Post-Pandemic Prudence
Almost a year ago, just prior to the lockdowns which were imposed upon much of the United States, a pathogen of largely unknown virulence arrived on these shores. In those days, faced with so many questions regarding the lethality and transmissibility of the novel coronavirus, it seemed prudent to both civil and ecclesiastical authorities to limit public gatherings. This has been done throughout the centuries, from the days of Justinian to Charles Borromeo. Every pandemic, historically speaking, summons the typical players in a crisis: the courageous, the banal, the disinterested, the fearful and the profiteer. All these people have appeared once again as this drama has played out. One year ago, I urged prudence in the panic, because prudence is a virtue applicable to every time and place. Prudence in the classical definition is “right reason in action”, or the “virtue that disposes practical reason to discern our true good in every circumstance, and the right means of achieving it”, as St. Thomas reminds us. Prudence seemed to suggest, due to so many unknowns, that the best course of action was to suspend the obligation to attend Sunday Mass, and so protect wider society. Although the obligation to worship God is of divine precept, the particulars of how that command is to be fulfilled has always been at the discretion of the Church, since we have been reminded by even Christ himself that “the Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27), and Our Lord made clear that the Third Commandment was not of such a nature as to demand a rigoristic interpretation. Hence, he reminded the Jews of his day that even they led their animals to feed (and hence worked) on the Sabbath. We have always admitted of extenuating circumstances which excuse from the obligation, such as physical or moral impossibility, illness, care of family, and other legitimate excuses.
The decreasing threat
We were told in those confusing times last year that we had “fourteen days to flatten the curve”. We have failed, but world governments are still trying. At this time, 1/5th of the United States population has received at least one dose of the vaccines being administered. If we take at face value further assertions like those of Dr. Marty Makary from Johns Hopkins, as well as the official data compiled by the various health agencies across the world, it seems clear that the end of the COVID-19 epidemic is largely in sight, at least in those places where the vaccine is readily available. If we add to this the further confirmation that Masses are “extremely safe” when done with CDC guidelines in mind, it seems like the level of danger assumed in attending Mass is at an all-time pandemic low.
It belongs to the virtue of prudence to adjudicate between competing goods. Granted that Our Lord and our theological principles derived from the Deposit of Faith give the Church ‘wiggle room’ in regard to the Third Commandment, it once seemed that the competing good of safeguarding health and human life was under grave enough of a threat that, in the minds of a goodly number, it was prudent to suspend the obligation to attend Sunday Mass. The bar set for that argument is now the lowest it has ever been; we know now that the vast majority of people who contract COVID-19 do not die or become seriously ill. We know that a significantly underreported portion of the general population had the sickness but were never tested. We know that casual, short contact is not likely to spread the virus. We know how to treat existing cases better, producing better outcomes. Yet one thing is increasingly clear: there is no vaccine to be had against fear, once it sinks into the mind. Now is the time for the Church to exorcise her fear.
Seeking understanding, a path to action
It may be helpful, generally speaking, not to speak in this instance of “the Church” as a global institution or mystical reality, but rather of “the Churches”, because the response of the Church and her leadership can largely be analyzed and evaluated by sociological and demographic metrics, and those vary greatly across the world. There are two factors that we can readily identify: the average age of the local Church in question, and a related psychological dynamic, which is the risk appetite of the local population. Where the average age is high, and the risk appetite is low, lockdowns are strongest. Conversely, where the average age is low, and the risk appetite is average to high, lockdowns are not done. It is well known that older populations tend to take less risks. That is a fact based upon a biological realities: old age is a sort of return to childhood, with an accompanying fear of vulnerability and the loss of independence. The interplay of the biological and psychological dynamics I think can be largely seen in the hugely disparate approaches to the virus which the United States has seen. Texas and Mississippi have largely returned to normal. New York and California have not. There is another aspect of the issue here which also deserves attention; namely, whether a person or population has higher levels of a sense of social or individual responsibility. Those who identify as liberal typically self-report a greater instinctive sense of social responsibility. It may occur to them that the most productive way to deal with a common problem is to address what “we do” rather than what “I must do”, which is the typical approach of those who self-report as conservative. This may help explain why liberals and conservatives, with equal conviction, may be convinced that their approach to the problem is morally and practically necessary. As Catholics, our response to such a duality is our usual “both/and” analysis. We must synthesize both approaches in order to produce an harmonious and effective outcome.
While understanding why people may have different goodwill approaches to the pandemic may help us to understand how to reason and communicate together, several problems remain. First, we have the problem of political, economic and social profiteering, as happens in every crisis. These are not the goodwill actors of whom I spoke before, but individuals who seek in both public and private to utilize the pandemic as a smokescreen for social engineering. Second, we have the problem of disinformation. This is a period of severe distrust of traditional leaders and of the media. This distrust, unfortunately, has been earned. And while our elites may decry the fact that we do not trust them or what they say, their solutions more often resemble an inquisitor purging a heretic from society than a leader truly informing, inspiring and guiding the public. Today, more than ever, the veneer of the omniscience of medical science has been thoroughly wiped away, as our health ministers have changed their minds as frequently as they have changed their masks. To be fair, it can be argued that they were scrambling to develop actionable advice in the face of a deficit of empirical knowledge, but that is to neglect a crucial aspect of human nature: it is far easier for us to disown old ignorance than old certainties. Ignorance we can excuse, but things once held as certain, when proven untrue, often provoke contempt. There is always the risk of causing fear when a professional says regarding a danger, “we do not know”. Yet was the risk of causing panic worth the risk of undermining the public’s perception of their expertise? That issue will continue to unfold in the coming months.
Rising to the challenge
As for now, the million dollar question is: what will the Churches do? Many, perhaps most, Senior Clergy who make policy are risk adverse by reason of age, fear, ideology, and institutional inertia. As a result, we are beset with paralysis: if the Bishops call the people back to Mass, our critics will say that we are contributing to people’s deaths. If we do not call the people back to Mass, we run the risk of having over a year in which the least-lethal pandemic in human history has caused the most precipitous decline in the practice of the faith in a generation. Being a leader means that you cannot please everyone. To be a Christian leader means to know how to please Christ, and how to lead others to please him. In short, the argument that it is necessary for the sake of health and human life to forsake the assembling of ourselves together grows weaker day by day. The need for God and for human contact grows ever stronger.
It seems that Post-Pandemic Prudence consists now in recognizing the fact that the danger of the pandemic in many places is at a record low, and is nearing its minimum. Not only ought the Churches to open, they ought to open with gusto, in keeping with the joyful triumph of the Easter season. While people may continue to disagree in good faith regarding the particulars of things like the efficacy or necessity of mask-wearing and the spacing of the faithful in pews, these would be to distract from the bigger picture.
I believe that Bishops and their Priests would do well if, on Easter Day, they included in their homilies a robust defense of Easter Sunday and the Resurrection as the foundation for the faith and hope of Christians, as well as being the primary and perennial motivation for Christians to gather for the Eucharistic Sacrifice on that day weekly. Emphasizing this would inject much-needed hope into the hearts and minds of our people, and also be a clear proclamation of faith from our clergy that the observation of the Christian Sabbath by the attendance of Holy Mass is a constitutive part of who we are. It is hard to say that a Christian truly honors Easter Sunday if they dishonor every other Sunday of the year by apathy and negligence. It is even harder to say that of our clergy. Fear, save that of God and his commandments, is foreign to the heart of a Christian. We knew that one day this pandemic, like all dark times, would one day pass. The time has come to regain our footing, with the words of our ancient ancestors: sine dominico non possumus! Without Sunday, we cannot live!
