Monsignor Charles Pope is the pastor of Holy Comforter St. Cyprian Catholic Church in Washington, D.C. He has been a vocal critic of harsh coronavirus-related restrictions, suggesting that fear has prevailed.
“Crippling fear has seized so many people, and at some point, fear begins to feed on itself,” Pope wrote in a July 18 blog post for the National Catholic Register.
You can guess where this is going: Pope was briefly hospitalized in late July with COVID-19. As you could expect, plenty of people believed Pope got what was coming to him, a sentiment that Democratic Rep. Seth Moulton suggested Northeasterners share about Republican-majority states that have seen a record number of virus cases in recent weeks.
The Washington Post story that broke the news about Pope was not nearly as condescending as one might expect, but it contains a subtle reminder about why Catholics such as Pope have been yearning so desperately to return to church.
“Parishioners who participated in Communion at the church — where wafers and wine are shared to represent the body and blood of Christ — between July 25 and July 27 were told to stay home for 14 days and monitor themselves for symptoms,” read the article. The phrase of note is “where wafers and wine are shared to represent the body and blood of Christ.” What Catholics have been bound to believe is actually much more radical than that.
Catholics really believe that Jesus Christ is present at Mass, not that he’s merely “represented.” What appears to all the senses (and to any scientific instrument) to be bread and wine becomes Jesus’s true body and blood.
Knowing that, how could priests be expected to do less than everything possible to avail their flock of that gift? That is Pope’s point. The stakes of missing out are incredibly high. “For a Catholic, living means the Holy Mass, receiving the sacraments and gathering for communal worship,” Pope wrote in May. One need not have to assent to those beliefs to respect that others sincerely hold and are motivated by them.
The theology of communion aside, Catholics and other Christians believe something about the human person that is increasingly considered radical: that he has a soul and that his soul needs tending to. It’s not that Pope doesn’t take health and the virus seriously. He has clarified as much in his blog posts. He simply prioritizes the health of souls above all.
Washington, D.C., health officials have told about 250 parish staff and parishioners to quarantine for two weeks because Pope unintentionally may have exposed them to the virus. “I’m sorry, very sorry, for the inconvenience that my illness has caused,” he said in a video posted on Saturday. Pope said that he and his parishioners have been wearing masks and remained socially distant, so hopefully, nobody contracted the virus from him. The reality remains that leaving one’s house brings risks of exposure, but for the faithful, the risks of remaining at home can be even more grave.
