The state should stay out of churches
Our vaunted separation of church and state in Canada appeared to me, upon reflection later, to be not enough in evidence at Maria Regina Parish in Port au Port East before mass on June 27.
Persons presumably acting on behalf of the parish, or the diocese, were questioning people to make sure these were sufficiently disease-free free to attend the weekend mass.
This seemed a policy “enforced” pursuant to a government decree regarding worship services during the current COVID-19 crisis.
No government measure ought ever to refer to worship services, so far as men define these as worship services.
If a government has good reason to forbid gatherings of more than 50 persons in a certain sort of building, of certain dimensions with an unobstructed interior, it ought accurately to forbid these. (It might mention churches as an example). But it ought not regulate any worship while referring to it as worship. It ought not, for example, even to forbid human sacrifice to an ancient Aztec sun god, except in establishing on separate grounds that that is murder, as indeed I deem it to be.
No government has any right to require a part of the Catholic Church, or any religious body, to enforce criminal or civil law. It might oblige the members of those bodies to enforce its regulations, in their capacity as citizens. But no church should represent the state to its citizens; it is enough for religion to mediate between men and God.
But I heard June 26 that if the parishes did not restrict mass attendance as government desired, then it was likely “we” would be “shut down again.”
It appears that those agreeing to restrict attendance at mass had not received any official hint regarding what they ought to do if any did not comply.
I do not know whether they were supposed to call police or to charge the noncompliant with trespassing.
Apparently they were given to understand only that unauthorized entry was absolutely to be prevented.
Governments who put people in that sort of potentially awkward position ought to be clearer than that about what exactly it expects of them. Church authorities ought not to put people in that position just because governments expect it.
If a government wishes its citizens to report to it whenever they might be gathering in a larger number than allowed, that would be different; let, then, the police drop by and enforce whatever law is applicable.
If the police suspect a gathering illegally large, then let them investigate and charge all present with failing to notify.
But let us not expect members of parish councils to assume they are obliged to wield civil authority without being sworn to public office as are our actual police.
Perhaps government and church authorities should consider (separately) what their response should be if a parishioner simply declined, when questioned at his church doorstep, to give the answers which everyone concerned is sure he would if he but chose, so that he might challenge in court what he deems to be a government’s frivolously asserting vexatious authority that it cannot reasonably justify.