Maybe ten days ago, or a million years -- who can tell at this point? -- I saw a quote attributed to one of Boris Johnson's lackeys. We should just let the virus run its course, he said, and deal with the fallout later. Prevention would be too hard on the economy.
"Thank God," I said to myself, "that this nonsense is on the other side of the ocean from me. That right there is why the Bible says love of money is the root of all evil."
Like the coronavirus itself, this unspeakably execrable flavor of cupidity has wormed its way inside our borders and is infecting disturbing numbers of people. A man from my church posted approvingly about the president's presser today, in which Trump asserted that we're just going to have to get back to work after a couple of weeks of this.
So let's be absolutely clear about what he is saying: we should allow more than 2 million people to die, many of them in heartbreaking respiratory distress, because the economy is the most important thing here. We should allow this virus to run roughshod over the most vulnerable members of our society. We should just...stand aside while it ravages our country -- primarily our elderly, but uncountable others as well.
I have been frustrated for a long time now with the voices on the right calling Trump The Most Pro-Life President In History. Now some of those same folks are expressing support for him in this, perhaps the least pro-life idea ever to issue forth from a human mouth.
Let's have a brief review of How To Catholic:
- Do we protect the vulnerable and marginalized, even when it is personally costly, whether or not they have already been born? (Answer: yes)
- Do we believe in a preferential option for the poor, who are already disproportionately affected by this virus and who urgently need our assistance? (Answer: also yes)
- Do we seriously suggest that allowing more than 2 million agonizing and largely avoidable deaths to happen, primarily so rich people can get back to being rich, is a pro-life perspective? (Answer: HELL NO, we do not.)
Recently, just before the wheels fell off the world, I wrote a post for the parish blog challenging the idea that good CatholicsTM are required to let abortion drive our voting decisions simply because there are more lives affected by abortion than by any of the other issues related to human life and dignity (i.e., it doesn't really matter if a Republican candidate supports the death penalty, because so few people are executed compared to the numbers of abortions in this country). Because I just wrote that post, I can tell you the Guttmacher Institute's most recent estimate for the number of abortions per year in the US: 862,000. And yet some of the people who claim that protecting the maximum number of lives is a moral obligation have now added an astonishing asterisk: *but it's okay to consign more than twice that many people to painful deaths this year if the price is right. One wonders what they might have to say about abortion if it were more profitable.
I do not pretend that there is a clear path forward, though this article from the Atlantic makes a whole lot of sense to me. But we must categorically reject the president's idea of allowing the virus to do its thing so the stock market can return to doing its thing. The only moral code in which this proposal makes sense is the one where Mammon is Lord. No man can serve two masters, some rabble-rouser once said. Donald Trump is showing us yet again where his true allegiance lies.
Please, my friends, let's make it clear where our true allegiance lies.
Recent Comments