The United States Senate will soon vote whether to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci in contempt for refusing to answer a Senate committee’s questions. On July 29, the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs held a hearing in which Fauci, former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases repeatedly invoked the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination when asked about decisions he made during his tenure as Covid Czar. Republicans characterized it as oversight of what the government did during Covid; Democrats called the hearing a backward-looking waste of time to “relitigate” Covid history.
My interest is not in the hearing. I am interested in why there hasn’t been a similar discussion inside the Catholic Church about ecclesiastical performance during Covid.
Bishops across the United States took the unprecedented action of closing churches and shutting down public Masses, in some cases for a year or more. Many Catholics died alone, bereft of the sacraments, including Reconciliation, Anointing, and Viaticum. In some places, it was alleged that Confirmation was “administered” not by episcopal hands but by Q-tips.
And, in the six years since Covid broke out, there has not been any autopsy of the bishops’—and Pope Francis’—decisions. In an era where “synodality” is declared a “style” of ecclesiastical “dialogue” and synodal “conversations in the spirit” dare to deconstruct received dogma and discipline, the de rigueur “dialogues” have yet to reach a public discussion that might suggest the ecclesiastical response to Covid was wrong.
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