In this episode of The Open Door, Catholic philosophers Jim Hanink, Mario Ramos-Reyes, Christopher Zehnder consider questions on Church, State, and the Virus. The discussion will reference a blog post on today's New Oxford Review Narthex. (Please see post below.) We'll address the following questions. As always, you are free to suggest your own.
No special guests, just us: Jim Hanink, Mario Ramos-Reyes, and Christopher Zehnder.
Church, State, and the Virus
1. Quick check: Have you seen any examples of people pretty much ignoring social distancing?
2. How has your local parish or church dealt with the increasing virus-related restrictions?
3. Do you see commercial or financial venues that remain open to the public and which have found ways to carry on business?
4. If you have seen such venues, why do you think that they are deemed “essential” and on that account remain open?
5. What are some reasons that places of worship are deemed “non-essential”?
6. Do public health officials in a secular context have the conceptual tools to decide which institutions are essential and which are not?
7. How persuasive is the argument that in the context of a pandemic public health considerations are paramount and therefore we ought to follow all public health directives as a matter of good citizenship?
8. How would you compare the language and policies of public health officials during the worst of the AIDS crisis and their language and policies in the current pandemic?
9. Is there an integral unity of the basic goods of the person or is it the case that in order to advance some of the goods it is sometimes necessary to undermine others of them?
10. Prudential policies need ongoing review. Why not identify at least one parish church in each deanery that will remain open for prayer? It would be a simple enough matter to limit entry to the church to, say, half a dozen people at a time. It would be simple enough, as well, to make sure that they stay several feet apart. And why not identify at least one parish church in each deanery, one with serviceable cry rooms, that will use its cry rooms to offer the Sacrament of Reconciliation on a regular basis? Again, it would be simple enough to do so in a way that kept social distancing.