It goes without saying that no serious priest finds the unavailability of Holy Communion for the faithful to be a trivial matter. Clearly, Catholics are suffering in this regard. But it is rash judgment to attribute these measures in the Church to a general apostasy or subservience to the state or a lack of courage and faith of the priests who, until now, have offered Mass daily to the faithful. Some are even attributing this temporary suspension of public attendance at Mass to a takeover of the Church by a one world government conspiracy. I submit that the critics having better arguments for a different approach, should stay clear from what is quite implausible and in my view false alarmism. …

And it is historical fact that current measures have been adopted during other pandemics by the Church. Public attendance at the Mass was suspended during the 1918 influenza pandemic and at other times when Europe was afflicted by the plague.

Bishop Athanasius and company are fond of pointing to St. Charles Borromeo Archbishop of Milan (1564-1584) and his bringing of communion to the sick and the dying during the plague of 1576-1577. They foist this upon us, as the profile in courage that we are allegedly too scared to follow. But the they fail to mention the key point: during that plague, the saint also ordered the churches in Milan to be closed. As father Joseph White OP writes, “In fact, there is clear evidence that in medieval and modern Europe, as well as in the U.S., this form of response on the part of the Church is a very traditional and time-tested one.”