THE TABLET

THE INTERNATIONAL CATHOLIC WEEKLY FOUNDED IN 1840

DEFEATING

COVID-19

NO POINT TO BLAME GAME NOW

As Alexander Pope put it, “To err is human …” It is obvious that serious errors were made by various governments in the weeks before the coronavirus became a rampant pandemic, but efforts to point the finger of blame at specific targets are a waste of energy unless they lead to lessons being learnt. The Labour party’s new leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has been right to say that the point of critical scrutiny should not be to score political points but to encourage better decision-making in the future.

One such lesson, for instance, would be not to trust either the United States or China – or indeed other countries – to act in anyone’s interests but their own. Those two countries have become entangled in a crude blame game over coronavirus. Donald Trump, fearful of losing the forthcoming presidential election unless he can switch the narrative away from his failure to respond earlier to the threat of the pandemic, is claiming that China is criminally culpable for allowing the coronavirus to spread as it did, first in China and then to the rest of the world.

Perhaps – but, so what? There is no jurisdiction where China can be called to account. Everyone knows already that China is a corrupt and oppressive society. The fact that its leaders failed to take adequate countermeasures when the epidemic first appeared merely puts them in the same category as Mr Trump himself. Indeed, his lamentable prevarications and procrastinations have cost many lives. But saying so brings nobody back: what matters is that whatever mistakes were made are investigated effectively and

honestly and that lessons are learned. Effective and honest action from the government is overdue in Britain too.

It seems undeniable that in the early stages of the disease, Boris Johnson and his inexperienced team of ministers took their eye off the ball. The Conservative Party’s long-term neglect of the National Health Service was compounded by the unprecedented nature of the challenge it faced, with shortages in almost every department. But governments are made of human beings, and, as the poet said, human beings err. In recent weeks, bland reassurances that everything is under control have been contradicted by reports of blunders the following day. Pretending all is well, in order to avoid blame, damages public confidence and stands in the way of finding solutions.

The coronavirus is likely to be around for several months. The engineering industry responded brilliantly when called upon to make good the shortfall in ventilators, as did the Army and the construction industry when asked to provide new critical-care hospitals. Now the clothing industry should be urgently charged with manufacturing items of personal protective equipment for medical and nursing staff; the chemical and pharmaceutical industries should be mobilised to provide all the ingredients necessary for large-scale testing, which will be a key element in any plan to ease the lockdown. And so on. The defeat of the virus has to engage all our resources and imagination. Apportioning blame for the mistakes of the past is irrelevant.

WORSHIP UNDER LOCKDOWN

CHURCH DOORS SHOULD STAY SHUT

Pressure on the British government to end the coronavirus lockdown is steadily growing, not least because every day it continues it inflicts a serious toll on the economy. The disruptions to everyday life it has caused also include the almost complete cessation of organised collective worship. Churches of every denomination, synagogues, mosques, gurdwaras and temples have all fallen quiet behind locked doors. This remarkable silence has happened with the blessing of the relevant religious authorities, who recognise that the deadly coronavirus can easily be transmitted wherever crowds may gather. “Thou shalt not kill” in this case translates as “Thou shalt not gather together in public”, which is a hard saying for people of faith whose main expression of it is through group activity.

Among those authorities are the leaderships of the Catholic and Anglican Churches. They have been criticised for it, but by and large their memberships have accepted the medicine while also looking for inventive ways to continue their religious observance. Online streaming of Mass from parish churches has been surprisingly successful in enabling congregations to join in the liturgy and participate spiritually if not in the flesh. The Church is more than a building. Take the building away, and the Church still exists.

These are among the reasons why the Catholic bishops in the United Kingdom should resist calls to press the government for an early release from lockdown so they could reopen their doors and resume normal church life. Proposals being studied by

the government include a partial relaxation of the restrictions, perhaps starting with primary schools, which are thought to be infertile ground for the epidemic to spread. But for some weeks at least, the precautionary principle would counsel strongly against exempting places of worship from restrictions.

Perhaps more promising would be for the government to start moving from a compulsory form of lockdown to a more voluntary one. Compliance is already largely voluntary in effect, as the police cannot oversee every supermarket queue. Indeed, the government’s own behavioural scientists have been surprised by the willingness of the great majority of citizens to cooperate freely, once they saw the need. So it could become a matter for religious leaders themselves to decide what degree of lockdown to continue with in their own case, trusting in their common sense and their duty to the common good.

But caution is required. Lives are at risk. Removing the statutory obligation to keep church buildings closed would merely transfer a difficult call from the government to bishops and other faith leaders. The bishops would need to explain more fully than they have done so far why, as an expression of social responsibility and Christian charity, they might decide to continue to keep church doors locked. Meanwhile religious communities have been finding novel methods of connecting their members one with another. It is proving an exciting stimulus to new ways of being the Church: virtual worship, and worship alone or with our families, can be the real thing.

2 | THE TABLET | 25 APRIL 2020