More COVID

Churches continue to bring US First Amendment suits against state and local authorities on the basis of natural rights to freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, and free exercise of religion.

Andrew Wommack Ministries in Colorado is in a battle with local authorities who seek to limit attendance at a ministers' conference:

Andrew Wommack Ministries planned to host an in-person ministers' conference expected to draw hundreds of attendees. The group has tried several times since early last week to get exemptions from statewide health orders that limit crowd sizes during the pandemic. Those efforts have all been denied.

In a request filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court of Colorado, health officials with the state and Teller County said the group has gone ahead with the event anyway.

Liberty Counsel represents Wommack. It comments,

The ministers’ conference is ongoing on despite the Colorado government’s threats. To be threatened with criminal charges and fines is a serious matter. I believe we will win this battle, but it may take longer than we hoped. In the meantime, I want to ask for your prayers and support.

As I said earlier, this case is far from over. Despite the lack of an emergency injunction, our appeal on behalf of AWMI remains pending and we look forward to presenting a full argument before the court soon.

Liberty Counsel makes the point that county authorities limit attendance at religious gatherings to 175 with social distance, but they allow casinos in the couhty to operate so that

anyone can sit side-by-side at any number of slot machines and gamble 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There is no social distancing or sanitizing the gambling machines that are touched frequently by everyone.

The case is moving through the federal appeals process.

An SSPX priest, Fr Trevor Burfitt, is suing Califonria officials for violations of First Amendment rights:

Attorneys from the Thomas More Society have filed a lawsuit in California Superior Court against [California Gov] Newsom and 19 other state, county, and municipal officials on behalf of Father Trevor Burfitt. Submitted on September 29, 2020, the case charges each of the named parties with eight distinct violations of Burfitt’s rights under the Constitution of California.

The US Department of Justice has filed a Statement of interest

in the case filed by Capitol Hill Baptist Church in Washington, D.C., against the District of Columbia and Mayor Muriel Bowser. The 853-member church has a strong religious conviction that it must meet weekly and in person, as a single body, for worship. As a result of Mayor Bowser’s onerous COVID-19 orders (first capping worship services at 10 people and now 100), Capitol Hill Baptist Church (CHBC) has not been able to meet together in the District since March. As a temporary measure, they’ve been meeting in a field in Virginia.

. . . The statement of interest is part of Attorney General William P. Barr’s initiative, announced April 27, directing the DOJ to “review governmental policies around the country to ensure that civil liberties are protected during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

On the other hand, in what I think is a retrograde step, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Green Bay, WI reissued a dispensation from attending mass due to increasing COVID "cases" in its area. All Wisconsin bishops had previously agreed to lift the dispensation during September.

The COVID crisis increasingly appears to be an episode of public hysteria, fostered initially by legitimate concerns about the potential impact of an unknown new virus. Almost immediately, politicians and media continued to create an impression that there would be plague--like consequences unless the public consented to unprecedented and draconian measures.

Legal remedies have been slow and largely ineffective so far. A much greater effect will occur as the public at large begins to realize that the actual impact of the virus has been wildly exaggerated. That the US president, age 74, would contract the virus and fairly clearly recover after what was effectively a weekend of bed rest and plenty of fluids, should help to reshape the public impression.

Statements from Catholic bishops either lifting the dispensatoin or simply urging a return to mass are what's needed here, not vacillation over statistical chatter.

Allowing for Pastor MacArthur's knee-jeerk radical Protestantism, his overall message in the video below is what's needed now.