Free Market, Open Borders

If you are really a capitalist and you really, really believe in a free market, then you necessarily believe in the free movement of people to pursue the market in whatever way they want.

Insofar as you want controlled borders, you are opposed to free market capitalism.

Amazing how many Trump supporters are socialists.

An Open Letter Abeba Birhane

Your endorsement of "a person is a person through other persons" is a brilliant one-sentence summary of Christian Trinitarian theology. As you know, the word “person” was itself invented by Christians to describe the three Persons of the Trinity. Tertullian adapted it from the Latin word "personae" (Greek prosopon), which referred to the mask worn by actors on the stage, and it has been used in Tertullian's sense ever since.

What few non-Christians realize is that the three Persons of the Godhead are distinguishable ONLY through their relationships (Father begets, Son is begotten, Father and Son breathe forth Spirit, Spirit is the One breathed forth). If any other aspect of God is examined, the Persons of the Trinity cannot be distinguished or identified. This is why God is One, but also Three - as you imply, only the relationships reveal the Three.

Likewise, we are persons only because of our relationship to the original three Persons. God calls us into intimate relationship with Himself, the original three Persons, thus we bear the “image and likeness” of those Persons, we are - by that call - made persons. It is the call to relationship which makes us persons. This is straight Thomistic understanding.

In fact, this understanding explains what many people consider a peculiarity of Christian theology. It is de fide that Jesus is fully God, fully the Second Person of the Trinity, fully human, but NOT a human person at all. Fully human, but NOT a human person: to say that He is a human person is the condemned heresy of Nestorius. Why not a human person? Because He, via the relationships within the Trinity, is already in full, perfect, intimate relationship with two other perfect Persons of the Godhead, He is already fully a (divine, perfect) person.

A human being, by himself, does not possess a nature not capable of this full, perfect, intimate communion, with the divine nature. Human nature has to be perfected, elevated, deified. This is the role of the sacraments. Sacraments impart grace so that the human nature is capable of something outside of itself - perfect communion with perfect Personhood. We are already fully human, but the sacraments make us, as it were, fully persons, every relationship to every other existing person is perfected. Since the Second person of the Trinity already has the perfect communion, the full divine nature capable of this perfect communion, is already perfectly a Person, He has no need for human personhood. Thus, Jesus has a full, complete human nature, but is not a human person at all.

When Descartes insisted on cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore, I am) he thereby denied the role of relationships (and grace) in his own personhood. True, God is pure rationality, but reason leads to conclusion, and the conclusion is Love. Descartes' statement was an emphasis on process, without mention of purpose or end. Thus, all subsequent philosophies built on Descartes' foundation would necessarily get lost in the forest of process. They will all necessarily deny some important aspect of personhood as originally defined and used for millennia in Western culture. In short, they won't be able to properly handle Love.

A person is a person through other persons. Exactly right. That’s the substance and foundation of the word "person" as Tertullian originally intended it. It is the substance and foundation of Christianity.

The Ubuntus have a basic understanding of this, but the Zulus have summarized it best.

Thanks for the essay!

Smallpox, Polio and Wuhan

As recently as 1967, the World Health Organization estimated that 15 million people contracted smallpox and that two million died in that year. In 1967, smallpox killed 2 million people out of a world population of 3.463 billion, for a world-wide death rate of 0.00057753. That was enough to spur a world-wide vaccination effort to successfully wipe that disease from the face of the earth.

The first major polio epidemic in the United States occurred in 1916 and reached its peak in 1952. Of the 57,628 reported cases in 1952, there were 3,145 deaths. The 1952 US Population: 157.6 million. So, in the worst year we ever experienced, the US had a polio death rate of 0.00036. That kind of death rate was enough to spur a world-wide campaign to eliminate polio forever, a campaign which is still ongoing.

Approximately 70% of all polio infections in children are asymptomatic. Another 24% of polio infections in children consist of a minor, nonspecific illness without clinical or laboratory evidence of central nervous system invasion. Nonparalytic aseptic meningitis occurs in 1% to 5% of polio infections in children. Typically, symptoms last 2 to 10 days and are followed by complete recovery. Together, this accounts for more than 99% of cases.

Less than 1% of polio infections in all children result in flaccid paralysis. Of that "less than 1%" population, only 2% to 5% of paralysed children and 15% to 30% of adolescents and adults will die, although up between 25% to 75% will die if there is bulbar involvement. Of the "less than 1%" population, 21% will have bulbar involvement. So, 75% of 21% of less than 1% = 0.1575% worst case fatality rate, although the polio fatality rate could be as good as 0.0525%. That's a 99.85% to 99.95% survival rate for polio.

In the United States, coronavirus has produced a death rate of 43,995 in a population of 330 million (that's as of 4/21/2020. Today, 5/16/2020, it's 87,697. In three weeks, the death count doubled). The first case of the Wu-flu in the US was January 19, 2020, just about three months ago. So, in three months, CCP-virus has produced a death rate of 0.000133. But that’s just three months. To get the full year death rate, multiply by 4.  It is not unreasonable to project an annual death rate from coronavirus of 0.000533 by the end of December.

Now, you may argue that the death rate in the US has been artificially inflated, because officials are including all kinds of deaths into the Covid 19 virus death rate that shouldn’t really be counted against the Chinese virus. But we also know that China definitely lied about the death rate they experienced with Wuhan virus, deliberately under-counting deaths by at least tens of thousands.  Do the two miscounts balance each other out? We don’t know. We can only work with the numbers we are given. Even if there is fudging in the US, I trust the US numbers more than the China numbers, which is why I'm doing US death rates instead of world mortality death rates. . The world death rate would be 177,230 out of 7.8 billion, which yields an annual world mortality rate of 0.00009, which is likely an undercount (as of 5/16/2020, it is 308,899 out of 7.8 billion, annual mortality rate: 0.00016).

Annual mortality rates

• Smallpox (1967)    0.00058
• Polio (1952)           0.00036
• Wu-Virus (US)       0.00053
• Wu-Virus (World)  0.00009 
• US Deaths WW II: 0.00076 (average per year)

So, our current epidemic is killing people faster than polio did in the US in the worst year we ever had for polio, and nearly as fast as the death rate smallpox delivered to the world in 1967.

If you don’t think the precautions being taken are worthwhile, then be logically consistent. You must also insist that too much fuss has been made about smallpox and polio as well.

Update: 7/12/2020
Wu-Virus (US) has had 136,621 deaths as of 7/12/2020, roughly 6 months.
That yields an annual mortality of 273,242 and a mortality of 0.00082
Annual mortality rates

• Smallpox (1967, world)    0.00058
• Polio (1952, US)               0.00036
• Wu-Virus (US)                  0.00082
• Wu-Virus (World)             0.00009 
• US Deaths WW II:           0.00076 (average per year)

Polio, at it's height, only killed about 3,000 people. That's all. A drop in the bucket compared to Wu-flu:

"For the next four decades, swimming pools and movie theaters closed during polio season for fear of this invisible enemy. Parents stopped sending their children to playgrounds or birthday parties for fear they would “catch polio.”

In the outbreak of 1916, health workers in New York City would physically remove children from their homes or playgrounds if they suspected they might be infected. Kids, who seemed to be targeted by the disease, were taken from their families and isolated in sanitariums.

In 1952, the number of polio cases in the U.S. peaked at 57,879, resulting in 3,145 deaths."

Cut-And-Paste response for those who dismiss Covid:

Covid has somewhat worse morbidity/mortality effects than polio.
As long as you consider polio a "mild seasonal virus", then Covid is certainly nothing more than that.

If you don't believe the comparison is accurate, look at the numbers. In 1952, the number of polio cases in the U.S. peaked at 57,879, resulting in 3,145 polio deaths, out of a total US population of 157 million people. Polio morbidity was equally paltry: In 1959, there were 1,200 people using tank respirators in the United States. 1200 people paralyzed, 3145 people killed, out of 157 million. That's it. For THAT we launched a decades-long world-wide vaccination campaign.

For the first half of the 20th century, swimming pools and movie theaters closed during polio season for fear of this invisible enemy. Parents stopped sending their children to playgrounds or birthday parties for fear they would “catch polio.” In the outbreak of 1916, health workers in New York City would physically remove children from their homes or playgrounds if they suspected they might be infected. Kids, who seemed to be targeted by the disease, were taken from their families and isolated in sanitariums.

Of the 57,879 who were infected in 1952 (the worst year), roughly 21,000 were paralyzed to some degree. Of those whose lungs were paralyzed, most only required an iron lung for one or two weeks. Doctors felt a much larger health threat was tuberculosis, which 34,000 people died from in 1950. Also, the deadly flu epidemic of 1957 killed 62,000. By contrast, 3200 people died during 1952, the worst year of the polio epidemic.

The survival rate for polio was 99.95%. The survival rate for Covid is 99.96%. Covid also produces long-term morbidity in terms of lung, circulatory and brain damage, although the exact extent of this morbidity is still not clear. For better or worse, the Covid scare is essentially the 21st century version of the polio scare.

This UK doctor also likened Kung-Flu to polio:

Covid has a far lower mortality rate than smallpox, or indeed malaria, the subject of another WHO initiative. But its high infectivity, capacity to overwhelm hospital services, and legacy of Long Covid make it a formidable problem comparable to polio.

Pope Francis and the Universal Basic Income

Is the Pope embracing socialism when he calls for a universal basic income? Actually, it is quite the reverse: socialism has always been an atheist’s parody of Christian teaching. The idea that the rich are in debt to the poor is an ancient teaching of the Church with roots in Judaism.

The approach Christians are to use towards the poor is highlighted in the ancient rabbinic example of two men walking through an arid desert. According to the rabbis, if one man has enough water to make it out of the desert, but not enough water for them both, it is not reasonable to expect the first man to share his water. Since a man can only be expected to look out for himself, he is morally permitted to keep the water for himself, even if that guarantees the death of his companion. But notice, this is only true if both are normal men. If both men are scholars, learned in the ways of God and His laws, then the scholar with the water is obligated to share with his companion, even if this means both men will die.

Christianity has always taught that every Christian must act not as a normal man, but as a scholar, a rabbi; every Christian must act as the most learned of men. Because Christians have been given the light of grace through baptism, every baptized man has the fullness of revelation, thus every Christians is required to act as a learned rabbi would, and share his riches, even at risk to himself. Now that we remember this, we can look on the Pope's words with renewed understanding:

I know that you nearly never receive the recognition that you deserve, because you are truly invisible to the system. Market solutions do not reach the peripheries, and State protection is hardly visible there. Nor do you have the resources to substitute for its functioning. … 

...The ills that afflict everyone hit you twice as hard. Many of you live from day to day, without any type of legal guarantee to protect you. Street vendors, recyclers, carnies, small farmers, construction workers, dressmakers, the different kinds of caregivers: you who are informal, working on your own or in the grassroots economy, you have no steady income to get you through this hard time ... and the lockdowns are becoming unbearable. This may be the time to consider a universal basic wage which would acknowledge and dignify the noble, essential tasks you carry out. It would ensure and concretely achieve the ideal, at once so human and so Christian, of no worker without rights.

How does the Pope make the insistence on a universal basic income fit with Paul's exhortation: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat." (2 Thess 3:10)? Well, keep in mind that the Christian understanding of what constitutes work does not match the modern understanding:

[Bernadette of Sourbirous] sat sometimes all night on the side of her bed in constant pain, because to lie down was to suffocate. That she understood this vocation to suffer is borne out by the answer she gave one of her superiors who came into the room one day and asked jokingly: “What are you ding here in bed, lazybones?” [Bernadette] replied: “I am working away at my calling, dear Mother. I am being ill.”

Suffering is work, spiritual work. This suffering has worth. Still, while every Christian is called to bear the cross of suffering, we are not meant to seek out crucifixion. Physical suffering and the various physical poverties are necessary evils, but these are natural evils, and should be avoided when possible. At one time or another, all of the apostles, including Paul, fled cities in which their lives were threatened (Acts 9:25; 2 Cor 11:32-33). In the same way, while the poor suffer, if they can avoid that suffering, then we should help them do so, just as the friends of Paul helped him avoid suffering by lowering him in a basket outside the city walls.

“When someone steals another's clothes, we call them a thief. Should we not give the same name to one who could clothe the naked and does not? The bread in your cupboard belongs to the hungry; the coat unused in your closet belongs to the one who needs it; the shoes rotting in your closet belong to the one who has no shoes; the money which you hoard up belongs to the poor.” ~ St. Basil the Great (d. 379 AD)

"People give all sorts of reasons to excuse their lack of charity, their hardheartedness!  Some say, 'hard times.' But if the times are hard for those who have a sufficiency, how much harder are they for the poor? This pretext alone should lead one to give all the more generously."   - St. Theophan the Recluse (d. 1894 AD)

Clothe your brother first, then clothe the altar table. Of what use is it to weigh down Christ’s table with golden cups, when he himself is dying of hunger? First, fill him when he is hungry; then use the means you have left to adorn his table.  ~ St. John Chrysostom (d 407 AD)

Christians have a duty to provide for the poor. In fact, the needs of the poor outweigh even the needs of the liturgy.

Has the Church led by example?

The Pope calls for every nation to provide a basic universal income. But is not Vatican City a nation? Has the Church led by example? Has the Church given her riches to help the poor? And if you say that she has, then what of her artwork? What of her grand cathedrals? If she insists on a universal basic income, then should she not give to the poor first?

Of course, the Church leads by example, and the example is instructive. For example, according to the Economist, the Catholic Church in America alone already spends 170 BILLION dollars a year in charitable work. If American Catholic charitable work were compared to the annual GDP of the world's countries, then the American Catholic Church alone spends more each year on charity than the GDP of 136 of the world's 189 countries. That's more spent on charity by just one branch of the Church than the entire GDP of  countries like Algeria, Qatar, Khazakhstan, Hungary, Angola, Kuwait, Sudan, the Ukraine, Morocco, Ecuador, Cuba, Slovakia, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Kenya, Dominican Republic, Guatamala, Oman, Myanmar, Luxembourg, Panama, Ghana, Bulgaria, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Croatia, Belarus, Lebanon, Tanzania and Macao, just to name a few. And that's just the American Catholic Church. So, if just one branch of the Catholic Church already provides more in charity than two-thirds of the world's nations earn in GDP, then how much more does Vatican City, the smallest nation in the world, need to provide before the world is willing to grant that she is "leading by example"?

But what of the vast, hidden wealth of the Vatican? "The Vatican has amassed incalculable treasures ranging from art to buildings to property to gold reserves, commercial concerns and investments(!)..."  All true. Should these reserves be sold and the proceeds given to the poor?

Let us assume you were a lawyer, independently wealthy, but interested in assisting the poor through pro bono legal work. This is a laudable goal, one the Pope would applaud. Now, would you be able to assist the poor if you sold off all your law books, gave up your subscription to Lexus/Nexus, dressed in rags because all of your clothing had been given to the poor, and lived out of a cardboard box on the street, because you sold your house and gave the proceeds to the poor? Would a judge let you in his courtroom? Now that you have surrendered every tool you have to assist the poor with their legal needs, would you, in fact, be able to help the poor at all?

Can a carpenter build houses for the poor if he has no tools to join or cut wood? Can any skilled professional help the poor if he has none of the tools of his profession at hand?

"It would be excessive to take so much out of one's own means to give away to others that with what was left one could not very well keep up the way of life that accords with one's station, and meet contingencies as they arise.... [however] there are three exceptions... Thirdly, when he is in presence of extreme indigence in an individual, or great need on the part of the common weal. For in such cases it would seem praiseworthy to forego the requirements of one's station, in order to provide for a greater need."  ~ St. Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274 AD)

"Whatever is necessary for one's children, one's household, honest gifts, entertainments, hospitality, in view of common contingencies, provision for heirs, future needs, etc. is not superfluous." ~ St. Alphonsus Liguouri (d 1787 AD)

The Church's job is to teach the world who God is. God is Truth, God is Goodness and God is Beauty. All three must be taught. In order to teach the last aspect of Who God is, the Church needs the artwork it has commissioned, built up and protected over the centuries. These are necessary tools to do the work of evangelization. Teaching about God without artwork is like teaching about God without Scripture – it is hard to imagine how it could be done. That's why the Church values its entire collection of art at one (1) Euro. None of this magnificent artwork, this architecture, these cathedrals, have any commercial value because none of it can be sold. All of it is necessary to the work of evangelization, just as law books are necessary for lawyers and hammers, nails and saws are necessary for carpenters.

The Church runs 5,500 hospitals, 18,000 clinics, 16,000 homes for the elderly and those with special needs, with sixty-five percent of them located in underdeveloped and developing countries. To help the poor, the Catholic Church invented the modern hospital, the orphanage and the modern university. If you believe Wikipedia (which does not exactly lean in favor of religious institutions), the Catholic Church is the largest non-governmental provider of education and medical services in the world. The Pope's call to the nations is to imitate what the Vatican has done for centuries. The call is not to give up everything, for if everyone did this, no one at all could be helped. Rather, we are to provide for the poor in a way that preserves our ability to always help the poor. Most especially, we are to give out of our excess. And yes, we do have excess.

Let's try this a different way.

Certainly, every Christian must agree that every human person should have enough to eat, should have adequate shelter and access to clean water, yes? Is it not the case that every Christian would insist that people have a right to adequate food, clean water, shelter, even if that right is often unfulfilled? You see where I'm headed with this, of course.

If you deny that people have such rights to basic sustenance, water, shelter, then you've essentially denied the Faith, the basic teaching that we are all equal and all deserve equal, dignified treatment. So, every Christian must admit that everyone has a right to these basic needs being fulfilled.

Clearly, these basic needs have a dollar value. So, by saying that everyone has a right to basic needs being fulfilled, we have already admitted that everyone should receive a universal basic income - enough cash (or goods-equivalent) so the poor can fulfill their basic needs. For Christians, the argument is not whether people have a right to a basic, universal income, but only how much is required and how it should be delivered. It is about where the lines gets drawn, not whether to supply a basic universal income at all.

And, since the Pope didn't supply a number (nor could he, as the cash-equivalent would differ depending on the exact locale of the person in need), anyone who agrees that people have a right to not starve to death necessarily agrees with the Pope's basic principle: everyone has a right to a universal basic income. The Pope is simply using modern economic language to say what all the saints have said for the last two millennia - everyone has a right to basic food, water, shelter, etc., everyone has a right to equal dignity in treatment.

The Nations Have Already Been Working Towards This

But, as happened with Leo XIII's Rerum Novarum, wherein the Pope called for reforms that were already underway, the world has already anticipated the Pope's request and has already been working to fulfill it. After all, we have fewer poor people alive today, even with a population of 7 billion, than we have had at any time in human history, even when the human population was below 1 billion.

At this month's meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davis, Gates cited data that show the proportion of people living in extreme poverty declining from 94 percent in 1820 to only 10 percent today.... Starting with that $1.90-per-day measurement, the level of extreme poverty fell from 42.2 percent of the world's population in 1981 to 8.6 percent in 2018. In 1981, 1.9 billion people lived on less than $1.90 per day; in 2018, the number was around 660 million.

Contrary to the Pope's assertion, market solutions have actually already reached to the peripheries. We know this, because the benefits of the market have already touched every living person in the world. After all, thanks to the contributions of the world's richest countries, no one today needs to worry about dying from smallpox. Nowhere in the world are cattle still dying from rinderpest. Almost no one in the world has to worry about polio. The incidence of Guinea worm has dropped from an estimated 3.5 million in 1986 to 54 in 2019. Even as the world's population increases, the incidence of plague and famine continues to drop around the world.

Is it the case that every poor person has access to the basics necessities? Obviously not. Is it the case that the poor are receiving the income they need in order to access those necessities? Again, obviously not. But, are we assisting the poor, helping them move out of their place of suffering? Yes. Yes, we truly are. More can be done. More will be done. But, it is good to be reminded that we are not yet done.

Once we review the ancient Christian teaching, we can see the papal call for a universal basic income is not just a call for money, but a call for all people to become scholars, to become rabbis, to become even more: to become Christians and live the life of baptismal grace. The Pope's call is simple: embrace and believe in the Gospel.

Saints vs the Plague

Just a century ago, plague was common. Smallpox, malaria, measles, whooping cough, polio, plagues raged, they ravaged, they subsided. Plagues came in waves, years or even decades apart. We all remember learning of the Black Death in 1348, but that was merely the worst wave, the largest tsunami in the constant ebb and flow of the oceans of plagues that surged about an afflicted mankind. Famine punctuated the plague waves, acting in concert with them. Famine weakened the immune systems of those who survived the last plague, plague killed the workers who might have otherwise been able to farm and harvest enough crops to avert the next famine.

Together, famine and plague led to war, as neighboring countries desperately tried to grab enough resources between plagues and famines to survive the next wave of famine and plague. And war led large groups of sick, weak, ill-fed troops to gather tightly together, each spreading their own illness to the others, as the troops and their camp followers tried to wage it. It is often forgotten that World War I was was the very first big war in history in which more were killed by military action than by infectious diseases (and even that is arguable, since the Spanish Flu killed five times more people than World War I did). War brought violent death, but it wrought more death by famine and disease than it ever did by sword or spear.

We are shocked by famines and epidemics because we really don’t have them anymore. But epidemics, famine and war wrought suffering and out of that suffering came saints. We have been so shocked by this latest plague that we have forgotten how the saints handled plague. But we are slowly remembering.

St. Roch (d. 1327) lived through plague years. He was said to have cured plague victims he visited in Italy with his prayers and by marking the sick with the sign of the cross. St. Roch saw in the plague-stricken an image of the Savior stricken with suffering for the sins of us all. However, when he, too, was sickened by the plague, he withdrew to a hut in the forest until he recovered. He did not know germ theory, but he knew enough to respect the illness, and the possibility that he might transmit it to others. When stricken with plague, he isolated himself, lest he injure others.

Damien of Molokai (d. 1889) chose to personally enter a Hawaiian leper colony in order to minister to the victims, but he didn't bring others with him, nor did he endanger others. In fact, when he needed to make confession, he was willing to shout out his sins to the priest on board a coastal ship, so that all the shipboard crew could hear, rather than come aboard and risk infecting others.

Charles Borromeo (d. 1548), like St. Roch, knew nothing about germ theory, yet he ministered to the sick during the 1576 outbreak of bubonic plague in his city, Milan. He was sure the plague was God's wrath poured out on the city, a wrath that only spiritual humility and abasement would end. Even so, while he led processions of the faithful to receive ashes on their foreheads, he also ordered them to stay at least a stick's length apart while in procession. He closed all the churches, but erected crosses in the piazzas so that those under quarantine could join in prayer from their windows. If plague were purely an example of God’s wrath, then why engage in social distancing? Why close the churches? Indeed, why would a stick’s length distance between sinners avert the wrath of God Himself? Yet he enforced precisely this social distancing on, and allowed quarantining of, the Catholics under his care.

Despite these precautions, and the fact that he spent all of his family’s enormous wealth on the care of the sick, the good saint's insistence on gatherings large groups of people together for spiritual ministration were not very effective in "appeasing God's wrath", for Milan lost about one-third of its population, which is about the same as the rest of the European cities struck by plague at that time. That is, if the plague were a physical manifestation of the outpouring of God’s wrath, then his processions to appease that physical wrath were not very effective.

St. Don Bosco (d 1888), on the other hand, lived at a time when germ theory was finally being understood. He organized his students to help during a cholera epidemic, but he ordered them to wear face masks at all times and wash their hands with vinegar after ministering to cholera victims. If they ran out of vinegar, they were to come straight back to the oratory without talking to or in any way interacting with anyone. That is, Don Bosco enforced the same social distancing his forebears had, but he was able to employ a much better form of PPE.

Don Bosco lost none of his boys to cholera. Don Bosco had a lot better luck appeasing God's wrath with his face masks, vinegar bottles and social isolation than our sainted friend Borromeo had with his constant processions. That either means Don Bosco was holier than Borremeo, or that God's wrath is better appeased by correctly using the tools and the reason God gave us. Perhaps God favors the people who understand and respect how to deal with His creation, the viruses and bacteria. Perhaps all of the above.

Remember, processions didn't save Milan from the plague.
Vinegar and face masks DID save Bosco's boys from the plague.

So, take some lessons from the lives of the saints who fought plagues:

• Engage in social distancing, as all the plague saints did. 
• Wash your hands and wear face masks, as Bosco's boys did. 
• Quarantine yourself, as all the saints encouraged plague victims to do. 
• Remember that Bosco's mother stripped the altar of its linens to care for the sick, and 
• St. Charles Borromeo closed the churches during plague years, just as today’s bishops have done. 

Show a healthy understanding and respect for God’s creation, right down to the bacteria and the viruses, as the bishops do. As Eastertide approaches, do not murmur and grumble against your spiritual leaders, as the followers of Korah did against Moses, as the bishops’ detractors do today. For the followers of Korah thought themselves chosen by the Lord, but even in the midst of their holy prayers, God caused the earth to swallow them alive, and those who whined and grumbled against Moses’ leadership were struck down by the plague that followed.


UPDATE - Even TLM priests closed down Masses:
Dear TRADITIO Fathers:
Some people think that Catholic churches were closed too quickly in response to the Chinese Virus pandemic. When the Spanish Flu pandemic struck in 1918, did the Catholic Church close down its churches and Masses in accordance with civil orders to stop the spread of the deadly virus? I have seen a documentary that mentioned that churches were in fact closed then.

THE TRADITIO FATHERS REPLY
Yes, Catholic churches were closed for up to five months during the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic. The hierarchy supported the public-health emergency orders, and the few scofflaw priests were apprehended, and their churches barred shut. From October 1918 to February 1919 in the United States, for instance,, essentially no Masses were celebrated around the country.. Catholic pastors said that the closure orders would be followed "to the letter." One priest addressed his congregation as follows:

A situation unprecedented in the history of our state presents itself to you today. By order of the civil authorities, and by the advice of your religious leaders, you will not assemble, as you were wont to assemble on Sundays, in your various Catholic churches to assist at Holy Mass. That you may have some words of uplift and cheer, you are for the first time in your lives deprived of the opportunity of hearing Mass on Sunday, and you will, I trust from this very circumstance, appreciate more thoroughly what Holy Mass is for the Catholics....

The Mass, the unutterable sweetness of the Mass. Nothing human could draw, but the Mass is the God-given sacrifice offered the Creator, it is Holy Thursday come down and Calvary made present today. Mass is God really and truly present on our Catholic altars, a living unbloody victim offered again for the sins of men, offered, too, in thanksgiving for all the wondrous graces that unceasing flow from God’s great mercy throne on high....

Ah, brethren, let us today reflect on the meaning and the history of that great sacrifice at which we may not assist, a sacrifice that links us with the saints and sages of every age from Christ’s time till now, and let us beg God in his mercy to remove from us that sickness that keeps us deprived of the great sacrifice, so that soon we may again with glad, worshipful hearts, meet in our churches and assist in offering to the All High that clean oblation, seen by the prophet Malachy in vision, that sacrifice that is offered in every place from the rising to the set of sun [verse 11 of chapter 1 of the prophet Malachias has traditionally been understood as referring to Christ's sacrifice as perpetuated through Holy Mass.]

Beating a Dead Coronavirus

So, First Things (and a lot of the Catholics who read it) seem to be on a tear about how evil the bishops are for not allowing public participation in Easter celebrations. Again, let us revisit the lives of the saints.

St. Charles Borremeo's beloved Milan was afflicted by the plague. The good saint considered the plague an expression of the wrath of God, so he organized processions (in which all participants were ordered to keep a stick's-length apart, which sounds a lot like social distancing), and he erected crosses in public piazzas so those in quarantine could participate from their windows. Which still sounds like social distancing.

Despite his processions and crosses, Milan suffered the same morbidity from the plague as other areas. His thoughts were pious, but about one-third of Milan still died.

St. Don Bosco, on the other hand, organized his students to help during a cholera epidemic. He didn't consider the cholera plague an expression of the wrath of God, he simply considered it a natural evil, which it was. So, the good saint ordered his young men to wear face masks at all times and wash their hands with vinegar after ministering to cholera victims. If they ran out of vinegar, they were to come STRAIGHT back to the oratory without talking to or in any way interacting with anyone.

That also sounds like social distancing, but with a better understanding of germ theory, and a lot better PPE.

Apparently, St. Bosco was holier than St. Borremeo because Bosco lost none of his boys to cholera. Either that, or God favors the people who understand and respect how to deal with His creation, viruses and bacteria. Perhaps both.

Processions didn't save Milan from the plague.
Vinegar and face masks DID save Bosco's boys from the plague.

Take a lesson from the lives of the saints. 
Engage in social distancing and wash your hands.

Oh! Wait!

That's what the bishops are having us do. It's almost like the Catholic bishops of the world (the Pope included, of course) have more respect for, and understanding of, God's creation than First Things does.