Pandemic of coronavirus can be slowed and its damage lessened by not going to Mass.

Well family of fellow dying inmates… it looks like we better get comfortable with slowing down real quick, because we are going to be at home for some time. The coronavirus pandemic is deadly serious. It not only kills but causes organ damage in those who recover. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advises that gatherings of 50 people or more be either canceled or postponed over the next eight weeks. 

Therefore: don’t go to Mass.

First, watch your American guilty feelings mixed together nastily with your Catholic upbringing. Second, familiarize yourself with what professionals are advising. Third, contrast this with recent trends of life-threatening stupidity in both Government and some (not all) Christian personalities.

Deadly Serious Pandemic

The Dean of Harvard University’s Faculty of Medicine and consultant to the CDC, George Q. Daley writes, “The outbreak of COVID-19 is the single most threatening pandemic to arise in the last century, and has historians recalling the devastation of the influenza pandemic of 1918, which infected about a third of the world’s population, resulting in at least 50 million deaths. The world’s population today is almost four times larger, and our communities are correspondingly denser and more vulnerable. Reducing not only community density but containing the migration of those infected with the virus will be essential for dampening the impact of this pandemic. I ask you to act responsibly on behalf of our entire community, especially those who are most vulnerable. Please work remotely and maintain distance and isolation until we have a better understanding of the course of this outbreak. We will get through this, together.”

This is no joke or hoax, folks. It’s real. And millions of lives are at stake because of this pandemic. So when I read warnings from a competent medical professionals like the one above, I pause and pay attention. But then I look over at social media postings from my fellow Christian Americans behaving dangerously and am dismayed. Why? They are behaving not unlike the fundamentalist Mrs. Carmody of Stephen King’s “THE MIST.” And it’s very concerning.

A Pandemic of Sincere Stupidity

Online Christian personalities warping the Eucharist with their Providentialism foolishly dismiss the dangers, thinking that God is going to magically protect “the faithful” from this pandemic. God is not the Genie from Aladdin nor is God a helicopter parent swooping in to save the day. But these brothers and sisters of ours aren’t just pooling ignorance this time. Their actions are threatening to kill people. Lots of people.

This is not a time for spiritualizing things away via magical misunderstandings of the sacraments. It is definitely a time of prayer but also for sound reason.

Concerning saving millions of lives by preventing the spread of the virus, the math doesn’t lie. Don’t be like those fabled Aristotelian priests who refused to look into Galileo’s telescope. Look here:

Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to "flatten the curve" https://t.co/yDJnTMuWS3

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 15, 2020

An Invitation to Reason

Please fellow Catholics and other Christians: let’s not be the last ones cancelling our gatherings. We shouldn’t be people balking at science or dismissing facts.

If because of this pandemic we have eight weeks to stay away from gatherings of fifty or more people, then we should not be going to Mass. You don’t want to wipe out our elderly and most vulnerable, do you? Then don’t go to Mass.

Grace isn’t a quantity. God is still with us even if we don’t receive Communion right now. Let’s prayerfully together stop the spread of this killer bug. God forbid it be said centuries from now that Christian fanaticism killed a hundred million people, all deaths that could have been avoided.

Don’t go to Mass these several weeks. God understands. And if the God in your mind doesn’t understand, it’s time to drop that idol and get to know the real God.