As the
Church enters a Triduum where a great majority of the faithful lack
public access to the sacraments, I’d like to offer some reflections that
stand in sharp contrast to those currently being promoted by the editor
of First Things, my friend Rusty Reno,
regarding the current pandemic, civic responsibility, and access to the
sacraments. In fact, I take his views to be rather misguided, though
well-intentioned, and am grateful for his magnanimity in inviting me to
offer an alternative position. I realize the issues are fraught, and
anyone’s view is necessarily subject to a fair amount of fallible
prudential judgment. I hope, however, to at least ground my arguments in
both Catholic principles and a realistic assessment of our current
situation, so as to develop what I think are measured and appropriate
positions.
On the Civic Response of Quarantine Measures
My first claim is based on a basic given of natural law. The state has a
fundamental obligation to protect human life, especially when it is
gravely threatened. This obligation is compounded in a time of epidemic
if there is a danger of a generalized collapse of the medical system
through a rapid and overwhelming influx of new cases of a deadly
disease, which COVID-19 certainly is. In a context where the medical
system breaks down, deaths from the disease multiply and many other
maladies cannot be safely treated. The state, then, has a moral
obligation to seek to halt or slow the spread of the disease. In
requesting a thoroughgoing but temporary quarantine, governments across
the world are following both traditional, time-tested procedure and
proven scientific advice. In doing so they are acting in accord with
human inclinations to protect life that are both basic and intrinsically
good, even ineradicably so, despite the effects of sin on political
organizations. Civic governments are wounded by sin, but not radically
depraved. They can still pursue and uphold basic natural goods, as they
are seeking to do in this case.
Furthermore, because temporary (two to three months) quarantine
measures are the essential key to stemming transmission rates so that
societies can learn to deal with this illness more competently,
quarantine is also a necessary first step in the restoration of public
economic well-being and civic freedoms. Opposing the two (health vs.
civic flourishing) is scientifically unrealistic and ethically
irresponsible.
The Catholic perspective on the common good and solidarity can and
should naturally align with the act of public reason requiring temporary
quarantine, not protest it in the name of a misbegotten exaggerated
libertarianism. It is true that Christians can and should maintain
measured reserve regarding political regimes and the state, especially
when they illegitimately ignore the moral obligations of natural law or
encroach upon arenas of religious freedom. But Christians should also be
on guard against exaggerated individualism, magical thinking that
ignores scientific evidence, and religiously rationalized narcissism.
Protesting quarantine because it disrupts one’s lifestyle choices can be
a sign of displaced individualism, denial of reality, and bourgeois
entitlement. Furthermore, it is obvious at this time that the national
community must agree on measures of public health as a precursor to
resolving larger political and religious disagreements. Here Christians
should exhibit a sense of solidarity in pursuing the common good, and
foster a sense of greater empathy for those who are especially
vulnerable: the elderly, those with pre-existing medical conditions,
people with disabilities, and the poor who frequently have a lower
quality of health, to say nothing of the young and ordinarily healthy
people who are also dying from this disease. To cause division on the
fundamental good of protecting human life during a pandemic by way of
moderate quarantine measures seems to belie these efforts.
Sacraments in an Era of Pandemic
The first thing to be said about the suspension of public masses is
that it is not innovative nor is there any evidence that it stems from
undue influence of a secular mentality. In fact, there is clear evidence
that in medieval and modern Europe, as well as in the U.S., this form
of response on the part of the Church is a very traditional and
time-tested one. St. Charles Borromeo has been mentioned much in these
discussions. He closed the churches of Milan due to a plague in
1576–77. During this time, he arranged for masses to be celebrated
outside and at street intersections so that people could watch from
their windows. There wasn’t any question of distributing communion since
it would have been rather unusual in this period for most people to
receive regularly at mass. This lasted about two years. There are many
other medieval and early modern examples that could be cited, but much
more recently, in 1918, the churches in many parts of the United States
closed for public worship during the Spanish Flu. In New Orleans (hardly
a Protestant city) the city ordered that churches had to close, which
did prompt some outcry from Catholic pastors who said that this had not
been done during earlier epidemics. They were in error. Old moral
theology manuals classically indicate that one of the reasons a priest
can celebrate mass privately without a server is due to plague, which
shows that earlier moralists understood that priests might not be able
to celebrate publicly during such times. The bottom line is that the
Catholic Church generally did whatever was reasonable to prevent the
spread of disease and to comply with rational city ordinances. It chafed
a little and pushed back against things that seemed unreasonable, but
when it needed to suspend gatherings for mass, it did so. By contrast,
in 1918 some Christian Scientists in the U.S. refused to close churches
based on the premise of their spiritual superiority, and argued that if
they were pious enough, the gathering would not be affected by the
illness, nor would they transmit it to others. Here nature is replaced
by an appeal to permanent miracle, and common sense and natural reason
have given way to vain spiritual presumption. This is what good
old-fashioned theology calls a heresy.
Secondly, it is in fact seriously unethical to attribute to the
leaders of the Catholic Church the principal intention of selfishly
trying to protect themselves from getting sick. (The technical word here
is “calumny.”) Bishops and priests do have the right to try to avoid
getting sick, as a matter of fact, and it is a natural right that cannot
be denied to them even if one disagrees with their prudential
decisions. More to the point, they also can infect older members of
their communities who will be likely to die. (As I write this, two older
Dominican priests I know have died from the virus this past week, and
dozens of others are struggling with the illness. I wonder how many of
my confreres will have to die before critics will concede that it is
reasonable for younger priests who live in rectories with them to take
serious precautions?) But this set of concerns, while legitimate, is in
fact secondary. The primary issue the bishops are concerned with is the
protection of others. This virus spreads through social contact, purely
and simply. Often those who have it are asymptomatic and can transmit it
even when they think they are healthy enough to say mass or attend
mass. If priests have public masses, and then they visit anyone who is
older than 50, or if they visit the sick and then say public masses,
they will help spread the illness both indirectly (by gathering people
together) and directly (by becoming transmitters). Under these
conditions the temporary suspension of public masses is not only
reasonable, but strongly morally defensible.
This is the case even when there are also priests who decide to
heroically expose themselves to the illness for the sake of others and
their spiritual care. In the Catholic tradition, the practice of heroic
virtue on the part of priests and religious is not mandated but should
be invited and lauded. Even here, however, one has to be reasonably
prudent. It is one thing to make a martyr of one’s self, and another
thing to eradicate a nursing home in the process. In a case like this,
priests may only minister to those who are infected if they themselves
are taking sufficient precautions not to infect others, which requires
some kind of ongoing quarantine for the duration of the crisis (at least
in its most acute phase). This is precisely the practice that has been
undertaken in my own Dominican province (and I’ve heard of other such
cases in both Italy and the U.S.), where members of the province living
under quarantine apart from others are ministering to the sick. The
decision is not a trivial one. At least one priest I know has already
contracted the illness and recovered, but is back again serving at the
hospital. In Italy, meanwhile, the fact that the churches are not having
public masses allows for the priests to visit the sick either at home
or in the hospital. In doing so, many of them have contracted the
illness and some of them have died as a result. What this approach
prevents is priests spreading the illness either to healthy laity or
other priests, who in turn may die from it.
In saying this I am presuming that some essential services can and
should be made available to the laity, such as keeping churches open for
public prayer or Eucharistic adoration with spatial distancing.
Churches should be able to provide confessions in safe circumstances,
facilitate anointings, and carry out private marriage ceremonies and
baptisms, all under the guidance of due prudence. I'm also presuming
that the measures enacted by the bishops are temporary, as clearly they
are intended to be. A worldwide pandemic of this nature is not an
ordinary event, and thus leads to many uncertainties in the short and
long term. That the Church should suspend public masses temporarily is
defensible as the most reasonable course of action given the novel and
unpredictable nature of the illness. It is objectively the best course
in such circumstances to err on the side of safety in the protection of
life. This gives one time to re-evaluate. Once the quarantine reaches
some initial degree of success, standards of practice will evolve and
there will be questions of how to safely re-engage public sacramental
practices while minimizing public risks. This is not
bourgeois reasoning. It is prudential public responsibility.
What is Our Current Task? Hope, Interiority, Christian Empathy
We might ask, what should we be doing as a Church in this time, one
that is extremely trying for a great number of people, both religious
and non-religious alike? Currently around 1800 to 2000 people are dying
in the U.S. daily from this virus, the vast majority of whom would not
have died if it had not broken out three months ago. These are not mere
statistics. These are people’s parents, brothers and sisters, children,
friends, and loved ones. The medical staff of our country are currently
experiencing the greatest medical crisis in generations, and it is
costing them a tremendous amount spiritually and physically. In Italy
over 100 physicians and 20 nurses have died from the illness in just two
months. Something similar is to be expected in the U.S. and is already
happening across much of Europe. These people go to work every day
knowing that they might die, and along with janitors, grocery store
clerks, and public transport personnel, they are risking their lives for
others. Currently priests like myself are being contacted daily by
people struggling with the illness or with the death of loved ones. We
are living in a time that is deeply troubling for many of our fellow
human beings.
In this context the instinctual move of some conservative Christian
commentators to practice social criticism while fomenting division among
priests, bishops, and laity is spiritually corrosive. (What does it do
to a priest’s soul, by the way, when we incite him to break the vow he
made to God to obey his bishop?) Nor is it helpful to utter the
tone-deaf claim that the COVID-19 pandemic is not so bad and that people
are overreacting. People are not overreacting when they grieve as their
patients, friends, or family members die by the thousands. In fact, the
Christian message in this context is one of basic evangelical hope.
What we are to learn first in this crisis is that there is life after
death, that God loves those who die, that there is the possibility of
the forgiveness of sins, that our littleness in the face of death is
also an opportunity for surrender, that Christ too died alone from
asphyxiation and that he was raised from the dead, that God can comfort
the fearful, and that there is a promise of eternal life. In the face of
death, Christians should be precisely those who put first things
first.
Second, Christians ought to treat this pandemic as an opportunity to
learn more about God. What does it mean that God has permitted (or
willed) temporary conditions in which our elite lifestyle of
international travel is grounded, our consumption is cut to a minimum,
our days are occupied with basic responsibilities toward our families
and immediate communities, our resources and economic hopes are reduced,
and we are made more dependent upon one another? What does it mean that
our nation-states suddenly seem less potent and our armies are infected
by an invisible contagion they cannot eradicate, and that the most
technologically advanced countries face the humility of their limits?
Our powerful economies are suddenly enfeebled, and our future more
uncertain. Priests and bishops are confronted with a new obligation to
seek interiority over activism as their sacramental ministry is rendered
less potent, and laypeople have to find God outside the sacraments in
their own interior lives, discovering new ways to be grateful for what
they have rather than disdainful in the face of what they lack. We might
think none of this tells us anything about ourselves, or about God’s
compassion and justice. But if we simply seek to pass through all this
in hasty expectation of a return to normal, perhaps we are missing the
fundamental point of the exercise.
Finally, what can Christians do to console both their religious and
secular neighbors? What about the people heroically risking their own
lives to serve others at this time, or those who are ill and afraid,
especially those who do not have a religious recourse or perspective?
What about those grieving, or those who are isolated? How can we be
creative in our hope and empathy? Bishops, priests, and laity alike
should work together in the coming months to discern how we can safely
return progressively to the public celebration of sacraments, and have
interim steps of public worship in limited ways. But we should also be
thinking about how to communicate Christian hope and basic human
friendship and compassion to people who suffer, in our words and
gestures, both individually and collectively. The life of the heart is
as real as the life of the mind, and in our current moment, for however
long it should last, charity is itself the most basic prophetic
activity. “By this they will know that you are my disciples, if you love
one another” (John 13:35). I’m citing him because in this and in every
other case, his authority comes first.
Thomas Joseph White, O.P., is director of the Thomistic Institute in Rome.