Most Catholics favor resumption of Masses, survey shows

SOCIAL DISTANCING A church worker hands out roses to parishioners during Sunday Mass at a church in Paranaque City. —MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

MANILA, Philippines — Majority of the Filipino faithful want Masses in churches to resume already in areas under modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ) and general community quarantine (GCQ), according to a survey conducted by Catholic Church-run Radio Veritas.

Based on the Veritas Truth Survey, 62 percent of the respondents wanted church Masses to resume in MECQ/GCQ areas (with strict social distancing and hygienic practices) while 16 percent objected to the resumption and 22 percent remained undecided.

The survey, when analyzed geographically, show that those living in the Visayas had the highest desire for the reopening of Masses at 90 percent, followed by those in Mindanao at 80 percent and those Luzon at 55 percent.

“This spiritual hunger for church Masses to resume is indicative for the need to maintain spiritual wellness in the midst of COVID-19,” said sociologist and VTS head Clifford Sorita.

Social distancing will remain the greatest challenge to spiritual wellness because it will hamper religious gatherings within the faith experience of Catholic devotees, he added.

The survey, conducted from May 1 to 15, 2020, used a stratified sample of 1,200 respondents nationwide for a +/- 3 percent margin of error. The information was gathered through text-based and online data gathering process.

“If we are cognizant of feeding the body during the shift toward this GCQ, then we too should be mindful of feeding the soul during this GCQ. Both body and soul are crucial components in the holistic wellness of a person because how can you separate the soul from the body of an individual?” said Sorita.

According to him, “the tension between ‘physical health’ and ‘spiritual well-being’ is in some way an incompatible one—a predicament in which acting to protect an indisputable value inevitably generates some sort of inner malnourishment.”

“But allowing people to attend ‘church Masses’ under strict hygienic and social distancing practices is not just a way of nourishing the soul but a means as well of ‘healing’ the community through a sense of communal solidarity in dealing with this traumatic health crisis brought about by COVID-19,” said Sorita.

“Fear and anxiety will be our greatest concern under the ‘new normal’ but faith and solidarity will help us endure,” he added.

Based on the survey, those who objected to the resumption were high among Luzon residents at 30 percent, followed by Visayas at 7 percent, then Mindanao at 3 percent.

Those who were undecided were high for respondents in Mindanao at 17 percent, followed by those in Luzon at 15 percent then finally in the Visayas at 3 percent. INQ