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Secret Masses are being celebrated in northern Italy during the coronavirus crisis.
Some churches are closed in response to edicts from the bishops, some are open although Mass is suspended, some are hosting Masses not intended for “the people,” although visitors may stay.
The coronavirus situation has fired-up critics of the bishops’ with some Catholics berating the bishops for being cowardly for stopping the public celebration of Mass.
One critic wrote an open letter to Turin’s archbishop, Cesare Nosiglia. In it, Angela Ciconte shames the bishops of “all the dioceses of Northern Italy”.
They had abandoned and betrayed the faithful, she wrote, “submitting as cowards to political correctness” by shutting down the region’s churches while “mosques and shopping centers” remain open.
“It is strange to hear of a church that has recently defined itself as an outgoing church and field hospital — to see it transform even faster than the infection itself into a self-closed church for fear of health.”
Ciconte is also protesting the “unconditional” imposition of communion in the hands instead of on the tongue, appealing to Nosiglia to withdraw his directive.
Medical practitioner Dr Silvana De Mari is another who wants the region’s churches to reopen.
“The bars are open and the churches are closed. If our priests are too terrified to keep them open, we will keep them open,” she says.
She stresses the irony of the bishops’ response: “In the event of an epidemic, the first gesture of elementary prudence and common sense is to close the borders”.
The new Church 3.0 wants open borders but closed churches, she says.
“The new Church 3.0 imposes on Italians an immigration of people who are often tested positive for scabies, tuberculosis and AIDS, but are they terrorized by coronavirus?” she asks.
“Closing churches during an epidemic is an atheistic gesture, so we note that a good part of the new Church 3.0 is completely atheist … and completely aligned with the elites who want the destruction of the Christian European civilization [especially] Italy….”
Catholics should “go to church, kneel down, ask for forgiveness of all our infinite sins,” she says, adding: “the worst thing that can happen with coronavirus is to die.”
Others protesting the edict banning Masses are comparing the church hierarchy’s compliance with situations that existed centuries ago.
A historian says Christians in the early Church responded to epidemics with faith, not fear.
“Motivated by faith, they … visited each other and supported each other, prayed together, buried the dead. So much so that their survival rate was higher than the pagans.
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