The Empire Strikes Back

As I've reported here, Los Angeles County has been unable to secure a temporary restraining order against Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA to stop it from holding indoor services that include singing, but without masks or social distancing. On Sunday, the county public works department sent the church a letter giving notice that it was terminating the month-to-month lease of county land for part of the church parking lot, effective October 1.

The best discussion of the story is at The Federalist. Another story with additional detail is here.

There are likely to be further legal developments. The church's counsel, Jenna Ellis, released a statement:

“Los Angeles County is retaliating against Grace Community Church for simply exercising their constitutionally protected right to hold church and challenging an unreasonable, unlawful health order,” Ellis said.

“The Church has peacefully held this lease for 45 years and the only reason the County is attempting eviction is because John MacArthur stood up to their unconstitutional power grab. This is harassment, abusive, and unconscionable,” Ellis added.

As of this morning, the Thomas More Society, which is representing the church, has no statement on its website. I would guess that the church and its counsel will pursue some type of legal redress, but they aren't telegraphing their strategy. As a legal amateur, it seems to me that one avenue would be the doctrine of estoppel. On one hand, although the rental agreement is month-to-month, the church has relied for 45 years on the continuation of this agreement.

In addition,

Collateral estoppel, sometimes known as estoppel by judgment, prevents the re-argument of a factual or legal issue that has already been determined by a valid judgment in a prior case involving the same parties.

It appears that the church's counsel may attempt to argue that the county is trying to gain a result by terminating a contract that they could not obtain in court -- and in doing so, they're violating the church's constitutional rights. But we'll have to see how this develops.

In the case of North Valley Baptist Church in Santa Clara, CA, Pastor Jack Trieber says in this YouTube broadcast that, although the country health department fines the church $5,000 for each service held indoors with singing, the church has the financial resources simply to pay these fines and continue holding the services. This, of course, is completely in the spirit of Dr King's "Letter From Birmingham Jail".

This story explains that $5,000 per service is the maximum penalty the county health department can impose, which is leaving the county in a difficult situation. According to the story, the county is investigating how it may be able to enforce its order now that the maximum penalty isn't working.

However, the measures at the county level in California are taking place in the context of steadily improving COVID statistics. Beyond that, the US Center for Disease Control has been revising its published statistics to respond to long-expressed concerns that definitions of COVID conditions wildly inflate the numbers.

For instance, the CDC updated its website has to show that only 6% of all coronavirus deaths were completely due to the coronavirus alone. This gives a total of 9,210 deaths, not the nearly 200,000 widely cited.

This information from a recognized government source is likely to be used in further legal proceedings that argue, in part, that restrictions on worship have not been tailored to the actual risk.

Remarks by our clergy during yesterday's mass, though, suggest there's an understanding that county authorities intend to continue these restrictions indefinitely. As a result, the legal cases being brought by the Evangelical parishes in California will, at least we hope, bring about benefit for all churches.

More Information On The Anglicanorum Coetibus Society Board

My regular correspondent sent me a link to a post on the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society blog from 2018 covering its annual general meeting, which lists other board members as of that time.

At the AGM, we affirmed the re-election of three Board members: David Murphy who is based in Germany but belongs to the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham; Hans-Jurgen Feulner, a liturgical scholar from Austria for participated on the international commission that developed Divine Worship: the Misssal; and Fr. Stephen Hill, a priest from Australia and the Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross.

. . . After the AGM, the Board of Directors met, and this year seven of us where there in person. Here is our secretary Christopher Mahon from Toronto, Ontario, and Clara Chung our Vice President from Orange County, California. Beyond them is our treasurer Joe Blake and our editor of Shared Treasure, David Burt.

Here I am holding forth on something, with Bill Tighe, a historian from Mullenburg [sic] College in Allentown Pennsylvania.

Also present were Fr. Eric Bergman, rector of St. Thomas More, our chaplain and our host.

The entry gives seven members there in person, wahrscheinlich aber nicht der Herr Doktor Professor aus Wien, the scholar of English liturgy. We don't know how many others besides the seven are also on the board.

Nevertheless, from my personal experience, if you mention Anglicanorum coetibus to a diocesan priest, the result will be only a quizzical expression.

My regular correspondent reflects on the predicament of David Murphy, the board member from Germany, who although he was reelected in 2018, seems to have faded into obscurity:

Poor Mr Murphy. He did yeoperson’s service gathering news and curating comments on the Ordinariate Expats blog. He had a big vision for the role of the Anglican Use Society as it then was. Contrast with the current reality is marked. He seems to have dropped out of view. Fr Ernie Davis left the OCSP to be reincardinated in the Diocese of Kansas City, where he is a parish pastor.

It's worth pointing out that the Ordinariate Expats blog continues to be an important source for hard information on the history of groups, parishes, and personnel in the North American ordinariate, even though it's no longer maintained. This was the work of one man, which the present committee has been unable to replicate.

Reminds me of a situation long ago in my work history when I was working as a technical writer. However, the company had to load some trucks back in the warehouse, but the truck loaders were all out sick or something. So my boss in the technical writing department lent me to the warehouse to load trucks for the day. At the end of the day, the warehouse supervisor scratched his head and said, "I don't understand it. I normally have three guys to load trucks here. You did as much in one day as three guys normally do."

I don't think I needed to explain that three guys will spend the day smokin' and jokin', where one just does the work without a lot of BS. Not my problem, I went back to the tech department.

Sounds like the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society has something like the same problem. Mullenburg Coillege indeed.

"I Don't Know If The Average Parishioner Even Knows Of Its Existence."

A visitor commented,

As some of your visitors have commented, a lack of communication seems to be prevalent in the Ordinariate. An organization such as The Anglican Coetibus Society could help, but it seems to be a closed society. I don't know if the average parishioner knows of its existence. Has it ever been referenced in parish bulletins, or links from parish websites?

My regular correspondent remarked just yesterday,

It is interesting to compare the website of the Friends of the Ordinariate, the UK version of the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society to what the AC Society seems able to produce. The contrast is immediately obvious, in layout and content.

Not to say that the content, on close reading, is uniformly stimulating, but the overall impression is one of professionalism and seriousness.

So I guess the first question I would have is what, if anything, someone looking for information on the North American ordinariate would gain from going to the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society website.

The first thing that strikes me is that its theme and objectives seem to be somehow off kilter. At the sorta-kinda top of the page is DEDICATED TO PROMOTING THE ANGLICAN TRADITION & COMMON IDENTITY WITHIN THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.. But what is the "Anglican Tradition"? High church, broad church, low church, Anglo-Catholic, or all of the above? It's so vague, it can go on to embrace Wind in the Willows. Peter Pan, or Upstairs, Downsairs -- a Disneyfied, Masterpiece Theater style of maybe religious endorsement. The problem I see is that this separates style from anything like doctrine, which I suppose is good Episcopalianism if nothing else.

By the same token, what is "common identity"? Catholics are Christian, and many Christian denominations acknowledge a common Christian identity. (I do note recently that while moderate Evangelicals acknowledge that Catholics are Christian, radicals like Pastor John MacArthur do not.) But this does say that Catholics and most Protestants acknowledge a common Christian identity, which means that for all intents and purposes, saying the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society promotes "common identity" is nothing more than a bromide.

I'm not at all sure who is currently on the Society's Board of Directors. A web search brings up only two entries from 2015 on the Ordinariate Expats blog, here and here. As of those 2015 entries, the board was comprised of Fr. Eric Bergman. Fr. Ernie Davis, Fr. Allan Hawkins, Dr. William J. Tighe, Ms. Deborah Gyapong, Herr Doktor Professor Hans-Jürgen Feulner, Mr. David Murphy, and Ms. Antonia Lynn.

Other references indicate that Mr Shane Schaetzel was on the board at some subsequent date, but has now left it. I can't find any listing of board members on the Society's website. Nor can I find it on the weekly news page (which, by the way, between the tiny print and the creamed-spinach background for many items is unreadable). I would surmise that at least some of the people listed in the 2015 blog posts are surprised that they were ever members of such a board.

So oddly, as I so often find myself, I'm again in a position of being the de facto news coordinator for the North American ordinariate, although I'm not a member, and my actual purpose throughout this project has been to caution Catholics that they have far better resources available to them locally within the novus ordo Church than they may think they can find on a distant website.

But in that spirit, if someone can provide a current list of board members for the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society -- and if perhaps a board member can serve as a central contact point for constructive feedback on how that body can radically improve its service to the Church, which is currently self-congratulatory but completely inadequate -- I'll be happy to publish this information here.

I think it goes without saying that the current website redo, and especially the unreadable newsletter, do not serve the purpose. Again, if ordinariate members are willing to step up to the plate and actually perform a real service, I'll be most happy to take up other projects for my life and move on from this blog.

News On Houston Seminarians

The Anglicanorum Coetibus Society has posted brave words about wanting to be a source on ordinariate news, but frankly, Mrs Gyapong and Mr Jesserer Smith have always struck me as complacent and self-congratulatory people whose actual interest in researching news is at best tepid. Hey, if they change one day, I could give up this gig! My regular correspondent asked a perfectly reasonable question, who's still in the seminary pipeline with the summer round of new ordinations?

The report:

The picture above was used as part of the publicity for the ordinariate Seminarian Formation Fund second collection in June 2020. However, as we see here, most of the men in the publicity picture are not seminarians: the two men on the right were ordained to the priesthood in June and have taken up ministry positions; the three men in the centre are of course Bp Lopes, J Henry, and Fr Perkins, the V-G; and second from the left is Fr Kramer, the Vocations Director.

The Canadian seminarian is not in attendance. Of the four seminarians on the current “Our Seminarians” page, three are studying at the Pontifical North American College in Rome, which is up and running according to its Facebook page, and one is, or was, at St Philip’s Seminary in Toronto, although I see he is identified as being at the Pope Benedict XVI House of Formation, which is the residence owned by the ordinariate, not an educational institution. He apparently wasn’t in the neighbourhood when the publicity shot was taken, and indeed why would he come to Houston at the moment?

The bulletin of Our Lady of Walsingham, Houston is looking for volunteers to deliver Sunday dinner to the Benedict XVI House of Formation beginning this month, however, so someone must be in residence. I notice that Bp Lopes refers to eight seminarians in this article from 2018.

According to his mother’s blog (fourth happy face down) Luke McDonald will be living at the B16HF -- “right next door almost to Bp Lopes“ -- while studying at St Mary’s Seminary in Houston this academic year. He is not shown on the “Our Seminarians” page of the seminary website, but it does not appear to have been updated to the 20-21 school year as Frs Alejandro and Davis are still shown as 4th year Theology students. Seminarians arrived at St Mary’s a week ago and are in two week quarantine.

I'm still not clear on how many seminarians there are. If eight minus the two ordained this summer leaves six, and Mr McDonald adds one, that's seven. But of the nine men in the photo above from 2019, six are not seminarians as of summer 2020. So apparently three in the 2019 photo are in the program as of 2020, plus Mr McDonald, plus the Canadian seminarian, which leaves five. And that still leaves the question of how many are living in the House of Formation. Four?

UPDATE: My regular correspondent clarifies, "Luke McDonald IS the Canadian seminarian, so there are now four in total."

This could be a start for a thorough and informative followup by the professional journalists at the Ordinariate News. They could make my regular correspondent and me look like the rank amateurs we actually are. I don't have many hopes, though. But hey, if they take over the job, I could give up this gig!

The Personal Prelature Puzzle

My regular correspondent brought to my attention an issue that's arisen in an ordinariate discussion forum that bears on a point I raised in Tuesday's post:

Someone brought to the attention of the Anglican Ordinariate Forum Fscebook group (the public forum, not the informal one) that the Our Lady of the Atonement bulletin last week mentioned that Quinceañeras were held at the church [This is a Latin celebration, both a religious and a social event, of a girl's fifteenth birthday.]

This has led to a blizzard of comments—-96 to date—-some of them making the point that San Antonio is 60% Hispanic, and that there are significant numbers of Hispanic Episcopalians, or just “what’s it to you?”, but many others saying that an Ordinariate parish should be culturally “English” and that Mexicans with their celebrations derived from Aztec fertility rites have no place there.

At one point there was a Spanish language OCSP community of former Episcopalians in Pinecrest FL, which has since folded, but I believe that their former administrator, Fr Pedro Toledo, travels periodically to Incarnation, Orlando to offer Confession in Spanish. Cahenslyite deviation indeed.

It does underline that the Ordinariate is not even a unified concept among its own adherents.

I covered Cahenlyism most fully in this post s year ago. It was a proposal in the 1890s by Peter Cahensly, a prominent German Catholic layman, to have separate hierarchies in the American Church for each group of ethnic immigrants in the US. This was apparently intended mainly to avoid situations where German immigrant Catholics would have Irish priests and bishops in charge of their parishes.

As best I understand the history, this never rose to the level of a formal proposal, and it never resulted in a formal rejection by Leo XIII, but a consensus arose both in Rome and the US that things weren't going to be done that way. However, I don't believe this ever reached the point that it was formalized in canon law -- I hope more knowledgeable visitors can chime in here.

But that a Latin tradition should cause controversy if it's celebrated in an ordinariate parish shows that there is some notion that the Anglicanorum in the coetibus refers to people of English or Episcopalian cultural roots, or more broadly, as Fr Bartus explained to an adult forum that I attended, "white people". (I know Fr Bartus well enough to know that neither irony nor humor is part of the man's makeup.)

So we're left with the question: is Quinceañera or Día de Muertos appropriate in an ordinariate parish? My answer would be derived from Wittgenstein, in which the solution to the problem emerges from the disappearance of the problem. In a novus ordo parish, this would be up to, say, the worship committee, the Fil-Am council, or whichever other parish body was involved, in consultation with the pastor.

In a novus ordo parish, the result would probably be processions, flowers, and lots of food. In an ordinariate parish, apparently a certain level of snobbery and bitter debate, no flowers, no processions, no food.

But this gets to the Cahenslyite conundrum as well. In effect, Cahensly's proposal, never quite folly defined or elaborated, would still amount to a personal prelature for certain interest groups. And this leads to the question, well above my paygrade, of why the idea of a personal prelature emerged in the late 20th century, when Leo XIII implicitly rejected it about 1900.

The first personal prelature was Opus Dei. It appears that Bernard Law was involved in some way with it, since he had been involved with, and maintained contacts with, Opus Dei since his time as a Harvard student in the early days of the American movement. At roughly the same time that John Paul was reviewing this possibility for Opus Dei, Bernard Law was advocating a personal prelature for disgruntled Episcopalians.

Law, an extremely ambitious man whom I've heard intended to succeed John Paul II as pontiff had it not been that John Paul outlived Law's expectations, was an opportunist and may have hoped that an Anglican personal prelature could in some way leverage his rise in the Church.

We're left now, with a personal prelature for Anglicans belatedly established under Benedict, trying to address the question of what problem it's meant to solve. Is it meant to cater to a particular ethnicity ("white people", perhaps?) in a way that novus ordo doesn't? I would say that Leo XIII was correct in saying this idea isn't worthy of a formal answer.

Is a personal prelature needed to cater to a particular liturgy? Why would that be necessary? Latin masses have prospered far more than Divine Worship within novus ordo dioceses. So we're left with the puzzle of why this strange personal prelature is needed, beyond that it seemed like a good idea to Bernard Law.

If any of the ordinariates had a strong leader, or perhaps even a strong advocate in Rome, who could articulate reasons for its existence, it might make a difference. In North America, Jeffrey Steenson comes off as an opportunist and an incompetent administrator. Bp Lopes -- I wonder why Bp Barron has never, to my knowledge, mentioned Anglicanorum coetibus or the North American ordinariate as any sort of bright spot in the suffering Church.

I would guess Bp Lopes is known to his brother bishops, if at all, as the guy who broke his leg falling off a ladder in his residence. Says a lot about a personal prelature.

I would guess that Cardinal Law, although he may have thought the establishment of an Anglican personal prelature could in some way further his career, he wouldn't have wanted the job, and he wouldn't have done any better in it than the others.

So if there's a reason for it, we've yet so see an effective leader who can show us what it is.

More California Civil Disobedience Updates

I've noted previously the very poor reporting we've had on the legal issues surrounding the California churches that are holding services in violation of local health orders. In particular, the various decisions by the superior court, and a decision by the appeals court that appeared to "overturn" a superior court decision partially allowing Grace Community Church to hold indoor services, haven't been clearly explained.

A new post at the Thomas More Society website goes some distance toward clearing this up.

August 25, 2020, in California Superior Court, Judge Mitchell Beckloff issued a five-page opinion, County of Los Angeles et al. v. Grace Community Church et al., denying the County of Los Angeles’ renewed application for a temporary restraining order against the church and Pastor John MacArthur.

. . . the court held that the county’s attempt to obtain a restraining order did not meet statutory requirements and that the Court of Appeal’s order did not justify a new temporary restraining order; rather, it simply stayed Judge Chalfant’s August 14 order and gave the county permission to enforce its own health order.

I thought something like this would be the case. I went to the judge's opinion, which is on line here, and found a problem with the health department's ability to enforce its order, whether or not the appeals court gave it permission to do so:

The County health Order also requests "that the Sheriff and all chiefs of police in all cities located in the Los Angeles Public Health Jurisdiction ensure compliance with and enforcement of this Ordr."

This answers a question I've had all along: who enforces health department orders in California? It turns out it's the relevant sheriff or police department. But we've already seen that the Los Angeles police chief has told Pastor MacArthur that LAPD does not enforce health department orders and will not under any conceivable scenario move against Grace Church. (Note that the health department's own language "requests" sheriffs and police to enforce its orders.)

This is actually a problem throughout the state, as a number of county sheriffs have already announced they do not enforce health department orders, and, for instance, the Ventura County Sheriff has refused to make arrests or issue citations in the similar Godspeak Calvary Chapel case.

This brings us to a new civil disobedience case. I've seen remarks here and there from pastors that, although there are a few well-publicized cases, there are a good many other churches -- mostly Evangelical or Pentecostal -- that are quietly holding indoor Sunday services with singing and without social distance in violation of the governor's and local health department orders.

One of these, it now comes to light, is North Valley Baptist Church in Santa Clara, 350 miles north of Los Angeles in Santa Clara, which is in Silicon Valley.

North Valley Baptist Church in Santa Clara is being punished for holding worship services, even though churchgoers adhered to the social distancing guidelines. The house of worship was even served a citation for singing.

The county placed a four-page letter on the front door of the church, indicating that singing at church services was "unlawful."

"North Valley Baptist is failing to prevent those attending, performing and speaking at North Valley Baptist's services from singing," the letter reads. "This activity is unlawful. The county understands that singing is an intimate and meaningful component of religious worship."

"However, public health experts have also determined that singing together in close proximity and without face coverings transmits virus particles further in the air than breathing or speaking quietly. The county demands that North Valley Baptist immediately cease the activities listed above and fully comply with the Risk Reduction Order, the Gatherings Directive, the State July 13 Order, and the State guidance. Failure to do so will result in enforcement action by the county," the notice concludes.

The "cease and desist order' appears to be consistent with the similar order issued against Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena. The question in my mind in both cases is how this health department order is enforced, and the answer I seem to get from the court document quoted above is that it's enforced via a "request" to the local sheriff or police department. But what we're seeing is that law enforcement has been reluctant to get involved.

What I think is happening is that both the courts and law enforcement are uncomfortable with enforcing health department orders, which are not laws passed by legislative authority, and are at least putatively temporary.

What pastors -- including North Valley Pastor Jack Trieber -- have said is that they closed their worship services in March in good-faith compliance, at a time when it was put about that there would be millions of COVID deaths in the US. When these did not materialize, civil authorities nevertheless did not relax their orders, and six months later, we're seeing churches penalized for holding indoor services and singing, when all available evidence shows this is not spreading the disease.

What Has Become Of Fr Richard Rojas?

In the context of Bp Lopes's visit to Pennsylvania';s Cement Belt, my regular correspondent suddenly began to wonder what had happened to the North American ordinariate's apostle to that very region, Fr Richard Rojas. As I reported here in 2018,

The history of this group is puzzling. As best my regular correspondent can determine, the group began in January 2014 as a venue for Fr Richard Rojas, who was ordained a priest in the OCSP in 2013 while serving as a military chaplain in Guam. He had been a Presbyterian pastor who subsequently joined the Anglican communion (although I assume this was not a denomination in communion with Canterbury).

My correspondent notes that Fr Rojas was in fact able to switch denominations twice while a chaplain with no interruption to his military career. However, once ordained in the OCSP, he remained in Guam only three months before moving to Scranton, where he and his family lived in the former convent on the STM, Scranton property for a little over a year before he was excardinated to the Diocese of Scranton.

During this time, he celebrated the DW mass at Sacred Heart, Bath. At one time there was a website for the Bath group, but since it appears on neither the OCSP map nor the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society map, there appears not to have been much sustained interest or enthusiasm. In any case, Fr Rojas no longer serves the group, having become administrator of the Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in Dushore, PA.

Somewhat belatedly, Fr Rojas began to appear in the sort of sappy publicity that the amateur writers professional journalists at the Antlcianorum Coetibus Society make their specialty. In June, 2017 we see Fr Richard Rojas on The Journey Home, to which someone gushes in the comment,

WELCOME, WELCOME, WELCOME, Fr. Rojas to the Catholic Faith and to Catholic Priesthood. MAY your ministry as a Holy Priest of God be well Blessed.

However, Fr Rojas left the Bath group and the St Thomas More Scranton parish at some point to become administrator of the Immaculate Heart of Mary parish in Dushore, PA in the Diocese of Scranton. But by November 2018, he had left that position to become chaplain at the Mercy Center in Dallas, PA. He lasted less than a year there. As of last fall, the diocese announced,

Reverend Richard Rojas, priest of The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, from Chaplain, Mercy Center, Dallas, to ministry within the Ordinariate of The Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter, effective September 22, 2019. (p 8)

At the same time, Fr Rojas's wife, Deborah, formerly (May-August 2019) the organist at St Thomas More, Scranton, is now the Director of Liturgy and Music at St Monica, Derwyn, PA. Her Facebook page is topped by a family photo, minus Fr Rojas. Meanwhile, there is no mention of any assignment for Fr Rojas in the ordinariate.

If anyone has news of Fr Rojas, I will be most grateful for it. However, what seems to emerge from the public information available is a certain pattern of aggressive self-promotion accompanied by predictably weepy publicity from the usual sources, followed by a fairly rapid flameout.

The Return Of Live Rescue

An early casualty of the BLM riots in late May was A&E's Live PD, which until its cancellation was the number one show on Friday and Saturday nights. There was a reason it was popular, and when it was canceled, A&E lost half its overall viewership. What it portrayed was live incidents involving routine police work by remarkably diverse and professional officers addressing some of the most visible social problems, including domestic violence, drunk driving, addiction, and homelessness.

Despite the show's positive message, it ran into controversy amid local politics even before national demands for its cancellation. Local politicians where the show had contracts with law enforcement didn't like the idea that their communities were portrayed as having problems with domestic violence, drunk driving, addiction, and homelessness, and sought to have the contracts canceled. The show's host, Dan Abrams, has apparently spoken without authority, and perhaps without basis, saying that talks are in progress to bring it back. This remains to be seen.

However, following a hiatus that started about the same time as Live PD's cancellation, a spinoff, Live Rescue, returned to A&E Friday night. This has a nearly identical format to Live PD, except that it covers incidents in the daily routines of firefighters and paramedics. A host, Matt Iseman, is accompanied by two working firefighter/paramedics, Dan Flynn and Garon Mosby. The difficulty for A&E and all right-thinking people is that emergency first-responders work closely with law enforcement, and you just can't blur the police officers out of the scenes.

This problem surfaced during the show's first episode after the hiatus Friday night. Paterson, NJ paramedics responded to a shooting, and inevitably the scene included police. A public information officer updated the camera crew on the situation, and in order to be reassuring, he and a police officer explained that due to recent outbreaks of violence, the police had a special task force to investigate and prevent such shootings. In the background, the victim screamed in pain as he was loaded into an ambulance.

The commentators explained with Matt Iseman the extreme pain that results when a bullet wound to the leg breaks a femur. Then, Garon Mosby spoke at greater length. He said something like, "I don't quite know how to put this. Paterson, NJ has had as many homicides so far this year as it had in all of 2019. We have the same problem in St Louis. We've had as many homicides so far this year as we had in all of last year. Something's going on. It isn't a Paterson problem. It isn't a St Louis problem. It's all over the country."

This is what makes Live Rescue and Live PD so extraordinarily popular. It's probably also why there'll be a new move to cancel Live Rescue. The programs give an unmediated look at real life, no politically correct agendas inserted.

The problem is almost certainly that the manufactured COVID crisis resulted in mass releases of felons from prison, which unleashed them back onto their communities. The COVID measures, largely unnecessary, have been an inconvenience to more prosperous people, many of whom were simply able to work from home and continued to draw salaries. But to the poor, the manufactured crisis has imposed a genuine disaster, loss of jobs, loss of businesses, and massively increased crime and violence.

Little wonder that from what we've been seeing, neither law enforcement nor the judicial system wants much of attempts by political authorities to penalize church attendance.

California Civil Disobedience Update

As far as I can see, something's been missing from reports on Los Angeles County's attempts to secure court orders against Grace Community Church. As we saw last Thursday, when the county's attorneys sought to enforce an order preventing the church from holding indoor services, a superior court judge could find no such order.

This suggests to me that the county's attorneys had to have made some sort of major error with their case, which Grace Community attorneys Ellis and LiMandri exploited effectively. But apparently nobody knowledgeable was in the courtroom, or on the Zoom call, so unless Ellis or LiMandri goes into detail, we'll never know. And Ellis and LiMandri presumably have a confidential strategy they'll pursue in any case. Which doesn't bode well for the county.

In any case, the county has had to go back to square one and try to get another judge to issue a new temporary restraining order and go through the whole routine again, which it will begin to do on Monday, August 24. They'll have to argue their whole case one more time, with Ellis and LiMandri in opposition -- apparently far better attorneys, based on the week's developments.

In Ventura County yesterday, the Godspeak Calvary Chapel, but not Pastor McCoy, was held in contempt for holding indoor services, but the fine was only half of what the county requested.

Ventura County Superior Court Judge Vincent O'Neill Jr. issued the ruling against McCoy and the Godspeak Calvary Chapel after a two-hour hearing in Ventura. He fined the chapel $3,000, but did not impose any fines on McCoy.

That was half the $6,000 Ventura County officials had recommended against the church, based on a fine of $1,000 for each of the six services held indoors over the past two Sundays. County officials had not recommended a fine against McCoy either.

Ventura County appears to be taking a lenient position toward the church and recognizes the danger in creating martyrs. Previously, the judge refused to order the sheriff to issue citations against congregants.

In the least publicized case, Pasadena authorities are taking a harder line against Harvest Rock Church.

Harvest Rock Church received a letter from the City of Pasadena’s Chief Assistant City Prosecutor threatening daily criminal charges unless in-person worship services cease.

. . . The letter from the Pasadena prosecutor states, “Each day in violation is a separate violation and carries with it punishment up to one year in jail and a fine for each violation…. Your compliance with these Orders is not discretionary, it is mandatory. Any violations in the future will subject your Church, owners, administrators, operators, staff and parishioners to the above-mentioned criminal penalties as well as the potential closures of your Church”

Exactly when and how these threats will reach a courtroom isn't clear.

In the cases of Godspeak and Grace Community in particular, the controversies have begun to generate national attention, and attendance at both churches has significantly increased. The national attention has also begun to increase the sense of urgency in other church organizations on the need to reopen.

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Sioux Falls, SD has become the first in the US to lift the dispensation over attending Sunday mass.I've got to assume this was done in consultation with the USCCB. The Archdiocese of Anchorage-Juneau will apparently be next. I suspect this signals that pressure on civil authorities elsewhere from the Catholic Church will increase.

Beyond that, California Gov Newsom appears likely to revise once again his changing orders on what may reopen, what must close, unless he changes his mind again, and so forth. This means that all the local authorities, Los Angeles, Pasadena, and Ventura County, are likely to be in the position of trying to enforce orders no longer in effect.

"There Is No Court Order Prohibiting Pastor John MacArthur. . ."

The Thomas More Society announced on its website, following this morning's hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court,

The Los Angeles County Superior Court announced on August 20, 2020, that there is no court order prohibiting Pastor John MacArthur and Grace Community Church from holding indoor worship services.

In other words, the threat of $20,000 in fines and counting from the county is so far not in effect. I suspect there will be further developments, but it appears that courts have been less than sympathetic to attempts by local county authorities to close churches.

I'll cover developments as they take place.

The Enforcement Conundrum

The question hovering over all the churches holding indoor, non-socially distanced services in the Los Angeles area is what the civil authorities will eventually do in attempts to enforce their orders. Although Los Angeles County obtained a last-minute reversal of the superior court's order allowing Grace Community Church to hold services, its announcement earlier this week was lenient:

L.A. County said the church holding services on Sunday could result in citations, but right now they are focused on education.

But by yesterday, the county was taking a harder line:. In an e-mailed press release that I so far can't locate on line, it said,

Los Angeles County has asked a Superior Court judge to impose sanctions against a Sun Valley church that has repeatedly violated public health and court orders needed to slow the spread of COVID-19. A hearing is set for August 20 at 8:30 a.m.

The Thomas More Society posted on its webpage:

The LA County Board of Supervisors has decided to continue their unconstitutional attack against Pastor John MacArthur and Grace Community Church. They are now asking the court to hold the church in contempt for simply being open for worship last Sunday. Pastor MacArthur is standing firm that church is essential and has no plans to yield to this tyrannical board, which is clearly defying the constitution’s mandate to protect religious liberty.

Exactly what those sanctions will be remains to be seen. UPDATE: According to Fox News,

The county is claiming that Grace Community Church, led by pastor John MacArthur, should face $8,000 in fines -- or $1,000 each for eight acts of contempt they're alleging. The county also seeks an additional $1,500 in fines for violations of court orders, bringing the total to $20,000.

The problem for the county is that court orders need to be enforced, but enforcement is normally done by the police. This certainly applies to issues like restraining orders, bench warrants, and so forth. On the other hand, civil judgments and penalties are difficult to enforce in many cases -- if defendants are ordered to make restitution, for instance, victims have few options for collecting.

Adding to the county's problem is that the Los Angeles police chief has already told Pastor MacArthur that LAPD will not enforce any county health orders against the church:

He quotes the chief as saying, "There is no scenario that I can imagine in which the police would come against Grace Community Church". The police position is that they enforce laws, not health department orders, which is a policy that has already been widely expressed by law enforcement across the country. So even if MacArthur were to be found in contempt of court, the police would need to arrest him. But even if he were to be jailed, another pastor would preach at the church in his stead.

Another option would be Mayor Garcetti's threat to turn off power to the church via the city Department of Water and Power. Garcetti did finally do this yesterday, after months of threats, to a Hollywood Hills home that had hosted wild parties. The difficulty there is that business-grade emergency generators are easy to rent, and I would assume that the church and its elders already have contingency plans covering this situation.

The word being passed on YouTube and elsewhere is that Pastor MacArthur plans to be in the pulpit this coming Sunday.

Pastor McCoy of Godspeak Calvary Chapel in the wide-ranging discussion below is more optimistic about how the Ventura County board and the court will resolve their own dilemma:

His position appears to be that the county authorities have found themselves the unwitting subjects of national controversy and would prefer to find a way out of the situation. As well, I suspect they would have a difficult time getting the sheriff to issue citations to churchgoers or make any arrests. In the video, he suggests that although congregants have offered to demonstrate en masse before the county board, this so far will not be necessary.

St Timothy Catonsville Ordinariate Update

From my regular correspondent:

As you reported on May 14 of this year, Fr John Worgul of the OCSP has been appointed Pastor of a diocesan parish, St Joseph, Sykesville. As part of this arrangement, the Ordinariate community of St Timothy, previously led by Fr Worgul while he served on the staff of St Joseph’s as Director of Faith Formation, planned to move from its rented premises in Catonsville to the former St Joseph’s church in Sykesville, now used as a wedding etc chapel by the parish, whose main church is actually now located in Eldersburg, MD (both churches pictured here.) The pending arrangement is discussed here.

Trying to find out how this worked out has been quite challenging. The St Timothy website gives no hint of the move and links to the (former Facebook page are broken. However, on the link to their YouTube channel I was able to find two videos of mass being celebrated last month by Fr Worgul in the new premises. (Old) St Joseph’s is smaller and more spartan than the previous chapel in Catonsville;

I am not sure if there is space for Mr Stagmer, who provides music on the guitar, to be accompanied by a keyboard player as was the practice at their former venue. In any event, the mass on July 19 was, as has been the custom at St Timothy, celebrated versus populum, with vested female servers, and the aforementioned guitar music. Communion was given in the hand to those who presented themselves in a standing line, as commonly seen at Catholic parishes. I counted twenty-five communicants, including the servers, and about half a dozen non-communicating children. I think this is a typical turnout for St Timothy’s.

The newly-ordained Fr Armando Alejandro, formerly a parishioner of Our Lady of the Atonement San Antonio and teacher at Atonement Academy, has been appointed as Assistant Priest at the diocesan parish and will be living in the rectory. Fr Worgul and his wife have a house elsewhere in the vicinity. No sign of Fr Alejandro in the video but his picture is up on the St Joseph, Sykesville Staff page.

Of course there is nothing about the move or the new appointments of Ordinariate clergy to St Joseph’s on the OCSP website. The Ordinariate community is still shown as “St Timothy, Catonsville” and the link takes you to the St Timothy website which as yet has no hint that the congregation is now worshipping in Sykesville, twenty miles away. Nothing on the St Joseph website about the Ordinariate congregation. I guess the presumption is that everyone who cares already knows. There’s a lot of that in the OCSP. Not my idea of—-what did Bp Lopes call it?—- “Evangelism in the front row.”

Speaking just as someone who's been around parishes for over 40 years, it sounds to me as though the lack of on line presence is a symptom of not enough lay involvement, although a prosperous novus ordo parish can afford a communications specialist to maintain this and other outreach programs. But in this day and age, it ought to be possible to recruit volunteers who can at least do a minimal job with a Facebook page -- or by the same token, someone who can call someone in Houston and try to get the parish finder updated.

Instead, it sounds as if people are coasting and not much growth is taking place. It's worth asking what the appeal is for the Evangelical megachurches in the Los Angeles area, where laity is pretty clearly so supportive of their church's work that they'll risk citations or fines for it. What's there that isn't at St Timothy's?

The California Megachurches, Their Pastors, And The Letter From Birmingham Jail

I've gradually become more interested in the California Evangelical megachurches that have defied state and county orders requiring social distancing, no singing, and outdoors only with a maximum of 100 attendees. As part of that interest, though my wife and I attend Sunday mass in person at our novus ordo parish, I've been watching on line services at these churches and following written and video statements by two of the pastors, Rob McCoy and John A MacArthur, and their counsel.

The styles of their two communities, Godspeak Calvary Chapel and Grace Community Church, are quite different. I somewhat prefer Grace Church, which has a choir, organ, and orchestra and is a little closer to the main line environment I grew up in. However, both pastors are educated, intelligent, sophisticated, and carefully-spoken men. They are being advised by capable counsel, but beyond that, both men have pretty clearly read Dr King's Letter From Birmingham Jail. This is, I think, not a good sign for the civil authorities.

It's also not a good sign for the "blue" political establishment that unlike the 1960s, clergy are absent from public political demonstrations, which back then were at least arguably for natural rights and opposed to racial discrimination or the abuse of the state's conscription power. Back then, clergy, including Catholic priests, were often in the front lines as they marched with Dr King himself.

Now, those clergy who are practicing civil disobedience are doing it in their chapel naves and demonstrating for a different natural right, the ability to worship as they see fit.

Back when I was a graduate assistant teaching rhetoric, I had an officemate who was a great admirer of the Letter From Birmingham Jail as rhetoric, that is, an example of the art of persuasion. This sent me back to it in the present context. King's purpose in the Letter is to address clergy who have objected to his presence in Birmingham. By the way, this is 1963, quite late in the civil rights movement, which had been going on since before Brown v Board of Education was decided in 1954. Rhetorically, it's addressing a controversy that's already been largely resolved, much like Milton's Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. It adds to the effectiveness of both that recent history is on their side.

Dr King's first major rhetorical move is to shift the context of his readers' objections:

You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. . . . It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's white power structure left the Negro community with no alternative.

He then goes on to outline the city's essentially bad-faith responses to the demonstrators' concerns:

Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation. . . . certain promises were made by the merchants--for example, to remove the stores' humiliating racial signs. On the basis of these promises, the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and the leaders of the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights agreed to a moratorium on all demonstrations. As the weeks and months went by, we realized that we were the victims of a broken promise. A few signs, briefly removed, returned; the others remained. As in so many past experiences, our hopes had been blasted, and the shadow of deep disappointment settled upon us.

Dr King's outline of the circumstances is similar to statements by Pastor MacArthur following Los Angeles County's appeal of the settlement negotiated in superior court last Friday:

“This was stipulated as a more reasonable action than that of the county’s rush to shut down church services. The judge agreed and set the full hearing for Sept. 4, ordering the church to have congregants wear masks and social distance between family groups indoors,” according to the statement shared with The Christian Post.

MacArthur told the attendees Sunday, “We agreed … look, we’ll comply for a few weeks. They asked that for three weeks. We’re not wanting to be defiant. We will do what is reasonable. That was not enough for the city. They went to the appellate court Saturday late, and had that order removed.”

Pastor McCoy has made statements that parallel King's Letter in other ways, in YouTube presentations that I've linked here. He's argued

• Ventura County authorities refuse to acknowledge the full scope of essential religious activity, including the need to worship in a corporate body in person, in a convenient place
• The county authorities are refusing to address the full range of conditions resulting from the lockdown, including mental and spiritual health, unemployment, and increased domestic abuse
• The authorities are enforcing emergency health measures selectively against churches while exempting political demonstrations
• A park is not an acceptable worship substitute for thousands of people in hot weather
• County officials exaggerate and misrepresent the health risks of normal worship activities.

The current judge in the Godspeak Chapel case seems inclined to negotiate, like the judge in the Friday hearing for Grace Community Church. It appears that civil authorities may be unwilling to accept any sort of negotiation or compromise, if the Los Angeles case is any indication.

The Letter From Birmingham Jail seems to be accepted as a defense and moral framework for non-violent civil disobedience. It outlines circumstances in which this is justified. It appears to me that Pastors McCoy and MacArthur have seriously studied this document and prayed over it. They clearly understand the circumstances in which they may be placing themselves and those in their churches who may choose to follow them.

The problem will be what happens when the municipal authorities elect to enforce their orders, which they will almost certainly be compelled to do. From their point of view, it won't be enough for them simply to cite or fine the pastors or certain elders. They'll need to act visibly to stop the indoor worship. They will almost certainly have to do this on thousands of people, with media present. There will immediately arise the problem of why they dispatched law enforcement to cite or arrest churchgoers who violate "health" regulations, when they took no such action against BLM protests.

I don't see a good outcome for the civil authorities here.

By the same token, given the balance of issues Dr King addresses in his letter, for the California pastors to engage in civil disobedience is as justified as King's own activity in the 1960s.

"What I'm Worried About Are The Effects Of The COVID-19 In The Aftermath."

A visitor e-mailed me with this concern for the North American ordinariate and went on,

It's like time has stood still as far as growth goes. Understandable, yes. But I fear that the virus has given our not strong leaders an excuse. Blame it on the virus for the low attendance and low growth. The truth is thought that they don't have to be as defiant as the Protestant pastor in that video. I don't mean he is doing wrong. But there are things that can be done well within the local ordinances in this environment. If you are told to limit the attendance to 50% capacity, what is to stop you from thinking outside the box, and having more services or Masses? Heck, restaurants have adapted with walk ups, drive throughs, call ups --- why can't the church adapt better? When things go back to normal, we may find we have even fewer attendees.

There are two basic issues in this comment, what the ordinariate can do within its constraints and within a Catholic context, and what it's doing vis-a-vis the strong Protestant leaders like Pastors McCoy and MacArthur. I'll deal with the first one here, but the second will be in a separate post on Dr King and the Letter From Birmingham Jail, maybe later today if nothing intervenes.

On the issue of what the ordinasriate can do in the present environment of lockdowns, the answer is partly that the specific constraints vary arbitrarily by state and county in the US. I assume the situation in Canada is roughly equivalent.

However, whatever the exact limits imposed in the areas where ordinariate communities operate -- 25%, 50%, 75% capacity, 25, 50, 100 maximum or whatever else, only a few ordinariate communities will exceed any of these limits. If they're allowed inside the building at all, they're so small, even the health department isn't going to raise a fuss. Of course, a few aren't even allowed inside the building, but that seems to be an administrative issue for the host parish, not the civil authorities.

The visitor has suggested increasing the mass schedule to compensate to me in the past, but if a novus ordo parish has a capacity of 2000 and fills it (ours does) even once a Sunday, and the local authorities allow 100 maximum, you aren't going to fix that with just a few more masses. But California now allows only outdoor services on top of that. Our parish, when indoor masses with a maximum of 100 were briefly allowed, increased the mass schedule, but outdoor masses in the midday summer sun aren't practical, so the schedule had to be reduced again.

So for most of the ordinariate, increasing the mass schedule is a moot point, and it isn't a good solution in any case. All efforts by any pastor under these conditions -- that is, short of unpredictable legal action or civil disobedience -- can only be at the margin. But the visitor is right in suggesting the virus has probably just made some ordinariate priests more comfortable in their complacency.

But not all of them. My regular correspondent comments,

Fr Kenneth Bolin was an army chaplain, I believe latterly ACA but I cannot confirm that. who prepared for his ordination for the OCSP while stationed in Afghanistan. Now retired from the army, he has been placed in charge of St Thomas Becket, formerly St Timothy, Ft Worth. A former TEC congregation led in by Fr Stainbrook and served by him with the assistance of Fr Hough III and Fr Cornelius, this group dwindled away when Fr Stainbrook was redeployed to St John Vianney, Cleburne and not replaced with a permanent PA, a situation they endured for over two years, while moving from a local Catholic parish church to the small chapel of the Catholic Diocesan Center.

Fr Bolin and I do not see eye to eye on a number of issues, but I have to admire the fact that he has thrown himself into the task of rebuilding the St Timothy, now St Thomas Becket, congregation. He posts something on FB every day, often about the saint of the day, but not from a “feed” like one sees on many other parish FB pages—-something he has personally sought out. Other times he has observations about Catholic issues, or parish updates. He sends out a weekly e-letter.

Because of the space limitations of the chapel in a time of social distancing, he has added two extra Sunday masses. He celebrates mass in a local park sometimes, not sure why. But in any event, he’s there. If I were a STB congregant, even if not attending at the moment, I would feel connected to the community. If I had a pastoral emergency, I’d be on the phone to Fr Bolin. I feel sorry for anyone who has to deal with any of the too-numerous MIA Ordinariate clergy.

My estimate is that there are roughly a dozen conscientious and capable priests in the ordinariate -- maybe 20% of the total, in other words. Fr Bolin would be among these. Others would include the ones who serve diocesan parishes as well as ordinariate groups. But there's a much larger group that I suspect a diocesan vicar for clergy will not touch, no matter the shortage of priests he has to work with.

As I say, I'll take up the civil disobedience option in another post, recognizing it's not currently open to Catholics.

An Example Of Strong Leadership

Again, what strikes me about the civil disobedience among Evangelical churches in our area is the strong and articulate leadership from its pastors. Although Catholics disagree with Evangelicals in key areas, and Catholic clergy have been exercising quiet leadership in many ways, I've found the performance of Pastors McCoy and MacArthur impressive. Bp Lopes and the campy soy boys and Protestant also-rans in the ordinariate, not so much.

Little Apparent Enthusiasm For Bp Lopes's California Visit

For the past week, I've been reading and posting here about stories of Evangelical megachurches in Southern California where thousands of people are willing to risk citations or fines to exercise their natural right to attend services.

In contrast is this remarkable account from my regular correspondent of Bp Lopes's episcopal visits last week to Southern California ordinariate communities. It's not just night and day -- it's alternate universes.

News from the SoCal Ordinariate has been in exceptionally short supply. There was a note signed “Fr Glenn” on the Our Lady of Grace, Covina Facebook page apropos of Bp Lopes’s visit last week, but no follow-up pictures or account, despite the fact that apparently several children were confirmed. I note that the finances of OLG are still handled via St John Henry Newman, Irvine (“make checks out to...”) and the contact phone number on the website is still that of Fr Bartus, although his name is not given. I suppose this is not an ideal time to be trying to get things reorganised at the Covina community. Fr Simington is a little more visible on the SJHN, Irvine Facebook page, as they have been live-streaming their masses from the Busch building patio. Phone number still Fr Bartus’s phone, mailing address a UPS store. Again, things in some understandable disarray, no doubt.

He was at Holy Martyrs Murrieta on August 6, OLG, Covina August 8, and SJHN August 9. There were “Event” postings on the respective FB pages where people could indicate that they were “attending” or “interested,” but no follow-up on any social media that I could find. Respective numbers were HM 18 went, 33 interested; OLG 12 went, 11 interested; SJHN 15 went, 18 interested. Of course not all who attended saw it on FB or bothered to respond there in any event, but numbers are not heartening from the OCSP perspective, one has to think. Fr Bartus’ energy generally dissipated itself in too many projects with too little follow-through, but at least he had some. Things seem very much on hold at the moment.

Last Sunday’s mass with Bp Lopes at SJHN was also the occasion for some First Communions, according to the Facebook event posting. Again, usually one would expect to see some photos posted later.

It's worth noting that during the lockdown and subsequent severe limits on attendance, our novus ordo parish has resurfaced its parking lot -- perfect time for it, huh? -- and is raising funds to renovate the 24-hour adoration chapel. We had a phone message from the pastor last Sunday thanking us for attending mass. It's possible to make lemonade out of lemons even if things in the Catholic world haven't risen to the civil disobedience level.

For instance, ordinary housekeeping issues like phone numbers or bank accounts are apparently being ignored by ordinariate clergy or parish councils, when you'd think they'd have the extra time to look after them.

And it sounds as though Bp Lopes and local clergy are anything but strong leaders.

California Appeals Court Overturns Grace Community Church Decision

According to this site:

Los Angeles County lost the first round in its battle to halt worship services at John MacArthur’s Grace Community Church. The county appealed that loss and won Saturday. In a decision handed down by the State of California Court of Appeal, Second District, Division Two, the lower court order that would allow Grace Community to conduct indoor worship was overturned.

The Appeals court said it would need time to consider the questions raised by the lawsuit before it could render a full order. It said in its opinion, “Definitively resolving these questions, however, will entail the resolution of difficult questions of law. We certainly cannot resolve them before tomorrow morning’s church services.”

So, while the issues are being decided, the Appeals Court said that LA County can go forward with any bans or enforcement that its Health Office decides appropriate.

Los Angeles County issued this press release yesterday:

The California Court of Appeal today set aside a lower court order that would have allowed indoor services to take place at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley.

The Court of Appeal’s decision temporarily upholds the County’s Health Officer Orders prohibiting indoor worship services in order to protect congregants and the community as a whole from transmission of the highly contagious and potentially fatal COVID-19 virus.

A full hearing on the matter is scheduled for September 4. A link to the court’s ruling can be found here: http://file.lacounty.gov/SDSInter/lac/1076857_GraceChurchOrder.pdf

So far, I haven't found any announcement from Grace Community Church or its Thomas More Society attorneys. However, the church had been practicing civil disobedience in holding services up to Friday, and I can't imagine this decision by the appeals court will change anything.

I'll cover this story with updates as they develop.

UPDATE: I checked the 10:30 AM livestream, and the service proceeded as usual, with no masks and enthusiastic singing to organ and orchestra.

This YouTube update gives more background:

Pastor MacArthur's opening remarks at this morning's 10:30 service:

Partial Victory In Grace Community Church Case

Late yesterday, a Los Angeles County judge denied a request for a restraining order that would prohibit Grace Community Church in Sun Valley from holding indoor services.

A judge is allowing a Los Angeles megachurch to hold indoor services despite health orders as long as it practices coronavirus safety measures.

Los Angeles County had sought a court order barring Grace Community Church in Sun Valley from holding the services, arguing that they were an immediate health threat.

He also set a September hearing on the county’s request for a preliminary injunction barring the church from holding indoor services.

According to a tweet from Thomas More Society attorneys Ellis and LiMandri, the judge's order requires masks and social distancing, but does not impose a cap on attendance. The state order allowing church services to resume on May 31 imposed a cap of 100 people maximum, regardless of capacity. On July 13, Gov Newsom rescinded this order and prohibited any indoor services.

Thus even this partial victory is the best news for California religious freedom since March, when the lockdown was imposed.

It isn't clear how other California churches may respond to this relaxation, but it's clearly not encouraging for state and county authorities, and it will presumably affect other ongoing cases, such as those in Pasadena and Thousand Oaks.

Earlier this week, a Ventura County judge refused to order the sheriff to enforce a temporary restraining order against the Godspeak Calvary Chapel in Thousand Oaks as well.

Ventura County, CA Junipero Serra Statue Demand Letter

Following BLM protests in June and July, the Ventura, CA City Council voted to remove the statue of St Junipero Serra from in front of the city hall. The county board is also movinig to remove the image of Serra from the county seal. Bp Barron noted his distress at these moves in a YouTube video, since this is his region in the Los Angeles archdiocese.

The Thomas More Society public interest law firm has sent a demand letter responding to both actions.

What started as massive civil unrest could become an uphill legal battle for Ventura County, California and the City of Ventura, California. Thomas More Society attorneys sent them a demand letter on August 5, 2020.

The letter warns the county executive officer and city mayor that they are displaying unconstitutional hostility to the Catholic religion and subscribing to anti-Catholic animus in removing a statue of the “Apostle of California” Fr. Junipero Serra. The statue was removed from its longstanding location outside City Hall, and officials are considering the removal of the Catholic Hispanic Saint’s image from the county seal and city police badges, thus sparking a Ventura Junipero Serra controversy that has reached national attention.

The letter, signed by Thomas More Society Special Counsel Charles LiMandri, and Jeffrey Trissell, both of LiMandri and Jonna LLP, addresses the county and city’s kowtowing to the radical demands of a vile anti-Catholic online petition.

. . . LiMandri explained the basic problem with the city and county succumbing to the newly arisen hordes of icon-toppling rabble rousers. “The First Amendment affirmatively mandates accommodation, not merely tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any. The government must neither abdicate its responsibility to maintain a division between church and state nor evince a hostility to religion by disabling the government from, in some ways, recognizing our religious heritage.”

The letter reads in part:

As explained below, we are greatly troubled by the County of Ventura and the City of San Buenaventura’s(collectively “Ventura”)recent efforts to scrub from their respective jurisdictions all references to the great Catholic, Hispanic Saint Junípero Serra—with most specific emphasis on the depictions of Fr. Serra on the County Seal and the City Police Badges. From an historical perspective, Fr. Serra is one of the greatest men that California has ever known, a founding father who represents California in the U.S. Capital’s National Statuary Hall Collection. From a religious perspective, Fr. Serra is beloved by the Catholic (and especially Hispanic Catholic) communities as the Apostle to California. Efforts to remove him from Ventura’s municipal imagery can only be perceived by reasonable observers as unconstitutional “hostility toward religion that has no place in” our modern, pluralistic society.

Thus, we write to inform you that should Ventura remove Fr. Serra from its Seal, its Police Badges, or any other similar prominent municipal location, we will bring a claim seeking to enjoin such conduct under the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and seek our attorneys’ fees. Our firm was lead counsel in defending the Mt. Soledad Cross in San Diego—which proudly still stands today—and we have extensive experience in ensuring that our attorneys’ fees are paid when we prevail. Thank you for considering the below as you take subsequent action during these times of national and local anti-Catholic sentiment.

Pastor McCoy recently noted that he doesn't believe the county board expected the level of controversy they've generated. It appears that he's working to try to resolve such issues before they reach the courts. Among other things, with tax revenues down, the county will have a difficult time funding such unexpected legal action, now potentially on two fronts.

More Petitions From The Persistent Widow

This week, a large Los Angeles area Evangelical church sued local authorities and the state for violation of US First Amendment rights, while another moved up a rung in the appeals process toward the US Supreme Court.

Both actions are based on a new set of facts vis-a-vis the appeals that were only partially successful in May -- since then, civil authorities have created a de facto First Amendment exception to allow BLM protestors to demonstrate without following social distancing rules, even though the free exercise clause should have allowed churches the same exception.

Another new ingredient in the current circumstances is that the two churches, as well as the Godspeak Chapel in Thousand Oaks, are practicing civil disobedience, holding indoor services without masks or social distancing, and including singing, in violation of state and local orders. This adds the conundrum of enforcement for local authorities. If they arrest or fine attendees, they create martyrs of ordinary churchgoers and pastors.

In addition, arrests and fines increase the contrast between the treatment of churchgoers and BLM protestors. They'll also inevitably bring the issue into the public eye, as well as creating friction between the local authorities and the highly influential police unions. So far, none of the local authorities has moved to enforce.

In July, I covered the case of Harvest Rock Church in Pasadena, CA, which is conducting indoor services and Bible study groups in defiance of state and local COVID orders. Liberty Counsel, one of two public interest law firms that has had partial success with recent cases, is pursuing this case. This week, it lost its initial motion for a restraining order at the district level, but will make an immediate appeal.

The lawsuit challenges both the total ban on in-person worship (including in private homes) in the counties on the “County Monitoring List,” and the ban on singing and chanting in the remaining counties. In addition to in-person worship at Harvest Rock Church, the church also has many “Life Groups,” which are home Bible studies and fellowship groups. These too are now prohibited under Gov. Newsom’s recent orders. Yet while he discriminates against churches and houses of worship, including home Bible study and fellowship meetings, Gov. Newsom continues to encourage thousands of protestors to gather throughout the state.

Also this week, another of the public-interest law firms involved in religious freedom issues, The Thomas More Society, filed suit against the State of California on behalf of Pastor John MacArthur and the Grace Community Church in Sun Valley:

The complaint states that the American people have begun to see that they are being cheated by their own government. “They have witnessed how the onerous restrictions imposed on them by public officials to allegedly fight the COVID-19 pandemic simply do not apply to certain, favored groups. When many went to the streets to engage in ‘political protests’ against ‘racism’ and ‘police brutality,’ these protestors refused to comply with the pandemic restrictions. Instead of enforcing the public health orders, public officials were all too eager to grant a de facto exception for these favored protestors.”

In addition,

In Minnesota, a lawsuit was filed Thursday in federal court challenging Gov. Tim Walz’s executive orders requiring 6-foot social distancing and the wearing of face masks at worship services.

“Gov. Walz, a former teacher, gets an F in religious liberties,” said Erick Kaardal, special counsel for the Thomas More Society. “Other states, including Texas, Illinois and Ohio, have excluded churches from COVID-19 mask mandates.”

The Thomas More website adds,

The complaint asks the court to declare Minnesota’s combination of executive orders regarding social distancing and mask-wearing at church to be unconstitutional under the First and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.

Kaardal added, “We are also seeking a pronouncement that Walz’s Executive Orders violate the Minnesota Constitution’s Article III separation of powers provision. Walz is exercising pure legislative law-making power—a thing only the legislature can constitutionally do. In particular, we seek an injunction against Executive Order 20-74, which mandates social distancing during religious worship, and Executive Order 20-81, which requires face masks and conflicts with existing Minnesota laws outlawing the wearing of face masks.”

This argument is especially important, since the current COVID restrictions rely on a shaky combination of state and local laws, emergency orders, and voluntary compliance that is less and less enforceable as the months wear on.

But again, we're dealing with the Parable of the Persistent Widow.

Church Civil Disobedience Update

There's been relatively less coverage of Grace Community Church's defiance of LA Mayor Garcetti's cease-and-desist order forbidding their indoor services. However, this Washington Examiner story covering last Sunday's services shows the issue has national attention:

John MacArthur, the pastor of Grace Community Church in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Sun Valley, welcomed his congregation Sunday morning in defiance of the state's order that the church remain closed because of coronavirus concerns.

"Good morning, everyone. I'm so happy to welcome you to the Grace Community Church peaceful protest,” he said, which was met with a standing ovation and cheers.

. . . "Are you glad to be here? Everything for us is based on the Word of God, right? And that means we are pro-life, pro-family, pro-law and order, and pro-church of the Lord Jesus Christ," MacArthur continued, before sharing that Chaplain Martin Morehouse of the Los Angeles Police Department would lead the church in prayer.

While there's been some delay, national media is beginning to cover the story. The Hill is not sympathetic.

As I noted Monday, there was no evidence that Garcetti's order was being enforced. In fact, the Los Angeles police union has made it clear that it does not wish to participate in COVID related enforcement, such as Garcetti's order to turn off the water and electricity to social distancing violators:

“Mayor Garcetti wants to reimagine policing,” officials from the Los Angeles Police Protective League wrote in a statement, referring to the city ordinance passed in June seeking to create civilian teams to respond to non-emergency calls instead of police.

“He should send his civilian staff to turn off people’s electricity & cut off their water. Let officers deal with the rise in shootings and killings in LA.”

Pastor Rob McCoy made a similar point in an August 11 YouTube update on the Godspeak Calvary Chapel legal situation:

McCoy, as I've noted, is anything but a bumpkin. The first few minutes of his presentation outline the current legal situation quite well. A key point was that since the sheriff did not enforce the restraining order last Sunday, the county went back to court Monday asking the judge to order him to enforce. The judge refused to do this. McCoy noted that law enforcement does not like to enforce such orders, as they damage community relations, and officers in fact worship at his and other such churches.

This recent Yahoo News story quotes Pastor MacArthur, who brings up an issue that should be, if it isn't already, on the minds of all religious leaders:

"Major public events that were planned for 2021 are already being canceled, signaling that officials are preparing to keep restrictions in place into next year and beyond," the pastor wrote in a widely shared post titled 'Christ, not Caesar, is head of the church.' "That forces churches to choose between the clear command of our Lord and the government officials. Therefore, following the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, we gladly choose to obey Him."

For instance, New Mexico Gov Michelle Lujan Grisham has said she intends to extend COVID restrictions indefinitely:

Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham is now saying she’s going to keep the COVID practices in place even after a vaccine is available. Grisham says, “These are good public health behaviors that will prevent the spread of influenza.”

A visitor sent me a "letter to the editor" from the UK that outlines the circumstances that seem more and more likely to continue indefinitely unless a range of remedies is aggressively pursued;

SIR – The rules for worshippers are now even more absurd than those described by Alan Cochrane (“Show me the evidence for these nonsensical restrictions on church services”, telegraph.co.uk, August 9).

We had planned to hold last Sunday’s service for our small rural church in the churchyard, with worshippers approximately five metres apart, meaning that face masks could be left off and, more importantly, that we could sing.

It then transpired that, even outside, this is not permitted. According to the Government’s guidance of August 4, only “professional singers” can perform in front of the worshippers; we’re not allowed to sing ourselves.

Interestingly, this document also states that face masks need only be worn “to reduce the risk of transmission (where two metres is not viable) between households”, but the Church of England tells worshippers that they are mandatory at all times.

The restrictions, plainly focusing on churches, were imposed in March on the basis they would last a matter of weeks, but they continue with only mild relaxations through the summer, with no end in sight. It appears that civil disobedience will need to be one strategy, along with legal, electoral, and legislative remedies.

No Citations Issued At Godspeak Calvary Services Sunday

I checked in at the Godspeak livestream services at various times yesterday and saw no signs of disruption, nor reference to any problem. It occurred to me that issuing 1000 citations would be an enormous logistical problem for a sheriff, if nothing else, and it would have visibly delayed the services, which didn't happen. According to the Associated Press,

Ventura County Superior Court Judge Matthew Guasco's order banning the church's in-person services will be in place until another hearing is held on Aug. 21. It did not appear to be enforced during any of the three services.

Ventura County Sheriff’s Capt. Shane Matthews told The Ventura County Star on Saturday that deputies would not issue citations during the services.

“We’re not going to take a proactive stance and disrupt the church service,” Matthews told the newspaper.

Matthews said the county might have officials at the church documenting the situation Sunday and could issue citations later in the week.

A sheriff's spokesman did not immediately respond to The Associated Press on Sunday afternoon for a request for comment.

So far, I haven't found equivalent news from Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, although Los Angeles City had threatened action against the church and its pastor, who also held indoor services yesterday.

UPDATE: The local ABC News station reports that Grace Community Church did hold indoor services Sunday, but does not mention any enforcement action by the city.

I did find a copy of the letter from Godspeak Calvary Chapel's attorney to the Ventura County health director on line.

[T]he Governor’s conduct, the County’s conduct, and the orders you seek to enforce will “must undergo the most rigorous of scrutiny.” Lukumi, 508 U.S. at 546. The requirements to satisfy this scrutiny are so high that the government action will only survive this standard in rare cases, and the government bears the burden of meeting this exceptionally demanding standard. Id. Therefore, Ventura County must prove that only banning Godspeak’s religious gatherings and practices while encouraging protests from Black Lives Matter “advance[s] interests of the highest order and [is] narrowly tailored in pursuit of those interests.” Id.

The State and County must have a compelling governmental interest to satisfy strict scrutiny. Id. at 533. As of yet, most COVID-19 related cases have chosen not to challenge whether orders restricting religious practices lack a compelling state interest. But COVID-19’s real affect is finally being revealed through medical studies, experts and statistics. In sum, COVID-19’s actual risk is far less than what some originally believed.

As cases make their way through the courts, attorneys are modifying their arguments in response to what does and doesn't work. In this case, Godspeak's attorneys are adding to the original pure constitutional argument to say that claims that the risk to public health outweighs natural rights aren't justified by experience with the "pandemic". Original lockdown measures, after all, were based on extravagant predictions that led to deployment of hospital ships and similar measures that were never needed.

Meanwhile, California's public health director just resigned:

California's top public health official has resigned, just days after the state announced a fix for a glitch that caused a lag in reporting coronavirus test results used to make decisions about reopening businesses and schools.

Dr. Sonia Angell said in a resignation letter made public late Sunday that she's departing from her role as director and state public health officer at the California Department of Public Health.

It's hard not to conclude that the COVID narrative is collapsing, despite efforts over the summer to retain and even renew lockdowns.

A Second California Church Opts For Civil Disobedience

On Thursday, I reported that Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti had issued a cease and desist order against Grace Community Church for holding indoor services that violate state and county health regulations. It plans to continue these services in spite of the order. As of Friday, a second church in the area was issued a similar legal order and also plans civil disobedience in continuing indoor services.

Godspeak Calvary Chapel, as far as I can determine from its website, is, like Grace Community, a large, "non-denominational" Evangelical congregation. Its website suggests YouTube has already removed some of its videos for being insufficiently whatever, and the home page carries the admonition, "If you desire to be socially distanced, we ask that you please remain in your cars and tune into our radio station."

The Christian Post gives the most complete account:

A California judge has granted a temporary restraining order against Godspeak Calvary Chapel and its Pastor Rob McCoy for holding in-person services in violation of COVID-19 health orders.

Ventura County Superior Court granted the order on Friday requiring McCoy and the church to adhere to statewide and county public health orders stipulating that church services be held outdoors with masks and social distancing or online, according to officials.

On Wednesday, Ventura County officials sued McCoy and his church for holding in-person services of up to 200 people after the church decided to return to normal services. The church had adhered to all social distancing regulations since Palm Sunday but recently decided to lift its restrictions on parishioners.

McCoy announced in a video message Friday that he will continue to hold indoor services. “I wish it didn’t have to come to this, I really do, but we will be violating the judge’s order. … We will be open this Sunday.”

He told church members, “Come to church, and if you’re one of the first thousand, you win a prize. You will get a citation. It will be a misdemeanor. It will go on your record; be mindful of that.”

Pastor McCoy's YouTube announcement is below:

The church is located in Ventura County, which neighbors Los Angeles County to the west along the coast. It serves an affluent area of far Los Angeles suburbs. Pastor McCoy, while his delivery is informal, does not come off as either a Bible thumper or a rube.

McCoy makes several key points in his YouTube announcement. One is that although the judge issued a temporary restraining order, such orders are emergency remedies meant to prevent immediate and irreparable damage. As I heard one judge put it, you move for such an order if "your hair is on fire".

A YouTube lawyer gave an example that it would prevent someone from bulldozing your house over the weekend. But McCoy points out that the church has been holding indoor services without masks or social distancing since May 31, and beyond that, nobody has gotten sick. In a low-key way, McCoy implies he's had legal advice.

Another issue is that the vote by the county board to secure the order was 3-2, indicating that the question is political more than health related. McCoy also points out that the county board is doing what it can to avoid creating martyrs, though it anticipates issuing more than 1000 citations. My guess is that many congregants will see an opportunity for witness nevertheless.

We should hear more about what happened at Grace Community and Godspeak by tomorrow. I would imagine that these cases are being closely followed.

UPDATE: The livestream of the 9 AM service today shows it was well attended. No information on whether congregants were cited.

COVID And Ordinariate Communities Using Diocesan Facilities

My regular correspondent reports,

Now that the school year in Florida has started, St James, Jacksonville, FL will no longer be allowed to use the classroom chapel in St Joseph’s school where they have been celebrating mass for the past year, owing to the extra cleaning and sanitizing this would involve for the school. Instead they have been offered the use of the so-called “Old Church” of St Joseph, Jacksonville closed in 1977 when the new church opened but subsequently renovated and used for Spanish, Portuguese, and TLM Sunday masses. St James will be celebrating a 5 pm Vigil mass on Saturdays.

Thus I was surprised to see that St John Fisher, Orlando, FL will apparently continue to be allowed to use the cafetorium at Andover Elementary School for its two Sunday masses even after the school reopens this month. The school is going to a model which allows parents to choose either distance or in-person instruction and the local Orange County School Board has created a seventy page manual outlining policies and procedures for maintaining school safety during the pandemic which encourages schools to limit any use of the school by outside groups.

St John Vianney, Cleburne, TX continues to use the cafetorium at Marti Elementary School. Volunteers from the congregation appear to be responsible for cleaning the area ahead of Sunday mass.

Meanwhile Cathedral High School in San Diego has not yet decided whether the St Augustine of Canterbury Ordinariate community will be allowed to use the school chapel once the school reopens. The group has not met for mass since the beginning of the lockdown.[California so far has prohibited in-person instruction at both public and private schools in most parts of the state.]

As we know, St Aelred, Athens, GA has relocated from the local school chapel to the community centre in Bishop, GA.

I am surprised that these congregations are getting a better reception at public schools than at parochial ones. I thought it might be that the latter had more resources to handle the extra cleaning and sanitising, but Fr Mayer mentioned in his latest newsletter that the congregation was paying twice as much to rent the school chapel in Jacksonville as they had been paying previously to use church space in St Augustine, FL so the parochial schools are losing revenue by ending or suspending the arrangements they have with these congregations

It's worth noting that reopening schools is a highly contentious issue with major political implications, since those who advocate social engineering focus on schools. But political pressure from parents will make this a fluid situation, especially leading up to the fall elections.

A secondary question is how the typically small ordinariate groups can pay whatever rent the host parishes charge. How much does a group of a few dozen collect on a Sunday? How many will be back after the lockdowns finally end? While a parish might theoretically see income from the ordinariate group, if the group can't pay for the lights, air conditioning, and insurance, it may not be worth carrying.

A tax-supported school or community center with a budget and a public service mission may not have the same issues.