Executive Order GA-18 defines essential services to include “religious services conducted in churches, congregations, and houses of worship.” State and local government orders may not prohibit people from providing or obtaining those religious services.My regular correspondent reports on the status of ordinariate communities there. Texas is the main center of ordinariate activity:
Things are more or less back to normal at Our Lady of Walsingham, Houston; St Mary the Virgin, Arlington; Our Lady of the Atonement, San Antonio; and Presentation, Montgomery. The school where St John Vianney, Cleburne normally holds Sunday mass is using the cafetorium as a storage area, so they are celebrating mass at another chapel and using the school cafetorium as a site to distribute Communion. Sunday mass at St Michael, Denison has not resumed. Confusing messages on the St Thomas Becket, Ft Worth Facebook page, but I believe that Bp Olson has not allowed the community Sunday access to the Catholic Diocese Center where they worship. No news from St Margaret, Katy, which has been effectively off-line since last year, but the school where they normally worship is closed.Restrictions in South Carolina have been generally less draconian than elsewhere. On May 2, Roman Catholic Bishop of Charleston Robert Guglielmone announced that it will resume public Masses on May 11 – marking the first time they will be held since the coronavirus outbreak hit the state several weeks ago. This presumably applies to the Corpus Christi ordinariate group there, which meets at the St Mary of the Annunciation church and had been streaming masses online.
Although I had been under the impression that there was an ordinariate group in Georgia, where the governor has also relaxed restrictions, I can't find it on the ordinariate's parish finder on its website. (UPDATE: The Our Lady of Mt Carmel OCSP community in Savannah closed in 2017.)
As of March 4, it appears that Florida Catholic dioceses have continued to hold masses, but communion is distributed only in one species, the host. The Incarnation Orlando web site indicates current mass times but makes no other remarks. The St John Fisher Orlando site has no particular update. The St James Jacksonville web site says that masses are streamed, but there will be drive-up confessions on May 3.
St Barnabas Omaha announced on its website that it would resume masses May 4 following easing of restrictions in Nebraska.
I'm not aware of the precise status of religious services in other states or provinces, but it appears that ordinariate parishes in most other areas of the US and Canada are closed to in-person masses but broadcasting via livestream. As has been the case throughout this crisis, the main ordinariate web site carries no news. I wish the bishop a continued recovery and anticipate that one day Fr Perkins will find a productive use for his own time.
If visitors are aware of other changes in ordinariate parish status, I'll be happy to report them here. Indeed, if anyone is aware of other sites that may carry this information, I'll be happy to link them here. I look forward to discovering the works of charity being performed by the apostolate of the ordinariate laity, should any exist.
In other developments, the US Departmnt of Justice intervened on behalf of a Virginia church that challenged Gov Northam's virus restrictions.
The department filed a Statement of Interest in federal court in support of Lighthouse Fellowship Church, a congregation in Chincoteague Island, Virginia, that serves, among others, recovering drug addicts and former prostitutes.Legal remedies are likely to be an inconsistent strategy, since local judges are often part of a political machine that will support civil authorities. The threat of public exposure and adverse public opinion that may result from court cases, however, may force governors to back down in individual situations, even if they adopt face-saving partial retreats.The church says it held a 16-person worship service in its 225-seat sanctuary on Palm Sunday while maintaining rigorous social distancing. At the end of the service, Chincoteague police issued Lighthouse’s pastor a criminal citation and summons, based on the Northam’s executive order.
Lighthouse sued on Friday, but a judge denied the church’s request for preliminary relief, ruling that “[a]lthough [professional-services] businesses may not be essential, the exception crafted on their behalf is essential to prevent joblessness.”
DOJ’s filing argues the church can’t be treated differently than other businesses and that faith is essential during a pandemic.
I will be interested to hear of other local cases that may come to visitors' attention and will discuss them here as appropriate.
