Three Analyses of the Coronavirus Crisis

Can We Prohibit Religious Practice?

On her blog of September 26, 2020, Jeanne Smits reported the reflections of Bishop Thomas Paprocki, Bishop of Springfield, Illinois, United States, who has just published a philosophical study on the confinement imposed by the civil authorities to contain the spread of the coronavirus, in the September issue of the Catholic bioethics journal Ethics & Medics.

His reasoning is based on the distinction between extraordinary and ordinary means of saving human lives: “While it is true that some people can voluntarily adopt [extraordinary] means, only ordinary means which do not impose an undue burden are morally required to preserve life, both on the part of individuals and of society as a whole,” he says.

The American prelate thus applies moral principles - commonly used for clinical decision-making with respect to individuals - to society as a whole: “First, while we recognize that our human life is one of our greatest gifts, it is not a moral absolute and in fact is secondary to the eternal life of our immortal soul,” he wrote. While life is to be treated “with respect and reverence,” there are higher goods, as can be seen in “martyrdom, or attempting to save the life of another.”

Bishop Paprocki points out: “If we have a moral obligation to use every possible means, even extraordinary means, to preserve life, then we should not even get into our cars, since there is a risk that we could be killed, given the fact that over thirty-five thousand people have died nationwide [in the United States] in auto accidents every year since 1951.” Instead of outright banning automobile traffic, society has implemented certain safety devices to reduce the risk of accidents: these include seat belts and airbags.

“Similarly in the face of a pandemic, do we have a moral obliga­tion to shut down our society, require people to stay at home, put employees out of work, send businesses into bankruptcy, impair the food supply chain, and prevent worshippers from going to church?” asks Bishop Paprocki.

“I would say no. That would be imposing unduly burdensome and extraordinary means.”

Without addressing the question of whether citizens can refuse to comply with extraordinary means, he believes that “the Supreme Court of the United States was wrong” when it ruled that Gavin Newsom, the Democratic Governor of California, could apply an ordinance “that discriminated against houses of worship by placing numerical restrictions on public gatherings.”  

“Physical health is important, but the highest good is eternal life.” underlines Bishop Paprocki in his conclusion: “The free exercise of religion and access to the means of salvation established by Christ through the Church must have priority in the moral and legal order.” And he refers to the Gospel according to St. Matthew, where Christ affirms: “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna” (Mr. 10:28).

For a Return to Normal

In a letter entitled “Let us return to the Eucharist with joy!” and made public on September 12, 2020 on Vatican News, Cardinal Robert Sarah, Prefect of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, declares: “It is necessary and urgent to return to the normality of the Christian life. "

In this letter sent to the presidents of the Episcopal Conferences, the prelate reminds us that mass broadcasts online cannot replace the Eucharist.

“As soon as circumstances permit, however, it is necessary and urgent to return to the normality of Christian life, which has the church building as its home,” stated the Prefect, recalling that the Eucharist remains “the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; and at the same time it is the font from which all her power flows.”  If Christians have accepted this time of Eucharistic fasting, we must now come back to Christ “with increased desire” in order to evangelize.

Recognizing that the media have performed a great service during the pandemic, he recalls “no broadcast [of the Mass] is comparable to personal participation or can replace it.” Physical contact with Christ is “irreplaceable,” he insists, and these broadcasts even risk distancing the faithful from the “personal and intimate encounter with the incarnate God.”

The Guinean prelate points out the regrettable consequences that the prevention of the virus has had in liturgical matters: “due attention to hygiene and safety regulations cannot lead to the sterilization of gestures and rites,” he warns. And he asks the bishops to ensure that the “participation of the faithful in the celebration of the Eucharist is not reduced by public authorities to a gathering.” Civil authorities cannot legislate in liturgical matters, he recalls.

Facilitating the participation of the faithful should not lead to trying out “improvised ritual experiments,” he wrote, calling for respect for liturgical norms. He also recognizes that the faithful have “the right to receive the Body of Christ and to worship the Lord present in the Eucharist in the manner provided for, without limitations that go even beyond what is provided for by the norms of hygiene issued by public authorities or Bishops.”

A Clinically Extinct Pontificate

In an interview with the Vaticanist Aldo Maria Valli, published on his blog on September 14, 2020, historian Roberto de Mattei sees, among the unexpected effects of the crisis caused by the coronavirus, the end of Francis’ communication strategy.

Aldo Maria Valli: How do you see this year 2020, the year of the coronavirus?

Roberto de Mattei: As the year of a major turning point. Let us limit ourselves to one example: the Pope’s travels. All of Pope Francis’ trips have been suspended, from the trip to Argentina, where he was to meet the new President Alberto Fernandez, to the yet to be scheduled trip to Beijing to celebrate the agreement with the Chinese Communist regime. These trips have played a decisive role in the communications strategy of Pope Francis, who in seven years has made 31 of them to 49 different countries: trips with a strong symbolic significance, such as those made to the island of Lesbos, or to Abu Dhabi. During his travels, phrases that have gone down in history have been spoken, such as the famous “Who am I to judge?” [On the return from WYD 2013 in Rio, about homosexuals. Editor’s note] Today, the Pontifical Travel Office has even been closed, and no new papal trips are planned before 2022. On the other hand, St. Peter’s Square is empty, and neither the televised images of Pope Francis, nor his books and his interviews any longer attract public opinion. The coronavirus delivered the final blow to his pontificate, already in crisis. Whatever the origin of the virus, this was one of its main consequences. To use a metaphor, the pontificate of Francis seems to me clinically dead.

A.M.V. : However, on October 3, the Pope will publish his third encyclical, Fratelli tutti. Sulla fraternità e l´amicizia sociale, [All brothers, on Fraternity and Social Friendship] which is considered to be his programmatic document for facing the future world.

R. de M.: It is no coincidence that the Pope will go to Assisi to sign the document. This shows the importance of the symbolic context in which his messages are placed. I do not think, however, that this little trip is enough to get the encyclical off the ground with the media. In 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell and the bicentenary of the French Revolution, the theme of fraternity, or “solidarity,” was launched by the international left as the leitmotif of the years to come. Universal brotherhood, which is one of the principles of the 1789 Revolution, demands a unified world in which all barriers, geographic and cultural, fall. Today, on the contrary, the process of globalization and the dissolution of borders has been interrupted by the coronavirus, which has erected health barriers that are more rigid and impassable than the old historical-political borders. In this regard, too, the virus has proven to be a death blow to Pope Francis’ strategy.

A.M.V. : Do you believe in the existence of a “health dictatorship”?

R. de M.: We have to agree on the term “health dictatorship.” If we are referring to government imposition of masks, social distancing, or frequent hand washing, it does not seem to me that we can speak of “dictatorship,” but simple rules of caution used in all the epidemics of the past, even by the saints who did their best to heal the victims of the plague. If we refer instead to the imposition of rules on the Church, regarding the opening of buildings and the holding of religious ceremonies, it seems to me that the use of the term “dictatorship” is more than legitimate, because the state does not have the right to enter the ecclesiastical sphere, for example, by forcing the faithful to receive communion in their hands. It seems to me, however, that often, more than imposition by the state, it is a question of the self-enslavement of ecclesiastical authorities to political authorities. Faced with these measures, which spread irreverence and sacrilege, the faithful Catholic has the right and the duty of conscientious objection, while he is bound to respect the laws of the State whenever they do not directly transgress the divine law, natural, or ecclesiastical.