The US bishops are scrambling to address the myriad ethical and pastoral issues raised by spread of Covid-19, even as they join in a nationwide lockdown that will force all Holy Week services to be conducted without a congregation.
Oklahoma City Archbishop Paul Coakley, chair of the US bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice, praised federal legislators and the Trump administration for passing a $2.2 trillion stimulus package that expands unemployment benefits at a time when as much as 25 per cent of the workforce has become unemployed, providing aid to small business to meet payroll expenses, and providing aid to hospitals and schools, including those run by the Church.
President Donald Trump said the lockdown would stay in place until the end of April.
“It is good that there will be direct financial assistance to low- and middle-income Americans, and that there will be an infusion of financial resources for hospitals and charitable institutions which will be asked to do more than ever during this crisis,” Coakley said.
The Texas Catholic Conference issued a statement calling for the adoption of Mass Critical Care Guidelines that “should reject rationing of healthcare resources based solely on age, disability, or future ‘quality of life’ decisions.”
They also noted that the poor often lack access to quality healthcare in normal circumstances and that the allocation of scarce resources now must be “distributed broadly across communities.”
The Texas bishops noted their statement was “signed by all the Catholic Bishops of Texas with the exception of Bishop Joseph Strickland of Tyler.” In an interview on EWTN, Strickland called for subsidiarity in health care decision making, and supported the idea of ethical norms being adopted to guide health care workers, but rejected the broad norms his fellow bishops had proposed.
The US bishops’ conference has so far failed to address the issue of how far to prioritise economic issues.
Traditionally, the national conference does not address state-level issues but last year, Kansas City Archbishop Joseph Naumann, chair of the Pro-Life Activities committee criticised state-level abortion laws that made abortion more accessible. Naumann’s statement marking the 25thanniversary of Pope St John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium vitae did not address the ethical concerns raised by the virus directly, only noting that the schedule for implementing the “Year of Service” criterion to help benefit pregnant and young mothers, set to begin last week, could be altered as needed by dioceses and parishes.
Meanwhile, Fr Jorge Garay Ortiz of the diocese of Brooklyn, New York, became the first Catholic priest to succumb to the virus. The only US bishop to have contracted the virus, New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond, was recovering at his residence.