Should Our Churches Be Open for Christmas This Year? Yes!
By: Timothy Flanigan
It is time to openly defy and resist blue city mayors and blue state governors as well as the President elect and go to church this Christmas season. Fortunately the United States Supreme Court (thank you President Trump and ACB) ruled that the constitution isn’t suspended even during crisis times. There are scientific rationale for the benefits of church attendance and worshiping God with other people. The pandemic has caused certain side effects in our society that Chirch has been shown to be a remedy for.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The numbers of new cases of COVID-19 are at an unprecedented high. Our treatments are significantly better and the two new vaccines are now becoming available and are highly effective. Even though there is cause for optimism, our emergency rooms are strained and death rates particular among the elderly have risen to the level that we saw in March and April. Christmas is coming up. Should our churches should be open for worship?
As an infectious disease physician who has been providing care for patients in the hospital with COVID-19, and as a deacon in the Catholic Church, I have thought about this a lot. The CDC gives excellent guidance (which is available online) on how to decrease transmission of Sars-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The 3W’s our key: wear a mask, watch your distance, and wash your hands. The CDC makes it clear the same guidance will decrease the spread of the virus in churches, just as it does in supermarkets or drug stores or home improvement centers.
Prayer (alone and together), weekly worship, and the sacraments help us to stay healthy in mind and body and soul. There is now widespread recognition that the strain on our mental health going through this pandemic is enormous. Anxiety and depression are at high levels and treatment for mental illness is often hard to access. Suicide rates are high among all ages. There is excellent hard scientific data on the benefits of regular worship (usually defined as weekly in most studies) which provides social and mental health support and bolsters resiliency. “Going to church” should not be seen as a luxury or as nonessential but should be viewed as an essential community activity. Let’s face it… in many states, liquor stores and casinos have been considered essential while unsympathetic governors or mayors have deemed church to be “nonessential” and tried to close them down.
Most churches have been following the guidelines to decrease transmission conscientiously. Every other pew is roped off, worshipers wear masks, choirs no longer sing together, and good hand hygiene is made available throughout the church. Outbreaks have occurred in church settings when these guidelines were not followed. So these guidelines are important!
Going to church is not mandatory; it is a choice. Parishioners that are elderly or at high-risk or worried should not feel obliged to go to church. But for those that choose to go, it’s critical that the churches remain open. Kudos to our church leaders who have spoken out in the press or have filed lawsuits to insist that the churches remain open while they follow the CDC guidelines. Church is essential; please don’t close them down!
Dr. Timothy P Flanigan MD is Professor of Medicine at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island and a Deacon at Saint Theresa and Saint Christopher Catholic Church in Tiverton, Rhode Island.
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Churches open Christmas Eve? What a strange idea!
I am shocked-- shocked I tell you!
/sarc
We have three services today so as to keep the numbers lower at each individual service. All services are outside, with masks and distancing between families required. We keep a record of everyone in attendance for purposes of contact tracing.
Well, of course that's the smart way to do it.
But there are certain religious extremist crazies who feel that not allowing the to have services inside their Church is scandelous! That its violating their "rights".
Indeed, some of the extremist people of certain political and or lack of beliefs ideas have openly broken the law and have attempted to secretly hold packed religious services inside a house of worship!
Which, when you think about it, is really bizarre! Imagine-- believing in an allegedly all-powerful God-- who is totally unable to hear peoples' prayers unless they are done in a regular house of worship! (If you say your bedtime prayers in your bedroom-- their God is incapable of hearing them? people actually believe that...talk about "Stuck on Stupid"!!!)
They should be allowed to be open as long as they follow the principled guidelines for safety. This will vary per venue (per church), but this necessarily means that attendees should all wear masks, maintain a 6' minimum social distance, avoid touching public items (e.g. hymnals), no communal activities (e.g. communion with shared goblets, shaking hands, ...). The venues need to enforce the social distancing by closing off pews and reducing the amount of public projection of particulate matter by (possibly) reducing the amount of singing, chanting, etc. They should also be very vigil about disinfectant cleansing of the facility.
There are plenty of options available to churches to conduct services in a reasonably safe manner. While it is far better to offer online services to avoid human interaction, there is a level of human interaction that can be maintained with reasonable safety by simply following basic guidelines.