Amid violence, Central African Republic bishops denounce 'lack of patriotisms'
- Jan 19, 2021
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte got a badly needed favor Tuesday morning, as the pontiff essentially hit the off switch on mounting Catholic resistance to the PM’s program for recovery by calling for “prudence and obedience.”
One day after the Italian Prime Minister declined to offer a date for restarting public Masses in his “phase 2” plan for lifting of the country’s COVID-19 coronavirus restrictions, with some advisers saying it might not happen until the end of the month, one church official in Milan said faithful want Mass now.
The Italian bishops have appeared to threaten that if they don’t get a satisfactory response from the government on a date for restarting public Masses, they may be prepared to assert the authority afforded under religious freedom provisions of the Italian constitution and act on their own.
On Monday the Italian bishops criticized the government’s omission of a date to restart public Masses in its new week-by-week plan for the return to normal life after the coronavirus, threatening to act autonomously.
The apparent simplicity but actual complexity of “cacio e pepe” may be an apt metaphor for the recipe Catholic bishops in various parts of the world appear to be trying to follow with regard to the resumption of ecclesiastical life after coronavirus lockdowns.
Even in times of strict quarantine when prayer is not a legitimate enough reason to leave one’s house, in Italy expressions of popular piety and devotion are still driving the Catholic Church’s spiritual reaction to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, at times at the explicit request of the faithful.