In a recent Facebook post set to public, Bret Laird, a pastor here in the Kalamazoo area, makes an excellent point: All the talk about the alleged Christian duty to curtail our meetings due to Covid ignores the very nature of risk in the world in which Christianity was born and spread--the whole world, in fact, up to the early 1900s at least. Pastor Laird uses the discovery of penicillin and antibiotics early in the 20th century as a starting point for his discussion.
I would like to jump off from Pastor Laird's comments and make similar comments of my own, without using his specific numbers. Just to be "generous", let's take this piece's estimate from September of about 1% infection fatality rate for Covid, noting that this is in an article that is trying to debunk an overly rosy view of the virus's harmfulness. As the piece notes, some estimates of IFR have been lower, but let's take the higher one. Of course, that rate varies greatly from one group to another. Well and good. The case fatality ratio (which involves only detected cases and hence will be higher, since it involves more symptomatic people) has been wildly differently estimated from one country to another. The WHO more or less throws up its hands and suggests trying to avoid one's biases, noting that estimates of this ratio have ranged from .1 to 25%!
Now, let's consider a world with no antibiotics and no vaccines. The world, in fact, in which Christianity came into existence. The world in which the Jewish people came into existence. The world in which God commanded multiple feasts per year (in the Old Testament) and many sacrifices, which had to be carried out in Jerusalem once Solomon built the Temple. The world in which Christians were commanded not to forsake the assembling of themselves together. The world in which 3,000 people were baptized into the new Christian faith on the day of Pentecost. The world of pilgrimages, evangelistic meetings, huge numbers receiving Communion together, the world of "greet one another with a holy kiss."
And let's think about disjunctions. When you have no antibiotics, pneumonia (an infectious disease) is a real scourge. One estimate of its case fatality pre-antibiotics is a whopping 30%. That's case fatality rather than infection fatality, because it's very difficult to know who is technically infected with the pneumococcus, if they present no symptoms. But there's also smallpox, which was a separate real scourge, also with an estimate CFR (in an older world) around 30%.
You begin to get the picture. I'm not going to go look all of these up to get estimates of the probability of your dying of them, back when there was not very good medical care, no antibiotics (where relevant), and no vaccines to prevent them or make you have much milder symptoms. But let's just list a few more infectious diseases to keep the interest going--tuberculosis, typhoid fever, German measles (not very deadly in itself to the one showing symptoms but quite dangerous to the unborn child of a pregnant woman), etc. Oh, did you say something about long-term effects? Well, there was the scarring from smallpox, even if you recovered. There's the possibility of permanent sterility from mumps. Even seasonal influenza was deadlier in 1900 than it is in 2020, probably deadlier still in AD 100, and there were no flu shots to prevent it.
Now, consider: For any given church meeting, Israelite feast, or other religious gathering throughout the history of the people of God prior to the wonders of modern medicine, it is absolutely obvious that the probability that someone or other, as a result of that gathering, would catch one or the other of these infectious diseases and either die or have permanent, serious health consequences was far higher than the probability, in 2020, that that will happen from Covid as a result of a meeting of comparable size.
But (you might say), "they" didn't know that "back then." Well, actually, there have been plenty of centuries when people were able by sheer observation to get the idea that you could catch a disease by gathering together, even prior to knowing about germs. But waive that. God knew. God commanded that His people gather together, even en masse (pun intended), despite knowing, beyond all shadow of a doubt, with perfect foreknowledge, that people would die physically of infectious diseases as an indirect result of obeying those commands. Evidently God had other priorities. Whaddaya know?
If the church had ceased to gather or even had significantly curtailed gathering as a result of a danger of a death from infectious disease as a result of gathering, equal to that risk from Covid, now, then the church would scarcely have gathered throughout all those earlier centuries, and Christianity as we know it, and Judaism as it was before the Fall of Jerusalem, would never have existed. And, if you care about that kind of thing, a lot fewer people would ever have heard of the true God or known him, been discipled into his Church, and gone out to reach others. And also, while I'm at it, if everybody had tried to cover half of their faces in all of these gatherings for all that time, a lot of other good things would have been lost as well. But I'll leave that part as an "exercise for the reader" rather than saying more about it here.
This consideration about the multiplicity of infectious diseases that used to be stalking around this world should strike down at a single blow the idea that "this time it's different," that we are in some unprecedented and "temporary" situation (where the word "temporary," at a year and counting, with no clear end in sight, has become a kind of sickening joke) in which we should just submit "for now" to significant curtailment of normal life and religious practice, because we are "in a pandemic" and all the usual notions of normal life simply don't apply. And it should reveal for the utter falsehood that it is the claim that the Judeo-Christian God is pleased with us if we cease to meet in person, to evangelize, to gather, and disapproves of us if we, like Pastor Coates in Canada, carry on with such nefarious religious activities. Indeed, the more one thinks about it the more such a claim comes to seem like something nigh to blasphemy. Perhaps a well-intentioned blasphemy, but then, the Bible knows about well-intentioned blasphemy. Just ask Uzzah. I'd say that those fellow believers who are out there lecturing Pastor Coates and those who agree with GraceLife Church about their (alleged) duty to obey God by cutting way back on the services of Christ should think again.
For when one thinks of God's beloved servants, whose beautiful feet upon the mountains have for thousands of years brought glad tidings of peace, one should start suspecting that that is what God wants. Maybe we should be worried about displeasing him quite seriously by bringing all of that to a crashing stop. Maybe God has priorities other than avoiding a virus or an infectious bacterium. Any one of them, or all of them put together.
Comments (16)
What is different now is that due to the progress of medicine many once incurable diseases have become curable. If there was no way to cure Covid 19 any measures taken in order to prevent it from spreading would be pointless as such measures wouldn’t diminish the total number of deaths due to this disease, they would only prolong the time when these deaths occur. Moreover, it’s by no means the case that the Bible is silent on this topic. After all, in the Mosaic Law there are commands concerning the isolation of people who have infectious diseases, such as in Leviticus 13:1-32.
Posted by Patrick | March 6, 2021 4:39 AM
Yes, I know there are such commands, but the points I make in the post still stand. And no, the fact that things are curable doesn't mean we should be *more* reluctant to meet! That's about as backwards as it gets. More people will die when it's less curable. Moreover, *not meeting* or *reducing numbers* is not some kind of wonder of modern medicine! It's a crude measure to prevent infection, and God certainly could have enjoined private religion. In fact, the OT purity codes would have been excellent vehicles for exactly the kind of nit-picky rules that we are being given now. One can imagine: You shall meet in groups of no more than ten. You shall never talk with one another face to face for more than ten minutes. You shall cover your faces with a clean cloth and wash the cloth afterwards. You shall not travel to be in large groups. There is nothing about "social distancing" and not gathering that could not be commanded in an older world. Far from it. God could have imposed very draconian measures to have less spread of the diseases I named in the main post. Nor is it at all clear that these would have allowed the same number of deaths, just over a longer period of time. If society were broken up permanently into smaller groups, there would have been fewer outbreaks because those groups would never have come together. If measures of isolation *do work* (and you guys are the people saying that they do), then they could actually reduce absolute numbers of deaths if just kept up consistently and over a very long period of time. And what better to try to make that happen than a code of law that already micromanaged people's lives?
As for the Leviticus rule, as I've pointed out, it obviously *doesn't* cover all or even most of the infectious diseases that were around at the time, and that God must have known were around at the time, especially not diseases spread by respiratory means. So, shrug. Such verses *cannot* be attempts by God to prevent the spread of easily communicable infectious diseases in general, nor convey any such principle. Our modern scientific knowledge makes this clearer than ever.
But look, you're the guy who is still saying "temporary" a year after all of this started and who thinks we're obliged to listen to these orders on and on when we keep being told "temporary." So there's no reasoning with you. If these recommendations and orders *do* end up being ended in, say, the next year, then a) that's already way too long, and has probably cost souls, b) the ending will be arbitrary on the part of rulers who could have ended it much sooner if they were not overreacting but decided to wait in a misguided fashion while saying they were being guided by the science and then who decide later to overreact less, so there is no objective reason for, say, Pastor Coates to follow them now.
I know you don't think that, but I do, and your talk of "temporary" just totally bounces off of me. The point I made in the o.p. stands. If we regard risk of causing physical death by meeting in the way that lies behind these Covid recommendations, the church would never have gotten started.
Posted by Lydia | March 6, 2021 9:26 AM
As far as I can see for experts such as epidemiologists and virologists it has always been clear that this pandemic would last at least one year. It seems that by summer the worst should be over.
I haven’t studied the issue, but I assume that in past centuries when one had symptoms of an infectious disease one was supposed to refrain from attending church. The underlying moral principle of such a view can be put as follows: “If you love your neighbour you should refrain from avoidable behaviour that endangers his or her health and life.” The present measures aimed at preventing the spread of Covid 19 can be seen as an application of this moral principle to the specific circumstances we live in now.
Throughout History that many people don’t show any symptoms of a deadly disease seems to be the exception rather than the rule, and so there was no need to impose measures such as wearing masks or social distancing, which are only necessary when most people are asymptomatic. When there are clear symptoms of an infectionary disease it suffices that people with such symptoms isolate themselves, until the disease is over (or until they die).
That God has priorities other than avoiding a virus or an infectious disease may well be the case. It can certainly be made the case that for God a person’s spiritual well-being is more important than his or her health. But one can also make the case that for God a person’s spiritual well-being is more important than his or her wealth. One cannot rule out the possibility that economic hardships caused by measures against Covid 19 may make some people more inclined to seek God and as a consequence ultimately find salvation. As for evangelizing I don’t see why the measures against Covid 19 are supposed to create an insurmountable obstacle to it.
Posted by Patrick | March 6, 2021 12:15 PM
Actually people do carry pneumonia germs around asymptomatically. Then when other people's immune systems are compromised, they get really sick. And it's not always possible to figure out if your immune system is compromised. In fact, it has always been a bit mysterious why this person or that gets notably sick with pneumonia. Strike one.
It's not that simple, by any means. People can certainly pass on a disease when they have some symptoms but not absolutely identifiable, "you-have-x" symptoms. Influenza is a good example. If everybody were obliged not to go to church when they have symptoms of a cold or obliged not to serve in the Temple or travel for the Old Testament feasts, I'm a monkey's uncle. By no means was this, or is this, or has this ever been, a standard of moral behavior required by Christians. Yet for sure in a world without modern medicine, those cold symptoms could result in people's dying. Or take diarrhea, which can be just an individual, passing thing and not infectious, or not serious, or a symptom of something very serious that could be passed around. And in a dry climate there isn't nearly as much water for constant hand-washing. And so forth. You really just are living in a chronological bubble here.
But it is impossible to apply that principle consistently, as I have pointed out again and again. Church sevices are always avoidable. Just don't have them. The feasts of Israel were always avoidable. Just don't go to them! It took a lot of trouble to pack your bags and literally walk or ride on donkeys all the way to Jerusalem when you lived in Galilee, or even Rome. And behavior after behavior "endangers the health or life" of other people. But also, not undertaking those behaviors endangers things--sometimes their physical life and health, sometimes their spiritual life and health. There is no such flat, blanket principle as you articulate. One is always weighing up relative benefits and risks, including spiritual benefits and risks. You cannot reduce real human life to that kind of platitude, so you should stop trying, even though that makes it nice and easy for you to lecture Pastor Coates and others. They could just as easily be lecturing you about spreading fear and not being a light to the nations and not giving other people the incarnate love that they need, and I happen to think they'd have more of an argument on their side, but you wouldn't like it if they did.
And don't say "temporary" in response to this point, because it doesn't work. You just articulated a supposed underlying moral principle which has no inherent "temporary" limit to it, especially not when "temporary" has any real content rather than being an empty sound or set of pixels.
I'm afraid that saying that shows a major lack of imagination, lack of understanding of how human beings work as incarnate beings, lack of understanding of the role of in-person interaction and gathering in effective evangelism. It treats Christianity as a cerebral religion in which evangelism and (I would presume) discipleship all take place in the head by means of conveying propositions or viewing images, which apparently you think can be done just as well remotely. Of course writing is a good thing. I write myself. But it is no substitute for in-person preaching and intimate conversation, in-person prayer together, and so forth. The measures against Covid are a huge *hindrance* to evangelism, discipleship, and mutual encouragement. If you cannot see that, which it appears that you can't, I cannot help you further.
Posted by Lydia | March 6, 2021 1:06 PM
Children can have or spread mumps asymptomatically, for another example.
There are certainly other serious illnesses that have an early stage of ambiguous symptoms or asymptomatic potential transmission. Or even a longer stage. A mere stuffy nose or fatigue can mean something that is not serious and not communicable, communicable but not serious, serious but not communicable, or both serious and communicable.
Where in the world did people get the idea that Covid is so incredibly unusual that in "ages past" any serious, communicable disease came with the equivalent of a sign on the person's forehead? It's just crazy. If our current situation is unusual historically, it is unusual *precisely* insofar as communicable diseases are less deadly because we have better medical care. And it is undeniable that making people feel that they have a duty to travel in order to be together for religious purposes is going to result in more spread of disease than would have occurred otherwise. For that matter, if there were no travel from China right now, there wouldn't be worldwide spread of Covid itself! Of course you can have a more fragmented form of society that will result in less disease spread, but it will have other disadvantages, both material and spiritual. *Telling* people to get together, year after year, season after season, week after week, and setting up entire social structures based upon such orders, involves a certain set of priorities, and that set apparently doesn't include a high priority on preventing the spread of communicable, serious diseases with a period of ambiguous symptoms or asymptomatic transmission, of which there are plenty.
Posted by Lydia | March 6, 2021 1:39 PM
Lydia: “There is no such flat, blanket principle as you articulate. One is always weighing up relative benefits and risks, including spiritual benefits and risks.“
That is exactly what I do. It just seems that we both arrive at different conclusions when evaluating the relative benefits and risks, including spiritual benefits and risks. If no measures are taken against Covid 19 the breakdown of the public health system and with it an increase of the number of deaths is not just a remote possibility, but an absolute certainty. Given the fact that the spread of the Corona virus follows a pattern of exponential growth, and given the fact that the capacity of hospitals is limited, the breakdown of the public health system is inevitable. The question now simply is whether or not the benefit of preserving the public health system and with it saving the lives of many people outweighs the economic, spiritual and other consequences created by the measures taken against Covid 19. As for the spiritual consequences in my view it does or at least it is not at all clear that the spiritual harms outweigh the spiritual benefits. As for the obligation to wear a mask and the obligation to keep a distance among people of at least six feet I fail to see the spiritual harm created by them. As for limitations of the number of people allowed to take part in a church service I don’t see a fundamental difference between such a limitation and the limitation of the number of people allowed to take part in a church service due to the Fire Code. And finally, having to listen to a sermon online at home instead of listening to it while physically present in a Church congregation certainly doesn’t prevent one from benefitting spiritually from the sermon.
Posted by Patrick | March 6, 2021 5:12 PM
There you go again. Acting like matters of degree are irrelevant. We've seen that elsewhere, too. Tony tried to explain to you in the other thread how amount of time matters, a pain you can endure for a few moments is different from a pain you can endure for a few hours, and so forth. So, here. You are (I'm sorry) being extremely dense to say this, and I'm afraid that kind of denseness and these terrible analogies are all too common among those who take your perspective. You fail to see the difference? What if they were allowed only three people in the entire building? What if they allowed only 1%? Would you still fail to see the fundamental difference? In Canada right now, they are being told to be at 15% capacity, fire code capacity. Hence, 85% fewer people than the very thing that you just said you don't see any difference from! This is absurd. The building is built with a certain number of people in mind. Now they have to turn away most of those. How can that *not* make a difference? They are trying to minister in a particular way to those people, but most of them can't come. And they can't invite outsiders, either. This is basic. This is obvious. It shouldn't need to be explained. The fire code limits the numbers way, way more! They've already set up to accommodate the fire code, they spend money to have a church of a certain size, and now they have to turn away 85% of that number. And that's a big difference. I should not have to explain that this is a big difference. They are also not allowed to converse after the service. That is obviously important.
I already addressed this. Going to church isn't just listening to a lecture, taking in information. We are not just propositional beings. I'm sorry you don't understand this, but that is the fundamental problem here and the reason why you do not see the harms.
Actually, I believe that in general, with some exceptions, our hospital system has proven far more resilient than such overheated comments seem to indicate, and the current measures are disproportionate even with regard to that concern. Nor is it clear that the measures actually help all that much, especially that *requiring* such measures helps much over simply recommending them. Such comments imply that we know that the draconian requirements help, but we don't, as seen by the fact that states with lighter measures in the U.S. are not by and large doing worse than states with more restrictive measures, and that predictions of terrible spikes and overwhelmed systems have not been fulfilled in, say, Iowa. (Btw, I bet you didn't know that on payday night on the weekends the ERs used to get overwhelmed in some big cities. Maybe we should have outlawed regular paydays and instituted a system whereby all employers were forced to sign up to pay people on alternate weekends to "flatten the weekend curve" and prevent the *actually occurring*, but temporary, overwhelming of the health system at those hospitals.)
Posted by Lydia | March 6, 2021 7:36 PM
The measures against churches are now literally proven not to be necessary to prevent a breakdown of "the health system." I say proven, a word I do not usually use, because history has shown it in passing. Even here in Michigan, hardly the freest state in terms of Covid restrictions, we have a full exception for houses of worship, with no limits on capacity other than the previous limits pre-Covid, no mask requirement for houses of worship, and no distancing requirement. Various churches are choosing voluntarily to limit their capacity, but none that I know of are doing anything like the draconian measures (15% capacity, no singing, no talking after the service) being imposed in Alberta. Some churches are having no required masking at all. Others are having various in-the-middle practices. Some have a "mask not required" and a "mask required" service. And so forth. And our healthcare system is not being overwhelmed. And the same for many other states who do not have restrictions on churches. Texas just lifted all statewide Covid restrictions. (Some Texas cities might still be able to have some of them in place, though I think without the possibility of criminal penalties.) Let's wait and watch that "certainty" of the healthcare system being overwhelmed in Texas, or Iowa, etc. If it doesn't happen, I will eagerly await all of the mea culpas and "I was wrong" declarations from Patrick and others who agree with him.
Posted by Lydia | March 6, 2021 11:03 PM
you should refrain from avoidable behaviour that endangers his or her health and life.
This ignores that both "danger" and "avoidable behavior" come in an infinite variety of types and degrees, and it is literally IMPOSSIBLE to live a life without having the effect of putting someone in danger by an "avoidable" action. The degree of danger matters enormously. The degree of necessity of THIS behavior may be low, but the degree of necessity of {this or some similar behavior} may be much higher, such as a great many difficult jobs. A man might well say "I should not take on this difficult, dangerous job, because it would adversely impact the health of my kids if I should be injured", but then be faced with the fact that ALL of the jobs actually available here and now have similar degrees of risk or risk/reward structures. Such as in a coal mining town in 1850.
In fact, the due moral requirement is to make a fitting, reasonable choice as to the risks / benefits distribution of the behavior, and that INCLUDES things like "other people also taking due care for their own welfare", as we do every time we get behind the wheel of a car.
Given the fact that the spread of the Corona virus follows a pattern of exponential growth, and given the fact that the capacity of hospitals is limited, the breakdown of the public health system is inevitable. The question now simply is whether or not the benefit of preserving the public health system and with it saving the lives of many people outweighs the economic, spiritual and other consequences created by the measures taken against Covid 19.
Because (a) health care workers, and (b) senior citizens, have largely gotten the vaccine at this point, in fact the risk of overwhelming the hospitals is already greatly reduced. If they next limited the distribution to the most-at-risk part of the population under 65, they could reduce the risk of overwhelming the hospitals to a very low degree in just a few more weeks, with NO FURTHER restrictions of any sort. Even modest restrictions (much less constraining than, say, California's rules) would also do the trick - especially because plenty of people will voluntarily continue to be cautious even without criminalizing mandates. Because of the nature of the who the disease affects most strongly, we don't need GENERAL herd immunity in order to be no longer at risk of wholesale hospital failure.
As for the spiritual consequences in my view it does or at least it is not at all clear that the spiritual harms outweigh the spiritual benefits. As for the obligation to wear a mask and the obligation to keep a distance among people of at least six feet I fail to see the spiritual harm created by them.
Well, it appears that there is some room for variation among human beings - probably a normal curve - and maybe you are just on the low end of the range, but: people need both PHYSICAL and VISUAL contact to be healthy. This is part of our nature. Physical touch is so essential to developing young people that they can literally be damaged physiologically and psychologically by the lack of touch. When someone is going through a crisis, a hand on the arm, a hug, an arm on the shoulder, can be a very valuable component in the appropriate act of caring and love. Visual cues, taken more from the face (especially the mouth) than any other source, are an essential part of complete communication. This is one of the reasons why diplomacy is almost ALWAYS done in person, especially the most delicate parts of the diplomatic mission. Human beings are designed for seeing faces in order to communicate the full range of thought and feeling. You cannot get it from voice alone, and you often cannot get it sufficiently from a computer monitor, it is just not fulsome enough.
Posted by Tony | March 9, 2021 12:27 AM
"It treats Christianity as a cerebral religion"
I was thinking the same thing. No offense, but Patrick, your version of Christianity seems to be very much of the head, without much consideration for heart and soul, let alone the body.
Posted by Nice Marmot | March 9, 2021 7:01 AM
Exactly. It's astonishing and disturbing that these things should need ot be said.
By the way, in my state, nursing home residents still are not allowed to be touched by their visitors or relatives, *even if the residents are vaccinated*. And even if the relatives are also vaccinated. Let that sink in for a moment. The nursing home staff do not have to be vaccinated (though the option is offered to them), and they must touch the residents to care for them. But the friends and relatives, *if* they are allowed to visit in person at all (as they usually are not) are kept six feet away, regardless of vaccination status. This is not science. This is not sense. And this is very cruel.
In fact, even if the resident is actively dying of a non-Covid illness, visitors are permitted within six feet only for 15 minutes or less on any given day!
Most nursing homes are not permitting visits except virtually or through a window. And they are required to do this by health department order if even one staffer or resident has tested positive within the last 14 days, evne if it was not the resident in question.
So these elderly people are literally dying without the touch of their loved ones and friends.
Going back to diplomacy, which Tony brought up:
Posted by Lydia | March 10, 2021 10:43 AM
The question is not whether or not this or that measure against the spread of Covid 19 taken by this or that government is appropriate, but whether or not any government is at all entitled to take such measures and, if it is, whether or not in light of Romans 13:1-7 civil disobedience is justified when one disagrees with the government concerning such measures. The criticism of this or that measure against the spread of Covid 19 may well be justified, just as the criticism of any other action taken by the government may be. But in my view just because one (rightly) views an action taken by the government as less than optimal in itself doesn’t justify civil disobedience.
Posted by Patrick | March 10, 2021 4:20 PM
That is sure one question, but it is hardly the only pertinent question. Further, in determining whether civil disobedience is forbidden, allowed, or even obligatory on a Christian cannot be decided apart from whether the rules in question are good or bad, and in what degree or in what way.
but whether or not any government is at all entitled to take such measures
I have myself raised just such points in the past, so I am entirely comfortable with this point in this context. In matters of regulatory constraints on certain kinds of daily activity, like we have now, it surely is theoretically allowable for the government to make SOME measures, for the common good. (And we have already agreed to that point.) It is ALSO sure true that it is theoretically possible for the government to make some measures that absolutely go too far, both because they constrain acts that government has no business constraining, and because there is no benefit served by them. We have given two examples of just such cases, examples not only that some government MIGHT THEORETICALLY have enacted, but that governments HAVE enacted: (A) telling priests that they may not go into a room of a dying COVID patient to administer last rites; and (B) telling family members that have already been vaccinated that they cannot touch nursing home residents, and must stay 6 ft. away - even if they are dying anyway. Science does not tell us that either of those measures are necessary for public health purposes.
But for the general matter of civil disobedience, there is a vast, deep dispute among devout, loving Christians as to just where the theoretical lines are to be drawn in terms of obedience to bad laws versus resistance to them. On the one end, you have the point of view that (1) we must obey all laws in full and exactly unless they directly contravene God's law, in which case "we must obey God rather than man". On the other extreme, you have the point of view that (2) because (especially in a democratic system) it is the people themselves who are the ultimate sovereign and law-giver, the people can in effect issue a "veto" of a really crappy law by an ad hoc "I will not". In between these two extremes, most Christians have lived their lives believing something more middling is better representative of God's will and the law of charity, for which there are several intermediate varieties. One such variety is a position I heard from a very old and very devout and thoughtful priest, to the extent of: you may disobey regulatory rules that instantiate a rule of a matter of degree without actual sin, if you do so willing to pay the legal penalty when caught out. For example, a speed limit law setting the maximum speed of 45 in a particular zone is (obviously) a matter of degree and judgment: some states might have set the limit for those same conditions at 40, or 50. If you speed by going 50 (without endangering anyone significantly more than the danger implicit in going 45), but when caught you simply admit the violation and pay the fine, this is morally acceptable. I myself tend to think this position is a little more loose than is ideal, but it (and other positions like it in effect) are well-argued and supported in the literature of the topic. I am not aware of a theory that clearly settles where the appropriate lines are to be drawn - and I have been looking for 40 years.
But even though I would tend to disagree conceptually with the line of thinking in the above loose approach, I would be extremely disappointed at any priest who - after carefully thinking through the matter - willingly obeyed the authorities about not giving last rites to a dying man; in my opinion, this most certainly a case where he should have disobeyed man's laws and replied to them "I must obey God rather than man". After all, we are talking about the last sacraments before a man leaves this mortal coil to stand before God! If ever a man should have access to the sacraments, this is it. Not only would I be disappointed at such a priest, if I were his bishop I would strongly reprimand him - and would personally have marched down to the hospital to administer the last rites myself to make up for the priest's error. That is, not only would it have been an error on the part of the priest, for Catholics it is clearly and gravely an error that cannot be chalked up to "different opinions on where to draw the line". There are surely areas where there are gray in-betweens, and blurry lines, but this isn't one of them.
Posted by Tony | March 11, 2021 10:17 AM
While "the people" are sovereign, no individual is. The proponents of "sovereign individual" dissent naturally --that variety of humankind being found only in US. Thus, the view that any individual "can in effect issue a "veto" of a really crappy law by an ad hoc "I will not" " is merely a surrender to anarchy. I see you do write "people" and not "individual" but the people can veto an unpopular law by legal means.
At issue, is a possible misdiagnosis of the situation. What US is faced with is outright abolition of the human nature--you do not counter it it more individualism of sovereign variety that would veto inconvenient regulations.
The natural law exists between the divine law and the regulatory laws and that is under siege. Attacking regulations and defending only the divine law--both are inadequate.
Posted by Mactoul | March 17, 2021 5:41 AM
Actually, in my state, the people *cannot* veto the governor's illegal regulations "by legal means." We've tried. It isn't happening. To chalk up all civil disobedience to some kind of invidious "individualism" and to say that the only thing you can do is to find some way legally to overturn the bad diktats of the state is ridiculous. This is true even when the law is passed by actual "democratic means," such as if the legislature passes a law ruling that pastors must not counsel people in resisting sexual sin. (This is a real thing, by the way.) It is even more obviously ridiculous in situations such as those in the past year when governors or their regulatory cats-paws are simply issuing day-by-day diktats without the input of the legislature, when judges, sheriffs, and regulatory agencies with the power to fine and arrest are treating them as law and enforcing them, and when all of the people's efforts legally to overturn this rule by the will of one person are thwarted. In that case, to say that you can't civilly disobey because somehow "the people" could have legally changed things is just ignorance. And all the worse when the rules in question amount to direct suppression of core religious activities, such as meeting. To be clear, in my own state we have been fortunate that there is an exception in the governor's diktats (which she probably regrets) for churches, but in Alberta, Canada, and in California (to give two examples), this has not been the case.
Posted by Lydia | March 19, 2021 9:16 AM
Mactoul, you are right that sovereignty is not found in each individual, and asserting so is to assert anarchy. You may have noticed that I was laying out EXTREME positions, whereas I believe that the truth lies somewhere between those extremes. (Nevertheless, that extreme theory is, at least potentially, implicit in Lockean political theory, and the US is not the only purveyor of Lockean disorders).
As Lydia says, the possibility of "vetoing" a bad or unpopular law is only feasible within limits, and sometimes it is effectively impossible. Also, sometimes (as under COVID) the governors are acting extra-legally (not via some law, but by issuing diktats by their own will) and undoing a LAW is insufficient to the problem. If there is anything that 2000 years of Christian practice (regarding government) has shown us, one of them is that sometimes we must simply refuse to obey. This is, exactly, the apostles Peter and John showed us, when they defied the Sanhedrin (not democratic) and said "we must obey God rather than men", and what the martyrs showed us when they refused to sacrifice to idols, and so on. In SOME cases, we might hope to achieve an (eventual) change in the law, by refusing, and this can be a larger good effect of civil disobedience, but other times it is not a plausible prospect and we must refuse obedience anyway. Sometimes we will be noticed and punished by authorities, and other times not, but these cases in which we must refuse obedience are not driven primarily by whether we expect to be punished or not.
But the hardest parts to sort out are the cases where (a) the law is a bad law, (b) obeying the law will bring significantly bad consequences (perhaps to you, perhaps to many others), and (c) it is not DIRECTLY contradictory to divine law or natural law to obey, but (d) obeying would implicitly and through time become RELATIVELY unharmonious with the natural law. It's the stuff that is "sort of, kind of" not fitted to natural law that is hard to sort out, not the stuff that is explicitly and directly against the natural law. And, there is (so far as I know), no simple standard or criterion available that we can use to decide such cases: they often come out to "judgment calls" that are simply not susceptible to bright line tests and "per se" rules.
I happen to think that "the people are sovereign" is a bad way to describe the right political principle, because it leaves unstated (and unhinted) the very limitations you described yourself: those of divine and natural law. The people are A KIND of sovereign, under God, and in coordination with the natural law; and after they have formed a government, they are no longer sovereign to the extent of simply repudiating that government at whim. And yes, that sort of sovereignty rests in "the people" in a way that does not imply it rests in EACH individual person - probably because "the common good" regards "the people" in a way that is not merely the additive sum of how it regards each individual person.
Posted by Tony | March 19, 2021 9:20 PM