The right to worship

By Modesto P. Sa-onoy

Many legal and theology experts around the globe have challenged the order of governments to close churches that effectively denied the faithful from exercising their right to worship. The Philippines Catholic hierarchy did not challenge the state’s order.

On May 18, 2020, LifeSiteNews reported that the French Council of State ordered the prime minister, Edouard Philippe, to modify the decree prohibiting public worship under the sanitary state of emergency within eight days, a landmark decision that recognizes the specific rights attached to the “fundamental liberty” of public worship.

Churches in France should be allowed to organize public Masses and other religious ceremonies, which have been on hold since the second Sunday of Lent because of the COVID-19 pandemic, on the grounds that their prohibition is no longer proportionate to the “war on the coronavirus” declared by President Emmanuel Macron on March 16.

The Council, France’s highest administrative authority, declared that “the right to join a gathering or a reunion in places of worship, and not only that of praying at home or praying individually in such a place of worship, is an essential component of the freedom of worship,” and curtailing such gatherings is “a grave and manifestly illegal violation” of that freedom.

The leaders of the French bishops are somewhat “uncomfortable with the procedure that short-circuited their inter-religious and fruitless talks with the authorities” and explains why the Church individual bishops, a number of whom have openly decried the prohibition of public worship, decided not to join the procedure imposed by government.

LifesiteNews quoted Bishop Marc Aillet of Bayonne who tweeted: “I welcome the decision of the Council of State ordering the French government to lift the general ban on gatherings in places of worship. Thank you to all those who initiated this and thanks to the Lord who inspired this just struggle.”

Bishop Bernard Ginoux of Montauban called the prohibition of public Masses “unjust and totally absurd…we cannot be subjected to an order that is contrary to common sense.” Satisfied by the Council’s decision, he said, “My thanks to justice which has acknowledged a ‘grave and a legal violation of the freedom of worship.’”

Both the traditional priestly institutes and fraternities quoted from the Catechism of the Catholic Church to underscore why Catholics have an urgent spiritual need of Mass, at which they should assist in person, because “during Mass, the sacrifice of the Cross is renewed, where they can receive the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ in Communion as a necessary spiritual  nourishment.”

Though this “may seem a strange argument in front of administrative judges who monitor the activity of the public authorities of a secular and even secularist Republic such as France,” Jérôme Triomphe, who was one of the lawyers of the priestly institutes, told LifeSite, “it was necessary to explain Catholics’ specific needs in order to prove to the Council of State that not only had a fundamental liberty such as freedom of worship been restricted — and this can be allowed for proportionate reasons in the face of sanitary emergency — but that there was an “urgent” reason for putting a stop to the restriction.”

The judges of the Council of State focused on religious freedom and freedom of worship of believers in order to say that “the absolute and general prohibition” decreed on May 11 (apart from funerals, which have been possible since the beginning of confinement) was illegal because less stringent measures could be applied while preserving public health.”

They rejected the government representative’s arguments regarding a number of other public venues, such as sports centers, dance halls, and restaurants which may not receive the public until further notice, not only because of the activities involved, but because freedom of religious worship is “essential” and protected by international treaties, the French constitution, and laws in a way that those activities are not.”

Triomphe further said, “This victory is an important decision of general principle regarding the fundamental rights of worship, of which the French government had thought that it was not essential to the rights of believers. It is just as essential for a Catholic to receive spiritual nourishment, in particular through sacramental Communion, as to take physical nourishment, because man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

Do Filipino Catholics deserve less than the French?