The latest conclusions of the national Covid Inquiry have hit the headlines, and those who supported lockdown feel vindicated. An expert-led process costing £200 million has broadly endorsed the government’s approach, concluding that lockdown “was right” — and should, in fact, have happened sooner.
But the inquiry has also been labelled as a £200 million pound “I told you so” exercise; never willing to challenge the underlying assumptions of the lockdown strategy. Critics point to the fact that the inquiry uncritically accepted figures based on discredited modelling, and ignored real-world data such as the comparative case of Sweden. They believe that lockdowns not only couldn’t significantly change the mortality rate from an airborne virus, but that they cost lives, wrecked the economy as well as socially, educationally, and psychologically crippling a generation.
Later modules of the Covid Inquiry will give more opportunity for submissions on the effect of lockdown on Catholic life. But long before any official report appears, the Church faces a pressing question of its own: does the Church need its own internal reckoning? Not a tribunal, but a serious, unafraid conversation about what happened, what was lost, and what must never be repeated.
Like Brexit, the origin, nature, and response to Covid remains an emotive dividing line between generations, sectors of the working population, and even households. Many bishops understandably fear re-opening these wounds. But the wounds exist whether or not we speak of them. If the Church is to serve her people with clarity in the future, she must be willing to examine her response with honesty now.
The response of the institutional Church was panicked, rushed, and arguably incoherent. Surely it’s only appropriate that we learn lessons, draw red lines, consider principle and practice, so that next time (heaven forbid) there is confidence and clarity in our response?
There are three areas that any Catholic retrospective must address.
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