A little over seven weeks ago I had plans for Holy Week and Easter. And then COVID-19 started to take over my every working moment. Calls and emails started flooding in, and the rest is history. Momentous changes – the closure of our churches and public worship, restrictions on movements and the poor and vulnerable squeezed – has accompanied fear and anxiety and outpourings of social concern in equal measure. Our churches, schools and businesses have closed to prevent the virus spreading. And as we prepare currently to look to what comes next, we find ourselves in a maelstrom of media noise as government admits “mistakes may have been made.”
In little over four months, at the time of writing, we have gone from a small cluster of pneumonia of unknown origin causing concern in the health system of a city many had never heard of despite its size and manufacturing prowess to much of our lives experiencing profound and unexpected change as a virus sweeps the globe, infecting already over 1.5million (that we know of, many more may have been asymptomatic according to public health authorities) and having killed over quarter of a million at the time of writing. A novel coronavirus named SARS-CoV-2, causing a disease which ranges from mild to fatal, and to which it seems we have little immunity at present in the absence of either population immunity or a workable vaccine.
We have had shrill voices shouting from many sidelines about government response being in their eyes inadequate. So it has been difficult amidst what feels like media hysteria to sense the signal of how we will get though this. Undoubtedly, we could have learned more the lessons from 2009 H1N1 Pandemic, the 2003 SARS pandemic, and the 2016 national preparatory exercise assessment for pandemics Operation Cygnus. The time will come to pick over the lessons learned, but it’s important to respond as best we can at the minute rather than make the perfect the enemy of the good.
I participated in a theology webinar which left me feeling very mixed. Some contributions were good, others very challenging. Some felt to me too quick and somewhat too glib to reach for answers and solutions. “We have to fast from the eucharist for now, but we can feast on the word” was the contribution of one person. I am doubtless doing them a disservice but this felt a bit trite and quickly said, especially for those of us who feel the need for the sacraments very strongly, and connection with the community of the church.
In a recent personal encounter I was asked by a senior cleric to speak to the parents of a young man, with no underlying health conditions, who declined from symptoms to death in 3 days. I listened to their anger, their worry, their pain. Mostly I tried to explain what feels to them like a strange UK approach to testing which they, now symptomatic and aware of how differently things would be done in their own country, could not understand. Would they too become as unwell as he?
We know that there will be ongoing effects, whatever the route back to some kind of normality will be, and it will not be a quick process. We talk of the “new normal” as if it’s a simple destination. Nobody has a full roadmap yet. Some form of social distancing to reduce the opportunities the virus has for transmission will be with us for a considerable period. There will also be parallel epidemics of depression, mental ill-health, grief, the health consequences of missed essential medical care for non COVID-19 related issues like diabetes, unemployment, poverty and more.
We will take time to recover, but recover and move to a new rhythm we will, with time and patience. And there will be opportunities to hold onto the best of what some of us have shown as peoples – care for each other and the vulnerable, taking responsibility for our neighbours and not just ourselves, and a sense of the common good above the material things of life. A key task for the Church is to articulate these so we do not miss them.
The word epidemic means “from out of the people”. I want to focus on the different kinds of things that must and should come out of us as we respond to this. There have been amazing outbreaks of kindness, of love and concern. And in many ways what has been brought out of us has been the best of response in these times.
This raises what the role of the Church is in these times. I have learned and reflected a great deal on the Italian experience these last few weeks. The Italian Newspaper Avvenire has been a source of theology in action and the famous La Civilta Cattolica – a fortnightly Jesuit magazine – has issued a special edition.
As we go through the next year, the pandemic is an opportunity for the Church to put down a series of yardsticks about not only what it means to live through these times, but what the Christian message means right now. Part of that means we can hold onto, affirm and promote the good which has been shown here.
What I am talking about is the humanisation – in the Christian sense of the fulness of human life being found in healthy relationships with God, neighbour, self and society – of response to the epidemic, where no life is expendable and we are all in this together. And I think the Guild has an important part to play in this through continuing its networks and building on them, especially the coming Healthy Healing Hubs.
But I believe this crisis presents a broader and longer need for the Guild and its members, which is about how we live out our healing role now and for the future. To put this simply, Gillian our Director called us to take to heart, in what I believe is a landmark lecture for us in 2019, the fact that mission and healing should be seen as two sides of the same imperative for the Church. This is our time to discern what that means for us individually and as a Guild. Society needs the love of God and the Church to embody that. And the Church needs the Guild to help incarnate this.
What might that look like? I think there are a few roles:
First, there is the role of praying for and praying with people through these times. To acknowledge and hold in prayer the challenge we are facing, and to point people to the fact that God and Church are present, here and now, with people. And to intercede, and pray and care.
Second, we have a role in modelling how the Church can respond to the ongoing opportunity and challenge this pandemic has presented us with. The ongoing opportunity is that there are signs people are open to the gospel and open to God. We need to make sure people continue to be nurtured and included as we move towards the next phase of normality. At the time of writing our Churches may be closed. They will – sooner than we think – begin to re-open, but as others have said, people will continue to look to us for signs of hope and waymarks in the road to whatever different normality will come after this. We must model welcome, inclusion and safety wherever we are so people are healed and nurtured, not put off by the sometimes exclusionary behaviours of churches. Providing resources, tools, models of space where people can find healing (virtual and real) after this will be crucial.
Third, I believe we have to witness to what is our particular Charism or grace within the Church – to continue to bring the science on health and healing together with our faith to ensure we provide intellectual resources to the people of God to speak into and act into this space. Part of this may mean speaking peace and the witness of scripture and tradition into the unhelpful debate from some people that COVID-19 is a judgement of God on peoples’ wrongs. Another part of this will be to emphasise the importance of the spiritual and social dimensions of health alongside the physical.
I have not even begun to scratch the surface here. That will require discernment and prayer. But I am convinced God puts before us now this opportunity. Now, more than ever, what you and we do is needed.
So I leave you with some questions, to which I personally do not have answers. I do these in the spirit that together we may discern where we go next.
These are not extraordinary times. These are times many have lived through multiple times in history. What resources can we find to show that we will get through this?
How do we emphasise that much of the grief and pain which will result from this is normal human response, and set about doing what we can to heal?
How do we tackle stigma and shame?
How do we advocate for the reduction of inequalities which have meant this virus take a greater toll on those least able to withstand the burden? Those on low incomes,vulnerable to disease, in minority populations, subject to domestic abuse or more?
How do we come to a healthy acknowledgement of human vulnerability in the face of new and novel infections while holding firm to the proper use of science to protect us?
How do we speak calm into a debate which feels shrill and fractious, and where people seem to lose their nerve?
Director of Public Health in Hertfordshire
President of the Guild of Health and St Raphael