While maintaining the suspension of the obligation to attend Sunday Mass, the state’s bishops “are united in our conviction that we can safely resume public Masses in accordance with both our religious duties and with accepted public health and safety standards,” they said in a letter to Gov. Tim Walz. “It is now permissible for an unspecified number of people to go to shopping malls and enter stores, so long as no more than 50 percent of the occupancy capacity is reached … An order that sweeps so broadly that it prohibits, for example, a gathering of 11 people in a Cathedral with a seating capacity of several thousand defies reason.”