As was totally predictable, some people have been scoffing at the drastic regulations to control the COVID-19 contagion, because scoffage is fun.  There is a special breed of human who looks at rules like they’re the gates in a giant slalom racecourse, put there just to challenge your skill in avoiding them and provide entertainment in the process.

By now, though, some 4,000 blithe spirits across Italy have been fined for not staying at home — and more to the point, they left home to do things they’re totally not justified in doing.  Somehow, meeting up with ten of your friends in the countryside in an old abandoned shed to drink beer doesn’t fall into any of the three approved categories for being out of your house (Work? Medical/health?  Necessity?  Or did they claim to qualify in all three?)  Four members of a family in town A went to town B outside of their province to join the birthday party of their two-year-old relative.  Cue the Carabinieri.  People with holiday houses in the mountains are thinking of escaping there?  Not a chance.  A walk on the beach?  The mayor of Jesolo is imploring people not to be seduced by a sunny weekend.  Because Carabinieri.  Because virus.  Because just stay at home.

All this — the subject of skipping a rule you don’t like or understand or want to bother with or forgot  — brings us to don Riccardo Zanchin, the parish priest of the church of Santi Vito e Modesto in Spinea, a nearby town; Spinea is also the legal residence of Luigi Brugnaro, the mayor of Venice.  A town where you might think that the art of obeying governmental edicts would be more advanced than elsewhere, but actually, no.

Among the earliest bans affecting normal life was on public funerals; that was back when we could still be shocked.  The rule was that only the closest family members would be allowed to attend, without the usual mass.  Subsequent edicts on March 8 and March 11 intensified the ban, up to the one forbidding all religious services.  No weddings, funerals, baptisms, First Communions, Stations of the Cross, reciting the rosary — nothing.  Anything that involved more than two or three people was prohibited.  But when one of don Riccardo’s parishioners passed away, the family inquired about a funeral, and he said “Fine.”  Here is where things begin to get murky.

Don Riccardo doesn’t appear to belong to the sub-group of priests who like to protest (not to be confused with Protestants).  There was one priest the other day who was nabbed for conducting some ceremony, and his clarion call to disobedience was reported as “God is my boss,” and God requires him to continue his sacramental duties.  That would be fine in a world where extremely contagious diseases didn’t exist, but as God’s vice-boss observed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “The flesh is weak,” and people are getting sick.  I imagine that God’s vice-vice-boss, pro tem, a/k/a the bishop, had something short and sharp to tell him about all this.

Back to don Riccardo, who says that he hadn’t received any instructions to the contrary from the diocese (blame the bishop?  Not a good move).  Therefore he was all set to conduct a funeral Thursday afternoon of a 93-year-old parishioner.  Family?  Check.  Mortal remains?  Check.  Hearse and funeral director?  Check.  Another funeral director?  Excuse me?

Alessandro Gardi was the funeral director whose company had undertaken the work and had already loaded the coffin into the hearse.  But at that moment who should be driving past but Manuel Piasenti, director of another funeral home.  He saw what looked like a funeral drawing to a close, stopped his car, and called the Carabinieri.

“It isn’t possible to celebrate funerals,” Piasenti explains, “it’s a lack of respect toward the families and also toward other funeral homes that, respecting the regulations, aren’t working.”  I’d interpret that as meaning especially a lack of respect to other funeral homes, such as his, just to take an example at random.  What I don’t understand is his assertion that funeral homes aren’t working — that doesn’t seem to fall into any prohibited category of permitted work, and their services are, sadly, clearly required these days.  I suspect Something Else is going on here; for all I know it might have been something that happened when they were in second grade.

The Carabinieri come and discover that the situation has become a little heated.  The family members are furious with Gardi, the first funeral director, because evidently they blame him for getting them into this mess.  Gardi’s mad at Piasenti because “He blocked the hearse with his car,” Gardi stated, “and the people who were going to the cemetery.”  That’s an audacious move.  Everybody had something to say, and I’m guessing they were all saying them at the same time, and in a way that attracted the attention of the neighbors.

“I never blocked anybody,” Piasenti rebutted, “I was only waiting” (in a blocking position?) “for the arrival of the officers.”  And so it went until the Carabinieri had taken everybody’s testimony and found all three contenders guilty of something.

Don Riccardo had broken the decrees banning religious ceremonies, which in point of fact had not been issued by the bishop, but by a commission headed by the Prime Minister of Italy, so the good priest was probably a bit mistaken in thinking the bishop had the final word on this.

Mr. Gardi had also flouted the decrees, though he defended himself by saying “It wasn’t a funeral, it was a strictly private ceremony.  There were only eight people, all of them four or five meters apart.  We spoke to the priest and he said that he hadn’t received any opposition from the diocese for the celebration of that funeral rite, so we proceeded.”  Noted, but he still broke the rules.

Mr. Piasenti got two fines: One was for being out in his car even though he wasn’t going to work (one of the three reasons that justify your being out of your house; it was stopping in front of the church that gave him away), and the other because he had no authority to use his car to stop a funeral procession.  Well, neither does anybody, probably, except the firemen.

So in the end, everybody was unhappy, including the grieving relatives.  That flash of euphoria Mr. Piasenti enjoyed by reporting his competitor to the police was so sweet, but so brief.

So let’s review:  Stay at home.  In the end, it makes life simpler for everybody.