Covid-19 – Simply Catholic

Lizzy is doing her part to keep people healthy (even though she hates wearing the mask)

I have no idea why so many people are so against the very simple act of wearing a mask when they are out in public. Right now we are facing a very uncertain health situation, and while you might be certain that this is a “plandemic” or “over-blown” the fact remains that we have a public health situation that is possibly deadly to a portion of the population. Our brothers and sisters. Our fellow citizens. If you skip the politicians and just look at the best science information that we have here is what you know. Covid-19 will likely not kill you if you get it, and you probably won’t get it in the first place. And if you do get it your symptoms could range from almost nothing to organ damage.

I am shocked to see that some of the same people who will not vaccinate their children because of a 1 in a million rate of vaccine related injury rate will blithely yet firmly assert their right to not wear a mask. Who really wants to run the risk of passing an infection to someone else? Why not do everything you can, especially when it is something so easy.

So this is my two cents (despite the coin shortage) based on the fact that I have two children who work in grocery stores. They are deemed essential workers and they go to work. And they have to check out your groceries.

You do not wear a mask to protect you. If you are going to get ill it will most likely be because you touched a surface and then your face. You wear a mask to protect others. You can be contagious and not feel that sick or even know you are. Your mild symptoms might be dismissed in your need to buy cereal or laundry soap. So you go out and if you are not wearing a mask every sneeze, every cough, every wheeze could be “sharing the plague”. And that young man or young woman checking you out at the grocery store could bring home a virus and infect a medically fragile sibling or a grandparent.

There are some very few people that due to allergies, skin or breath issues or past trauma have problems wearing masks. If that is you realize I do not have a problem with that and you have nothing but my sympathy. It is the person walking through Costco bellowing about “sheeple” and their “rights” that I take issue with. Sure you have a right to not wear a mask — or clothing at all for that matter — but please just wear it. It is not a government conspiracy to get control and impliment the new world order and start herding Christians into camps – wearing a mask is a simple kindness you can perform for your fellow man. A corporal act of mercy to protect those who are medically fragile. And act of Christian self-mortification for the protection of others. And it help keep my kids from bringing home a virus that could kill my mother.

So please — it shouldn’t be that difficult.

You might think the COVID-19 concerns are panic and overblown – or you might think that we aren’t doing enough fast enough. The reality is probably somewhere in between, but I want to take a minute here to plead with our church leaders to think through what coronavirus can mean for your parish.

Some quick facts:

Your parishioners are probably older. Sure we all want to think we belong to the one fabulously vibrant youthful parish, but the truth is that you have a lot of the 65+ crowd in your pews every Sunday.

You bring people in the community who normally aren’t together into the same space every mass.

Your children are germ machines.

People touch things and each other at Mass, they sneeze, they cough – they spread diseases.

Just think of this scenario: Little Bobby goes to school and contracts coronavirus from a classmate on Friday. He is asymptomatic, but he is carrying the virus. He sneezes into his hands on the way to mass because he is 6 and six-year-olds do that sort of thing. Mom and dad are busy talking about the fact that the big game they have tickets to this weekend was canceled – no one thinks to wash their hands before entering the chapel. The family enters the church and Bobby places a finger into the holy water and makes the sign of the cross, he touches three pews on the way to his seat, he runs his hands over the back of the pew in front of him. He shakes Susan’s hand at the sign of peace. Susan lives in the retirement community across the street. In three days she will be showing signs of illness, in 14 days most of the people living in her community will have COVID-19 and several of them will die.

This is not unlikely.

If your Bishop has not taken the brave and prudent step to suspend mass what can you reasonably do?

At the very least

Remove the holy water fonts
Do not have the Sign of Peace
Put in hand sanitizer stations
Ask parents to keep a watchful eye on their small children and ask them not to touch anything
Ask parishioners to stay home if they or a family member are ill
Clean surfaces in the parish between masses.
remove your missals and hymnals
Ask parishioners to spread out and not sit close together (6 ft between families is a good guide)
Add more masses and ask parishioners to attend off time masses.
suspend offering the Eucharist under both species (no communal cup)
cancel all church events (including religious education)

If you are in a parish and your priest in not taking measures like this what can you do?

Attend a less popular mass and sit well away from other parishioners
Wash your hands before and after mass and when you return home
Do not attend mass if you or a family member are ill
Don’t touch anything you don’t have to (this includes touching or kissing images and statues)
Stay close to home (if you attend mass while traveling or travel to attend mass you can spread germs either to the new location or bring them from the other location to your community)
Pray that this passes quickly and that the situation is not as bad as experts are currently predicting

Some helpful links:

CDC Steps to Prevent Illness

Coronavirus and the Catholic Church – here’s what’s coming

As COVID-19 spreads, Catholic entities worldwide take precautions

Make prayer part of your hand-washing to fight virus