Looking out the window it is a beautiful spring morning and every leaf and bulb proclaims life. It is difficult to imagine that a pandemic engulfs us.
My hour long walk is something to look forward to even on a blustery day. I walk mobile free having discovered just how many things can wait for a reply.
Covid-19 makes us focus on what is important. By opting to live in a state of semi self isolation we are all re-calibrating our lives.
Designer clothes, flash cars and ostentatious jewellery don’t seem as relevant. As they say, there are no pockets in a shroud.
Watching rows of graves being dug is visually disturbing. It’s as if the poem, Requiem for the Croppies, has new meaning for this time - ‘They buried us without shroud or coffin, and in August barely grew up out of our grave.’
Of all those affected by isolation, it is the elderly who feel it the most. Many pensioners live the greater part of their lives in isolation. Isolation broken by family visits, pensions day, craic on the busy bus and nipping into a church to say a prayer or light a candle.
Whilst on the Camino a few years back, I hooked up with a young Scottish doctor and he said, “Tom, my da always said, never pass a church with an open door”. On that note we entered about ten churches over a day’s walking. Soon it became too many open doors for this impatient walker and I took leave from the good doctor.
Today as a result of Covid-19, church doors across Ireland are closed. This is difficult for the faithful.
Churches for centuries have been places of sanctuary. I too, find the stillness of an empty church a temporary respite from the outside world. My visits revolve around lighting candles for special intentions or to stick a pound in St Anthony’s box as a thanks for finding the things I have lost.
So I do get the desire to keep church doors open and understand, because of the fear posed by this invisible threat of Covid-19, that there are some people who would find solace by visiting a church.
But it is simply too risky.
In this paper last week, a Catholic bishop said if an off licence is a necessity then so to is a church. But a church isn’t a necessity for the purpose of prayer.
The bishop was well intentioned and some people clearly agree with him. But we need simple clarity not confusion on the rationale behind self isolating.
Social distancing isn’t a problem in most Catholic churches on a Sunday, let alone a weekday. Yet the issue isn’t about social distancing, it’s about contamination. And churches are all about hard surfaces from pews, kneelers and altar rails. Even making donations and lighting a candle requires touch. The other problem is the vulnerable and those over seventy, who are being asked to self isolate. These are the most likely to be drawn to open churches, even in defiance of their own health conditions.
Across the country, social media has opened up a raft of opportunities for the faithful to pray and maintain their sense of belonging and community. Many priests are using online platforms to reach out.
During a plague in AD 251 in Carthage, Bishop Cyprian said: “How suitable, how necessary it is that this plague and pestilence, which seems horrible and deadly, searches out the just of each and everyone examines the mind of the human race; whether the healthy care for the sick, whether relatives dutifully love family as they should.. whether physicians do not desert the afflicted”.
Putting people and their safety first is at the crux of Christianity.
Leaders, spiritual and secular need to be on message: Stay at home! And by all means pray for this time to end.
