Let us pray!

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CNS | Clarion Herald/Frank J. Methe

To politicians we say 'Let us pray!'

It may have taken some time to get the ball rolling, but at least it's now rolling. For awhile there it seemed like bishops had simply rolled over and were playing dead. At least a few bishops haven't forgotten how to play hard ball with the state.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Wednesday night that NY state restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic are a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of free religious exercise. After the ruling the Bishop of Brooklyn, whose diocese was a plaintiff in the suit, said that religious worship should be considered an essential during the coronavirus pandemic.

“It is time — past time — to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues and mosques,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in a concurring opinion in a Wednesday night decision, which temporarily bars restrictions on religious worship that were enacted Oct. 6 by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

Closer to home, the Archbishop of Vancouver has said enough is enough. Liquor stores remain open; churches are closed. Enough said? 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/archbishop-vancouver-service-suspended-1.5812021

https://bccatholic.ca/news/catholic-van/archbishop-in-talks-with-health-minister-about-church-closings

In our neck of the woods, a massive increase in deaths due to opioid use reflects our society's descent into despair. Governments are preventing people from fulling accessing support systems that provide a real perspective and community to combat isolation and depression.

Has the "cure" become far worse than the disease itself?

Under such circumstances, it seems reasonable that some pushback be directed against restrictive measures that have had little success other than driving people to despair and creating the circumstance whereby people are medicating themselves with the only means available to them, or so they are forced to believe - dangerous illegal drugs. By enacting policies that defy reason, governments are preventing faith communities from participating in the health and well being of those marginalized by government policies.

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