What?!?
The Bishop of San Bernardino (California) has dispensed ALL the faithful from Sunday obligation because of potential arrests of illegal aliens.
While American bishops dispense Catholics from the Sunday obligation due to the potential of being (legitimately) arrested, African Catholics in our day are attending Mass in spite of the potential of being killed by Muslims. pic.twitter.com/gnrUl5OMxC
— Eric Sammons (@EricRSammons) July 9, 2025
That puts things in perspective.
I wonder what Saint Bernardin of Siena would say to this bishop.
What might the Martyrs of Abitinae who preferred to be tortured to death rather than renounce Mass and the Eucharist? “Sine dominico non possumus”!
Today is the Feast of the Martyrs of Gorkum, rounded up and killed by Protestants because they would not renounce the doctrine of transubstantiation. Would they have an opinion?
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I suspect that next month the bishop will be complaining about parish donations being down.
This comes across as a baldly political move by the bishop, and the comparison you’ve made is spot-on.
I hope our American pope gets wind of this.
I’m so tired of us being the Church Mediocre instead of the Church Militant.
“If your priest of Bishop refuses to be a Saint, be a Saint for them” Robert Cardinal Sarah
Performative episcopal histrionics. Who’d thought the “do something” mentality would result in a dispensation from the Sunday Obligation? I’m reminded of the Ralph Wiggum “I’m helping” gif.
Stereotypical of the contemporary episcopate. But at least we have a liturgy in place now for creation.
Lord, how long?
Yes, I agree with APX: I sure hope Pope Leo is informed of this decision. Ya can’t make this stuff up!
that bishop is only 60 y/o. Lord have mercy!
i remember reading about a case in 1995 where JPII removed a similarly young French bishop from his see, leaving him only a titular see. that fellow established a website that is still extant. https://www.catholic-hierarchy.org/bishop/bgaillot.html
Had there been public penance and reparation over the closing of churches through Covid, for the no-risk as well as the high-risk, perhaps this bishop would not have imagined it to be acceptable.
When one’s liturgy is just a meal shared with fellow worshipers, sure, one can take a rain check.
When the liturgy is The Sacrifice of Calvary taking place before you in this time, this space and you are blessed beyond imagination to be present in this most August Sacrifice and you prepared yourself so you are allowed to consume the Sacred Body Blood Soul and Divinity of Our Creator and Savior!!!!…. Yeah, sign me up to face the Muslims and ICE. I’ll risk disease and death and drive hours to attend if necessary. Because I am here to know, love and serve God in this world in order to be happy with Him in the next.
When did Catholics forget we are not here for this world?
St Thomas Moore pray for us! St Bernadette pray for us! Saint Maximilian Kolbe pray for us! Blessed Miguel Pro pray for us! Our Lady of Fatima pray for us.
Go to confession! Pray the rosary. Our Lady warned us these days were coming
Is prime day over? Need a hair shirt.
The site “Not the Bee” has a good breakdown of this.
https://notthebee.com/takes/california-bishop-allows-parishioners-to-skip-mass-to-avoid-homeland-security-agents
Sine dominico non possumus.
They did this stunt for covid and most never went back. Guess they didn’t learn. Do they ever? Its all theater.
I remember bishops as serious, sober men. Where did all the good bishops go, and where did all these grinning performers come from.
I sincerely disagree that the dispensation meaningfully applies to all Catholics in the diocese. At a minimum, any (adult) American citizen invoking this to skip Mass at present is either (1) genuinely paranoid to the point that they should seek mental health assistance or (2) using it as an excuse to shrug off their obligations.
I will also suggest that if this derives fully from a bona fide concern, the appropriate direction from the Bishop should be for the priests to start holding Mass in other locations, because (and I do not use this phrasing ironically) for Heaven’s sake we have LITERALLY been doing that since the Last Supper when our Lord and Savior was arguably playing hide-and-seek with the authorities and He knew it*! “The doors, the doors”**, anybody?
To be clear, I might also seriously consider excommunicating anybody who decides to start arresting pretty much /anyone/ at Mass unless they are being violent /at/ Mass*** – notwithstanding their immigration status, something sticks in my gut about the law acting to alienate anyone from the Sacraments.
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Notes:
*If He knew Judas was set up to betray Him, that implies that He knew that the authorities meant Him ill. And even if He didn’t know so directly, I’d also argue that causing that stir in the Temple would have given Him reason to expect it.
**This is, for me, probably the most memorable moment in the Byzantine Catholic Divine Liturgy, deriving (as I understand it) from the Roman persecutions.
***I’m also open to cases where someone’s face is, or could plausibly be, on a “Wanted” poster for violent crimes, etc. But immigration status alone doesn’t exactly rise to the status of this – and if there’s something more serious at play, I’d say it isn’t their immigration status that’s at issue.
We people of good will can disagree on exactly how secular immigration policy should be formulated and enforced, so I don’t want to dive into arguments about policy specifics.
But as far as the Church is concerned, I second @grayanderson’s sentiment – it would seem to me a serious crime against our faith community for the secular government to invade our places of worship to make arrests (or to tell priests how to handle confessions – as in Washington state, once again).
We’ve come a long way from the days of St. Thomas Becket insisting on ecclesiastical trials for clergy against the king’s wishes, St. Ambrose publicly shaming Emperor Theodosius, or Gregory VII humbling emperor Henry IV.
Our spaces ought to be sacred, and no secular governments, which come and go, should claim more of our personal loyalty than our duty to provide the sacraments.