Threats vs. Science in Public Health Policy

Last updated on: July 30, 2021 at 9:57 am By Jennifer Fitz

NPR reports that the Biden administration is about to lay down vaccination requirements for federal employees:

He is expected to announce that federal employees will need to confirm they are vaccinated — or face regular testing and be required to wear masks at all times while on the job. The federal government is one of the largest employers in the nation, and the move could spur private sector companies to take similar steps. Some already have.

Reminder: The vaccines in question have not even been fully vetted by the FDA. (Recap: I’m fully vaccinated, freely chose it, am positive I made the right decision given my medical history, even though, of course, no decision is without risks. I think for most American adults, under present conditions getting vaccinated is probably the best choice. I also admit I’m not omniscient, so that judgment could be proven wrong.)

So why would a vaccine-supporter have objections to the Biden policy? Because it ignores the current science.

Pause and go read this op-ed by Jeremy Faust at Inside Medicine: “Delta breakthrough cases: rarely deadly but equally contagious.”

Things had already begun to change for me last week when two acquaintances tested positive for coronavirus despite receiving two doses of an mRNA vaccine this spring. Neither of them particularly enjoyed being sick, but both were at home, rather than hospitalized. What probably sounded scary to some—breakthrough infections—to me actually looked to be reassuring examples of the vaccines doing their job by preventing critical illness and death. But one of the two cases took me aback. She had tested positive via a rapid antigen test. That piece of information had important implications about her contagiousness.

To understand why, let’s refresh on test types. Most tests administered are PCR tests. PCR tests check for the genetic material of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19. A positive result means the person was infected “sometime recently,” but does not indicate contagiousness. In fact, many people remain positive on PCR tests for weeks, well after a person has won the initial fight and ceased being a danger to others. Rapid antigen tests work by detecting a particular protein on the surface of the virus. Only viable contagious virus harbors enough surface antigen to mount a positive test. A person only tests positive on a rapid test at times when they are contagious. That means my second friend, the one with the positive rapid antigen test, was vaccinated, infected, and contagious. So far, that combination is unique to the Delta variant.

For a popular press version, here’s a local media report from Madison, WI.

“Someone who’s vaccinated and has a breakthrough infection, and is walking through a crowded building, is potentially going to be exhaling a lot of virus and is potentially going to be putting others at risk . . .”

I’m sure you can find many others. This one is of particular interest because of the relatively high vaccination rates (70%) in the affected area.

This isn’t the press glomming onto the latest fad in fear-mongering, it’s just a thing, and not even a surprising thing. Viruses mutate randomly, but the mutations most likely to get passed along are those which favor the survival of the virus. Not a shocker. To be expected.

Some studies of interest on the question of breakthrough infections and re-infections:

Here’s a link to the study in Israel of morbidity and mortality in COVID infections in fully-vaccinated persons.
Looking the other direction on the topic is this different Israeli study on the incidence of breakthrough infections in healthcare workers.
Down at the bottom (item 5, when you scroll) of this report you can find the most recent UK observations on the characteristics of COVID re-infection. (Here’s the post where I linked to older studies on the topic, keeping in mind that “old” in COVID-years is less than six months.)
Here’s Healthline’s collection of links to studies of vaccine-effectiveness against the Delta variant.
Here’s a link to the Israeli Ministry of Health’s pdf presentation on the waning effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine over time (no, I don’t read Hebrew, sorry to disappoint; scroll down in the slides for some charts in English), linked from this article at Forbes.

So. Back at policy prescriptions. There is growing evidence that:

Vaccine effectiveness decreases over time.
Vaccinated persons can get infected and be contagious.
Previous COVID-infection appears to function similarly to being vaccinated, though I’ve been struggling to find more-recent studies examining this question.
Reinfection and breakthrough infections are both associated with improved outcomes compared to first-time infection in an unvaccinated person.

So what does this mean for vaccine mandates? What does it mean for mitigation efforts? A handful of thoughts:

#1 Vaccination or previous COVID infection are only partial mitigation measures.

They do indeed “flatten the curve.” Remember that? It’s still important, ask an ICU nurse. However, both of these (and both of them are pertinent, we think), though very helpful, will not end the disease. There is every indication that COVID-19 is going to become endemic. The current state of medical technology allows us, we’re pretty sure, to make the disease less-deadly, but eradication does not appear to be on the table at this time.

#2 Your colleague’s or classmate’s or caregiver’s vaccination status will not protect you from the disease.

Implementing policies that require disease prevention and detection measures only for the unvaccinated is disastrous. Even though an unvaccinated, never-infected person is more likely to become infected, a vaccinated person with a breakthrough infection appears, with the Delta variant, to be just as deadly to a COVID-vulnerable person.

There is simply no justification, given the present state of the research, to regard any given vaccinated individual as “safe” to a vulnerable person.

#3 Policy prescriptions need to distinguish more-vulnerable vs. less-vulnerable persons, rather than fixating on vaccination status.

If you are working with immune-compromised patients? You need to use full precautions to avoid passing on the infection even if you are fully vaccinated.

If a workplace needs to implement precautions such as masks or testing for unvaccinated individuals, it needs to do so for vaccinated individuals as well. Both are sources of transmission of the virus.

#4 Mandated mitigation measures should take into account differences in vulnerability.

Life involves risk. Mitigation measures are trade-offs. For a child who is immune-compromised or has a vulnerable (even after vaccination) family member, radical steps to prevent COVID transmission are probably warranted. For a child who is at low risk of disease complications and whose mostly-healthy older family members are all vaccinated or previously-infected, it is reasonable to transition to classroom precautions more like one would take during an ordinary flu season.

Given that the proportion of children needing full precautions and teachers needing full precautions is probably quite similar, an obvious answer is to group accordingly. Parents and teachers can self-select after consulting with their medical care team.

Meanwhile, the federal government can lead the way (happy birthday ADA) in providing full accommodations for employees who need to work remote due to continued risk of COVID morbidity and mortality.

#5 We seriously need to put ventilation on the table as a major mitigation measure.

Y’all. Your cloth mask is a real but weak mitigation measure. Six feet? Real but weak. Plexiglass dividers at check-out? Real but weak. If you are going to cough in my presence for any reason whatsoever, yes, I would like you to cover your cough. I would like less of your respiratory-tract contents coming my way. Every time, full stop. If you must breathe on me while sick, I would like you to breath on me less. That’s what these mitigation measures do: Less of your lungs in my face.

Okay that’s good. Reducing viral load matters.

But COVID-19 hangs around.

Think of it like a certain child of mine’s obsession with scented products: It’s not only a question of whether she’s actively spraying you with It’s All Vanilla Now, there’s also the part where you get to breathe in the lingering presence of Vanilla Will Haunt You Forever regardless of whether you were in the room when the wonder-potion was released. (To her chagrin, we have pretty good ventilation in our house. She has to keep re-applying. I keep telling her that taking out the trash would be a much better scent-improvement measure.)

So, with regard to protecting federal employees: Where are the ventilation mandates? Because in terms of your getting sick, it just doesn’t matter whether your now-infected colleague was previously vaccinated or not, what matters is whether you breathe the same air.

Vaccination or previous-infection status are protective against serious disease, and therefore vaccination is a worthy recommendation, despite the lack of full data on their longterm safety and effectiveness. Previous-infection and vaccination rates are both worth tracking, and vaccinations are worth* encouraging, because both do appear to slow the rate of transmission at the macro-scale. Averages are improved.

You, however, are not macro. Vaccination makes it less-likely your colleagues are infected, but what matters to you is a pure binary: Is this one here infected or not?

Thus it is laughable to the point of criminal negligence to claim that vaccination is the make-or-break in any given case of disease transmission. It simply is not. Your vaccinated colleagues can kill you. And when that happens, it’s because you inhaled what they exhaled.

So. Ventilation. Put it on your radar.

Update 7/30/2021: Here’s the link to the Washington Post’s PDF copy of the CDC’s internal slideshow, “Improving communications around vaccine breakthrough and vaccine effectiveness” July 29, 2021. Includes some interesting study results, well worth a look.

Photo of a window courtesy of Wikimedia, CC 1.0.

*By “worth encouraging” I don’t mean “forget everything you ever knew about civil rights” and certainly not “forget every major correction in medical knowledge that’s ever happened.” It is entirely possible to implement public health policies that encourage vaccination without mandating or coercing. You don’t have to choose between living in a free republic and having a fully-functioning public health system. Choosy voters choose both.

7QT: Life as a Walking Knock-knock Joke

Last updated on: July 23, 2021 at 12:38 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Since it’s that time of week, seven things to make you glad you don’t live inside my head all the time:

#1 I will almost certainly watch a little bit of Olympics this year, but honestly I’ve lost my taste for them. Reasons:

The regional chokeholds on broadcast coverage. I can’t watch the sports I want to watch, nor the commentary (or silence) I want to watch, because heaven forbid the television monopolies discover that half a dozen geeks worldwide prefer some other country’s telecast to their own. Geez. Might see what I can get this year using a VPN, though?
Men competing in women’s sports? No thanks. Deeply unimpressed by any further claims from the IOC that this is sporting “competition.”
Profoundly ticked off by this nasty nasty bit of ableism.
IOC gets guilty-by-association for Bikinigate. I’ve been irritated by the mandatory bikini-wearing since I first saw beach volleyball in the Olympics years ago. Dear women athletes: It’s all about voyeurism, your job is to be the eye-candy. Don’t wreck our ratings by dressing like the men do.

Guess the Olympics are turning me into a raging TERF.

#2 Just finished reading Trans by Helen Joyce. Hope a review will follow soon. I’ve quit predicting anything at all about my life, so who knows.

Two-sentence version: Highly recommended for most readers, excellent book overall, valuable contribution to the discourse, valuable for personal edification. Recommended only with caution for readers who are either coming in completely cold to the topic (little or no previous knowledge of the discourse), or those who would find reading an argument from a purely secular, atheist, and pro-abortion POV too unsettling to be of value.

#3 I have a shortlist of people (a few dozen or so) whose opinions I value so highly that if I should disagree with them, or they with me, I give immediate, serious thought to whether I have gravely erred.

Timothy Scott Reeves is one of them; Christopher Tollefsen is another.

Which would be (yet another) reason I tend to take a very conservative view of how public health policies should be implemented. Religious exemptions for vaccine mandates must be protected. Must. Must must must.

#4 And yet, because science, I think the US is being too cavalier in how we respond to the surge in Delta-variant cases.

Weird effect of being a walking knock-knock joke, “What do you get when you cross old-school liberalism with old-school conservatism?” –> You get someone who recommends (based on changing conditions on the ground and improved knowledge of the present surge, this was not my stance a month ago) aggressive use of vaccination, ventilation, distancing, face coverings, and heck just work on your garden this summer . . . without thinking that a whole-hearted embrace of that advice is in any way a call for limiting the freedoms protected by the US Bill of Rights, strictest possible reading.

#5 Insane fact about the Catholic faith: Even poor people should be able to raise children.

If you knew of, say, a high-profile politician who was both touting his or her Catholic faith and insisting we need to make abortion more available because-poor-women . . . they haven’t read their Leo XIII.

The answer to poverty and crisis pregnancies is not, “Poor people shouldn’t breed.” Tell me about what you’re doing to ensure even people who will never rise past the rank of Walmart stock clerk are able to raise their families in decent living conditions.

That’s the Catholic.

Doesn’t fit either party’s narrative, but there it is.

#6 Brandon @ Siris has written a fantastic discussion of what detraction is and isn’t.

#7 Reiterating for those who are bound to wonder: Don’t mistake my sudden presence online this week as a sign my life is sorting itself out. Quite the opposite. Nothing ominous in my saying that, just clarifying in case you were tempted to think maybe I was rejoining the ranks of the high-functioning. Nope. Not there. Still working on it.

Meanwhile, something fun:

Not just the world’s slowest paint job in the background, but also an Honorable Mention from the Catholic Media Association’s 2021 Book Awards. Huge thanks to OSV for submitting the beast for consideration.

Reminder for those who are, like me, still puzzling over how I of all people could have written such nice book? There were editors involved. Good ones. I promise it’s safe for the general public, Our Sunday Visitor is reliable that way.

Nuances in the Vaccine Conversation

Last updated on: July 22, 2021 at 3:10 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Oh heck, why not talk about vaccines, too, while I’m at it?

Ed Yong at The Atlantic has a good interview up this morning on the reality that unvaccinated folk are not a monolith of science-deniers but a complex group of people with serious questions and obstacles to getting vaccinated. (You can get the summary on Twitter at the first link if you can’t get past the paywall at the magazine.)

I can vouch for the barriers-to-access. When I went to get my first shot, what I assumed would be thirty minutes total trip time turned into a 90-minute ordeal, including, after an hour wait at the pharmacy, having to explain to the pharmacist that I came for the brand vaccine advertised as the only one the pharmacy was offering, not the alternative that he was now holding in a syringe in his hand ready to poke.

–> Um, no, really sir, I put a lot of research into which of the three available shots had the safest profile for me given my serious pre-existing condition I wrote down on the intake form, and you telling me “this one is just as good” does not change that fact. He caved and went and got me the brand that was advertised on all the flyers taped up around his pharmacy.

This would have been a nightmare if I’d had to watch little kids while I waited, or had tried to come on my lunch break, or was counting on a ride from someone. In contrast, went to a different venue for the second shot, and sure enough, thirty minutes total (home-shot-home-again), no problems.

So there’s that.

Meanwhile, I want to talk about some distinctions that Ed Yong’s article doesn’t address, and that have come to my attention over the past couple weeks.

Reminder: I am a person who is fully vaccinated. I am very content with that decision, despite the fact that yeah, I was absolutely wiped out by the second dose, lost a week of being able to function (another factor cited in Yong’s interview, and no small potatoes to people who don’t get sick leave and do need to work) and no I won’t say I’m “fully recovered” and back to where I was pre-vaccine, but that’s life with the body I have, and COVID would have been just as bad or worse.

I’m not, at all, anti-vax. At all. Not at all.

So. Complexities.

#1 What portion of the unvaccinated already had COVID?

I’m in conversation with a group of young adults (ages 18-22) who are being threatened by their university with loss of scholarships, etc., if they don’t get vaccinated. Why? Because, in this cohort, one of the young adults was COVID-naive, got vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and subsequently came down with symptomatic COVID disease. The remaining students in the affected group all are either vaccinated or had confirmed-by-the-university COVID infection last school year, or both.

Their state’s public health administration draws a line in quarantine regulations between vaccinated vs. unvaccinated, but not between previously-infected and never-infected. The university doesn’t want to deal with quarantine mandates, which would negatively impact the students’ ability to carry out some high-profile service work they do for their school (the reason this subgroup is being targeted).

Reality check: I’m told, but haven’t verified and can’t (because no sane administrator would commit such a thing to writing nor acknowledge it publicly), that some other high-presence student groups on campus are quietly being told by their staff supervisors, “Just don’t let anyone know if you get a cold. We can’t afford to shut down.”

So, summary: Administration is feeling the heat to pressure students into vaccinating because the incentives set up by the state health department dramatically affect the school’s ability to operate.

Okay fine, except the students who had confirmed COVID-19 infections last school year are able to use Google. Some studies cited in conversation that show the sources they are finding as they research this topic from quarantine:

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2780557

“The study results suggest that reinfections are rare events and patients who have recovered from COVID-19 have a lower risk of reinfection. Natural immunity to SARS-CoV-2 appears to confer a protective effect for at least a year, which is similar to the protection reported in recent vaccine studies. “

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/04/previous-covid-19-may-cut-risk-reinfection-84

“In a commentary in the same journal, Florian Krammer, PhD, of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, said that although natural infection tends to induce lower and more variable antibody concentrations than COVID-19 vaccines, ‘the findings of the authors suggest that infection and the development of an antibody response provides protection similar to or even better than currently used SARS-CoV-2 vaccines.’

He added, ‘The SIREN study adds to a growing number of studies, which demonstrate that infection does protect against reinfection, and probably in an antibody-dependent manner.'”

Florian Krammer is on Twitter. Very reputable source. Calls it like he sees it, not political re:COVID: https://twitter.com/florian_krammer

Interesting article by him as something to add to your knowledge on the topic generally: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01432-4.epdf And the meme to go with: https://twitter.com/walterswiston/status/1414769649095520259

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.06.01.21258176v2

“In a Cox proportional hazards regression model, after adjusting for the phase of the epidemic, vaccination was associated with a significantly lower risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection among those not previously infected (HR 0.031, 95% CI 0.015 to 0.061) but not among those previously infected (HR 0.313, 95% CI 0 to Infinity).

“Conclusions Individuals who have had SARS-CoV-2 infection are unlikely to benefit from COVID-19 vaccination, and vaccines can be safely prioritized to those who have not been infected before.“

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2781112

“The relative risk for PCR positivity was 0.22 (95% CI, 0.17-0.28) for vaccinated individuals and 0.26 (95% CI, 0.21-0.34) for individuals with prior infection compared with no record of vaccination or prior infection (Table).”

These studies largely predate the surge in Delta-variant infections sweeping their state, so don’t take them as Gospel. However, it certainly appears to these young health-science majors that there is virtually no difference in the level of immunity conferred by the vaccine vs. conferred by a previous infection. It seems the data is showing that if you’ve previously been tested and found COVID-positive, then your immunity status is equivalent to that of someone who has been fully vaccinated.

That doesn’t mean you’re guaranteed to be immune. (The vaccines don’t guarantee it either.) Therefore, there are good reasons for someone who was previously infected to seriously consider getting the vaccine. However, the lack of acknowledgement in public health policies of what the published data so far indicate creates a dramatic loss of credibility.

Again. Remember mask-reversal? (Yeah, that was me saying wear a dang face covering back when the CDC and WHO were insisting that masks were wasteful, dangerous, and unpatriotic.) Remember “It’s not from China until we say it’s from China?” There was already no credibility. This discrepancy between public health policy and published information drives the wedge further.

I can’t, for example, find a breakdown of what portions of the unvaccinated population in my state are previously-infected vs. never-infected. From a public health perspective, those are two radically different risk levels, both for personal wellness and for the public at large.

#2 Vaccine risk-benefit profiles vary by the individual.

The group of students I’m in conversation with are all in an age group at extremely low risk, personally, of complications from COVID-19, and all have either been previously-infected or vaccinated, further lowering their risk. Those who are unvaccinated are all individuals whose personal health history puts them at extremely low risk of complications from the infection itself.

That’s not to say it can’t happen. It’s to say that their risk-benefit analysis for their personal healthcare decisions is different from individuals who are older or who have pre-existing conditions that increase the likelihood of serious disease.

In contrast, they have anecdotal information of peers who have had severe reactions to the vaccine, and scientific reports of rare but extremely serious side-effects of the vaccine.

It is not unreasonable for someone who has already survived COVID infection with no lasting harm, and who is otherwise extremely low-risk regardless, to ask: Why should I expose myself to potentially serious vaccine side effects, in a vaccine that has been around less than a year, when the vaccine offers me so little additional protection?

Again, reminder: I’m fully vaccinated. Further, in such a judgement call, I see nothing wrong, whatsoever, in a young, healthy, previously-infected person weighing all the information and determining that yes, getting vaccinated is the best route.

But public health messaging and clear threats from university staff are in no way acknowledging this reality, let alone leaving room for individuals to make a sober and serious weighing of personal risks.

There are of course public health risks and benefits as well, which are different. It’s better for me if these students do everything they can to reduce the chances they become contagious with re-infection. But for the university and state and federal public health officials to entirely disregard and dismiss the serious concerns that these students have about their own safety?

One begins understand the old slogan “Don’t trust anyone over 30.”

(See how high-risk I am? I remember that adage.)

#3 Vaccinated persons are getting symptomatic infection.

On my way to the grocery store yesterday, I was stopped at a traffic light with an electronic billboard. A public health vaccine-promotion campaign flashed onto the screen: Picture of happy middle-aged persons, no mask, faces close together, doing something fun like eating at a restaurant together. The accompanying text was a few short words saying that if you’ll just get your shots, you can go back to normal life worry-free.

I wish I could remember the text exactly, but the message was absolutely unequivocal: Vaccination = no more public health hazard, no more personal risk.

Now to be clear, the data from my state is showing that current COVID-19 hospitalizations are overwhelmingly among the unvaccinated, with a small portion being persons who are vaccinated but have pre-existing conditions that increase their risk of serious disease. At last press release on the topic, new deaths were entirely among unvaccinated persons. Reduction in severity of the disease is an enormous benefit!

[UPDATE: I want to link to an article out of NJ that came across my desk this afternoon, reporting 49 COVID deaths in fully-vaccinated individuals in that state. Seriously: If you have underlying risk factors, your vaccine does not make you bullet proof. Consider continuing to practice, or resuming, additional risk-reduction measures.]

Like I said, I’m very happy with my decision to get my shots. (Also learned in this year of being glued to every press release from the state health department: Rabies is rampant. Get your pets their shots, too.)

But here’s what that group of young adults have observed: The only person in their cohort to get infected this summer was the one who was vaccinated. It was a confirmed COVID-19 infection in a vaccinated person that triggered their state’s quarantine regulations.

Specifically, for anecdotal purposes (obviously one case study is not the science you want to live and die on), the infected student was COVID-naive and vaccinated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

And thus these unvaccinated but previously-infected persons have to wonder: Why are we being treated as the walking public health disaster, and anyone who’s had the shot is allowed to circulate freely with no restrictions, regardless of exposure to someone with symptomatic infection, when it was a vaccinated person who had the infection?

It was a vaccinated person who was the source of the need for the university to implement quarantine. The unvaccinated but previously-infected students who were in the same peer group, and exposed to the same or similar community spread, have had no symptoms and have since tested negative for re-infection. These students can see that their state’s public health policies are divorced from the reality on the ground.

They can see that one category of persons in their peer group who posed no threat of infection or contagion is subject to draconian restrictions and threats, while another category that was the cause of the infection and potential contagion gets to walk free.

And so they do not trust.

Don’t read stuff into this story.

I’m not saying don’t get vaccinated. I’m very, very happy, despite the glitches I encountered, with my state’s mass-vaccination efforts. I’m appalled that other industrialized nations are so very far behind, and so very limited, in their vaccination efforts. I’m thrilled that someone is creating a vaccine that can be deployed in countries with significant infrastructure limits.

What I’m saying is that Ed Yong’s interview with Dr. Rhea Boyd, and my different encounter with a group of vaccine-hesitant persons, are both about real, serious, valid concerns.

If you want cooperation from the general public, honesty matters.

Photo: “Keep your distance” logo, courtesy of Wikimedia, CC 4.0.

Maybe Not the Unity the Holy Father Wanted

Last updated on: July 21, 2021 at 8:24 pm By Jennifer Fitz

One of my teens is determined to make a Taylor Swift fan out of me, and some time ago she introduced me to “Bad Blood”, lyrics here. I couldn’t deny the effectiveness of the artistry, but I was struggling to relate: The reality is that I just don’t have many bad relationships in my life, and even those few are merely tragic, not hateful. I’m surrounded by pretty good people. It’s nice.

I was listening to the song with my daughter, and knowing that Swift was capturing a real emotion, a real human experience, and I was searching my memory for someplace in my mostly-pleasant life when I’d encountered the kind of profound, life-changing, love-destroying betrayal that this song is about.

Oh yeah! I remembered in a flash of insight: The Catholic Church.

Can we say “McCarrick” for example?

After that, I considered turning this blog into nothing but pertinent links to The Pillar with the music video to illustrate the average sane-person’s feelings about the theme of the day. Financial corruption, sexual abuse . . . I would have been able to hit a respectable posting quota, no problem.

And the thing is: I’m Catholic. Very, very, very Catholic. I think everyone should be Catholic. I think the Catholic faith is the best route to eternal happiness, period. But dang can it get rough in here. It’s not always little cutesy Catholic food fights, sometimes it’s frank spiritual warfare.

And I mean by that Spiritual Warfare Level: Your guts spilled and your head blown off. The demonic is real, and there’s nothing the enemy hates more than the Presence of Jesus Christ.

***

So I want to share a reaction to Pope Francis’s attempt to quash the TLM from a Catholic guy who, in his own words, “Couldn’t care less about the Latin Mass.” He’s not interested. Never been. No appeal. If it evaporated into the ether, forgotten forever, he wouldn’t notice or care.

What he is, though, is a guy who believes the Catholic faith. Not easily, who does? And here I paraphrase his reaction to this news, which he shared with me extensively in an in-person conversation:

The Holy Father has made it clear he just can’t be bothered to deal with the real problems in the Church. It’s an outright F-U to everyone who is incensed by the raping of children by clergy, the cover-ups of the bishops, and the brazenness of the US President in actively promoting the slaughter of innocent children while blithely promoting his “devout Catholic faith”.

This longtime Catholic revert and active volunteer in his local, thriving parish, explained that before the new motu proprio? He could tell himself, “Well, the Pope can’t fix everything. It’s difficult, and complicated, and he can’t just step in and micromanage every problem in a Church with membership in the billions.”

Now? Oh, we have the time and energy to require every single priest in the world to get explicit permission to say a particular form of the Mass that was just fine for 400 years? And require every bishop in the world to check in with Rome about it? But somehow we don’t have time to clearly discuss the situation of one practicing-Catholic US president who is openly advocating for the killing of innocent children. Somehow we just can’t manage to deal with those bishops and clergy who are complicit in covering-up the rape of children.

Saying long-approved, perfectly fine, tried-and-true prayers of the Mass? We have time for every single priest in the world to personally apply for permission and get approved or disapproved. Raping children? Eh. We’re kinda busy, you know. It’s a big church. It’s so hard.

–> Though I am paraphrasing, I put the reaction in blockquotes because I want to emphasize that I’m reporting someone else’s POV. Not a theology guy, just an average Novus Ordo Joe-Catholic. And he feels personally stabbed in the gut by the Holy Father over a letter that has nothing, at all, to do with his own spirituality.

But we’re One Body in Christ. Whap that funny bone and the knees go weak.

***

So yeah, the Holy Father is getting his unity. A guy who never gave a crap about the TLM? Honestly thought Latin-Mass people were a little kooky? To quote him directly, “I’m sorry that I’m Catholic.”

He can’t help it. He believes the Catholic faith. But he’s unable to love it, and unable to ask anyone else to love it with him.

Artwork: The Isenheim Altarpiece, Colmar, France. I’ve been to see it twice in my life, and I love it, so, so much. Not because it’s nice, but because it’s true.

Amy Welborn blogs about reactions from farther up the pyramid here.

Sanity and Civil Rights

Last updated on: June 16, 2021 at 10:23 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Let me start by saying: My personal, non-medical, non-expert (but Old Married People do know a thing or two) opinion is that “conversion therapy” is a lousy idea. I think this because I think human sex drives are pretty deeply embedded in the brain.

I think, therefore, that even when we don’t like some aspect of our sexual inclinations, and even when for very good reasons we determine we must not act on our internally-driven desires, it is healthier and more realistic to seek out effective coping mechanisms than to pin our hopes on somehow, someway simply not being interested anymore.

Just not interested anymore is appealing in theory, but in practice I’m not convinced it’s really a thing. I’m very not convinced that one can successfully create a new, replacement attraction as a substitute for the unwanted attraction.

–> I think it’s disastrous to, say, enter into a marriage with a person you previously would have found categorically sexually unattractive, but now somehow you’ve hyped yourself up into a series of positive affirmations that will make that person someone you want to engage in the marital act with for the next fifty years?

I could, here, be completely wrong. But I wanted to state my opinion before continuing, so you know where I’m coming from.

***

Even though I firmly believe this, and therefore would not advise someone to pursue “conversion therapy,” I was alarmed this morning to see that the City of Columbia, SC (the state capital) passed an ordinance banning conversion therapy.

Why alarmed?

Because it is the banning of thought. In the case of “conversion therapy,” it’s the banning of just wanting and trying to think something. Conversion therapy bans make it illegal to try to think about what it is you wish to think about.

When on further reading I saw that the ban only applied to minors, for a moment I was relieved. I am strongly opposed to allowing minors to pursue elective procedures that permanently remove or disable major organ systems. Anyone who isn’t old enough to know whether it’s okay to have a beer or a cigarette is not old enough to know whether it’s okay to remove a healthy, fully-functioning body part.

So I thought to myself: Maybe the ordinance is okay. Maybe it’s a broader protection-of-minors thing.

Nope. Not so. The text of the ordinance can be found by downloading the June 15, 2021 meeting agenda packet, found here.

And reading the text of the ordinance (you’ll have to dig a bit into the agenda packet to get to it) you can see that some people don’t understand civil rights.

The ordinance struggles, mightily, because it wants to ban “any practice that seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity” but without banning “counseling that provides support to a person undergoing gender transition”. (Section 14-171 of Ordinance 2021-021)

Alas, gender transition just means changing one’s gender identity, soo . . . you aren’t allowed help someone try to change their gender identity except when you’re trying to help them change their gender identity?

The intent of the council is unequivocal, but the text of the ordinance ends up being meaningless, because the council wants to protect some kinds of gender-identity changes, but not all.

(Also, amusing note: They explicitly define “sexual orientation” as referring to practices and preferences “between consenting adults” and explicitly exclude preferences or practices “between an adult and a minor” but make no mention of preferences between consenting minors, which means that . . . the ordinance defines itself into non-existence. –> If you’re under-18, you are too young to be experiencing the ordinance’s definition of “sexual attraction”. Again, clearly what the council meant to do was say it’s okay to treat someone for pedophilia. But instead they accidentally made a definition that categorically excludes the subjects of the ordinance from the definition. Sigh.)

What could the council do instead?

You could decide that the care of minors is something that City Council doesn’t need to legislate. There is already a vast state-run social services edifice in place, but if the city wants to improve community outreach so that vulnerable teens have better access to various support systems, that is within the city’s scope, inasmuch as it involves improving the staffing of various city services (police, recreation centers, etc.).

In contrast, medical decisions, including decisions about psychiatric care, are the cooperative responsibility of the minor and his or her parents, in consultation with physicians or mental health care providers of their choice. It is not the job of the city to dictate what types of care a child or teen might wish to pursue.

Of course city council members care about the well-being of the youth in their jurisdiction. Of course they want parents to feed their children healthy foods, get them outdoors for sunshine and exercise, and please don’t mix alcohol and Tylenol, ever. And yet, it isn’t the job of city council to legislate, item by item, what kinds of care may or may not be sought out by persons living within city limits.

But, even more than the question of subsidiarity, there’s the deeper problem with this ordinance: It’s thought-police, plain and simple.

That the council worked so darn hard to make sure that one type of care was banned while an identical but culturally-opposite type of care was protected, and that they worked so hard to make such a distinction and were unable to write a text that succeeded in doing so, makes it abundantly clear that the purpose of the ordinance is to favor one way of thinking about human sexuality while prohibiting another.

Not a way of acting, mind. A way of thinking. Psychological care is the care of your mental faculties. Your thoughts.

Banning a certain way of thinking is just dumb.

It’s bad civil rights.

The freedoms of speech, religion, and assembly are all built on freedom of thought.

***

Bringing this back to the Catholic: People in power tend to want to suppress the opposition. People out of power tend to want to campaign for absolute freedom of expression.

As Catholics, we believe that our thoughts are so important they can even determine our eternal destiny. Therefore, when the Church has a political majority, it’s tempting to use that political power to enforce right thinking.

That temptation leads to evil. It starts with a good desire, but ends in bloodshed and lying. It ultimately sabotages the faith rather than shoring it up.

Because we care about our fellow men, we should try to encourage and guide others towards the truth. Coercion, however, does no favors.

***

I concede here that I was raised a fervent American patriot and only came into my own as a Catholic much later. My love for the Bill of Rights absolutely colors my thinking. I don’t know that I even could think objectively about a case for abolishing the US Constitution as we know it.

So I guess I plead a case of here-I-stand-can-do-no-other: Freedom of thought is foundational to civil society. Thought-policing is evil.

Please do not support bills and ordinances that dictate what kinds of thinking are legal, regardless of whether you agree with the general goal of the legislation.

Thanks.

Photo of car with the Bill of Rights written out on the driver’s side doors, courtesy of Wikimedia, CC 2.0. Probably going to have to make me one of these.

A Mission for Old Married People

Last updated on: May 23, 2021 at 9:24 am By Jennifer Fitz

If you have been faithfully married for a long time, you are likely out of touch with just how different the world of sex and dating is now than when you were young and single.

(By “long” here, I mean “decades” not “it feels like forever”. Not in any way minimizing the challenges and victories of the earlier years, but if you are still in the early years, you probably know more about the contemporary single-world than those who’ve been out of that game for a couple decades or longer. And the “faithfully” is important, since a fair bit of what faithfully-married persons don’t go doing is precisely what brings us to the mission.)

When you were young-and-single, Old Married Reader, it is likely that no matter how much you bungled it, there was still a generalized belief that faithful, lifelong marriage was a real, attainable, desirable thing.

It is likely you had doubts, of course, because if you are part of the under-80 set, you have spent your entire marriage under steady pressure to cut your losses and run if things aren’t as fulfilling as the magazine says they ought to be. And of course you understand that sometimes one or both spouses is simply incapable of behaving with the remotest shred of decency, and genuine abuse is not, at all, the same thing as sticking it out with your notably flawed but genuinely loving and committed other-half.

Old Married Reader, what you need to know is that a whole lotta single persons these days have no concept of the value of marriage that you yourself took for granted back in the day. You yourself perhaps never even gave it much thought, back then. It simply was. Fall in love, get married, hope it works out because you know that’s the good life, and you want a good life. That was our world.

That world is not the one known to most younger adults — nice kids, who mean well, and who want to live a fulfilling life for themselves and for others — their world is not at all like the world we dated in.

They live in a world where sex is entirely, totally, radically divorced from marriage and procreation. They live in a world that has no hope that faithful, committed, loving marriage can be a thing.

How hopeless are they? It’s not just the porn addiction and relentless promiscuity and the online sugar daddies. On the other end of the spectrum are those who won’t date anyone, because none of the candidates are divorce-proof enough, no matter how keen the other person is to settle down and raise a family. They want to date but somehow never can, because they’ve seen how many different ways a spouse’s faults can be marriage-ending, and thus are terrified to commit to anyone who isn’t the picture of Perfect Marriage Material.

They have, in short, become unable to fall in love.

Old Married Person, I know your marriage isn’t all that great. You’ve been at this for two or three or four decades or more, and your spouse still doesn’t have it together, and neither do you. Whole self-help books have been written about your glaring faults, with bonus chapters devoted to your lesser ones. If you had kids, they’ve turned out to be just normal people like yourself, not winning any Picture of Total Perfection awards.

And yet, by simple fact of choosing to keep on loving each other (even though you bungle it sometimes) and keep on staying faithfully committed to each other, you two who are really not that impressive on most measures of human achievement have managed to accomplish this amazing thing. Your marriage is far, far greater than the sum of you two parts. Indeed, the fact of your still loving each other (bungled, but genuine) and still being faithfully committed to each other is the most impressive thing you’ve ever done.

It’s involved denying yourself many, many other opportunities. You’ve set aside dreams that really mattered to you. Your spouse has been, at times, a source of pain to you, and likewise you to your spouse. Caring for him or her has meant letting go of parts of you. In exchange you’ve created, together, a world that doesn’t look like much on the outside, but when you probe it you discover depth and meaning that, frankly, it’s darn unbelievable someone like you could even pull off.

Single people need to know about this world.

They need to know that entering into the vocation of lifelong faithful commitment to the man or woman you fell in love with is fulfilling. It is meaningful. It is worthwhile. And above it: It is possible.

It doesn’t require two people who are ideal marriage material. It requires two people who are 100% committed to faithful, lifelong love for one another, and who acknowledge there’s going to be some bungling, it’s honestly not going to be glamorous, and that good-enough in the marriage department doesn’t play well for an audience, but hello? It’s not a show. It’s a life. A real life. A hard life. A good life.

***

Old Married People, I write to you because what you have is no longer a commonplace. Many young people have zero exposure to the reality of faithful, lasting, good-enough marriages. They think it’s impossible, or they think it’s a luxury for rare specimens of extraordinary perfection. They have not an inkling of how good a faithful marriage is.

And thus, OMP, there is a genuine mission calling your name: Let people know.

If you’re widowed, speak openly of the years you had with your spouse, both the good and the difficult. If you are both still alive, be available for single people who want to spend time with the two of you, seeing what this marriage business is really like.

For all OMP’s, be open to conversation with younger married couples who need some realistic feedback on the problems they are facing, and how to fruitfully (and safely — abuse is real, it does happen) work through them.

***

This isn’t a new mission, its just that the missionaries are fewer on the ground than in previous generations. I’d like to say right now that I’m incredibly grateful for the many older relatives and friends who have been an example and an inspiration for my own marriage. Not because they are perfect people, but because they are imperfect people.

Lessons on how to stay faithful when both of you are perfectly-perfect are utterly irrelevant to me. An example of faithfulness when both of you have some pretty obvious weaknesses and foibles? Yep, we needed that.

We still need that.

***

OMP, your life isn’t shiny and it doesn’t always photograph well. But your life is important. It’s important to you and it’s important to your family and friends, of course. But dear one, your life is desperately important to the legions of young people who have grown up without any exposure to old married persons like yourself.

It’s scary, because you know your weaknesses. You know very well your marriage is not fully accomplished until one of you have breathed your last, and even after it still unfolds. But put it out there anyway. There are legions of single persons whose lives could pivot towards genuine happiness, albeit the hard kind, if only they knew how real and attainable is your humdrum exceptional world.

A Week in Politics and Church Scandals

Last updated on: November 11, 2020 at 9:28 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Happy Veteran’s Day! My favorite veteran-related post (from my own archives — many other people have done more and better) is here. The deceased veteran, a young man I never got to meet in person, son of a longtime internet friend and whom every year at this time I remember the most among all the veterans I have known more personally, is memorialized here.

***

Blog silence over the past week or so is because I haven’t had anything helpful to add to the public discourse. But, in summary form, before getting into Church talk below, here are my responses to the great debates in the wake of the presidential election:

My personal opinion is that Biden is probably the legitimate winner of the popular and electoral college votes, though obviously the race was quite close. I would be surprised if it turned out otherwise.
Given the obvious stakes in a close race for a powerful office, it would not be surprising for any losing candidate of such a race to request recounts and investigations into possible fraud. I think the time and expense is a good investment in upholding the republic. If there has been no fraud, wonderful. It will do Biden, and the nation, well to be shown the clear and honest winner of the election. If there has been fraud, regardless of whether it changes the outcome of the election, it is of benefit to everyone that we detect and root it out. I see no reason why anyone would object to giving careful scrutiny to a matter of such national and international import.
Because I have the seen the dishonesty, bias, and hype generated by partisans on both sides of the race, I find that the bulk of my Twitter feed is now full of opinions and assertions from both left and right that I must simply disregard. No dearies, I am not going to go fact check every single one of your hysterical memes and outrage-tweets. Consider that developing a reputation for credibility can only help your cause, and that lying does the opposite.

And on that theme, moving on to the McCarrick report:

Michael Brendan Dougherty’s comments here seem to be right on point.
If you need a refresher, at this placeholder site you can download the Pennsylvania Grand Jury’s report on Catholic cover-ups of abuse. Of particular connection to the McCarrick case is the involvement of McCarrick’s protégé, Cardinal Wuerl.
And in my reading this week I stumbled on this highly-localized blog devoted to abuse cases at two New Jersey Catholic schools; it provides some good context for understanding the higher-level actions mentioned in the McCarrick report.
Here, for example, is a news report on a jury award for a school coach who claims that in 2005 he was fired when the headmaster “retaliated against him because he reported the headmaster for making two students uncomfortable when he excessively hugged them and patted them on their buttocks.”
I would like a “What did you know and when did you know it?” report from the Catholic University of America.

I think the McCarrick report should be required reading for any man discerning a vocation to the priesthood. Not to dissuade him; if God calls you, that’s where you go. Rather, so that he understands what he’s walking into.

Does every seminarian get groped by a superior? Not that I’ve heard. But is every priest working under a hierarchal culture where covering-up is the norm, and where generations of ordinaries have been selected for their willingness to keep their heads down and see-no-evil? Yes indeed.

The Lord tells us to count the cost before we follow Him. We still follow. But, the more you understand the immensity of the sacrifice you are undertaking, the more sanely you can accept the suffering that comes from the moments when the sacrifice is felt most keenly. Your heart will be pierced with a sword, so better to understand that’s part of the program.

***

I don’t have magic consolations to share in the face of the horrendous evils reported in the McCarrick report.

I certainly can’t assure anyone contemplating the Catholic faith that you won’t experience horrible things at your local Catholic parish and diocese — of this type, of some other type, perhaps of just the mundane low-level indifference that typifies so many bureaucracies. Maybe you will luck into a fantastic Catholic experience, but maybe you won’t.

I can say that McCarrick is the reason I added the chapter on “Integrity” in the evangelization book.

I can say that my reason for being Catholic is not because I have always had a good Catholic experience. I sometimes have wonderful Catholic experiences, and sometimes I do not.

I can say that Jesus always shows up in the Holy Eucharist, and that is the center of my faith.

I can say that my reason for being Catholic is because the Catholic faith is true.

***

Horrible people at a parish or a diocese or a Vatican pseudo-investigation can’t change that reality.

I have known many beautiful, wonderful, good, holy people in the Catholic Church. They are not the reason I am Catholic — though I am daily grateful for their presence and company.

The reason I am Catholic is that this is the Church Jesus Christ founded, and my goodness with the way Catholics behave, if it weren’t the Church He promised would prevail against the gates of Hell, it wouldn’t have lasted ten minutes.

When Christ became Man, He became one with a fallen human race. He did not fall, yet He bore our fallenness. And so, likewise, His Church continues to bear the suffering of unity with fallen man. It is a hard thing. But it is a temporary thing. Come Lord Jesus.

***

In my final, lighter bit of news-related commentary: I, too, like the devotional song “On Eagle’s Wings” — I know! — though I would not think to quote it in a political speech. All the same, I’d rather a good Dies Irae at my funeral. Thanks.

Photo: Arlington National Cemetery, courtesy of Wikimedia, Public Domain. Two of my grandparents are buried here, though their graves are not shown in this photo. If you wonder why I get all Bill of Rights on people, this is why.