Fort Worth Diocese Will Distribute Communion Outside After Private Masses

The Catholic Herald (UK) ^ | 3/19/20 | Jonah McKeown

[marshmallow]

Bishop Michael Olson of Fort Worth issued a pastoral letter March 18 detailing directives for the celebration of Mass during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. Those directives include a plan for the distribution of the Eucharist after Masses conclude.

While all Masses are to be celebrated without a congregation present, Olson urged the continued distribution of Holy Communion “outside of church in designated spaces after Mass for those who are present in their cars or separated by a safe distance.”

“After consultation with my priests and civic officials at local and state levels, and in cooperating with them for the good of society, I am informing you that Mass will continue to be celebrated at the scheduled times throughout the territory of the Diocese of Fort Worth, but without a congregation physically present in the church,” Olson wrote Wednesday.

Holy Communion, he continued, “is to be distributed in an open space with safe social distancing, in the hand, and not through a car window.”

In Tarrant County, where Fort Worth is located, civil authorities have urged the cancellation of gatherings of more than 250 people.

The Fort Worth area has two confirmed cases of COVID-19 as of March 18. The number of confirmed cases worldwide stands at 200,000.

[RebelTXRose]

I pray this catches on n moves east. To the next dioceses.

[lightman]

Bishop Michael (name means, “Who is like God?”) is one of the very few good guys.

I predict that at some future time the caving of many prelates in this “emergancy” will unleash a scandal nearly as divisive as the Donatist controversy of the 3rd century; in which the steadfast and faithful under persecution wanted those who had caved to undergo rigorous penance.