Missed Masses, marquesses, and mullets

Happy Friday friends,

Six years ago this week, Seattle became the first U.S. Catholic diocese to suspend public celebration of the Eucharist in the face of the coronavirus.

Announcing the move at the time, Archbishop Paul Etienne called it “an extreme measure of caution,” and said that “out of an extreme caution, we want to do our part to prevent the spread of this virus.”

The diocesan dominoes fell fast thereafter, with churches closing nationwide, often in response to government orders, but as often in anticipation of them, and even culminating in the indefinite suspension of baptisms in some places.

The death toll eventually taken by the pandemic sits north of a million lives in the United States. And the Covid effect on our society and politics may eventually become one of the great moments of speculation and argument by historians.

But to date there has been no systematic reflection on the long-term effects of voluntary ecclesiastical lockdown nor, as best I have seen, any substantive discussion among Church leaders to assess with hindsight the posture of “extreme caution” the bishops adopted.

For myself, I look back on how the Church confronted the pandemic with distinctly mixed emotions.

Pope Francis’ famous Eucharistic benediction urbi et orbi is