I don’t think we’re properly weighting costs to children of some pandemic strategies. Last week my wife had the kids out buying shoes. A woman & her preschool-aged daughter walked in. She said it was the first time the girl had seen other children in many months. This is madness.

Oh, but it’s a catechesis in sacrifice and solidarity, one might say. Maybe we can say that about masking (within reason) or giving up some field trips, but denying children the irreplaceable joy of other children—fellow human beings—is something different.

It’s a catechesis in fear, a catechesis in catastrophizing. It teaches children that the goodness of other people and indeed of the whole world is contingent on risk, and that risk minimization is worth any price. It teaches that the first principle of the world is danger.

While there is a paradoxical solidarity in isolation during a pandemic, we can take it too far. The mania for sterility is a mortal enemy of solidarity. Solidarity requires risk, vulnerability, presence. It requires us to see communion as a risk worth taking.

Denying children that communion will cause, I fear, long-term damage to their relationship to other people, both as individuals and as a society. It will teach that perfect security, safety, sterility are the preconditions to society. It will teach that society is impossible.