Social distancing for church goers

Wearing face masks and social distancing – these are the most basic instructions the government can give to the people in the ongoing effort to stop the spread of COVID-19. The government orders for people to stay home were meant to reduce the chances of people coming into close contact. After two months of the lockdown – the enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in Metro Manila and the rest of Luzon — the government restrictions have been eased. People have now been allowed to go to some malls, to churches, to their offices in companies resuming operations with skeletal crews.

When the Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) eased the stay-home restrictions, it directed malls to limit customers to “one person per square meter of unimpeded space.” This was to ensure continued social distancing in the malls.

An official of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), however, said the IATF issued another rule that people attending church gatherings be limited to five or ten. Fr. Jerome Secillano, executive secretary of the CBCP Public Affairs Committee, said the government failed to consider that there are many churches in the country capable of accommodating many more people without sacrificing social distancing. “Limiting the number of churchgoers to 10 is, I think, an abuse of prudence,” he said.

Manila Auxiliary Bishop Broderick Pabillo pointed out that the Archdiocese of Manila has so many big churches, among them the Manila Cathedral and the Baclaran Church. “There are many churches with different sizes. Five persons for such a big church as Baclaran or the Manila Cahedral is laughable. Why not give instead the instruction that there be one-meter or two-meter distance between persons in a church?”

Or, we may add, why not apply the order given to malls to allow only one customer per square meter of unimpeded space?

Parishioners of various churches attended Sunday Mass last Sunday. The parishioners of the Sta. Rita de Cascia Church in Baclaran in Parañaque, many of them women, sat in the pews at least two meters from each other. The church was able to accommodate over a hundred parishioners.

We must continue to watch mass gatherings of all kinds, but the basic rule of one-meter social distancing may be the best one under present circumstances.