1. Churches are allowed to hold regular meetings outside. There is no restriction on the length, size or frequency of these meetings, however, they have social distancing and masking of everyone who doesn't have a talking role. Therefore, the priest and a lector can be without a mask. The State appears to want to keep these restrictions the same as what they have done for protests.
2. There is no limit on the numbers of attendees of outdoor gatherings.
3. The parishes of the Diocese abide by the guidelines of the State's four tier system. At present all counties of the Diocese are in tier 1, the purple tier. However, in the past we had counties in all four of the tiers, thus the rules could have been different in different counties. For instance, if someone had attended a daily Mass in Santa Rosa, it would have been outside since that county was in the purple the entire time. That person could then have gone to Eureka for a weekend get-away and then been allowed to enter the church and sit down in a pew during an indoor Mass. The Church would have been at a reduced capacity depending on what tier they were in at that time.
4. Four of our counties are in the Northern California region and two are in the Bay Area region. So the new order based on ICU bed percentages could end up meaning that part of the Diocese falls under the new order while the other part does not. Or the whole Diocese could wind up under the order. The new order does not change anything for religious organizations. It permits religious outdoor gatherings with masking and social distancing.
5. The plan for what we do is dictated to the Diocese by the Health Officer of the State of California. We have agreed to abide by their decisions to help end this pandemic.