Trent is back from Australia with an update on how the coronavirus affected his travel. He then weighs in on the debate over whether churches should close in order to curb the spread of this pandemic.
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Welcome to The Counsel of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
I had a plan. I was going to come back from Australia, enjoy some free time with my family, and you all were going to enjoy a delightful, prerecorded interview about C. S. Lewis with my friend David Bates, but unfortunately, a stupid little virus from Wuhan, China, has to come over here and ruined everything. Maybe that’s what you’re thinking. Maybe you had plans, things that you were hoping to do or you wanted to just get through life through the normal course of events knowing that you could go to the store and get toilet paper and it was going to be there, maybe you had these plans too, and that stupid little virus came over here and went and ruined everything. So let’s talk about it.
Welcome to The Counsel of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Actually, this is part one of a two part episode. In this episode, I want to talk about the Coronavirus situation as a whole and then offer some principles from our faith for how we should respond to it. And in particular, I want to talk about some attitudes that I’ve seen from Catholics that are actually not very helpful and some principles we should not endorse in the face of this crisis that we’re facing right now. So that’s part one.
Part two, on Thursday, cross your fingers, I’m going to have some special guests come into the studio, Jackie and Bobby Angel, wonderful friends of mine. Jackie is involved with music ministry. Bobby routinely speaks at Pro-Life conferences, is a teacher at a Catholic high school up here in Anaheim, California. If they can escape the Los Angeles lockdown, you hear about places being under lockdown, when I think about that it reminds me of like, I don’t know, Demolition Man or Escape from New York with Kurt Russell, like it’s some apocalyptic war zone, but I think just what’s happening is that you can’t go to restaurants or bars anymore. At least that’s what’s happening up in LA. So the situation is rapidly unfolding, indeed.
I was hoping to have Jackie and Bobby, they’re going to come down because they have nothing else going on. Jackie is not doing any talks. Talks have been canceled. Bobby is not teaching at school. School has been canceled. So they were going to come down anyways, we had planned this a while ago to talk about probably topics related to theology of the body, but now I think we’re just going to have a special Counsel of Trent commiseration episode about life under quarantine and lockdown and how we as Catholic should respond to that. So the lockdown, panic buying situation, all of that, I’m going to discuss that more on Thursday’s episode.
Though I will say just as a brief follow-up so you know what’s been happening to me, I am glad I got out of Australia in the nick of time before everything really started to come about. When I was there speaking actually, I was in Epping, which is a neighborhood in North Sydney, doing a Pro-Life conference, and the conference was only about a third full. They had 250 guests registered for this conference, maybe not even a third, maybe only a quarter, there were probably only about 50 people there because, there might’ve been more than that, but certainly more than half were not there. And I know they canceled because they were afraid of Coronavirus, of COVID-19, and social gatherings, and with due cause, where we were having the conference because at the high school, at the Epping High School, just like a few blocks away from where the conference was, there were several cases of Coronavirus that had been detected at that school. The school has been under lockdown.
And so I was there in Australia and I was just doing my best to not get sick and get on the plane and get home and not get sick. And I will tell you this, at least on my international flights, so it’s 16 hours to Sydney, 14 hours back home from Sydney. I hate to say it, but I was grateful that the plane was pretty light on passengers. I mean, I had an empty seat next to me and an empty seat in front of me, which meant that there was nobody leaning their chair back.
On the way to Sydney, I had a guy sitting in the seat in front of me and he leaned his chair back and it’s only about, gosh, maybe 12 inches between the seat and my face when it’s fully lean back and I’m sitting upright. So I was grateful on the way back, the plane was actually lighter, but at least when I came into the country, customs was not overwhelmed, was able to get through that just fine. Now it seems like people trying to get into the country, especially from Europe, it’s like six or seven hours to get into the country.
I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve never seen anything like this, my parents have never seen anything like this, no one’s ever seen anything like this before, especially with the panic buying in stores, which I’m going to talk about on Thursday when I have the Angels come in. I love that Jackie and Bobby Angel, you can call them the Angels. Ladies, if you’re going to marry somebody with a surname, go with somebody who has Angel, I guess, I don’t know. But that of course will be many things we’ll talk about here on Thursday.
Today, let’s just talk about the issue of the virus and how we should respond to it as Catholic. Let’s do a summary and we’re just going to catch up with everything that’s going on, just see where we’re at right now. So most timelines put the beginning of this outbreak on New Year’s Eve, that’s when cases of pneumonia were detected in Wuhan, China, and they were reported to the World Health Organization. The cases were probably at the mid part of December and it was a day later when the Chinese health authorities closed down the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market where it was discovered that wild animals were being sold, that were probably the source of the virus.
Later, up through January 20th, there was a confirmed spread of the virus to Thailand, Japan and the first deaths in China. On January 7th, Chinese authorities confirmed they identified the virus as a Novel Coronavirus initially named 2019-nCoV by the World Health Organization, now we call it COVID-19. January 21st was the first case in Washington State. And a week later, the US reported the first case of person to person transmission. Over the next several weeks, World Health Organization names the virus COVID-19. Cruise ships are being quarantined. And in February 29th, 2020, state health official announced that a patient infected with a Novel Coronavirus in Washington State had died. That was the first death of the virus in the United States.
Fast forward a week, March 8th, the Italian Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, signed a decree placing travel restrictions throughout all of Italy. Then the next day on March 9th, he announced a lockdown to the whole country. And then several days later we had president Trump issuing his travel ban. And now other States are announcing lockdowns, Masses are being canceled, schools are being canceled. Here’s a situation where we’re at right now. And before I get into the situation, I guess I am not saying all this to try to drive panic or stoke fear, I think the things that we are most afraid of are the things that we don’t know. So the more ignorance we have, the more our imaginations can be filled with monsters, and so that’s something to be avoided.
Sometimes the facts are scary and we have to confront them, but living in ignorance isn’t always the best strategy either. Sometimes it’s helpful to have a sober look at reality and then formulate your response to what is going to happen. It’s funny, I was talking with my wife about all this and she was talking about her anxiety related to the shortages at grocery stores. And I told her, “You know what’s funny? I don’t have a lot of anxiety about that. I mean I’m concerned and I don’t want there to be shortages and I’m taking steps to make sure we don’t run out of basic supplies and to not engage in absurd hoarding or something like that.”
But I told my wife, I said, “I’m just one of those preppers and pessimists and worst-case scenario type people.” I mean, I think a year ago I did a podcast, it was a crossover with Catholic Answers Focus on how to prepare for disasters. And you know me, I’m obsessed with disasters. I’m all about preparing, having your emergency kits, having your contingency plans. And so, and I told my wife a while ago, “We need to have these plans.” She said, “Well, why?” I said, “Well, there could be a natural disaster, there could be social unrest.” And she said, “There’s not going to be social unrest, we live in America.” And yet here we go. You go to the store and basic supplies are not available when you’re there.
And so I think Laura said, “I’ve got anxiety,” and I said, “Probably because you didn’t countenance that this would ever actually really happen.” And she’s like, “Yeah, I’m glad you’re the one that over-prepared and was taking steps to counteract what’s going on here, or at least to have a plan to be able to respond.” Now, that being said, we should not turn into doomsday preppers who find all of our salvation simply in our one month freeze-dried storage bins of food.
I appreciate what my priest said at Divine Liturgy on Sunday, when in fact now after this last Sunday, all of the Masses in the Roman Catholic Diocese here in San Diego have shuttered. They’ve closed down. But at the last service we went to, it was great. He said, “Look, you’re going to die. I’m going to die. We’re all going to die. Life has a 100% mortality rate. So it’s important to be prudent in our actions, but we also can’t be obsessed with staying alive.
We have to also understand the ultimate goal in our lives, and when we do understand that ultimate goal of having union with God for all eternity in heaven, that gives us peace, knowing that whatever happens in this life, it is truly not the worst-case scenario. The worst-case scenario in life is to die apart from God for all eternity. And when you have taken steps and freely accepted God’s offer of salvation and not rejected it, well, then that worst-case scenario won’t come to pass. And if that worst-case scenario doesn’t happen, and you have a best-case scenario, we turn to life with God, then the trials we endure in this life are a pittance, they’re nothing compared to that.”
St. Paul talks about an eternal weight of glory, that he talks about the sufferings in this life are like a mild inconvenience in comparison to the eternal weight of glory that waits for us in the next life. So we always have to make sure we keep an eternal perspective on all of this. Now that being said, with that eternal perspective, it’s okay to look at the sober facts and see exactly what we’re dealing with.
The best data I had since March 15th is that globally there are 170,000 cases and 6,500 deaths. The majority of those being in, I think in Italy and in China, but there’s fear of the unknown. This virus transmits easier than the flu and it’s mortality rate appears to be 10 times higher than the flu. So along with being influenza, we also have to remember that if this virus is spreading, it’s not like the other viruses went on vacation while this virus took over, there’s other things to worry about getting sick during normal flu season that we’re already dealing with. So that’s why people are concerned about healthcare systems being overwhelmed and why authorities are really encouraging people to practice social distancing, which by the way, as an introvert, I have been championing social distancing for a long time. I’m surprised it’s catching on now. If we were all just listening to the introverts in the very beginning, everybody would be just fine.
So when I hear we’re going to practice social distancing, it’s like, “Oh no, how terrible. We’re going to have to give people personal space and make sure they don’t get overwhelmed in large groups.” So not to trivialize what’s happening of course, but there’s concerns. So how do we rank this? Last year about 35 million people got influenza in the United States, half a million were hospitalized, and about 34,000 people died of the flu. Now the concern, the worst-case scenario from the CDC is that the COVID-19 virus infects 160 million to 214 million people and could lead to as many as 200,000 to 1.7 million deaths, but we don’t know. Because it’s so new, we have to monitor the disease. And countries like China and South Korea that implemented social distancing and frankly other authoritarian measures to prevent movements of people, have seen decreases in new cases. So they may be breaking the virus and what they’re dealing with, and if we can do the same, that would be a very good thing.
How do we do that? And in particular, how do we do that as people of faith? We should never be ashamed to turn to God in prayer, to ask for reprieve from anything in life that we suffer from. Because God is our father in heaven. He loves us. He cares for us. 1 Peter chapter five says, “We can cast all of our anxieties on him because he cares for us.” We should always turn to God in prayer. And the highest form of prayer, of course, is the Mass. That’s where we can have union with God, receive him in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith. So seeing people having a natural desire to want to go to Mass or Divine Liturgy during this time, it makes perfect sense to me.
I remember after September 11th, the churches, they were full of people who were turning to God in time of crisis because you see, when you face your own mortality from some other kind of threat, whether it’s terrorist or a pandemic, whatever it may be, you remember what we say every year on Ash Wednesday, “Thou art dust and to dust, thou shall return.” So I think that’s a good thing, but the problem we face as Catholics is this, which is why people are closing churches, what if joining together in communal prayer at church and celebrating Mass exacerbates this disease, it spreads it and causes a risk to people, especially elderly and vulnerable populations?
Some reports say that among the elderly, among people over 80, this is a 15% mortality rate. It’s still very high mortality rate for people who are over 60, people who have compromised immune systems. What if getting together and going to Mass makes the problem worse? And so in doing so, we fail to love our neighbor as ourself? That is the rationale behind suspending Mass in many dioceses, not every diocese either in the United States or across the world or in affected places has suspended Mass, some diocese. I know the diocese in Tyler, Texas, the Bishop of Tyler, and the Bishop of Portland, Oregon, Archbishop Samples, they have continued celebrations of Mass. I know in Poland they’re doing more Masses so that people can practice social distancing and separate from one another.
In churches though, my friends, my wife’s friends told her that at their Latin churches that they go to, that it was only about a half or a third full already. Even though people had the ability to go to Mass here in San Diego on this previous Sunday, many people just chose not to avail themselves of that opportunity. And in other diocese, bishops are taking the precaution of just suspending the obligation to attend Mass. So they’re making Mass available but letting people know that you don’t have to go to Mass because you either, if you are sick, stay home. For the love of goodness, stay home. I have been saying that for years, people have been saying that for years, that you’re not doing anybody any favors if you are visibly sick and contagious and you go to Mass because God does not want you infecting other people, especially the elderly or small children at Mass or our priests themselves, we should not be infecting people just simply because we’re being careless and we’re disregarding their health.
There’s a variety of options people are choosing to respond to. Some people are continuing Mass under stringent protocols and other people are suspending Mass entirely. That’s happened here in San Diego, in New York, and a lot of other places both abroad and here in the United States. And so that raises the question then, as Catholic, should we close churches in response to the Coronavirus or in response to a pandemic in general? And my answer is, that is a prudential judgment that Catholics can reasonably disagree about and it depends on the situation.
In some cases I would say it’s patently obvious that churches should be closed. If all social gatherings of similar numbers have been closed, health experts say you should not have large numbers of people gathering for any reason in any circumstance, then I think it only makes sense that churches should follow suit. Now if you have a situation where not a lot of people have been infected or nobody’s been infected, you could make a prudential judgment saying we can safely continue the celebration of the Mass, we’re just going to have safeguards in place to try to prevent the spread of illness. Once again, it’s a prudential judgment that Catholics can reasonably disagree about, and I see the pros and cons on either side.
But all this still motivated me a few nights ago to publish a tweet that resonated with a lot of people. I wrote on social media, “Suspending Mass because of a pandemic shows prudence, not faithlessness. Charity demands we not unwittingly infect others and God gave us intellects to discover how to stop diseases. As the Bible says, “There is a time when success lies in the hands of physicians,” Sirach 38:13.” Now, as I said, people can reasonably disagree about this issue and because they can, we ought to avoid name-calling and slander and accusations against one another. So for example, I’m not going to say that people who make a reason decision to continue to celebrate Mass like they’re doing in Tyler, Texas, or Portland, Oregon, with safeguards, and it appears to be a prudential rational judgment they’re making, I’m not going to say they’re being reckless.
Much the same way, I don’t think people should say that bishops, especially in areas where the virus has been detected, where there are confirmed cases and there could be thousands of other unconfirmed cases we don’t know about because people can spread this virus without symptoms, we should not say that those bishops who are suspending Mass are being faithless. So don’t say the bishops who are celebrating Mass are reckless. If they’re not being reckless, don’t say the bishops that are suspending Mass are being faithless. What they’re trying to do is to safeguard the common good and protect everyone’s well-being and carry out Jesus’s command to love our neighbor as ourself. And if we love our neighbor, we’re not going to do things that are going to infect them when we could have taken reasonable steps not to cause them harm.
What I want to do now is I want to go through the responses I’ve received from that, that I’ll touch on. I think a lot of attitudes that people are having right now and the unease that they’re having and just try to work through this anxiety that everyone is dealing with. First, I want to make it clear, I don’t endorse just suspending all Masses without any consideration of the local situation at all. Mass is too important of a gift that God has given us to just carelessly stop celebrating publicly with other people. I mean, priests can and should still offer private Masses, especially with the intention of ending or stopping or slowing the spread of this disease. And I understand.
Here’s my concern about suspending the celebration of Mass. I’m concerned that people might get complacent and feel like, “Oh, I haven’t been to Mass in several weeks or a month, maybe I don’t really need to go. Who needs to go to Mass?” And they won’t return. Or people feeling like they have been abandoned by the church in a time when they’re feeling vulnerable and scared and we should have, the church should be there to help people when they’re feeling this way. So I am very sympathetic to the concerns that people have about suspending Mass. That’s why I believe the decision to do so should not be taken lightly. And if it is done so, other alternatives should be provided for people so they can still access the sacraments and still receive that care from the church.
For example, in San Diego, they’re making sure that private adoration chapels are open for individuals and very small groups of people to be able to go and adore our Lord and pray before the blessed sacrament, and I think if priests are not celebrating Mass and the churches, the employees, have called out sick and there’s really nothing to do, I think priests should make it clear, “Hey, I want to offer as much of the sacrament of confession as possible by appointment that you can just call the parish office and just set up, hey, scheduled appointments one after another.” I think priests can just do that right now. Because if the parish school is closed or the activities are closed, if people have nothing to do, I think priests should be able to offer both ministering to the sick, anointing the sick who have contracted this virus and offering the sacrament of confession by appointment to individuals as much as possible during this difficult time.
I’ve also heard of other churches who have live stream the Mass to people in parking lots, live streamed it on cell phones or maybe broadcast it on FM radio transmitters and then distributing communion in a way where people still practice their social distancing. And one other silver lining is I know people who have had very frank conversations with loved ones who are not religious or who’ve been away from the church for a long time about what to do if they die and about coming to terms with God and being reconciled with God and with the church. So sometimes it takes these calamities and these tragedies to bring a lot of people to faith, and we should pray for that to happen in the midst of these difficult circumstances. Once again to reaffirm, I think the decision to suspend Mass it can be justified, though the decision should not be made lightly. It should be done out of a concern for other people’s health and out of a duty of charity to love our neighbor as ourself.
Now that being said, let me address some of the arguments and opinions that I’ve heard online, both in response to my tweet and other common ones that I’ve seen and talk about how some of them may not actually be helpful and how we should respond to them. First, I’ve heard some people say we shouldn’t be concerned because if you go to Mass, you can’t get sick if you receive the Eucharist or the Eucharist can’t get you sick if you receive it. So you shouldn’t be worried about contamination in that way. But the miracle of the Eucharist, only changes the substance of the bread and wine into the substance of Christ body and blood. The accidents of bread and wine still remain.
That’s why people with celiac disease cannot receive a consecrated Eucharistic host because the accidents of wheat, the presence of the gluten accidents that we can perceive with our senses can still cause them to become sick. If you drink too much of the precious blood, you can become inebriated. So since those accidents remain, that means that a virus or a microscopic organism could be present on the Eucharistic host or on the chalice and somebody could become sick as a result of that. Consecrating the bread and wine does not make it some kind of miraculous remedy that prevents you from ever being sick or injured when you ingest it.
In fact, St. Thomas Aquinas said in the Summa Theologiae, he said, “If it be discovered that the wine that which has been consecrated at Mass has been poisoned, the priest should neither receive it nor administer it to others on any account, less the life-giving chalice become one of death, but it ought to be kept in a suitable vessel with the relics. And in order the sacrament may not remain incomplete, he ought to put other wine into the chalice, resume the Mass from the consecration of the blood and complete the sacrifice.” So St. Thomas Aquinas said, “Look, if you have wine that is poisoned and it’s consecrated at Mass, guess what? The poison still remains. The dangerous thing still remains in there. And if you give it to people, the life-giving chalice will become one of death.”
So the poisoned wine, you should put it in… we would put it in the sacristy or today we will wash it out with Holy water or pour it into the sacrarium which it doesn’t drain into the sewer, it drains into a Holy ground on the church itself. So that’s just not true. That the Eucharist can be a medium for the transmission of pathogens in spite of it being the precious body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s something that has to be taken into account when people make the decision to suspend celebrating Mass.
Some people said that if you close a church during this time, that means that you don’t have faith. Once again, I don’t understand that accusation. I mean, you could accuse someone of overreacting. I get that. That could be a valid accusation, a valid charge that could be made if Mass was suspended without good reason, but that doesn’t mean that the person doesn’t have faith because that assumes that a part of our faith is that God promised that if we celebrate Mass, people who attend will never get sick from diseases. But that’s just not true. The church has never promised that. Christ did not teach that. And so that doesn’t mean then that suspending Mass shows faithlessness because our faith does not teach that the Mass provides a miraculous cure or prevention of diseases.
So in times of prudence where celebrating public gatherings with large numbers of people could spread the transmission of a deadly pathogen and hurt our neighbor, then we should consider suspending Mass in those circumstances when it’s warranted. That’s once again, that’s not faithlessness, that is prudence, which is a virtue, a virtue that St. Thomas Aquinas writes about, the Cardinal virtue, the virtue where we use reason in order to achieve the good. All Holy people should be prudent people because Holy people are virtuous people, they practice all the virtues including the virtue of prudence.
Now earlier on some people said to me, “Well, why are we only closing churches if bars and restaurants aren’t being closed too?” And I would say treat them equally. So I would agree we should not suspend celebrating Mass if everybody else is going out to public gatherings with equal numbers of people, because then we’re overreacting at that point. But I think that if health authorities agree that a certain number of people gathered together provides a grave threat to others, and by temporarily suspending those gatherings, we can save lives and prevent people from being harmed from this disease, if you treat all public gatherings equally, both religious and nonreligious, then I think that makes a lot more sense.
And some of you will say, “Well, why doesn’t everyone just suspend the obligation to attend Mass?” And that is one option to consider, and that the benefit in that is people can still access the Eucharist and can still celebrate Mass, and so that is a benefit. But of course with every solution we offer, there are trade-offs. In the trade-off of suspending Mass, you are deprived of receiving the sacrament, people could become complacent, they may feel isolated from the church or the church has abandoned them. That’s a trade-off in suspending Mass. When you only suspend the obligation to attend Mass, you have the benefits of people being able to access the Eucharist, but you still have trade-offs there too.
One of the trade-offs is that people who are sick may still come. The stubborn people who say, “I know as long as I can get out of bed, I’m going to go to Mass.” Stubborn people, it takes only one stubborn infected person who goes to Mass to infect many other people. Even if you have safeguards in place, they could touch a door handle, they could touch the collection plate. It could still happen with that one stubborn sick person or a person who’s sick and is not showing symptoms. One thing people are concerned about when it comes to COVID-19 is that you can spread this disease for I think several weeks even if you’re not showing symptoms. And so that’s problematic. That if you suspend the obligation, only the obligation, you still may have sick people showing up to public gatherings and causing the disease to spread further.
Another attitude I’ve heard some people have said to me and to others, people say, “Well, what are you afraid of? Are you afraid of dying? Don’t you have faith?” No, I’m not afraid of dying. I mean, I would be super sad if I died because I wouldn’t be here. I think about this before, I had much of a less fear of death when I was single, and now that I’m married, because I have other little ones in my charge, my wife, who is a little one, a very diminutive cute little one that I love and my other little diminutive cute little ones that I love, my children. And so if I died, I wouldn’t be sad about death per se, it’s like what St. Paul says in his letter to the Philippians, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ or to be here and to serve you.”
So St. Paul had this dilemma, and his letter to the Philippians, he talked about how he wanted to be with Christ in heaven, but he also wanted to be here on earth to be able to serve others and lead them to Christ. And in my vocation as a father and as a husband, I am charged with leading my family to Christ. And if I depart from this life too early, I won’t be here to continue that mission and to lead them. So that would be the only thing that I’m scared of. That if I were to die, I wouldn’t be here to care for my loved ones and to continue to help them to get to heaven as well. I would still be able to help in the sense I would always be interceding for them and praying for them, but I wouldn’t be here in this mortal coil, in the flesh, to be able to assist them.
So no, I’m not afraid of dying. What I am afraid of is going out and getting sick and then becoming an unwitting transmitter of an infection to other people such as my elderly relatives who cannot get this disease because if they get this disease, they will probably die. I’m afraid of causing harm to other people. That’s what I am afraid of. And I think that because I have a duty of charity to others, that is a rational fear to undergo things like social distancing and even to offer up the sacrifice of not being able to celebrate Mass. I will see this as that if I am not able to attend Mass or the Divine Liturgy, then I will view that as, well, this is just something that I will have to offer up as a sacrifice out of love for my fellow man because I do not want to make them ill and I will offer up a spiritual communion instead, which I’ll talk about a little bit later here in the show.
Some people say, “I can’t believe the saints risked martyrdom to be able to receive the Eucharist and we’re not even willing to catch the cold.” No, I’m willing to catch the cold, I’m just not willing to give a very dangerous pathogen that is 10 times deadlier than the flu and is very dangerous to the elderly and vulnerable populations, I’m not willing to risk that for other people. When the saints risked martyrdom, they risked their own lives. They didn’t drag unwilling people with them in order to be martyred. So the difference would be like if I had to risk going to Mass because I thought like I lived in a gang neighborhood and people might shoot at me when I go to Mass, that’s a risk that, you know what? I’m willing to take. If they’re going to shoot at me because I am going to Mass and they want to murder me, I would pray that I would have the grace and the strength to be a witness to my faith. Say, “No, I am going to Mass as a witness to these people who want to try to stop me with violence.”
But if it’s just a virus that is out there that is not targeting me because of my faith, it’s just targeting me because I am a useful host organism, then the analogy would be more like driving the Mass even though I know the brakes on my car don’t work and I might run over people in the process. Well, no, in that case, I’m trying to avail myself with a sacrament and I’m unnecessarily risking the lives of other people and I shouldn’t do that. So when people try to make the analogy between receiving the Eucharist under martyrdom and receiving it in a pandemic, the analogy doesn’t work. That’s like trying to drive under persecution and drive in a broken car. One is a witness of faith to people who are trying to harm you because of your faith, the other could just involve behavior that unnecessarily puts other people at risk.
And similar to the argument from martyrs, some people say, “Well, what about the saints of the past or what about people like Pope Gregory the Great, who led a Eucharistic procession in Rome in 590 AD in order to combat the plague of his time? Why can’t we act just like them?” First, that specific story about Pope Gregory the Great, he did process the Eucharist in order to combat the plague of his time. Now, some of you will say that because he did that, he had a miraculous vision of the Archangel Michael and the plague stopped. First, the miraculous vision of the Archangel Michael and the plague stopping, that does not appear in the earliest historical sources about Gregory’s response to the plague, that is something that appears to have been added later by a medieval chronicler. So I’m skeptical that it actually happened.
But even if it did happen, even if by making a public procession of the Eucharist, God miraculously stopped the plague in Rome in 590, that doesn’t mean that that should be our only recourse today. Miracles are rare by their nature. Miracles aren’t things that happen that… The point of a miracle is that it’s not an effect that happens from a natural cause. So it’s not like we can say, “Okay, every time that we march in a procession, in a public procession, that will end up pandemic. If that were the case, then the effect of a pandemic ending would not be a miracle, it’d be some kind of natural cause that God had built into the universe.
The Baltimore catechism even says, this is very interesting. The Baltimore catechism says, “In all our devotions and religious practices, we must carefully guard against expecting God to perform miracles when natural causes may bring about what we hope for. God will sometimes miraculously help us, but as a rule only when all natural means have failed.” So in this case, God gave us minds to discover how to combat natural diseases like pandemics and our minds eventually discovered the ways to be able to do that. If you remember the podcast I did several months ago on, actually, it was just a few months ago on the 19th century, how people developed the germ theory of disease. It wasn’t until the 19th century that we correctly discovered the cause of many of these illnesses that they’re spread by germs. And so we discovered how proper hygiene techniques, how social distancing though they didn’t call it social distancing then, how all of these techniques like quarantines would be able to keep people from getting ill.
Now people used many of these techniques before. In fact, the word quarantine comes from the Italian word [foreign language 00:33:18], which is where people that had the plague, ships that had the plague or were suspected of having plague, had to be docked in the Harbor of Venice for a period of 40 days. And they don’t know why they picked the number 40, though it may have been for a biblical significance or because Lent is 40 days long. So originally it was [foreign language 00:33:36]. You had to wait 30 days. And then they said, “You know what? How about they [foreign language 00:33:40]?” And I apologize for the Italian listeners, you’re going through a lot right now and I really shouldn’t be butchering your accent on top of that. So they established the [foreign language 00:33:48], which now is where we get the word quarantine from.
And even a village in England in 1655 that was suffering from an outbreak of the plague, Eyam, it was a village there. The Anglican priest encouraged the entire town to self-quarantine and not flee the town. They put stone markers in a one mile circumference around the town and had food delivered to the town at these stone markers. And they had a well filled with vinegar so that you could purify coins that had been exchanged in order to prevent the plague from spreading beyond the boundaries of the town. And I think about one third of the town’s population died from the plague, but the actions, the priests told people, “Don’t flee. If you do, other people will get sick. And we as Christians have a duty to not infect other people.” And so he appealed to their Christian convictions. And this Anglican priest, William Mompesson of Eyam, England, Father William Mompesson, an Anglican priest, encouraged that kind of self-quarantine.
So we should absolutely pray for God’s assistance in every trial that we endure, but we should also appeal to practical remedies including those that we know now that saints and popes in the past were not aware of. And so we should seriously and strongly consider the advice from healthcare professionals if it turns out that one of the remedies that was offered in the past, like a public procession of a large number of people, may be antithetical to the ultimate goal of preventing a disease. Just because you may not choose to do a public procession of the Eucharist doesn’t mean you can’t have everybody praying a Novena in the privacy of their homes. Now some of you will say, “Well, that just shows you don’t have faith.” Well, no. Once again, God never promised that if we gathered in large numbers of people and we gathered and processed with the Eucharist that we wouldn’t get sick.
Maybe God miraculously helped people to not get sick in the past who did that, maybe, but that doesn’t mean he will always do that. Once again as the Baltimore catechism says, “We should appeal to natural causes and seek natural remedies to problems we have before hoping for the miraculous to intervene.” Because remember, God gave us rational minds to discover how to understand the world and how to apply that understanding in the sciences, which includes the science of medicine. Go read the 38th chapter of the book of Sirach. It has a wonderful discourse about the relationship between faith and medicine.
So Sirach chapter 38, here’s what it says in part, “Honor the physician with the honor due him, according to your need of him, for the Lord created him; for healing comes from the Most High, and he will receive a gift from the king. The skill of the physician lifts up his head, and in the presence of great men he is admired. The Lord created medicines from the earth, and a sensible man will not despise them. Was not water made sweet with a tree in order that his power might be known? And he gave skill to men that he might be glorified in his marvelous works. By them he heals and takes away pain; the pharmacist makes of them a compound. His works will never be finished; and from him health is upon the face of the earth.” So you can see that even in biblical times we see that people of God sought out natural remedies that the Lord inspired them to do through the rational minds he gave them. And this continued all the way even through into the medieval period.
During the black plague in the 14th century, you’ll remember this if you listened to my old Free For All Friday where I talked about the black death a while ago, I talked about how Clement VI during the black death, he made calls for prayer, but he also consulted doctors, Guy de Chauliac. Guy de Chauliac, his most trusted physician. He’s been called now the Father of Modern Surgery. He did early rudimentary autopsies to understand the human body. And so Pope Clement VI sought his advice, he sought advice from astronomers who believed that the stars could affect things on earth, that maybe the alignment of planets was causing the plague that was happening. He tried to seek out the natural causes and the doctors and scientists of his time told him, “Well, you need to purify the air. The air is making people sick. So stay inside and stay between two bonfires and you should be able to stay well.”
And if you remember my episode on germ theory, that’s the miasma theory. It was popular all the way up into the 19th century until the germ theory overtook it. That it’s not the air that makes you sick, it’s the microorganisms in the air that make you sick. But for Pope Clement VI, he took their advice and he did not contract the plague because the fire, the heat from the fire, actually kept away the fleas that were carrying Yersinia pestis bacteria, that were the things that were actually causing the plague during that time.
And in fact, in the 19… Sorry, in the 20th century, when we had a good understanding of the germ theory of disease, some churches did close in response and that saved lives. There’s a book by Morris J. MacGregor called The Emergence of a Black Catholic Community: St. Augustine’s in Washington. It’s published by Catholic University of America Press, hat tip to [Waylon 00:38:46] by the way, for pointing this out to me on social media. And in that book it talks about how St. Augustine’s faced the Spanish influenza, Spanish flu epidemic of 1918. And it talked about how more than, in the city, in that area, 3,500 people died in six weeks. Thousands of people filled the hospitals. City services were disrupted. St. Augustine’s priest visited scores of the sick in Providence in Freedmen’s Hospitals, at times making as many as 20 sick calls a day throughout Northwest Washington.
Finally, in September, the district commissioners ordered all churches closed and St. Augustine’s like the rest, canceled all public Masses, funerals and outdoor services. Miraculously only one parishioner became sick during that epidemic. And so that’s important to keep in mind that now we understand how germs propagate, that hopefully, and I’m hoping and praying because once again I think that it is serious when we suspend the celebration of, the public celebration of Mass, that could lead to very negative consequences. I don’t want that to happen. I want to get people back in church as soon as possible. So I am praying the suspension of these Masses in areas that are affected, especially here in the diocese of San Diego where I am, are short-term. And I hope that if it just happens for the short-term very quickly in the beginning, then this disease can be staved off and we can save people’s lives and prevent healthcare systems from being overwhelmed. And in doing so, we will love our neighbor as ourself.
Finally, some people have said, “We’re risking our souls not going to Mass more than our bodies by going to Mass.” Now on the one hand, I agree, not celebrating Mass may create opportunities for people to become spiritually lax or to fall into despair. And that’s something that we should be concerned about. But if you are in a state of grace and you have a strong, robust faith, not being able to access the sacraments is not automatically going to kill God’s grace within your soul and send you to hell, that’s not how it works. Some of the greatest saints throughout history, and even today, there are people who are living all around the world who live in isolated rural areas, who are only able to attend Mass maybe once every few months or once a year when a visiting priest can come and celebrate Mass, and some of these people have the holiest interior lives you can find because they understand how much of a gift it is when they are able to receive the sacrament, when they’re able to receive it.
You know, it’s funny, I think sometimes in America, especially in some Catholic schools where you can tell a lot of the faculty are lukewarm or downright anti-Catholic in their attitudes and the students don’t care, I think sometimes that familiarity can breed contempt. We take it for granted just like we do in our own marriages and in our own families, we take things for granted when they become familiar and we don’t value them. But when they’re taken away, we suddenly see how important they are and we desire them ever more earnestly. So here’s the thing. If you are in a state of grace and your bishop suspends the celebration of Mass, you’re not going to fall out of God’s grace, you only have to receive the Eucharist once a year. And the church can dispense us from our obligation to attend Mass.
Merely offering Mass is not going to get people to heaven automatically, because if you lack saving faith, if you’re not in a state of grace, going to Mass won’t… I mean, you still need to go to Mass. Obviously, you have an obligation if it’s not been dispensed, but if you don’t discern the body and blood of Christ as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, chapter 11 verses 28 through 29, “If you receive the body and blood of Christ unworthily, then it will actually compound the sins that you have.” So Mass is not a cure all in that respect. If you don’t have saving faith in that regard, celebrating Mass it may become a stumbling block and opportunity for you to sin more if you receive the Eucharist in an unworthy state.
But once again, if you were in a state of grace and you pray and seek spiritual communion with God, God will not abandon you. Because throughout history, once again, there have been saints, Holy men and women of God who… and even today, who have been deprived of regular access to the Eucharist and God will not abandon them because God has promised to not leave us as orphans. So I will leave you with a prayer that you can pray during this difficult time, especially if you cannot go to Mass. I will say that if you’re suffering, if you’re stuck at home with your spouse, your children, if you’re scared, if you’re anxious, unite those sufferings to Christ who bore all of our sufferings on the cross. We can offer up those sufferings.
For people who may be having a crisis of faith right now, say, “Lord, I want to offer up my anxiety, my nervousness, my despair, my anguish and not being able to receive you in the Eucharist, I want to offer up all of the suffering that I am enduring right now and in doing so, we find meaning in that and ultimately joy even in the midst of that suffering.” I want to offer that up to you, Lord, for people who are suffering right now, for the healthcare workers who may be contracting this virus and trying to help other people, for those who are not able to attend Mass, I will offer up the suffering that has been imposed upon me, for their good. And I want to draw closer to you, Lord, so that I can offer that up in a more efficacious way.
This is a common spiritual communion prayer I found online that I would definitely recommend to you. “My Jesus I believe that you are present in the most Holy sacrament. I love you above all things and I desire to receive you into my soul. Since I cannot at this moment receive you sacramentally, come at least spiritually into my heart. I embrace you as if you were already there and unite myself Holy to you. Never permit me to be separated from you. Amen.” I hope that was helpful for you. We had a longer episode today, but I figured that was probably okay because a lot of you might be under lockdown, you might be tucked away working from home, you might be bored.
Our biggest enemy face now, if we’re going to combat this virus, it may not be a shortage of supplies, it could just be boredom. So now is a time to not let boredom become the devil’s workshop, but to turn to him in prayer with our families. Don’t fall into the trap of just doing a Netflix binge or a Disney+ binge or something like that, take time to spend time with your family. There’s still opportunities to go out to public places where there aren’t a lot of people, but if you have to be confined to your home, especially if you’re self-quarantined or you’re quarantined because you’ve contracted an illness or this virus, know that we’re praying for you. Let us all pray for one another. Let us bear one another’s burdens as Galatians 6:2 says.
So, hey, ask friends, family, or neighbors on your street, or people you can communicate with, “Are you short on supplies? Do you need anything?” Now’s the time for us to be there for one another both for our temporal good and for our eternal good. I’ll be praying for you all. Pray for me and my family as well. And be with us on Thursday, we’ll have more of a commiserating session and we’ll talk more about the panic buying, the hoarding, what to do and just how to survive when you have to be under lockdown and you’re away from your normal routine.
We hope it will be a fun episode. We’re talking about serious things but a fun chat with good friends of mine, Bobby and Jackie Angel, pray they could still make it down here on Wednesday to record so we can share that with you on Thursday.
You all have been great, take care, and I really do hope that you have a very blessed day.
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