Msgr. Charles Pope, well known for his regular appearances on EWTN’s Morning Glory Show, was himself a serious victim earlier this year of COVID-19 (which we should be regularly calling a plague instead of just a ‘virus’). He has had plenty of opportunity and understanding to have an opinion on the reopening of Holy Mass to the public. LifeSiteNews has covered Msgr. Pope’s recommendations here.
It is time now for Cleansing Fire’s readers to begin offering their opinions and concerns. Please read the full article re Msgr. Pope first; it will help our communication. Especially (but not solely) I extend that offer to our followers in the Diocese of Rochester, NY, where CF first sprang up with its own voice a decade ago. Time to input on restarting Masses for the flock is now.
In the next few days, I also will offer some thoughts, but don’t want to hold up dissemination of Msgr. Pope’s writing while I do my own.
Excerpts from Msgr. Pope’s Call to resume public Masses
“I accept that some degree of protective measures is necessary to protect the vulnerable and to minimize the spread of the disease…. I am sympathetic … that the ‘cure should not be worse than the disease.’”
“For a Catholic, living means the Holy Mass, receiving the sacraments and gathering for communal worship.” … we must face our fears and accept that illness, suffering and death are a part of life in this world we call “Paradise Lost.” Life is filled with countless risks; …. To be cognizant of risks and to try to minimize them is wise but to avoid all risk is neither possible nor healthy.”
” For believers, trusting in God’s care and in what he has provided to keep us healthy plays an important part in overcoming our fear.”
“We have to accept the hard truth that people die. They die of many things, COVID-19 among them…. It is alarming to me as a priest and believer how little we as a Church have had to say about death. Death is a reality, but it is not something we should excessively fear. Christ
Msgr. Charles Pope
conquered death and made it a doorway to the glory of Heaven for the faithful.”
“We all have a natural fear of death, especially the dying process itself, but as Christians we are taught to confront and conquer our fear of death. The grace to do so has been given to us by Christ…. Death is not the end; it is a birth unto new life. For the faithful Christian, the day of our death is the greatest day of our life.”
“… far more than grieving is going on in this current situation. What we have today is a gripping fear that so dreads suffering and death that almost everything else must be sacrificed…. Much of this, I am convinced, is because in this increasingly secular world, suffering and death have lost their meaning.”
“… the widespread, gripping fear in the face of this virus is unprecedented in my lifetime. I have never seen anything like it. Its worldwide scope tells me that it is demonic in origin, and thus the Church must speak more vigorously to exorcize the demons of fear. Instead we have remained strangely quiet.”
“We have allowed … bullying and misrepresentation of our views to silence us… the paralyzing fear manifest in the news reports and displayed by many Americans is destructive as well as unbecoming.”
————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Please read the whole article at the link first shown above.
I will only add here, for now, that Msgr. Pope’s identification of paralysis by fear of death is a good explanation, IMO, of the frozen inability to act soundly by many prelates, who fail themselves, their priests, their missions and their flocks by essentially doing nothing, and would prefer to be led by the leash of government around their necks than by their own defective or cowardly consciences. See open letter to the bishops who have shut down their dioceses: https://fromrome.info/2020/03/18/open-letter-to-the-bishops-who-have-shut-down-their-dioceses/
More soon.