Monday of Holy Week! And So Many Churches are Still Closed

Holy Week Monday: It begins. The repentant woman anoints Jesus
for his burial....

The linked title is the post I wrote last year on Monday of Holy Week when the Mass had almost disappeared from the earth except for a few people who were able to attend video Masses in person. This year many are still being denied the Mass. I check out the Vox Cantoris website almost every day and those poor Canadian Catholics are still out in the cold in most places.

There are many times in history when Catholics had to go underground. The English recusants during Elizabeth's reign heard Mass infrequently, only when a disguised priest, at great personal danger, traveled around the countryside and offered the Mass at a safe site. Many of those homes had "hidey holes" designed by St. Nicholas Owen where the priest and all the vestments and other liturgical items could be hidden in an instant if Topcliff or his agents arrived.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider talks about the persecution of Catholics under soviet domination. And who doesn't know about the Communist persecution of the underground Church in China?

But when in the free world have so many shepherds abandoned their flocks? How many dioceses around the world continue to impose draconian rules on the faithful and even have parishioners arrested for not masking -- even in an empty church? It's happened in more than one diocese here in the U.S.! (See here and here.) Interestingly, all these cases involved a priest calling for the arrest of a woman, a mother in fact. Is that significant? Draw your own conclusions. I wonder what an investigation of these priests would show.

Thanks be to God my diocese will have Masses this week and other liturgical events. Several parishes are offering more than one Mass of the Lord's supper and Good Friday service to make them available to more parishioners. I thank God for that and I know I won't be arrested for not wearing a mask wherever I go. But how many Catholics will be denied the Mass and other liturgical events during the holiest week of the year? In many places Caesar, not the successors of the apostles, rules through the cowardice of our shepherds. May God have mercy on their souls!