the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church is pleased to announce the opening of the main church for private prayer beginning Monday, May 18th. In a letter from Cardinal Tobin, churches will be permitted to be open for private prayer and for individuals to receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
PRIOR TO YOUR ARRIVAL, PLEASE BE AWARE OF THE FOLLOWING:
You should take your temperature at home. Anyone with a temperature of 100 degrees or higher is not to enter the church.
Everyone entering the church must wear a mask. Please bring one with you from home.
THE ONLY ENTRANCE TO BE USED IS THE PASSAIC STREET ENTRANCE since this entrance allows for handicap access.
A MAXIMUM OF TEN PERSONS WILL BE PERMITTED IN THE CHURCH AT ANY GIVEN TIME. PLEASE FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS OF THE STAFF MEMEMBER WHO MAY ASK YOU TO WAIT OUTSIDE UNTIL SOMEONE LEAVES.
the exterior and interior doors at this entrance will be propped open to allow “hands-free” access.
Automatic hand sanitizers have been installed throughout the church. Please use them upon entering and leaving the church.
Social distancing of six feet (6’) is to be followed by those who do not live in the same household.
Only the main church will be open at this time. Because of this, the following will take place
A tabernacle with the Blessed Sacrament will be placed on the main altar in the church.
The candles from the Daily Mass Chapel have been temporarily moved by the Statue of the Sacred Heart in the main church.
THE CELEBRATION OF PUBLIC LITURGIES, DEVOTIONS OR GROUP PRAYER IS NOT PERMITTED.
(Example: recitation of the rosary by a group of people)
Aisles in the church will now be ONE WAY. Please follow the arrows or markings on the floor to avoid going against the flow of traffic. This might mean have to take the “long way around” to get to your destination.
RESTROOMS WILL REMAIN CLOSED at this time.
Holy water fonts will remain empty and holy water will not be available to take home.
THE LEAVING OF ANY PAMPHLETS, BROCHURES PRAYER CARDS OR MATERIALS OF ANY KIND IN THE PEWS, BOOKRACKS OR ANYWHERE IN THE CHURCH IS PROHIBITED.
Everyone should exit the church via the Passaic Street doors only.
A STAFF MEMBER WILL BE PRESENT IN THE CHURCH AT ALL TIMES. IF YOU SHOULD HAVE A QUESTION OR NEED ASSISTANCE, PLEASE SEE THEM.
CHURCH HOURS
Monday through Saturday – 9AM to 11AM and 2PM to 4PM
REMINDER: ONLY THE PASSAIC STREET ENTRANCE IS TO BE USED
(The church will NOT be open on Sundays due to our live stream mass schedule)
The church will be sanitized prior to each start time.
CONFESSIONS
Confessions will be heard from 3PM to 4PM on the following days:
Tuesday
Thursday
Saturday
Please use the Passaic Street entrance.
CONFESSIONALS WILL NOT BE USED
To meet social distancing guidelines, confessions will be held in the Adoration Chapel and the Cry Room in the front vestibule.
Portable screens are available for confession.
Please line up against the side aisles of the main church for confessions practicing social distancing of six feet between non household individuals.
Please exit the church via the Passaic Street doors only.
Okay people, Susan from the Parish Council, a.k.a., She Who Is To Be Obeyed, has now spoken.
In case you hadn’t heard, Susan also said the following:
Having now described the Blessed “New Normal” at Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Ridgewood, New Jersey, I also hasten to inform you that Monsignor Vicar of the Virus has empowered me to punish not only those who violate the new rules, but also those who publicly disagree with them.
For the time being, those who find themselves disagreeing internally without admitting it to me or another parish official are strongly encouraged to purge themselves of such antisocial tendencies by regularly availing themselves of the Sacrament of Reconciliation to the Will of the New Church of the Virus, since for the time being at least, the Priests hearing such confessions are still bound by the strictest rules of secrecy in terms of what they are told by penitants.
Moreover, out of an abundance of Virusmercy, such individuals will still be allowed to assist at mass in the same way as anyone else if we pull their name during the daily lottery drawing, or if they contribute enough coin of the realm to the Cardinal Archbishop’s new Italian Actor Resettlement and English Instruction Fund.
Such internally rebellious individuals should bear in mind, however, that in addition to the now hot and cold running Holy Hand Sanitzer equipment that is now ubiquitous throughout the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, we here in Ridgewood are moving forward with installing video-monitoring, pheromone-sniffing, and brainwave-analyzing apparatus throughout the nave and in the parish center downstairs. Eventually that technology will catch up with you, register your dismay, dissent, discomfort, or disgust as the case may be, and promptly report the same to me or to Karen, my parish council assistant. Your membership in OLMC parish in Ridgewood will then be immediately summarily revoked without opportunity for appeal and you will be cast out into the street at nightfall to wail, gnash your teeth, and personally question your very humanity.
Have a nice day!
The current sentiments of a well-known Catholic commentator are worth repeating here:
Pews are a Protestantism.
We at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel should remove our Pews.
Now would be a perfect time to do it. Cleaning/disinfecting will be much easier.
What did the Blessed Virgin and St. John do at Calvary? They stood, and they knelt on the ground. The Mass IS Calvary. Ergo…
Excerpting from a Crisis piece by Fr. Rutler from several years ago:
The whiskering of buildings with ivy is a metaphor for another aesthetic offense, and one more serious, since it is a reproach as much to ascetics as to aesthetics. Pews are the climbing ivy of God’s house. My case is that they should be removed. I immediately alienate from this argument anyone whose limited aesthetical perception sees nothing wrong with electric votive lights and bishops wearing miters in colors matching their vestments. But the problem with pews is worse, for it is not simply a matter of taste. Pews contradict worship. They suburbanize the City of God and put comfort before praise.
For most of the Christian ages, there were no pews, or much seating of any sort. There were proper accommodations for the aged (fewer then than now) and for the infirm (probably more then than now) but churches were temples and not theatres. One need only look at the Orthodox churches (except where decadence has crept in) or the mosques whose architectural eclecticism echoes their religion’s origin as a desiccated offshoot of Christianity to see what churches were meant to look like. The word “pew” comes from the same root as podium, or platform for the privileged, indicating that if there were any pews in the Temple of Jerusalem they were those of the Pharisees who enjoyed “seats in high places.” The first intrusion of pews into Christian churches was around the twelfth century and they were rare, and mostly suited to the use of choir monks in their long Offices. But filling churches with pews was chiefly the invention of the later Protestant revolution that replaced adoration with edification.
Increasingly, manorial lords had special seats in the churches that were in their “living” not unlike the Pharisees, and this eventually extended to other people of means and in fact became a source of income. Pew rentals were precursors of pledging for the bishop’s “annual appeal.” Pews were property and could be part of a bequeathed estate. It was this sort of instinct that moved Ambrose Bierce to say of Celtic culture: “Druids performed their religious rites in groves, and knew nothing of church mortgages and the seasonal-ticket system of pew rents.” By the eighteenth century, in Protestant lands, “box pews” became like little cabins, where people could doze during long services and even brew tea and keep small charcoal warmers. Pews gradually were adapted by Catholics in areas imbued with a Protestant culture and were alien to purer Latin traditions. Try to find pews in the great Roman basilicas. Curious, then, is the way some people have come to identify pews with “traditional Catholicism” when they are its antithesis.
Ascetically, pews stratify the people as passive participants. There actually are churches where ushers, like maître d’s in a cabaret, move down the aisle pew by pew, indicating when the people can go to Communion. Ensconced and regimented in serried ranks, the people are denied the mobility of the sacred assembly and even the sacred dance, which is what the Solemn Mass is—a thing far different from the embarrassing geriatric ballets called “liturgical dancing.” Especially in a busy city parish, people wandering about and lighting candles and casting a curious eye at images, can be distracting, but it is also a healthy sign that people are freed by grace to be at home in the House of God, unlike the passive creature known as a couch potato or, in this instance, a pew potato.
Worse than plain wooden pews are those that are upholstered. Goodbye acoustics. And anyone who gives priority to the softness of his seat rather than the sound of song, should humbly ask forgiveness of St. Cecilia who died suffering from more than the lack of a cushion, but was comforted—and eternally so—by good music. Sensibly, seating should be provided for the elderly and physically limited. Other seating should be moveable to permit different kinds of liturgical use, with space for kneeling.
James they are coming out of the woodwork.
quarantine
Geez get a hobby
The Archdiocese Office in Newark (RCAN) has more to say.
https://www.rcan.org/archdiocese-newark-announces-phased-reopening-churches
When masses eventually resume, the following instructions from RCAN will apparently apply:
During Mass
1. Doors are to be propped or held open before and after Mass to prevent people from touching the door handles, knobs or push plates.
2. Staff, ushers or other volunteers should direct people to specifically marked pews. As previously indicated, attendance will be limited to ensure compliance with social distancing requirements.
3. Families are to maintain six-foot distancing between their households, even of one individual, throughout the celebration of Mass.
a. Seating must be maintained with six feet of distance between members of one household and members of another.
b. One or two pews should be left vacant in between rows such that six feet of distance can be maintained in all directions.
c. All ministers, including music ministers and choir members, must maintain six-foot social distancing.
4. The entrance/recession procession should be done only if social distancing can be maintained.
5. The procession at the Preparation of the Gifts is suspended. Collection baskets (or any other materials) are not to be passed from one family to another, nor shall ushers take up the collection from the congregation. Instead, fixed baskets are to be used for donations from the assembly and should be monitored by the ushers until the donations are collected and handled according to the proper protocols.
6. There must be no physical contact during the sign of peace. A simple gesture, such as a bow or nod, is recommended.
7. It is recommended that separate chalices be prepared for each concelebrating priest and/or deacon.
8. Priests or deacons who are in at risk groups are permitted to refrain from distributing Holy Communion and may delegate distribution to other Communion ministers.
9. For the distribution of Communion, ushers or other volunteers who are masked and gloved will ensure six-foot distancing in the Communion line. Floor markings may be placed six feet apart in the aisles to facilitate proper social distancing in all directions during Communion.
10. Communion ministers must be masked and sanitize their hands immediately before and after distributing Communion. Ministers should avoid physical contact when placing the host in the communicant’s hands.
11. Holy Communion is only permitted in the hand. Distribution of Holy Communion from the chalice is prohibited to the assembly. For those who are gluten intolerant, special arrangements are to be made with the pastor.
12. Ushers or ministers of hospitality should assist in maintaining a single-file line during the distribution of Holy Communion in order for each Communion minister and communicant to maintain social distancing in all directions. Multiple Communion ministers may be used, provided one-way traffic patterns are observed.
13. When approaching the Communion minister, the communicant should make a slight bow of the head, receive the host in the hand, step to the side, lift his/her mask and consume the host.
14. Those who refrain from receiving communion still unite themselves with the sacrifice of Christ. Non-communicants are kindly asked to remain in their places rather than coming forward to request a blessing.
Cardinal Joseph Tobin, Archbishop (i.e., local ordinary) of the Newark, NJ Archdiocese, is currently saying that he will only permit the faithful to receive Holy Communion in the hand. By so doing, he will oblige diocesan priests tasked with implementing that instruction to deny Holy Communion to any well-disposed member of the faithful who approaches the altar choosing to receive on the tongue.
This is quite regrettable. Cardinal Tobin needs to reverse this uncalled-for change in policy immediately. Any diocesan priest, after beginning to celebrate public masses again, and upon being presented with a well-disposed member of the faithful who approaches the altar clearly expressing a desire to receive Holy Communion on the tongue, who refuses or otherwise fails to distribute Holy Communion to such individual, will have committed a grave violation and must know that he will face swift and certain punishment directly from the Vatican.
During the Swine Flu epidemic, the Vatican’s CDF, or Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the Discipline of the Sacraments, lead at that time by then-Cardinal Ratzinger (later to be Pope Benedict XVI), ruled on this very issue. Cardinal Ratzinger sent a letter dated July 25, 2009 to all the Bishops/local ordinaries in the world that read in relevant part:
“This Dicastery observes that its instruction Redemptionis Sacramentum (25 March 2004) clearly stipulates that “each of the faithful always has the right to receive Holy Communion on the tongue” (n.92), nor is it licit to deny Holy Communion to any of Christ’s faithful who are not impeded by law from receiving the Holy Eucharist (cf. n. 91).”
Like Cardinal Tobin of Newark, Cardinal Gregory Wilton, local ordinary of the nearby Washington, D.C. Archdiocese, wants the faithful of his Archdiocese to forego receiving Holy Communion on the tongue during this time in favor of in-the-hand reception. He is evidently not above using subtle (or not-so-subtle) shaming techniques to achieve this goal. Nevertheless, and in stark contrast to the action in question taken by Cardinal Tobin, Cardinal Gregory ultimately appears prepared to yield to higher authority by complying with the long-standing requirement that on-the-tongue reception continue to be made available to the faithful as a fully valid option that they may freely choose. He recently instructed the parishes of the Washington, D.C. Archdiocese in relevant part as follows:
“Those who wish to receive Communion on the tongue are asked to [go to a particular minister / wait until the end of Communion / etc.] to help us
accommodate this preference. Although each person retains the right to receive on the tongue, the Centers for Disease Control have recommended
against it; but more importantly, out of love for our brothers and sisters, and out of kind concern for the vulnerable and our sacred ministers, those
who normally receive on the tongue are respectfully asked to consider
receiving in the hand as a temporary measure. It is a legitimate practice attested to in our Catholic Tradition since the ancient Church. The minister will immediately disinfect his hands after each communicant who receives
on the tongue, even if no physical contact is made.”
Cardinal Tobin, in breaking with his Washington, D.C. colleague on this issue at this time, and more importantly, in disregarding clear and authoritative instuctions to the contrary from the CDF that are directly on point and as such can’t legitimately be ignored, is clearly being both intransigent and insubordinate. His stubborn refusal to continue to support reception of Holy Communion on the tongue as a valid option that members of the faithful may freely choose is unacceptable. He is placing every parish priest in the Newark Archdiocese in danger of earning swift punishment from the Vatican, not just once, but every time an otherwise well-disposed communicant is illicitly denied or turned away.
The CDF’s July 25, 2009 letter remains to this day the law of the Universal Church. As such, the contrary diocese-wide instruction Cardinal Tobin recently promulgated in this regard must be promptly revised so as to become fully consistent with the CDF’s July 25, 2009 letter before public masses can be allowed to resume.