Is Pandemic The Right Word?
By DONALD DeMARCO
We are certainly in the midst of a pandemic. That is a clear and undeniable fact. It is the word that the media use over and again to describe the spread of the coronavirus around the globe.
What we do not hear, in the media’s extensive, round-the-clock coverage, is the word “chastisement.” Yet, that word, taboo for media journalists, may best describe the meaning of the pandemic. The Bible records numerous occasions when people felt the wrath of God as a consequence of abandoning Him. God will not be mocked. He will not allow His people to go on sinning on a grand scale indefinitely, living by their own rules as if God’s laws were no longer valid. A Godless life leads to an unhappy conclusion.
Is it not naive in the extreme to think that the current pandemic is merely a temporary and inconvenient interruption of our affluent lifestyle and, with the aid of technology, will soon be over? If we recognize chastisement for what it is, we may undergo reform. If we do not, we will return to our previous ways and invite what may be a more severe chastisement.
We do, however, hear the word “chastisement” from a few God-oriented individuals. An Italian priest and theologian, Nicola Bux, has stated that the root of the current pandemic are the sins of the world, both within and outside of the Church. In this regard, he is in agreement with Archbishop Viganò, Bishop Schneider, and others.
According to Fr. Bux, we have defied the natural law and committed “sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance.” He refers specifically to idolatry, abuses in the liturgy, adultery, abortions, and divorces. “We have violated the rights of God,” he went on to say, “and put in their place those of man.” Nonetheless, the theologian and scholar believes that the chastisement is providential in that it can bear fruit.
A hermit priest by the name of Maximilian Mary Dean, who resides in the Diocese of Harrisburg, Pa., also believes that the pandemic is punishing mankind for its many sins. He singled out abortion, homosexuality, pornography, and the failure of churchmen to preach and live by the faith in its fullness. He urges us to “make our life an extension of the Mass” and offer up our sufferings in “atonement for our sins and those of the world.” He also advises us to “cling to Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart.”
T.S. Eliot established himself as one of the outstanding poets of his time. He used his poetic abilities to assess the modern world, which he found to be a Waste Land. In his extended poem, Choruses from “The Rock,” he, like the prophets of old, declares: “We build in vain unless the Lord builds with us.” In his own poetic way, he describes the vacuity of atheism: “And the wind shall say: ‘Here were decent godless people: Their only monument the asphalt road and a thousand lost golf balls’.” Without God, man attends to superficial things while cheating himself of happiness. He is preoccupied with “devising the perfect refrigerator….Plotting of happiness and flinging empty bottles.”
Without God, he fails to live. Eliot refers to the bottom line of human futility when he writes: “Life you may evade, but Death you shall not.”
If the current pandemic is not a chastisement, it has all of its essential features. Reading the Book of Jeremiah can be instructive. His commission was from God: “Let not the wise boast of their wisdom or the strong boast of their strength or the rich boast of their riches” (9:23). “For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed for themselves, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (2:13). The parallels between what we read in the Book of Jeremiah and what is transpiring at this time is both sobering and frightening. The world, especially Europe and North America, has forsaken God.
And what is more, it has replaced God with “broken cisterns,” such as pornography, abortion, euthanasia, homosexuality, and various forms of entertainment that are anything but spiritually nourishing. The great question that many are mulling over, and with obvious good reason, is whether these “two evils” have brought forth the current coronavirus pandemic as a chastisement from God?
And the Lord said, “Behold, you trust in deceptive words” (7:8). How this phrase typifies our present era. Abortion is just as “choice.” Euthanasia is “death with dignity.” Pornography is “adult entertainment.”
Contraception is “being responsible.” Adultery is “serial monogamy.” A child begotten outside of marriage is “a love child.” A same-sex “marriage” is “equal” to that of a traditional marriage. “They have not given heed to my words” (6:20). We have invented a language that rejects the Word of God. “Everyone deceives his neighbor, and no one speaks the truth; they have taught their tongue to speak lies” (9:4). We cannot prosper when we try to live within a system of lies.
Nonetheless, even if the current dilemma is not a chastisement, it is evident that a return to God and the imitation of His Will is very much in order. A Godless nation ruled by Godless people cannot long endure. It would eventuate in a chastisement even if it is of its own making. There is hope, however, where there is the will to reform.
At the close of the Lamentations, also attributed to Jeremiah, we read: “Restore us to thyself, O Lord, that we may be restored! Renew our days as of old!” The alternative is terrifying: “Or has thou utterly rejected us? Art thou exceedingly angry with us?” We are poised on a precipice. What we choose will be given to us.
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(Dr. Donald DeMarco is a professor emeritus at St. Jerome’s University, and an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles College & Seminary. He is a regular columnist for the St. Austin Review. His latest three books are How to Navigate Through Life and Apostles of the Culture of Life [posted on amazon.com], and the soon to be published, A Moral Compass for a World in Confusion.)
