Police stop mass to check masks

https://7news.com.au/news/wa/commun...lough-church-service-to-check-masks-c-5567846

 

And quite right too. If I was at that church service I would like to feel more protected by the congregation wearing masks. I'm sure it's the law that people should wear masks.

Maybe the lesson of the day was Romans 13.

All of you must yield to the government rulers. No one rules unless God has given him the power to rule, and no one rules now without that power from God. So those who are against the government are really against what God has commanded. And they will bring punishment on themselves.

And lo it turned out just as God said it would.

 

Meanwhile, if I'm not mistaken, several countries have done away with special measure like mask requirements. England, South Africa, Finland, Denmark. I read that Spain from now on is handling Covid like ordinary influenza.

The severity of the latest strain is lessened and a large majority have protection either from antibodies or inoculations.

 

Do you suppose that any Germans who opposed their government, when it was rounding up and exterminating Jews, were "against what God commanded"? Or that, when the Jewish leaders told the Apostles to stop speaking about Jesus, the Apostles were "against what God commanded" when they answered, We ought to obey God rather than men (Acts 5:29)?

Albert Barnes' Commentary makes this point concerning Romans 13:1---

Are ordained of God - This word “ordained” denotes the “ordering” or “arrangement” which subsists in a “military” company, or army. God sets them “in order,” assigns them their location, changes and directs them as he pleases. This does not mean that he “originates” or causes the evil dispositions of rulers, but that he “directs” and “controls” their appointment. By this, we are not to infer:
(1) That he approves their conduct; nor,
(2) That what they do is always right; nor,
(3) That it is our duty “always” to submit to them.
Their requirements “may be” opposed to the Law of God, and then we are to obey God rather than man; Act_4:19; Act_5:29. But it is meant that the power is intrusted to them by God; and that he has the authority to remove them when he pleases. If they abuse their power, however, they do it at their peril; and “when” so abused, the obligation to obey them ceases.​

 

Sounds just like what my family-members said of the WWII-era in Eastern Europe. Did the officer make them say "Sieg Heil" in Australia?

 

Probably not. God seems to have a ban against exterminating entire races, unless you're an Amalekite of course.

I'm not aware of him having a reason to forbid the wearing of masks ( unlike the killing of Jews) so why would you not want to obey Rom:13?

 

I am only imagining here, but perhaps one of the congregation reported to the police that not everyone wears a mask, so they came in response to that? Otherwise it is probably best left up to the parishes to work these things out. My parish is still masking as required by law, but some people still wear it under their noses which defeats the entire purpose of the mask.

Anyway, I for one am happy to see mask rules enforced, but perhaps police is a bit overdoing it. I won't judge them though. These have been challenging times for everyone.

I think Nazi references just demean the real Nazi atrocities, so won't be using that kind of analogy. Wearing a mask is not as bad as being a Jew in Nazi Germany.

 

I understand what you're saying, and wearing a mask in response to a government decree does not sound terrible on its face. But perhaps I can ask a couple of questions to shed a different light on it. What if the government required that every woman wear a hijab, whether she is Muslim or not? Or, what if the government required that every Christian wear a gold star sewn onto the clothing? What if the government mandates that everyone accept a subdermal tracking device implant?

Some people may feel that wearing the mask makes it difficult to breathe. Some may have read that studies have shown masks other than N95 to be ineffective and potentially harmful as they accumulate and concentrate viral particles. Some may feel that being forced to wear face coverings depersonalize and demean human beings. Some may think, "I'm socially distanced from everyone, so what's the harm?" Some may even suspect the government of using masking as a conditioning tool to prepare them emotionally to obediently accept tracking chips, and even to obediently accept at some point a requirement to worship a false god. I can only conjecture why those particular church attendees did what they did, but I don't discount the possibility that they had plausible reasons.

Anyway, for a policeman to interrupt the Mass for that purpose is really objectionable, and his superior IMO should discipline him for handling the situation poorly. It's tantamount to the policeman saying to them, "Stop your worshiping and communing with God, and pay attention to ME as I represent the government." Is the government greater than God?

 

It's interesting to me how those who shout loudest for separation of church and state only see the separation going one way. Those who would fight tooth and nail against the Church exerting its influence over politics see nothing wrong with the state sending armed agents to interrupt the Church's most holy Sacrament to punish any discovered noncompliance with a temporary health measure. It's not separation from but subjection to the state that these folks demand.

 

Well I wouldn't agree, as wearing a hijab or not wouldn't help protect me from anything. However I think our gov't mandates fullish clothes and a sun hats which is getting towards a hijab for preschoolers and youngish school kids when at educational institutes to stop them getting melanoma., and I agree with that. I presume your Gov't tells women they should wear something above the waist. Some may feel that being forced to wear coverings depersonalize and demean human beings.

Again that has no health benefit to me or anyone else, so I wouldn't support it. I would have in Denmark in 1940 when the Nazis made the King of Denmark make a public decree that all Jews had to wear a yellow star. Then people noticed he was wearing a yellow star. The next day everyone in Denmark was a "Jew" and the Jews in Denmark had a relatively peaceful time.

A bit like what Google does now, again the Gov't wouldn't be doing it to help peoples health.

Good point, I don't know about Aussie but here you can get legitimate exemption from wearing a mask due to health reason.

No it's tantamount to the policeman saying "please put a mask on to lessen the risk of passing Covid to the congregation, which you appear to have no concern about"

 

We are able to resist and object unjust laws. Making people wear masks are unjust as they violate the God given right to your own health and how to dress oneself.

 

Obviously if you wear a proper mask like an n95 it does not matter if I mask and if you don’t have n95 you are just putting on a non beneficial show

 

So if I went into the afore mentioned church with unmasked people in it and wanted express my God given right to my own health, what should I do?

 

One of the main arguments here seems to be the rights of the individual over the rights of the community. Putting religion aside for the moment, when it concerns a health issue like a pandemic, I just don't see how the individual rights not to mask are more important than the community's right to protect themselves from a potentially lethal disease.

Yes, the police handled it badly, but the principle is sound. If a person doesn't want to wear a mask, don't attend Mass. At our church, the priest offered a special Mass for unvaccinated people who either didn't want to or couldn't get vaccinated. Perhaps there could be a special Mass offered for those who don't want to wear a mask? It would depend on the priest of course. I find the mask makes me hot and my glasses fog up, but I am protecting myself and others, so I do it. why is it so hard to think about others? In America it always seems to be about 'me' 'me' 'me'.

So it is a little uncomfortable or inconvenient but for heaven's sake, didn't the martyrs and saints endure a lot more than just having to wear a mask? As they used to say in the RCC, 'offer it up'!

 

No, but the internment camps would be just the same. Why have countries that did not have any of these protocols have no more deaths from the COVID-19 virus than those that did and are still implementing them? I shudder to think of people condoning such government overreach in protecting us from ourselves. I do not wish to get into a debate, but these are my thoughts concerning it all.

 

In the right fundamentalist church, in the right region of the US, the Police might have been fired on by the faithful.

 

I guess we don't know what that parish's policy was. For all we know, the priest might have told members that they were free to be masked or unmasked as they chose. (That's how it is in our church.)

Laws in the US are designed to protect individuals more strongly than the collective. Over the past century the collective's interests have been gaining some ground, but theoretically at least our Constitution should preclude those interests from gaining ascendency over those of the individuals. So many of our early citizens came here fleeing oppression of one sort or another, and therefore they took steps to try to guarantee that individual freedoms would not be trampled here as they so often have been elsewhere.

For those who prefer their legal protections to favor the collective rather than themselves and the individuals who comprise their families, neighbors, church members, friends, etc., you folks have the whole rest of the globe. When injustice of your own making strikes at you personally, perhaps you will wish you lived in the US instead, and I hope we can find room for you then. Provided, of course, that community-minded people haven't taken over in this country by then, too.

Quite frankly, mask wearing has been admitted by our Centers for Disease Control to be largely ineffective. After insisting otherwise for a year and a half, now they concede that anything less than a N95 is just about worthless. Fauci of the Forked Tongue spoke the truth in Feb. 2020 when he spoke against masking, but from March 2020 until this past fall he lied, lied, lied about masks. Since the "authorities" were not honest about mask wearing then, many of us are skeptical that they're even right about N95 mask-wearing efficacy now, or that they have ever been truthful about the safety and efficacy of Covid jabs. Despite all their promises, we now know that the fully masked, fully vaccinated-and-boostered people catch and spread Covid just like anyone else.

They most certainly acted underhandedly when they condemned early treatment with combinations of HCQ, Ivermectin, antibiotics, vitamins and zinc; our authorities threatened to pull doctors' medical licenses if they prescribed those proven-safe drugs! And they forced the medical community to make people with Covid symptoms stay home until they got seriously (too) sick. Here's the crop they reaped: almost 900,000 claimed dead from Covid out of some 340,000,000 people. Compare that to a country like Uganda, population 50,000,000 but only 325 Covid casualties! Uganda, which couldn't afford vaccine and didn't have a lot of hospital beds, so they focused on early diagnosis and early treatment (just like the US medical community used to do before this debacle) and the results speak for themselves. Covid has been an "affluent nations' disease" because that's where the money is (our government pays Billions for those nifty Covid vaccines). Uganda and nations like it have proven that the methods foisted upon the US, Europe, and Australia have been, all along, a load of cow patties.

The problem is not that some people are being selfish, "me, me, me." The problem is that the foxes are in the henhouse killing the chickens, and a bunch of well-meaning chickens have been lulled to sleep by the smooth-talking foxes; they're failing to see what Belshazzar saw in Daniel 5 (the handwriting is on the wall).

 

That's quite the hyperbole.

 

Is it? My father participated in the Gordon Kahl manhunt in 1983. There were plenty of people in North Dakota in that time who would have shot a cop.

The Westboro Baptist people, and a hundred other stripes of fundamentalist, view themselves as an oppressed minority. And they are mostly ready to light up a cop. Most won't be able to pull a trigger in the critical moment, but the true believers will.

 

I can see this is a very polarising topic - almost as much so as WO!