In case you didn’t see it, there is an August 19 report on Real Clear Science from the Thomistic Institute on the success of the common sense measure of Covid prevention in Catholic liturgical celebrations. This essay is co-authored by the Physician Members of the Thomistic Institute Working Group on Infectious Disease Protocols for Sacraments & Pastoral Care.
They calculate that “over one million public masses have been celebrated following guidelines to prevent the spread of the virus” made up of the “17,000 parishes in America typically holding three or more weekend masses – and a greater number of daily masses – for the last 14 or more weeks.”
Thankfully, the cases of (unknowingly) infected people attending Church that the physicians are aware of did not result in transmission of the virus to others. They report that churches that followed the simple guidelines have not reported any infections during their services, while the few church-based transmissions “did not follow social distancing or require masks … [and] also promoted congregational singing.”
I attend liturgy (eastern rite) where most people wear masks, but not all (and some don’t cover the nose). Also there is tons of congregational singing. Oh well. Such is life. I always wear a mask properly.
I may move back to the Roman Rite in September as, they seem to be following some of the guidelines better. The restrictions do work. But enforcing them is a different issue.
While encouraging, I would only caution that the report cited is anecdotal, and relies on churches self-reporting possible outbreaks. There may very well be outbreaks that we do not know about – either because parishes made no report to public health authorities or because contact tracing was not or could not be done.
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