COMMENTARY: When crises come, the Church is not supposed to cower on the sidelines, seemingly useless.
Father Roger Landry, National Catholic Register, December 9, 2020
Father Roger Landry Father Roger J. Landry, a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, is national chaplain for Catholic Voices USA.
On May 1, as the initial panicked phase of the battle against COVID-19 was concluding, I wrote that the most important and urgent lesson Church leaders needed to learn coming out of the first phase was the disaster of acquiescing as various civil leaders attempted to treat the Church’s activity and worship as a “non-essential” service.
It’s not surprising, I said, that those who do not believe in God might think that the life of faith is non-essential. It’s similarly unremarkable that Catholics who no longer practice the faith, who do not deem it essential to their life, might also reckon it unnecessary in the lives of others. But that the Church — clergy, religious and faithful alike — would not thunderously protest against such a gross mischaracterization, and in some places would behave as if she agreed with that description, was scandalous. …
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