The new COVID Christmas rules in Italy awaken the debate on midnight mass

When the Italian government this week issued new rules for the holiday season, inter alia by imposing a strict curfew that makes the traditional celebration of midnight mass on Christmas Eve impossible, it revived the debate on the actual time of Christ's birth.

Issued on December 3, the new rules, which span the entire holiday season, stipulate, among other things, that travel between regions is prohibited from December 21 to January 21. 6, which means the period just before Christmas and through the Catholic feast of the Epiphany.

Citizens are also prohibited from traveling to different areas of their city on December 25-26 and on New Year's Day.

A national curfew that extends from 22pm. until 00:6 will be strictly enforced and will be extended by one hour - until 00:7. - on January 00st.

As for the Christmas Mass - which for many Italian secular newspapers has been a front page theme in recent days - the government said that the traditional celebration of the Midnight Mass should be brought forward to respect the national curfew.

Speaking of the decision, the undersecretary of the health ministry Sandra Zampa said that the masses “will have to end soon enough to go home for the curfew at 22.00pm. So around 20:30 pm. "

Zampa insisted that the decision was made "in agreement with the CEI", the acronym of the Italian bishops' conference, which he said, "perfectly understood the need".

After they were made public, the new rules were met with backlash, but not by the Catholic Church.

The Italian bishops hosted a meeting on December 1st and issued a statement in which they agreed on the need to "foresee the beginning and duration of the celebration at a time compatible with the so-called curfew".

It would be the duty of the bishops, they said, to ensure that the parish priests "guide" the faithful on health standards such as social distancing in order to ensure maximum participation in compliance with safety standards.

Opposition to the measure came from two primary, and probably surprising, sources: Italian Freemasons and the far-right Lega party.

In a blog published on the website of the Roosevelt Movement, the largest Italian organization of Freemasons, the head of the association, Gioele Magaldi, criticized what he called "the scandalous silence of the Catholic Church" in the wake of Thursday's decree, insisting on which constitutes a violation of religious freedom.

The new measures, Magaldi said, "also mortify Christmas: no midnight mass, and it will be forbidden to see loved ones and hug them ... This is inadmissible".

The Church "was also heroic, had its martyrs torn apart by lions," he said. However, referring to the bishops' compliance with the new COVID measures, he asked, "where is the courage of the Church in the face of a government that dares to 'turn off' Christmas, pretending to believe that keeping Italians locked up at home is really a solution? "

"Those who hope for a further sacrifice in terms of expulsion and renunciation are deluded," he said, adding, "it is clear that the measures adopted against COVID, which often violate the Constitution, are completely useless".

The Italian politician Francesco Boccia, minister for regional affairs and autonomies and member of the League, also criticized the new decree as authoritarian, saying it would be "heresy" to have the baby Jesus born "two hours earlier".

In the comments to Antenna Tre Nordest, the Veneto regional television broadcaster, the Patriarch of Venice, Francesco Moraglia, who participated in the CEI session on December 1, responded to Boccia's complaints calling them "laughable".

"Ministers should focus on their duty and not worry so much about the time when the baby Jesus was born," Moraglia said, adding: "I think the Church has the maturity and the ability to evaluate her own behavior in line with the dutiful requests of the public authorities. "

"We must go back to the essentials of Christmas", he said, stressing that the liturgical celebration of Christmas "never intended to intercept the hour of Jesus' birth".

Formally, the Catholic Church has never issued a definitive sentence on the exact time and date of Jesus' birth. All over the world, midnight masses on Christmas Eve are often celebrated as early as 21pm or 22pm.

This also applies to the Vatican, where since the last years of the papacy of John Paul II, midnight mass has been celebrated at 22pm, allowing the pope to rest and still be up to celebrate mass on Christmas morning.

Moraglia in his comments noted that the Church allows Mass to be celebrated in the afternoon and evening of Christmas Eve, as well as in the morning and night of Christmas.

"What Minister Boccia tried to agitate or resolve is not a question, but simply a question of organizing schedules", he said, adding, "we want to obey the law as good citizens, who also have the maturity to understand how to manage their celebrations without the need for theological advice from those who are perhaps less equipped ”on the subject.

What is needed, he said, is "security". Underlining the divergent opinions of experts and politicians on the virus and on the measures to be taken, Moraglia said that those in government leadership positions "must be able to give a unified, and not contentious, line".