Cardinal Burke’s long-winded promotion of COVID-19 conspiracy theories.

ester­day at the Rome Life Forum, Car­di­nal Ray­mond Burke, a most vocif­er­ous crit­ic of the pope, gave a long pre­sen­ta­tion enti­tled “Fati­ma: Heaven’s Answer to a World in Cri­sis.” And here I sit, think­ing that Christ was the answer. Burke’s talk was 5,166 words long, and about half of it had to do with Fati­ma, the evils of Chi­na, and the impor­tance of con­se­crat­ing Rus­sia: red meat for the Catholic hard right. In the process he also man­aged to pro­mote dis­cred­it­ed con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and mis­state Church teach­ing on a num­ber of points.

Burke begins:

We are liv­ing through most trou­bled and trou­bling times. A virus has been, in some way, unleashed, trav­el­ing to all parts of the world. It has caused and is caus­ing many to suf­fer from the asso­ci­at­ed ill­ness, COVID-19, to a greater or less­er degree.

It’s hard to know what he is get­ting at when he says that the virus has been “unleashed.” This is a pas­sive voice con­struc­tion; who did the “unleash­ing”? Was it a vin­dic­tive gov­ern­ment? A mad Franken­stein? Was it an acci­dent in a lab­o­ra­to­ry? Is it pun­ish­ment for sin­ners in the hands of an angry God? Burke does not say. Evi­dent­ly, from his per­spec­tive, it was not some mere hap­pen­stance of nature. The virus was unleashed; but we don’t know by what, or whom.

Per­haps even Burke is befud­dled. A few weeks back, he said: “There is no ques­tion that great evils like pesti­lence are an effect of orig­i­nal sin and of our actu­al sins”; and he men­tioned gen­der the­o­ry in par­tic­u­lar. How Burke came to this conclusion—whether God spoke to him in a vision and said “Ray, I’m pun­ish­ing the gays”—he did not say. But now he sim­ply says “unleashed” and leaves the sub­ject of the verb to our imag­i­na­tion. “The ori­gin of the virus remains yet unclear,” he says; he’s hedg­ing his bets, per­haps out of a fear that God might be pun­ish­ing the pope’s detrac­tors. He needs to watch him­self.

There is also a legit­i­mate fear of unscrupu­lous per­sons using the health cri­sis for polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic ends.

 

[Or reli­gious ones.]

 

A pecu­liar aspect of the result­ing inter­na­tion­al health cri­sis, what is called a pan­dem­ic, is that the greater body of the healthy are placed under severe restric­tions, even regard­ing their prac­tice of the faith, on the assump­tion that infec­tion with the virus often remains hid­den until it sud­den­ly man­i­fests itself.

This is an inel­e­gant way of say­ing that one can be infect­ed with a virus, and be con­ta­gious, before symp­toms emerge. And it’s more than an “assump­tion”; it’s very com­mon with the flu in gen­er­al, and indeed many ill­ness­es. There’s no rea­son to treat this as though it’s a mere whim­si­cal guess.

Among some, the sit­u­a­tion has led to con­stant wor­ry about pos­si­ble infec­tion [Which is sad but very nor­mal.] and the nur­ture of an illu­sion that some­how we can can have a per­fect­ly san­i­tary envi­ron­ment in which we will not be threat­ened by any bac­te­ria or virus or in which by pro­phy­lac­tic mea­sures, includ­ing uni­ver­sal­ly imposed vac­ci­na­tion, we will be pro­tect­ed, with cer­tain­ty, against the coro­n­avirus.

I don’t know any­one who thinks that. Burke reveals his igno­rance here. The goal of stay­ing at home, of wear­ing masks, of social dis­tanc­ing, is not that any­one thinks we will have a “per­fect­ly san­i­tary envi­ron­ment.” The goal is to reduce the num­ber of infec­tions, to con­tain the virus. The goal is to save the max­i­mum num­ber of lives. Just as impor­tant, the goal is to reduce the num­ber of patients in ERs at any one time so that resources and hos­pi­tal staff are not over­whelmed. No one thinks that we can stop infec­tion alto­geth­er.

As far as uni­ver­sal vac­ci­na­tion, quite a num­ber of virus­es actu­al­ly have been very suc­cess­ful­ly con­tained by vac­cines. The CDC has the details. Polio, for exam­ple, has been elim­i­nat­ed in the Unit­ed States due to the Salk vac­cine. The idea that uni­ver­sal vac­cines can suc­cess­ful­ly con­tain or even elim­i­nate virus­es is hard­ly the pipe dream Burke seems to think it is. We’ve proven that by expe­ri­ence.

With regard to vac­ci­na­tion, it must be clear that it is nev­er moral­ly jus­ti­fied to devel­op a vac­cine through the use of the cell lines of abort­ed fetus­es. The thought of the intro­duc­tion of such a vac­cine into one’s body is right­ly abhor­rent.

Well, Burke is part­ly right here. The Church does say that it is grave­ly evil to devel­op a vac­cine from an abort­ed fetus. The doc­u­ment is called Dig­ni­tas Per­son­ae. There we read:

[T]he use of human embryos or fetus­es as an object of exper­i­men­ta­tion con­sti­tutes a crime against their dig­ni­ty as human beings who have a right to the same respect owed to a child once born, just as to every per­son. (34)

At the same time, how­ev­er, cer­tain vac­cines already come from an abort­ed fetus: Hepati­tis A; Measles, Mumps, and Rubel­la; and Vari­cel­la (aka Chick­en­pox). And DP adds this impor­tant qual­i­fi­ca­tion:

Grave rea­sons may be moral­ly pro­por­tion­ate to jus­ti­fy the use of such “bio­log­i­cal mate­r­i­al”. Thus, for exam­ple, dan­ger to the health of chil­dren could per­mit par­ents to use a vac­cine which was devel­oped using cell lines of illic­it ori­gin, while keep­ing in mind that every­one has the duty to make known their dis­agree­ment and to ask that their health­care sys­tem make oth­er types of vac­cines avail­able.

It’s called remote mate­r­i­al coop­er­a­tion. Burke mis­leads us by not ful­ly stat­ing Church teach­ing here. He also rais­es fears that a COVID-19 vac­cine is being devel­oped from abort­ed fetal mate­r­i­al in the first place, which is far from cer­tain. Accord­ing to this arti­cle on May 20 at the Catholic Reg­is­ter:

In a sur­vey of 16 lead­ing COVID-19 vac­cine research projects, Dr. James Sher­ley found that 10 of them were using eth­i­cal alter­na­tives, five were rely­ing on abor­tion-derived cell lines and one could not be eas­i­ly clas­si­fied into either cat­e­go­ry.

Burke needs to be care­ful. Too many peo­ple are already con­vinced that the vac­cine will come from illic­it cell lines, and will not believe any­one who tries to reas­sure them to the con­trary. It’s impor­tant to take a breath from the fear­mon­ger­ing and stick with ver­i­fi­able facts. Burke seems to have a hard time with that.

Back to Burke’s text:

At the same time, it must be clear that vac­ci­na­tion itself can­not be imposed, in a total­i­tar­i­an man­ner, on cit­i­zens. [Why not?] When the State takes on such a prac­tice, it vio­lates the integri­ty of its cit­i­zens.

That’s not so. This is lib­er­tar­i­an think­ing, not Catholi­cism. There is no right to put oth­er peo­ple’s health and lives in jeop­ardy, which is what hap­pens when you refuse a vac­cine. To do so cre­ates an obstruc­tion to herd immu­ni­ty; and herd immu­ni­ty pro­tects peo­ple who for one rea­son or anoth­er can’t get a vaccine—such as new­borns who are still too small, peo­ple with com­pro­mised immu­ni­ty, and so on. In the inter­est of the com­mon good, the state can cer­tain­ly say you must be vac­ci­nat­ed.

While the State can pro­vide rea­son­able reg­u­la­tions for the safe­guard­ing of health, it is not the ulti­mate provider of health. God is.

This is non­sense. Of course God is the “ulti­mate provider” of health in that every­thing good has its source in God. But Car­di­nal Burke sounds like a Protes­tant who would say that the sacra­ment of penance is illic­it because only God for­gives sins. In the Gospel, Jesus sends his dis­ci­ples to heal the sick. The Com­pendi­um of the Social Doc­trine of the Church (§166) tells us that health care is a human right and a demand of the com­mon good. Because vac­ci­na­tion is a form of health care, it is most cer­tain­ly a duty of the state to guar­an­tee. This is basic Catholic social teach­ing. The Church has nev­er taught a lais­sez-faire, “God will pro­vide” atti­tude toward human needs.

I skip a few para­graphs:

It is also clear that indi­vid­u­als and groups with a par­tic­u­lar agen­da are using the pro­found suf­fer­ing, in what regards both the health and the econ­o­my of fam­i­lies, local com­mu­ni­ties and nations, to pro­mote their agen­da, whether it be the advance of a sin­gle world gov­ern­ment, the pro­mo­tion of envi­ron­men­tal caus­es, and even rad­i­cal changes in the prac­tice of the Catholic faith.

I’m sor­ry, but I don’t think this is “clear” at all. Burke cites no exam­ples of such a nefar­i­ous plot. I find that sus­pi­cious and irre­spon­si­ble.

At this point, Burke speaks for a while about peo­ple who say a priest denied them this sacra­ment or that sacra­ment. Then he arrives here:

From the begin­ning, there has been a fail­ure to make clear that among all of the neces­si­ties of life the prin­ci­pal neces­si­ty is com­mu­nion with God.

Actu­al­ly, no, the “prin­ci­pal neces­si­ty” is life itself. “I came,” Jesus says, “that you may have life and have it more abun­dant­ly.” There can be no com­mu­nion with God with­out life first.

[I]f we false­ly think that the com­bat against the evil depends total­ly upon us, we take mea­sures which offend our human dig­ni­ty and, above all, our right rela­tion­ship with God. In that regard, the State should be atten­tive to the reli­gious free­dom of the cit­i­zens, in order that the help of God may be sought at all times and in all things.

Well, I don’t know any­one who thinks that defeat­ing the virus “depends total­ly upon us.” Who thinks this? Nor do I need to attend Mass to implore God’s help. If I’m con­fined to my home or my bed, does God shut his ears to me? Does he refuse to help? Burke has a strange view of God if he thinks that’s true. Burke wor­ries that we’re mak­ing the state our God. There may be nations that have done this already, but no one has done so because of COVID-19. To say that the state has an oblig­a­tion to the com­mon good is not to treat it as though it’s God; that’s just absurd.

But drink your cof­fee, because now Burke gets real­ly wild:

Also, there is a cer­tain move­ment to insist that now every­one must be vac­ci­nat­ed against the coro­n­avirus COVID-19 and even that a kind of microchip needs to be placed under the skin of every per­son, so that at any moment he or she can be con­trolled by the State regard­ing health and about oth­er mat­ters which we can only imag­ine.

To quote Cos­mo Kramer: That’s kooky talk. This idea that a microchip per­mit­ting the state to “con­trol” us is going to be attached to a vac­cine has been round­ly debunked. For a man of Burke’s learn­ing to pro­mote this kind of con­spir­a­cy garbage is the height of irre­spon­si­bil­i­ty. There are gullible peo­ple out there who may very well refuse a vac­cine because a man of Burke’s stature is giv­ing cre­dence to fears like this, and it could put their health and their life in grave dan­ger. It is a grave fail­ure of char­i­ty on Burke’s part.

After a few more para­graphs, he turns to the lift­ing of the Sun­day mass oblig­a­tion:

The Sun­day Mass oblig­a­tion, for instance, par­tic­i­pates in nat­ur­al and divine law, the Third Com­mand­ment of the Deca­logue, which we are oblig­ed to observe, unless, for rea­sons beyond our con­trol, we are not able to do so. [A pan­dem­ic that has killed close to 100,000 Amer­i­cans is a “rea­son beyond our con­trol”.] Dur­ing the present cri­sis, it has been said that Bish­ops dis­pense the faith­ful from the Sun­day Mass oblig­a­tion, but no human has the pow­er to dis­pense from divine law. If it has been impos­si­ble, dur­ing the cri­sis, for the faith­ful to assist at Holy Mass, then the oblig­a­tion did not bind them, but the oblig­a­tion remained.

What does this even mean?—the oblig­a­tion does not bind you but there’s still an oblig­a­tion. Poor Burke is expend­ing a great deal of ener­gy here mak­ing a dis­tinc­tion with­out a dif­fer­ence. Some­one please stage an inter­ven­tion.

In this regard, I have been con­cerned about the response of some to the long-term impos­si­bil­i­ty of access to the Sacra­ments [Fun­ny how Burke was not con­cerned at all about the “impos­si­bil­i­ty of access” to Mass in the Ama­zon.], who have said that it was actu­al­ly good to be with­out the Sacra­ments, in order to con­cen­trate on the more fun­da­men­tal rela­tion­ship with God. Some have expressed a pref­er­ence for watch­ing the tele­vised Holy Mass in the com­fort of their homes. [How may are “some”? 6000? Six­ty? Six? One per­son in a pri­vate group on Face­book?] But the Holy Mass is not some human rep­re­sen­ta­tion. It is Christ Him­self Who descends to the altars of our church­es and chapels to make sacra­men­tal­ly present the sav­ing fruit of His Pas­sion, Death, Res­ur­rec­tion and Ascen­sion. What on earth could be prefer­able to the pres­ence of Christ in our midst in the sacra­men­tal action!

How about life? How about my life? My neigh­bor’s life? The Mass is not a sui­cide pact. It’s not Chris­t­ian to say that God demands our pres­ence at Mass at the risk of our lives or the lives of oth­ers.

Some pas­tors have even rebuked the faith­ful who plead­ed for the Sacra­ments, accus­ing them of want­i­ng, in self­ish­ness, to risk seri­ous harm to the health of oth­ers.

 

[I agree. It turns the Mass from a sac­ri­fice into a per­son­al fetish, or a form of mag­ic that itself will repel ill­ness.]

 

In this regard, even as it is per­fect­ly nor­mal that indi­vid­u­als leave the con­fine­ment of their homes to pur­chase, for instance, food and med­i­cine, it is even more per­fect­ly nor­mal that per­sons of faith leave the con­fine­ment of their homes to pray and to receive the Sacra­ments.

One needs food and med­i­cine to sus­tain life. If I don’t go to Mass, I am not going to drop dead. Mass is not going to keep my blood pres­sure under con­trol, but Carvedilol does. Mass is not going to keep my dia­betes under con­trol; insulin does. Mass is not going to ward off star­va­tion; I’m not Cather­ine of Siena; but food does.

In a time of health cri­sis, pub­lic health experts may make rec­om­men­da­tions about how best to pro­tect the health of those who have access to church­es and chapels, but it is the Bish­ops and priests who must imple­ment such rec­om­men­da­tions in a man­ner that respects the divine real­i­ty of the faith itself and of the Sacra­ments. For instance, to sug­gest that a priest dis­trib­ute Holy Com­mu­nion while wear­ing a mask and plas­tic gloves, and san­i­tize his hands at var­i­ous times after he has con­se­crat­ed the Sacred Host may, from a med­ical per­spec­tive be the most san­i­tary prac­tice, but it does not respect the truth that it is Christ Who is giv­ing Him­self to us in the Sacred Host.

 

[Why not? Burke does not say. Does he think the Real Pres­ence is nul­li­fied by plas­tic? I don’t read that in Aquinas.]

 

At the same time, the pro­hi­bi­tion of receiv­ing the Sacred Host on the tongue and the man­date to receive Holy Com­mu­nion in the hand, while it may be more san­i­tary, although that is debat­ed, could only be jus­ti­fied by a grave rea­son.

Car­di­nal Burke, Your Emi­nence, dear sir. A pan­dem­ic that has already killed near­ly 100,000 Amer­i­cans and over 300,000 world­wide, and sick­ened over 5 mil­lion, is a “grave rea­son.” If this is not a “grave rea­son,” what is?

One gets the feel­ing here that Burke appeals to “grave rea­son” mere­ly as a pro for­ma when his actu­al view is that there are no grave rea­sons, only his own grave con­cern which he is going to impose upon the world.

At this point, Burke goes on to bash Chi­na as a nation of idol­a­try, bab­ble on about the Third Secret of Fati­ma, and demand the con­se­cra­tion of Rus­sia (which has already hap­pened). So I leave his text at this point, for the sake of your own peace and mine, dear read­er. Just remem­ber: A Car­di­nal elec­tor speaks like this.