In an essay published this month, Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield in Illinois argued that months-long lockdowns in response to the coronavirus are an extraordinary means of saving life, and are therefore not morally obligatory and should not be coerced by the state.
We have “taken the extraordinary and unprecedented step of shutting down a major portion of our economy for the past several months, telling people to stay home, not to go to work, and not to go to school,” Bishop Paprocki wrote in “Social Shutdowns as an Extraordinary Means of Saving Human Lives”, an essay in the September edition of Ethics & Medics, a commentary published by the National Catholic Bioethics Center.
“The distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means of preserving life is important, for if a means is extraordinary—that is, if the burdens outweigh the benefits—then it is not morally obligatory and should not be coerced by state power,” he wrote.
“[I]n the face of a pandemic, do we have a moral obligation to shut down our society, require people to stay at home, put employees out of work, send businesses into bankruptcy, impair the food supply chain, and prevent worshippers from going to church? I would say no,” the bishop concluded, saying that such actions “would be imposing unduly burdensome and extraordinary means.”
Speaking to CNA, Bishop Paprocki drew an analogy with the distinction between ordinary means of preserving the life of a patient in medical care, which are obligatory, and extraordinary means, which are so burdensome that they are not obligatory, in the response to a pandemic.
“It just occurred to me that that very word extraordinary is a word that we use in Catholic medical ethics when we talk about treatments to save life, when you’re talking about an individual patient,” he said.
“Looking back, at emails and decisions we were making at that time, we were very much thinking in the middle of March, that this was going to be for a couple of weeks – we’ll close our schools until the end of March, and then things will reopen.”
“Obviously that didn’t happen that way,” he said, “so the lockdowns got extended another month, and so here we are several months later and this is ongoing.”
“The impact that it’s been having on people being able to go to church, receive Communion, go to their jobs, go to school, with all that being basically shut down for a period of time, again, it just struck me as extraordinary, that this had never happened in my lifetime, and probably in the lifetime of most people who are alive today, and so the word extraordinary kept coming back to me,” he explained.
Full story at Catholic World Report.
Just over 200,000 dead. Yes, some had issues of co-morbidity.
With all due respect to the Bishop, I think the difference between ordinary and exrtraordinary care depends on whether ones loved one is in the hospital ICU.
So violate the orders, bishop. Easy. Catholics don’t have an obligation to obey an unjust law/order/edict/regulation. If you think the order is unjust, then violate it.
The Bishop, I assume is not an expert in decease control. If he were, he would tell you that we did not shut down the country as we were advised to do. Each governor, for lack of national leadership, took it upon himself or herself to set up their own rules. We did not shut down the country. Florida is a good example. Even today, with virus cases spiking, young people now 20% of the cases, he is opening the state as it was before the pandemic started. Think about that. We are still in the first phase of a national crisis and the state is fully open, including schools. We not only have a national public health crisis, but we also have a national moral crisis. The Bishop’s thinking is much like a circular firing squad.
Survival rate of 99.995% refutes everything you say.
Anon, this is still above epidemic levels.
The Bishop is simply wrong. Catholics are morally obligated to follow just orders given by civil authorities. Also, Catholics are obligated to respect life.
By the way, to the anonymous guy spitting out incorrect things…the death rate after exposure to this virus is between 1 and 4%, depending on how overrun the health care system is, with many many more suffering long term ailments even if they don’t die. It is irresponsible to be putting out crazy fake facts.
So stay in a state of physical or mental lockdown all you want, hang out with Bob One. The bishop is right in his analysis and actions, I’ll follow his lead.
So let’s use real numbers, as of today the US has had 32,600,000 cases of the virus. Of those, 200,000 have died. Many are old with underlying conditions but the number of young people with the virus is rising quickly. Opening colleges and other schools are part of the reason. Over 200 million people would need to catch the virus for herd immunity to work. Assuming a 3% death rate, we have to be willing to let six million people die. Even if we cut the death rate in half, millions will die. The prediction is that at least another 200,000 will die by year-end because of the early opening of everything. Let’s pray the predictions are hugely wrong. In the meantime, the least we can do is avoid crowds, stay six or more feet apart from other than your household folks, wear a mask outside the home, and wash hands often. That isn’t really being locked down. That is not a big deal. Filling a church with people is a big deal.
I thought Catholics are pro-life? I guess not if you are elderly! I wonder how much the Republican National Committee or the Trump campaign paid the good Bishop to write this article.