I don't understand why folks just can't follow these rules for now.

I would love to attend the TLM nearby perhaps once a week, as has been my custom for some years. But since no one wears a mask or keeps any kind of physical distance there, I only attend the Novus Ordo.

I will say this: New Catholic's disrespect of Mgr Aupetit is both something that only a schoolyard bully could say and is something worthy of immense shame, and I suppose it is for this reason that NC writes anonymously.

I don't understand why folks just can't follow these rules for now.

Because the rules are annoying, incoherent, and cause all sorts of other problems, and on top of this, even if we were to be obedient to a T, the government isn't going to negotiate in good faith; they certainly tried to delay reopening public worship in May 2020, and then they took their sweet time to sit down with the bishops in November, after the Conseil d'État ordered the government to allow public worship. Finally, the prime minister refused, at first, to walk back a capacity limit that Macron had promised to repeal in a late-night phone call to the president of the French episcopal conference.

The best example of the annoyance is how it affects children. I haven't met anyone who can effectively discipline their child wearing a mask, certainly not in church, and "talking louder" while wearing a mask is inconsistent with not spraying particles everywhere.

Then there's communion. One is supposed to receive on the hand in many French diocesess; an understanding, implicit or otherwise, has been reached in trad or conservative dioceses, but it's not being advertised. In my local parish, the ministers distribute starting in the back, and they just sort of drop the host into your hand.

We haven't had holy water available in most churches since the lockdown ended in May 2020.

This might be perceived as a minor annoyance, but seeing everyone masked in the sanctuary is extremely ugly for many people.

This said, I find masks to be the path of least resistance, but the government is going to get fussy over seating, which, OK, the benefit to me has been seeing how much better it is with fewer benches and chairs. But I'd prefer that this come from our end and not because of coronavirus measures.

The Sunday obligation returns in this diocese at Pentecost, that is unless something happens between now and then to change that. As a Byzantine, I don't care much about Latin obligations and will go back to public worship when I feel it is safe to do so. I have been wearing masks since the pandemic started. Did it help? I don't know but it did me no harm other than fogging my glasses at inconvenient times.

To repeat myself - the Japanese were conditioned to wearing masks by the Spanish flu epidemic a century ago, and have accepted it as common courtesy to others at any respiratory infection ever since. Death rate per million from this virus : Japan 74 USA 1,723 . No proof of connection of course, could be conincidence.

CGZ - it won't work, three weeks is the absolute minimum. Our current lockdown started on the 3rd March, it is likely to be 5 weeks to achieve elimination of unexpected cases (the orange curve, the blue curve is cases in people already in quarantine and under observation)

I am going to Mars. Contacting Mr. Musk tomorrow.

Francis -
I hear it's really hard to find a Mass on Mars.

Madame,
Francis will be taking along his own priest, who always travels with a proper Mass/Sacrament kit.

By the way, their detention is quite serious; there's no real equivalent in Anglo-American law; either you have to cough something up and charge, or you have to give them up. In any case, it signals the government's intention to charge you or at least to continue pursuing you as a person of interest in order to charge you.