MASS CONFUSION (Excerpts only; please read the fully linked text)
https://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/vortex-mass-confusion
… some bishops have issue[d] clear statements saying prudence and charity would demand that a person who is ill is dispensed from his or her Sunday obligation … other … bishops just canceled Masses wholesale, shuttered parishes and said little else beyond press release-sounding phrases….
[M]ass-confusion created in the minds of the faithful was, frankly, mind-numbing. Some were not sure if they were dispensed from the obligation, because it was never actually stated that they were. Some didn’t know if they showed up if they’d be turned away because there might be too many people in the Church…. Still others were getting mixed signals about if they could still receive Holy Communion on the tongue because their bishops strongly advised against it. Then they heard their bishops had illicitly forbidden it, while on social media they saw other bishops saying it was okay. [N]o bishop has the authority to forbid reception on the tongue ….
Others just decided to dovetail their diocesan directives with their state governor’s guidelines of arbitrary crowd sizes …. Various Catholics … told us they just had made private arrangements with priest friends to offer a private Mass. The whole scene is surreal — a Church, in some aspects, going underground — private Masses, secret locations, or at least locations away from public scrutiny.
Frankly, the collective response was more reminiscent of a Keystone Cops movie than the calm, measured hand of authentic leadership… It took the Protestant President of the United States to call for a National Day of Prayer. The best the USCCB could come up with was a series of statements from various committees and subcommittees and a reflection from … Abp. José Gómez.
It doesn’t look like the U.S. hierarchy as a whole is going to provide any real leadership in this health crisis any more than they have provided any real leadership in the half-century, ongoing spiritual crisis — which means the faithful, to some degree, are going to have to fend for ourselves and figure this out on our own.
… the spiritual dimension of all this is actually more threatening than the physical.