MISSING MASS: “I encourage those of you who cannot come to Mass, to stay home and read the Gospels, pray with your families, and to join yourself to the sacrifice of the Mass by making an act of spiritual communion.
“There are a number of prayers of spiritual communion that you can use, the one I like is simple: ‘I wish, my Lord, to receive you with the purity, humility, and devotion with which your most holy mother received you, with the spirit and fervor of the saints.’” – Archbishop Jose Gomez (Los Angeles)
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In response to the global COVID-19 pandemic, many dioceses have announced restrictions on public liturgies and granted dispensations for missing Mass.
At the link is CNA’s rolling coverage of restrictions and special measures taken by dioceses, organized by province, and the status of public Masses and school closings. This list will be updated regularly as news comes in. Check with your diocese or local parish for any to-the-minute changes where you live.
EWTN broadcasts Sunday Mass in English at 9 am and Noon. It can be livestreamed at the link.
Catholic TV has Sunday and weekday Masses in English and Spanish. It looks like these also include Closed Captions for the hearing impaired. Click the link for the schedule.
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From John Hinderaker at Powerline blog, March 13, 2020. I added the graphics.
The Democratic Party press is openly trying to turn coronavirus into President Trump’s Hurricane Katrina. In that context, much of what reporters say is too stupid to be worth rebutting. For example, when the Dow dropped 1,000 points after Trump gave a coronavirus speech a few days ago, the echo chamber told us that Wall Street has no faith in the incompetent Trump. Then, when Trump began to deliver this afternoon’s speech that declared a national emergency and announced various anti-virus measures, there was a brief drop in the Dow, about which many liberals tweeted, blaming Trump. But then the Dow soared 2,000 points, and lots of those tweets were deleted.
That is the world we live in: the press vs. the Republican Party. But let’s step back from hourly swings in the stock market and take a broader look at coronavirus and how it is likely to impact our politics going forward. I suggest several propositions:
The Democrats’ effort to blame coronavirus on Trump is doomed to fail. Most people simply aren’t that dumb. The virus came from China. Its origin may have been a market where freshly-slaughtered bats and such animals were sold, or possibly a nearby government laboratory. No one who isn’t already a fanatical Trump hater thinks that the global spread of the virus is somehow his fault.
On the contrary, the pandemic shows that Trump was right all along about China. While low wages are superficially attractive, there are many disadvantages to doing business there. In the medium and long terms, coronavirus will boost the American economy. There is already a trend toward abandoning China and bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. Coronavirus will accelerate that trend, and will contribute to the ongoing renaissance of American manufacturing. Does anyone think that a few years from now, 97% of our antibiotics and most of our generic pharmaceuticals will still be produced in China?
So far, voters are entirely indifferent to the Democrats’ attempts to gain political advantage from coronavirus. The Rasmussen Survey hasn’t budged, one way or the other. Today Trump stands at 49%/50% in the rolling approval poll.
One of the Democrats’ problems with coronavirus is that it isn’t a very threatening disease. The press would have you believe that it is the 21st Century version of the Black Death, but it is actually more like a bad cold. I have a couple of friends who think they probably have already had it, following trips to Europe. Soon–Two months? Three?–it will be obvious that the hysteria has been vastly overblown. This will make the Democrats, not President Trump, look silly.
The stock market has taken a hit, but it is certain to rebound, and soon. There is no realistic scenario on which the virus, which is fatal overwhelmingly to elderly and unhealthy people, adversely impacts our economy to a significant extent. It is the panic which now affects our economy, not the disease. By November that will be obvious.
Early on, President Trump did the right thing: he tried to damp down the panic, while at the same time taking the measures that would have practical effect, in particular, banning China travel. As press hysteria mounted, he shifted toward visible activism. Today, he declared a national emergency and announced a broad range of anti-virus initiatives, including regulatory waivers that enable a prompt approval of corona test kits and procedures, thereby overcoming (one hopes) the slow pace of the federal bureaucracy. How much this will matter, I don’t know. But it creates the impression of action, which is mostly what matters for political purposes.
Long before November, it will be obvious to everyone that fear of coronavirus was vastly overblown. That is my opinion, anyway. In that scenario, Democratic attacks on Trump’s handling of a “crisis” that fizzled will be ineffective at best. Trump, meanwhile, will claim credit for neutralizing the greatest epidemic (supposedly) of our age. Once again, I think the Democrats have bet on a losing horse, like the Russia collusion scam and the Ukraine nothing-burger. Trump will get credit for defeating a virus that was never much of a threat.
Then again, maybe I am wrong. Maybe by November coronavirus hasn’t dissipated and people are worried about it. What then? In a crisis of any kind–war, depression, epidemic–most people want a strong executive. This is an instinctive preference. If we are under a serious threat, we want a strong, effective person to lead us. That impulse has been consistent for thousands of years.
So, if coronavirus is seen as a serious problem in November, who will voters see as the strong executive? President Trump? Or the doddering Joe Biden, who has to be led down the sidewalk by his handlers, who is so far gone that his campaign team limits campaign appearances to a few minutes, and who generally comes across as an old man who used to be of marginal intelligence, and is now senile?
I think the Democrats’ attempt to make political hay out of coronavirus will–best case–go nowhere, and likely will rebound against them in November.
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PI DAY: Take a break from politics and pandemics to celebrate Pi Day! I have no idea how one would do that, but I’m open to suggestions.
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C.S. Lewis in “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays.
In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year, or as you would have lived in a Viking age when raiders from Scandinavia might land and cut your throat any night; or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”
In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me, dear sir or madam, you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways. We had, indeed, one very great advantage over our ancestors—anesthetics; but we have that still. It is perfectly ridiculous to go about whimpering and drawing long faces because the scientists have added one more chance of painful and premature death to a world which already bristled with such chances and in which death itself was not a chance at all, but a certainty.
This is the first point to be made: and the first action to be taken is to pull ourselves together. If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.
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PRAY: This is from a long Facebook post about the good that this family has experienced during their two month long quarantine in Wuhan, China – “God is providing so many opportunities for good while we are here, and he is showing us his goodness every single moment. We are at peace in the epicenter of the virus. We are at peace in the epicenter of his will. Fear is a faithless coward and has no place in the lives of believers. Fear and worry have no seat at our table. We’re here because he wants us here, right now, for his purpose. Coronavirus wants you to isolate and stock up and take care of your own first. Instead, look to him first while you take care of others. In community, we can do so much more than we can do on our own. God is caring for us so richly and showering us with SO MUCH GOOD each and every moment.”
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My latest update from the campaign trail
TRUMP: “America is a land of heroes” [3:41] – “The best is yet to come.”
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Take it seriously, but don’t panic. The disease is highly contagious and poses a lethal risk primarily to the elderly, the immune deficient, and folks with other underlying conditions, such as chronic heart disease.
Symptoms include fever, dry cough, fatigue, and shortness of breath. If you are feeling sick and are not in one of the high risk categories, please stay home and do all the things you usually do for a cold or flu. In young, healthy people, the Wuhan Coronavirus is usually just a bad cold.
The disease is contagious before symptoms are present, so to avoid catching it in the first place, limit exposure to other people. If you must go out, avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth until you can thoroughly wash your hands. If you must go out and are in a high risk category, wear a mask. They are thought to help reduce your risk and, if nothing else, they make it impossible to touch your nose or mouth!
If you must cough or sneeze, do it into your elbow, not your hand. Viruses transfer readily from hands to surfaces, where they can survive long enough to transfer to other hands.
The head of the Chinese Coronavirus Task Force says Vitamin C is proving helpful both for preventing and for treating the disease. Personally, we are upping our intake from our usual 1,000 mg per day to 2,000 mg per day until flu season ends.
Pay attention to what your state leaders and local news outlets are saying about what’s going on in your area.
And if you aren’t sick, don’t ask to be tested. People who are sick need those test kits.
Also, stop hoarding stuff or, worse, stealing stuff from hospitals! Sheesh.
If you know someone who is in a high risk category, give them a ring and ask if they need you to get them anything at the store. The less they go out, the better.
If you have any questions, you can call the CDC at 1-800-CDC-INFO or go to https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html.
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LENTEN MEDITATION: [6:20] – A great way to make this Lent even better spiritually is to offer up not only something you chose, but also to offer up your inconveniences. Give God those moments when you’re stuck in traffic, or when someone says something bitter to you, or when you have to run an errand you just don’t want to run.
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