Three Years

It is now three years since the worldwide covid-19 pandemic began. On Monday, March 9, 2020, I had a regular doctor's appointment, at which I told my physician that my mother had died a few days before and that I was about to fly to California to celebrate her funeral. He advised me not to make the trip and to postpone the funeral. The next day, at our regular general priests' meeting in the diocese, I asked the Bishop his opinion, and he too told me to postpone. By the following Sunday, the obligation to assist at Sunday Mass had been lifted indefinitely, and soon enough (starting March 20) all public Masses were cancelled. This was a radical (if not altogether unprecedented) precaution as we struggled to respond to the global threat posed by the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. As I wrote at the time, this was a sacrifice which we were being called upon to make to reduce the spread of infection, because that is what it means to be a society and to care about the common good. Meanwhile, across the country, California had already shut down, and my mother's funeral was postponed indefinitely. Having cancelled my travel plans, I prepared to hunker down for the duration.

No one imagined then what that duration might be. When my doctor first advised postponing my trip, he suggested we postpone the funeral until after Memorial Day. My immediate reaction was "that long?" Little did any of us know what we were in for!

Like everyone else, I worried about catching this mysterious virus, getting seriously sick, and dying. Accordingly, I washed and sanitized my hands as often as feasible, wore gloves when pumping gas into my car, took advantage of the early morning "Senior" shopping hour at the local supermarket, and even left the mail out on the porch for several hours before opening it in order for the sun to kill any viruses that might be on it! 

Meanwhile, I was pastor of a parish and had to address the rapidly changing needs created by this crisis. I wrote a daily email to keep in touch with as many parishioners as possible and to encourage them to keep in touch with each other. As recommended, I offered Mass in the church with the doors closed and then opened the doors for a few hours to make the church accessible for private prayer. (Some came, but relatively few.) Soon enough, we were all commanded to start live-streaming Sunday Masses - something I had not the slightest idea how to do. We started very low-tech on Palm Sunday, streaming Mass on Facebook Live - just me at the altar and a parishioner recording me on my laptop. In time, with technical advice and help, we purchased a proper camera and hired someone to live-stream in a more user-friendly and technologically up-to-date way. By late May, when the church reopened for regular services, we also had a team in place to "sanitize" the pews after each Mass, had roped off suitably distant seating, and were enforcing (or trying to enforce) strict mask protocols.

All things considered, I guess we were successful. Sadly, some parishioners did catch the virus. Some died. May they rest in peace! But most of us were spared the worst and somehow emerged from the crisis still standing - if a bit battered emotionally. It was, however, a very challenging final 10 months until the end of my tenure as pastor. Even worse, it was an increasingly conflictual and divisive time as people quarreled over masks and the country as a whole became more polarized than ever. Since then, while the danger of disease may have diminished, the social divisions and affective polarization it produced have persisted.

I am no scientist. I have no idea which precautions worked and which were primarily theater. I am pretty sure that leaving the mail out on the porch for the sun to kill the virus was largely theater. Maybe, sanitizing the pews was primarily theater too. I'll still happily defend masks. (I still wear one religiously on the bus and in stores.) But, honestly, I don't know how effective masks actually are. When our regional Catholic school reopened in August 2020, they practiced strict mask protocols. They stayed open successfully with no cases of student-to-student transmission. So I am inclined to trust masks. But I really don't know for certain. Maybe masks were as much a symbol of social solidarity as they were a protection against the virus. Maybe that was enough to justify their use!

What, if anything have I/we learned from that horrendous experience? Not much, according to some, who are convinced that the U.S. is as unprepared for the next pandemic as it was for the last one. Certainly the politicized fights over vaccine and mask mandates suggest that we have hardly advanced at all toward greater social solidarity. If masking and other precautions were what we were being called upon to do because that is what it means to be a society and to care about the common good, then, I guess, the consequent conflicts and affective polarization proved how fragile our society is and how little we actually care about the common good.

It is sometimes suggested that we learned little as a society from the horrendous experience of the 1918 flu pandemic. So, perhaps, that is just the way we are.