devout life, a single parishioner offering his prayers and suffering? Perhaps the parish with a Legion of Mary that visits medical centers, nursing homes, jails, the shutins, the sick has that spark of faith. That the sun shines here and not over the hill is beyond our control. Not so where grace flows down.
“That someone can live in two different worlds, as does Biden, worlds opposed to each other, seemingly unaware, convinced there’s no contradiction.”
Ah, it is so easy! “I am a Catholic and Jesus said we should love our neighbor and so, out of my love for him I call him “she” and grant him access to all females-only places”. Being challenged “but this is not a woman” such a Catholic will answer “mercy is above justice” and so it goes. Being challenged “But the women do not want a man in the female changing room, they are afraid” the answer is “how intolerant of them – they have nothing to be afraid of, they must work on themselves”. Etc.
It is all about the heresy of being “nice”. Such politicians are “nice” to biological men. Is it an authentic empathy with transsexuals? – Absolutely not, it is all about “nice” self-image. Why am I so sure? – Because a person cannot have selective empathy and compassion. If he feels empathy with biological males who want to get access to the female-only places he must also feel the same empathy with vulnerable women who do not want those males to be there. But he does not. And why is that? – Because:
1) he does not have empathy for anyone, he is deficient
2) because if he refuses to allow males into female toilets he is not “nice” to women, he is just normal – why if he allows, he is very nice.
Here we are, it is all about being nice. Such “Catholics” swapped “good” with “nice” and reinterpret the Scriptures and Tradition accordingly – according to themselves.
I also argue that men who make the laws which endanger women are not really men, psychologically. They are devoid of a normal instinct any normal man has, of protecting women and girls. So those men (and women) who create such laws basically announce “we are neither male nor female but something else” – and here if they are Catholics they may say “Yes! Isn’t the apostle Paul said it?”
Yes. Men have lost their sense of manhood in fear of retribution. Appeasing deviants is ideological favoritism. To be odd or queer once disdained as a cowardly betrayal of one’s manhood is now vaunted as heroic. Liberty, now freedom to revise life itself, now an idol of worship, jealously protected by federal law. Enemies of truth such as George Soros invests millions to corrupt the Justice system with the aim of collapsing our once traditional Common Law culture. Lucifer has done an incredible job of feminizing modern man. Man’s elective weakness is a rebellion against God.
Prof Eduardo J Echeverria notes that Pope Francis, in his autobiography, ‘Life: My Story Through History’ advocates for legal support of same-sex civil unions of homosexuals “who [Francis says] experience the gift of love”. Echeverria asks, “In what sense, if any, is homosexual love a gift?” .
So, is it the story of feminizing men in the West? In my homeland (Russia) we have it because of multiple wars. After the war 1942-45 we had a deficiency of men – of the fathers and those whom women can marry. Even worse, the widowed mothers would often treat their sons as “my precious”. A generation spoiled by single mothers, men rose who seriously expected women to serve them just like their mothers did. They honestly believed that their value is in the fact they are men (what kind of men did not matter).
It is a very broad generalization of course but misogyny created by mothers is definitely a trend. And such misogyny, sucked with mother’s milk is the worst.
By the way, I have observed among younger Roman Catholic priests in the West a disproportionate number of those who clearly show the symptoms of being “a mother’s golden boy”. Like many Russian men, they are brought up by mothers – not that they had physically absent fathers but emotionally absent, disconnected from their wives or suppressed by them.
You make good sense on the issue Anna. Fortunately with will and fortitude a mother’s darling can still make himself a man.
It looks like there are 2 reasonable options: 1. Successfully challenge the law in federal court, and break it until the case(s) is won. 2. Start setting up a parallel education system that does not use federal funding.
Going along to get along is not a reasonable option.
The democrats can make up fantasy rules on any perv thing they want but it will not wash. More and more the little girls themselves are saying no when asked to compete against a boy at a competition. There is no reason for these girls to risk injury or compete on an uneven playing field to satisfy some crazy notion of sexuality which is transparently false. Its clear the kids have more brains than the adults on this issue.
The Government was allowed to create a religion when it established “gender identity” as a protected characteristic that isn’t shared by all people. There can only be protections for immutable traits like race and biological gender/sex, which are shared by everyone, not the unverifiable, unnatural and imagined idea of sex and gender. This makes “Gender Identity” a government sponsored religion which is why it conflicts with Christianity.