In her infuriating and ignobly equivocal article in The Atlantic, Let's Declare a Pandemic Amnesty, Emily Oster hides her own culpability* in lockdown matters by begging for universal amnesty, so that we can "try to work together to build back and move forward."
"In April 2020, no one got the coronavirus from passing someone else hiking. Outdoor transmission was vanishingly rare. Our cloth masks made out of old bandanas wouldn’t have done anything, anyway. But the thing is: We didn’t know."
We knew, Emily. And we tried to tell you. Ask yourself what happened to our voices.
"When the vaccines came out, we lacked definitive data on the relative efficacies of the Johnson & Johnson shot versus the mRNA options from Pfizer and Moderna."
With this anodyne statement, hopefully trying to cast the "sides" as equally culpable, as if one side were not in power, silencing and harming the other, Oster fails to mention further developments warned against by honest questioners, at great cost to themselves and their reputations, that the lockdowns and shots would prove to be devastating (the real, if soft-pedaled, meaning of the quote above).
For many reasons, not least having to do with how much we let ourselves know in the future, we should not move on, despite this transparent effort from a now-spooked ruling class to impute bad motives to those they attacked and harmed, hoping to evade a reckoning.
But there's another class of experts who also must not be allowed to fade into the background.
And that is Catholic authorities and experts who followed those in the government and the media who now say "we didn't know" -- but who at the time were obviously silencing discussion (let alone criticism).
These Catholics insisted on following calls to mask and vaccinate, using religious authority, theological arguments, and the virtue of obedience to harm persons, families, and consciences.
This group includes various bishops' conferences, bishops, vicar generals, pastors, parish administrators, theologians, and ethicists, not to mention random pundits, columnists, and podcasters. Many are left-leaning, politically, but some are conservative and even quite traditional.
All abdicated their duty to defend personal autonomy and bodily integrity, as well as justice and right reason.
Astoundingly, this cohort, this unholy cabal, ratcheted up fear and shut down our churches. Oh, some of them may have not wished to go that far, but their complicity in one or more aspects of the regime undermined their discomfort.
On a matter of utter prudential judgement on medical and social matters -- the Covid response -- that required information and only then, consent, by the persons in question, these religious experts and authorities abused their position and the respect accorded to them by the helpless faithful, and presumed to make judgements about matters outside their proper sphere of providing teaching of objective principle.
They pompously rejected or provided the pretext for rejecting religious (really, conscience) exemptions from tormented people, their brothers and sisters in Christ. (My husband Phil Lawler wrote a book about all this: Contagious Faith - affiliate link.)
Never will I forget images of children sitting at desks, once school did reopen, swathed in plastic, masked, behind plexiglass -- for the cowardice of our moral leaders.
Many young people missed meeting their best friend or spouse; are now drug-addicted; many committed suicide. Many families lost a loved one and did not have the opportunity to say goodbye or comfort them in their last hours.
For these Covid fellow-travelers, too, who enabled all this, there ought to be a tribunal and a requirement for apology and reparation. I don't know what that tribunal would be. Let their consciences accuse them.
The important point I want to emphasize in this matter of "moving on" is that the harm is not all in the past. The economy is in tatters (with the fallout being borne by the truly poor, near and far away). So is the Church (ditto).
Fathers of families still are without jobs and pay, anguished and burdened by their means of provision and protection being taken away. Mothers are still traumatized by not being heard, by giving birth wearing a mask and alone, by being kept inside with young children who needed to go outside. Children have been subjected to loss of education, friendship, and well being (including physical well being, as immune systems are weakened by lockdown). Children in some places still wear a mask. Many of us can't go to the doctor without one (though I won't wear it).
Even today, the fearful wear masks outside or while driving alone, their psyches permanently scarred.
I can't even go through the whole list of wrongs and evils -- it's too long. And it's not over.
But anyone in the Catholic Church who went along with lockdowns, vaccine mandates, masking, and/or social (and religious!) pressure ought to be ashamed. All along, we told them how it would end. Now even the ones who tried to suppress the truth see that it's coming out. Will they too ask for amnesty without any sign of repentance? For shame.
