Coronavirus

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No confessions? Coronavirus crisis creates legal, doctrinal Lenten minefield for priests

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No confessions? Coronavirus crisis creates legal, doctrinal Lenten minefield for priests

Every now and then, while a priest is traveling or out running errands, a stranger will approach and ask: "Father, will you hear my confession?"

This can happen on a city sidewalk or in a quiet corner of a big-box store. Often the question is urgent -- because something disturbing has shaken someone's faith.

"I've been asked for confession in a taxi. I've been asked while on a train," said Father Fergal O'Duill, part of the Dallas-Fort Worth branch of the Catholic movement Regnum Christi. His name is pronounced "O'Doul" and he is originally from Dublin, Ireland.

These requests happen, he added, because "people see you and they know you're a priest. We're priests no matter where we go."

Hearing confessions is crucial during the penitential season of Lent, which precedes Easter, which is on April 12th this year for Catholics and Protestants (and April 19th for Eastern Orthodox Christians). Centuries of Catholic and Orthodox tradition urge believers to go to confession during Lent, before receiving Holy Communion on Easter.

The irony, right now, is that O'Duill can hear confessions during chance encounters, but not during scheduled times at the school where is serves as a chaplain.

The evolving coronavirus pandemic has turned Lent into a confusing minefield of legal and doctrinal questions for pastors and their flocks. In many communities, but not all, state or local officials have ordered people to "shelter in place" -- staying home unless they have "essential" needs elsewhere. This has raised an obvious question: Is going to confession "essential," even if Catholics are preparing for Holy Week and Easter rites they will have to watch on digital screens at home?

For most of March, O'Duill was one of several priests who heard confessions in a giant parking lot, or in a pair of tents, near the Highlands School in Irving, Texas. Every effort was made to provide enough privacy to maintain the "dignity" of the sacrament, he said, while priests remained a safe distance from the penitents. Priests offered similar "drive-through" confession opportunities in a few other parts of America.

Then, on March 22, Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins issued a "shelter in place" order effective through April 3 and, perhaps, beyond.

The ground rules changed.


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Angry preachers fight 'shelter in place.' #NEWS Major religious groups follow rules? #SOWHAT

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If you were going to create an FAQ built on complaints from ordinary news consumers about the journalism biz, some variation on this question would have to be at or near the top of the list: “Why do journalists cover so much bad news? Why do they ignore all the good things that people do in our town/city/country/world and focus only on the bad things that a small handful of people do?”

I believe it was the late Walter Cronkite of CBS Evening News fame who said something like this (I’ve been hunting, but can’t find the quote): It would be a terrible thing if we lived in a world in which good news was so rare that everyone considered it unique and truly newsworthy.

If you pay attention to religion threads on Twitter, you know that we are living through a textbook case study of people arguing about this subject. This time, the question looks like this: Why are the few pastors who reject “shelter in place” orders getting so much ink with their face-to-face worship services, while the vast majority of clergy who have moved their rites online — often for the first time — are getting little or no coverage? I have already written about this twice at GetReligion — look here and then here.

Some people are upset, I think, because the rebels are all independent church leaders who, as a rule, perfectly match each and every stereotype of the angry white evangelicals and Pentecostals who back, you know, Citizen Donald Trump. In a way, this is a life-and-death example of the great evangelical monolith myth. Here is what people are feeling: How come some angry preacher deep in the Bible Belt is getting all this coverage and, well, online efforts by the still massive Southern Baptist Convention are ignored?

Frankly, the leap to online worship hasn’t been ignored. It has been covered over and over in local and regional news and in a few national stories that have not received all that much attention.

It’s also true — you know this if you follow Twitter — that Catholic and Eastern Orthodox people have been arguing about “shelter in place” rules, as well. The news there is that bishops have been making decisions to protect their priests and laypeople (see my most recent “On Religion” column). That’s a big story, too.

So what do these mad-preacher stories look like? For some reason, Reuters seems to be Ground Zero. Consider this headline: “The Americans defying Palm Sunday quarantines: 'Satan's trying to keep us apart'.” The story opens with a brave woman near Cincinnati who is staying at home and then jumps to this:


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Coronavirus crisis reveals gap between news media pros and and many people of faith

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A while back, I found myself asking a woman I’ve known all my life, “Do you really believe the news media is ‘the enemy of the people?’”

“Yes, I do,” she replied.

I shook my head in amazement.

“You realize,” I said to my sweet, loving mother, “that you’re talking about your son and your daughter-in-law and your grandson, who is a journalism major.”

“No, I don’t mean you,” she insisted.

I’ve spent 30 years in the news profession — working both for secular and religious publications — and believe in the vital role of a free press in a democratic society.

Yet many of the people I love most in the world have lost all respect for journalism. That’s evidenced by the snarky Facebook memes they post, making comments like, “Something our major news media will never tell you.” (Forget that the information supplied often comes from a news source.)

If I’m being fair, I understand how my friends and relatives — many of them Bible-believing Christians — arrive at the conclusion they do.

Their perception of the news media is the New York Times arguing for more, not fewer, abortions during the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s the same newspaper publishing an op-ed blaming Christians for the spread of the coronavirus.

I would counter that, yes, the Times is a liberal newspaper editorially, but there’s a difference between news and opinion content. The problem is that the line often becomes much grayer than it should be.


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Ryan Burge asks that question, again: Are politics, or doctrines, shaping COVID-19 responses?

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America is traveling further into uncharted lockdown territory, which will inevitably lead to more and more mainstream news coverage of how the coronavirus crisis will shape political events and trends.

Why? Politics is real. Also, never, ever forget that someone will — sooner or later — get to name a U.S. Supreme Court justice to replace the elderly, frail Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

But there are real religious questions here that need to be asked. Are conservative Christians responding to COVID-19 trends in ways that are radically different than liberal believers? Are the faithful in different brands of Protestantism responding in ways that are different than Catholics? And is that cultural Catholicism, Sunday morning Catholicism or daily-Mass Catholicism? Are secular people radically different from average religious people, during a crisis of this kind?

This brings us to another Ryan Burge (a must Twitter follower for religion-beat pros) think piece. It’s linked to a previous GetReligion post, sort of, that ran with this headline: “Faith in quarantine: Why are some people praying at home while others flock to pews?”

This time, writing at Christianity Today, Burge discusses political and religious themes in all of the fear factors at work right now — without oversimplifying the religion details. Get ready for crucial sentences containing words like “some” and “many.” The headline: “Faith Over Fear? No, It’s Political Ideology that Keeps People Unafraid of COVID-19.” Here’s the set-up material, pointing to a source of polling info:

In recent years, Americans across religious traditions have become more worried about the potential for a major epidemic, the kind of hypothetical question that has become all too real in the past few weeks.

But the earlier data shows fears around the spread of disease tend to be lower among Protestant Christians who identify as politically conservative and attend church weekly. This may explain why some conservative leaders, including a couple of President Donald Trump’s evangelical advisers, hesitated to cancel in-person worship or on-campus classes amid the current coronavirus precautions.


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Podcast: Will preachers fighting 'shelter in place' rules create a church-state disaster?

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For several weeks now, churchgoers — and journalists — have been waiting to see what would happen at Easter, Passover and Ramadan.wisely,

We don’t have all the answers, yet. But it’s clear that in the overwhelming majority of cases, Christians in North America and around the world will be observing Holy Week and Easter at home, watching small teams of clergy and musicians celebrate the holiest rites of the Christian year while striving to follow the fine details of “shelter in place” orders.

In my own church — Eastern Orthodoxy — we will celebrate Pascha a week after Western Easter. Clergy in the Diocese of the South (Orthodox Church in America) just learned that our Archbishop Alexander has (I believe) set strict standards (.pdf here) for his parishes all across the Sunbelt. People will stay home through it all — Holy Week and Pascha — watching five-person teams of clergy and chanters do as many of the long, ancient rites as they can. Click here for Rod Dreher’s poignant post on that, which includes:

Did you know that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, the one built over the site where Jesus died, was buried, and was resurrected, has been closed for the first time since … the Black Plague, in the 14th century? The right way to see this is that we Orthodox Christians are being asked to make an absolutely extraordinary sacrifice for the life of the world — so that this plague which has killed, and will kill, so many, and will have reduced so many to poverty, can be defeated. As the old-school Catholics like to say about sacrifice, we should, “offer it up” as an extreme sharing of Christ’s passion. We will know in a way we never have the meaning of the crucified Jesus’s words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

All of that loomed in the background as “Crossroads” host Todd Wilken and I recorded this week’s podcast (click here to tune that in).

For the most part, we tried to look past that story and down the road at the long-term legal implications of other religion-beat headlines caused by the coronavirus crisis.

I am referring to the small number of evangelical Protestants who have been rebelling against government orders to “shelter in place.” Julia Duin and I wrote about the coverage of some of these cases here (“About Rodney Howard-Browne and what happens to Easter, Passover and the hajj during a plague“) and then here (“All megachurches are not alike: NYTimes noted Howard-Browne arrest, but didn't leave it at that“).

What happens if — as some are planning — clashes between a few churches and state officials end up in court?


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Oh no! 'New Yorkers' upset about Franklin Graham's hospital tents near Central Park angel

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That didn’t take long.

Just yesterday, I wrote a post — “All megachurches are not alike: NYTimes noted Howard-Browne arrest, but didn't leave it at that” — that opened with a plea for reporters to be more careful when making sweeping, simplistic statements about niche groups in the public square.

I was discussing the wave of news about the small number of megachurch pastors who are rebelling against “shelter in place” orders — by continuing to hold face-to-face gatherings instead of asking their members to stay off and watch digital, streaming versions of the services. This important and valid topic was yet another chance for reporters to be tempted to say that “evangelicals” (or even megachurch evangelicals) were doing this or that horrible thing, instead of attempting to get inside this complex phenomenon and report hard, nuanced facts. Then I added:

You also see this equation play out with “Catholic voters,” “Jews and Israel,” “New Yorkers,” “Democrats” (and “Republicans”) and lots of other niches in public life. … Making blanket statements of that kind — about evangelicals, Jews, journalists or any other group — requires either (a) massive amounts of solid reporting or some combination of (b) ego and/or (c) hatred.

Frequently, journalists need to carefully look at the evidence and add words such as “most,” “some” or even “a few.” They may need to limit their judgmental statements to certain zip codes or subgroups of a larger whole. …

Yes, take New Yorkers, for example.

There are many different kinds of New Yorkers (at least, that has been my experience). New York isn’t Dallas, for sure, but it is a very different place than the simplistic New York City that dwells in the fever dreams of way too many right-wingers.

This brings me to a hot topic on Twitter, as summarized by a new Religion News Service report with this headline: “Franklin Graham on his Central Park field hospital: ‘We don’t discriminate. Period.’ “

It’s a good thing — as you can see in that headline — that the RNS team let Graham speak his peace about the controversy that is swirling about those emergency hospital tents that his Samaritan’s Purse relief agency has brought to one of New York City’s most iconic locations. Nevertheless, read this overture carefully:


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Fire at will, in a circle: What does 'pro-life' mean in the context of the COVID-19 era?

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The assertion of certain conservative politicians that abortion should not be considered “essential” surgery in a time of medical shortages is the latest twist in the ever-active “pro-life” news agenda. But different sorts of life debates lie ahead.

Writers on religion and ethics went to work when Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick suggested on Fox News that it’s OK if senior citizens like himself need to die in this epidemic to ensure that their children and grandchildren have decent economic livelihoods. Radio talker Glenn Beck, a Latter-day Saint, agreed that he’d “rather die than kill the country.”

Even liberals who favor fully free choice for abortion and mercy-killing abhorred suggestions that incomes should count more than the sacredness of human life. Harvard’s Ashish Jha told The Washington Post’s Sarah Pulliam Bailey that Patrick set up “a false dichotomy” between economics and public health, which is “possibly the dumbest debate we’re having.”

A related topic could be around the corner that journalists should be preparing to cover. In a word: Triage.

Here’s the Merriam-Webster definition: “The sorting of and allocation of treatment to patients and especially battle and disaster victims according to a system of priorities designed to maximize the number of survivors.”

That is, in a crunch who gets life-saving treatment and who doesn’t? In the current crisis, what if intensive care units in a city’s hospitals run short of ventilators necessary to sustain life, as worst-case projections indicate could happen? Should advanced age be a criterion for withholding treatments? This is a nation that next January will inaugurate a president of age 74 (Donald Trump) or 78 (Joe Biden) or 79 (Bernie Sanders), alongside a likely House Speaker who is 80.


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All megachurches are not alike: NYTimes noted Howard-Browne arrest, but didn't leave it at that

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Rare is the day when I do not receive some kind of email linked to the following issue.

I will use “evangelicals” in this equation, since that is the most common religious flock mentioned in these missives. You also see this equation play out with “Catholic voters,” “Jews and Israel,” “New Yorkers,” “Democrats” (and “Republicans”) and lots of other niches in public life.

It is one thing to say that “evangelicals” are doing such and such or are responsible for a specific trend/event that is in the news. Think about that recent New York Times headline — now tweaked — that read: “The Road to Coronavirus Hell Was Paved by Evangelicals.”

Making blanket statements of that kind — about evangelicals, Jews, journalists or any other group — requires either (a) massive amounts of solid reporting or some combination of (b) ego and/or (c) hatred.

Frequently, journalists need to carefully look at the evidence and add words such as “most,” “some” or even “a few.” They may need to limit their judgmental statements to certain zip codes or subgroups of a larger whole (there are many kinds of Baptists, for example).

With that in mind, consider the following New York Times story that — #WAITFORIT — deserves some praise for not putting all evangelicals and even megachurch pastors in the same boat during the coronavirus crisis. And, yes, I am returning to an important topic that was just addressed by our own Julia Duin. Here’s the double-decker Times headline: “

Florida Pastor Arrested After Defying Virus Orders

The sheriff of Hillsborough County said the Rev. Rodney Howard-Browne, a Pentecostal pastor, endangered the lives of his parishioners by holding services on Sunday.

Yes, that preacher — again. Here is the overture:

MIAMI — Before the Rev. Rodney Howard-Browne, the pastor of a Pentecostal megachurch in Florida, held two church services on Sunday — each filled with hundreds of parishioners — lawyers from the sheriff’s office and local government pleaded with him to reconsider putting his congregation in danger of contracting the coronavirus.


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Clandestine masses and online funerals: Italy's newspapers covering virus through a religious lens

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Italian newspapers are known for their hyper-partisanship. The country has dozens of dailies and they have political allegiances that are tied to parties of either the left, right or center. It’s not unusual at all, of course, for newspapers in Europe to approach news and commentary from this partisan lens.

Hunger for information during the coronavirus pandemic — of which Italy has seen the world’s highest death toll when it surpassed 10,000 this past weekend — has led to some exceptional reporting. In the process, many Italian journalists have fallen ill from the virus while covering hard-hit areas like the northern Lombardy region.

While Italy’s newspapers have always covered news through a partisan lens, COVID-19 has led to lots of strong journalism as well as coverage of plenty of religious angles.

Newsrooms across Italy have closed — with editors working from home — while reporters in the field have reported on the national lockdown’s disruption of daily life and how the contagion has ravaged communities and families. I have been closely monitoring and reading several of Italy’s dailies even before the pandemic spread to the United States. How the deadly virus overwhelmed hospitals and led to the casualties of so many of its citizens (Italy has one of the world’s lowest birthrates and oldest populations) in such a short period of time is something truly grim and scary.

I examined several of Italy’s largest-circulation dailies — La Repubblica, Il Messaggero, La Stampa and Il Giornale — that span the political spectrum. La Repubblica (which leans left), Il Messaggero and La Stampa (which are both centrist) and Il Giornale (a right-wing outlet) all have one thing in common — all of them have included religion in their coverage. In fact, none of them have shied away from the subject in a country that is overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.

While some Italians have been resentful of the church’s power and authority in the past, the pandemic has led to a religious revival of sorts.


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