Covid: Truly religious people should stick to the lockdown rules not flout them to go to church like Jacob Rees-Mogg – Helen Martin

Hospitality, restaurants and pubs were the first to resist against shut-down and back then they worked hard and believed that they could protect people with safe distance, screens and hours of sanitising.

Jacob Rees-Mogg breached Covid restrictions to go to a church in Glastonbury, which was under a tier-4 lockdown (Picture: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Now the new strain and a variant from South Africa have made the virus so much more transmissible, lockdown has increased. We need access to essentials such as supermarkets and food shops, pharmacies, GPs, vets etc, but even schools are complex to be dealt with and non-essential travelling is banned.

This time complaints from several people about lockdown on churches and worshipping venues are even more shocking.

You can pray at home, sing hymns at home, and take part in Mass and Sunday worship online. You can’t have Holy Communion but God’s not going to be angry about that.

Any religion from Catholicism to Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Buddhism or anything else involves caring for others, which in this case often means not gathering together and rather staying at home. I would hope a priest, minister, rabbi or imam would advise their congregations.

Not surprisingly one rebellious, arrogant character dismissed the rules. Jacob Rees-Mogg left his house in Tier 3 to attend a Latin Mass in a Glastonbury church in Tier 4 where locals were permitted to attend but not those from another tier.

He counts himself as a devout Catholic, obviously with a preference for Latin. I’m a lapsed Catholic, but if he’s infected anyone or infected himself and passed it on to others, I hope he goes to Confession.

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