Open Letter to Archbishop José Gomez

Your Excellency:

With all due respect for your attempts to stop the spread of COVID-19, the faithful of the Los Angeles Archdiocese feel betrayed that you have allowed state officials to step in and impose a political lock-down of the Church. You couldn’t act fast enough to heed Governor Newsom’s latest directive to close the churches in response to the “increase” of COVID-19 hospitalizations, yet supermarkets and other non-essential enterprises continue to operate at full capacity.   

Why do you dignify this modern-day pharaoh who is using COVID-19 as a tool to oppress the Church? Is Newsom your master? You seem to have forgotten that the Church is not bound to the state, and this would especially apply when state officials are accomplices to crime.

Certainly you must know that Governor Newsom and L.A. Mayor Garcetti were calling for a disbanding of the police for the purpose of encouraging race riots. Newsom told Black protesters, "I want you to know that you matter. To those who want to express themselves [riotously] ... keep doing it. Your rage is real." https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/your-rage-is-real-gavin-newsom-tells-california-protesters/ar-BB14THDJ       

According to Newsom, criminals "matter" but the innocent owners of looted shops don't matter.  Neo-Nazis like Newsom want to prosecute the Church, not those who burn down the Church. Are these the people you consult in directing Christ’s Church?

COVID-19 was sprung on us by these very socialists to place society and Church on lockdown, so your duty as bishop is to ignore tyrannical state rulings and to remember your fidelity to God who commands that you listen to Him and not to corrupt state officials that have exaggerated the COVID-19 figures for their own political gains.

The numbers are way over the top. Doctors have testified to how the government has pressured them into lying about COVID-19 death figures. They deliberately up the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths to justify continuation of their socialist lockdown, which is all the more reason for the Church to ignore these state rulings and recommendations.  

Even if the state was just in its recommendations—which it is not—the final decision is with the Church, not the state, since the state cannot impose itself on the Church. The Church is autonomous and is even protected by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment (Separation of Church and State) that says the state cannot interfere with the Church. Even the  CDC admits that “The federal government may not prescribe standards for interactions of faith communities in houses of worship,” so why do you allow the state to bully the Church?  

We often praise the martyrs who accepted persecution and death at the hands of pagan leaders because they stood up against these tyrants, but when it's our turn we suddenly shrink and make excuses for fleeing the cross. You wrote a book about "Men of Brave Heart," so please live up to it by rebuking these Neo-Nazis who want to boss the Church. 

AND PLEASE DO NOT allow Cardinal Mahony to exert any more influence in the church, because he and his deep-state cronies are also using COVID-19 as a tool to impose Communion in the hand. Several churches in the Archdiocese are mandating this practice in accord with your directives, though the state hasn't actually required this of you. Why are you encouraging this practice, to please Mahony?

What is absurd is that receiving in the hand poses a far greater COVID-19 contagion risk than receiving on the tongue, proving all the more that these imposed restrictions have little to do with COVID-19. We've become like the hypocrites in Christ's time, touting our hand-washing and "sanitary" procedures and adopting ridiculous "traditions of men" while the work of God is ignored! 

By definition, Communion in the hand is an indult, and a sacrilegious one at that, and as such, may never be imposed on the faithful. Pope John Paul II's Redemptionis Sacramentum (March 25, 2004) clearly states: 

“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).

Anti-church progressivists were hoping to use COVID-19 to get Communion in the hand mandated on a permanent basis, so we ask that you stand against this sinister plan to profane the Eucharist under the guise of “public health and safety.” All this fuss about face-masks, social distancing, limited attendance, and receiving in the hand has accomplished nothing more than to turn the Church into something of a police-state. Let’s drop the protocol and open the churches without reserve that the people might be on their knees in reparation for the many sins in the Church that brought this chastisement upon us to begin with.

For COVID-19 is a chastisement for our profanation of the Church through modern practice, especially the practice of receiving Communion in the hand. When chastisements are given by God, we’re supposed to learn by them. Have we learned our lesson or are we continuing like Pharisees to impose sin upon God’s people?

Sincerely in Christ and His Holy Mother,

David Martin

Our Lady’s Workers of Southern California