Read on Twitter
I doubt I'll get round to an article on 'Pandemic Ireland: Faith News and Fake News', because the combination of illness, family time, and other projects make for a packed schedule (and because I'm absorbed in re-reading Joe Lee's 'Ireland, 1912-1985: Politics and Society'). /1
Given that, this seems as good a place as any to reel out thirteen factoids and absurdities that I've seen online and elsewhere about the Church in Ireland since the Spring. Pretty much all these claims contain some truth, but none are actually true. Here goes... /2
1. 'Mass was banned.' Sorry, not true. The sacrifice of the Mass took place daily in parishes and abbeys and priories and convents and chapels and monasteries all over Ireland, all year long. Not being able to attend Mass is not the same as the Mass not happening. /3
1a. 'Priests have called for Masses to be cancelled' - a variant of the above, not true, and for the same reason. Calling for Mass to be celebrated behind closed doors is not the same as calling for Masses to be cancelled. The Mass isn't less real because I'm not at it, say. /4
2. 'Spiritual communion is a poor substitute for the real thing.' Not true, in fact, though I can appreciate that the Liguori prayer may give that impression. On the contrary, as Aquinas teaches, a communion of desire can be just as efficacious as sacramental communion. /5
3. 'Restrictions on worship are persecutions, like the penal times'. Not even close. Such associations trivialise real persecution, undermining efforts to raise concerns about it. Rather, our restrictions are best understood in terms of the Catholic teaching of double effect. /6
4. 'We are the only people subject to such restrictions.' At any given point this might be true, in so far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far unless other tough restrictions in other countries are factored in too. If we loosen this up, what other areas should be tightened? /7
5. 'NPHET thinks hairdressers are more important than worship'. Not true. NPHET made no such comparison ever. When Ronan Glynn spoke in September about pausing public worship for a few weeks so other 'more important' social contacts could continue, he made clear that: /8
... this was in the context of society in a pandemic, 'so we have choices to make: we can have contacts for healthcarers, contacts [in our] schools, in our universities, in our workplaces but we can't have them everywhere'. These were NPHET's specific points of comparison. /9
Crucially, he said nothing about hairdressers, and rightly, since the one-on-one social interaction of a hairdresser visit is more like the one-on-one social interaction of going to Confession, which was permitted, than the indoor group social interaction of public worship. /10
6. 'We are banned from receiving the sacraments'. Clearly untrue: while Mass was off the table save in funeral and nuptial contexts, couples were still getting married, priests could be ordained, dying parishioners received extreme unction, and penitents went to Confession. /11
7. 'There are no clusters linked to churches'. This *might* be true, but it presents our evidence as saying something it says nothing about. As Philip Nolan explains in this thread, the data on clusters doesn't cover when the virus was contracted: https://twitter.com/President_MU/status/1306908247568384003 /12
(I'll be back to this later. I'm not done yet, I'm afraid. For now, though bear in mind how dodgy it is to claim that small numbers of outbreaks should be compared to large numbers of Masses - how many household gatherings have there been, say, if we want to do comparisons?) /13
8. 'Churches have been made safe by volunteers, and are now among the safest places in Ireland.' Not really, I'm afraid, though the heroic efforts being put in my parishioners across the island - and around the world - needs to be recognised. /14
If you go into most churches nowadays, you'll see your sanitiser stations, and you'll see volunteers ready to clean benches between Masses. This is great, but the thing is, these efforts are responses to the threat as we thought it was back in March. /15
In March a major concern was hard surfaces, and how long the virus could last on hard surfaces. But we now know that that's not really the problem: the problem is mainly light aerosol particles that hang in the air like smoke: https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-10-28/a-room-a-bar-and-a-class-how-the-coronavirus-is-spread-through-the-air.html /16
Cleaning hard surfaces is good, sure, and social distancing is better, but given how the virus builds in the air, it looks as though good ventilation is the only way to genuinely make safe indoor contexts where people spend time together. And how many churches have that? /17
9. 'The bishops have rolled over and allowed the State to shut down our churches.' No, from the beginning they worked to get their ducks in a row so they could make a case for reopening churches, with +Diarmuid being the point man for dealing with the Government. /18
Sorry - with the Irish Government, because let's not forget how with a conference, dioceses, and parishes split by the border, the bishops have had the rather tricky job of negotiating with more than one government in this affair. /19
Now, this isn't to say the bishops' efforts have always been wisely intentioned and well directed, but they have tried and should never have been criticised or challenged for not doing so. /20
10. 'The French and American courts have said that Masses shouldn't be restricted.' No, afraid not. What they have said is that worship shouldn't be restricted in ways that are excessive *compared to comparable activities*. /21
11. 'There's no evidence that Covid spreads in churches.' This may be true in a limited sense, in that there are few cases known where clusters have been tracked back to churches or public worship, but it may help to think of this in terms of a more meaningful question. /22
The real issue is this: given that we know Covid is especially prone to transmission in indoor environments with poor ventilation where people spend prolonged periods of time, what evidence is there that public worship might somehow not be an obviously risky activity? /23
12. 'The Constitution says that the Faith sustained our forefathers.' It doesn't, I'm afraid. The preamble to BnahE states, rather, that it was Christ himself that sustained our forefathers. Now, sure, I think that was through the Church that is his body, but still. /24
13. 'It's cowardly to believe restrictions on Mass should remain - better to let those who feel safe worship freely, while those who don't feel safe stay home.' This ditches our common good duty, and the basic principle that collective defence is meant to protect everyone. /25
To explain, the constant point NPHET and others have tried to make is that it's really only by making society safe that we stand a chance of keeping our most vulnerable safe, whether they be at home or in hospitals or nursing homes. /26
In other words, the argument is that it's only by suppressing transmission of the virus through reducing social contacts in as many contexts as possible that we can protect the lives of our most vulnerable. /27
Now, obviously this has costs, and entails suffering and inconvenience, but there's something very dodgy about accusing people of cowardice because they think sacrifices should be made for the sake of saving the lives of others. /28
14. I know I was going to go with just thirteen myths, but a fourteenth is significant. People do have ulterior motives and biases etc, but they're not always announced, and so a fourteenth myth might be the 'I'm just asking questions - I have no vested interests' take. /29
For me, for instance, it's important to say that I'm driven hugely in this affair by not having seen my mam in nearly ten months, because she lives in a nursing home where she has severe dementia. I miss her immensely, and this is definitely an optic I see through. /30
In short, I'm one of many, many people in Ireland whose families have been split up by necessary actions to face the pandemic. This is the only way of keeping my mam and people like her safe; no matter how much I miss attending Mass, I think it's a necessary sacrifice. /31
