As a practicing Roman Catholic, i can’t tell you how upset I was with the dreadful United States Supreme Court decision to allow services in New York houses of worship to go on unrestricted.
The court ruled it was a violation of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion when, after all, bike shops weren’t restricted. Here’s Justice Jimmy Stewart, uh, Neil M. Gorsuch in the concurring opinion:
“It is time — past time — to make plain that, while the pandemic poses many grave challenges, there is no world in which the Constitution tolerates color-coded executive edicts that reopen liquor stores and bike shops but shutter churches, synagogues and mosques.”
Uh, Neil, I don’t think people who go into liquor stores are sitting in pews for an hour taking part in a service. I think the liquor store or bike shop is a 10-minute visit, tops. Nonetheless, Neil, who always reminds me of Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” for some reason, “Frat Boy” Brett Kavanaugh and “Typhoid Amy” Coney Barrett sided with Samuel “I’m Too Dull to Have a Nickname” Alito and “Uncle Clarence” Thomas for the debut of the new conservative Supremes voting block.
A fascinating subtext to the vote: John “The Chief” Roberts was becoming the Anthony Kennedy swing vote and joined the Ruth-less lib justices — Sonio Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer — in the dissent. But now his sometimes lib, sometimes con vote has been checkmated by the arrival of Typhoid Amy, she of the grating, nasally voice with no diaphragmatic support. You better watch her, Johnny.
But back to the vote. Why is a house of worship’s right to stay open and pack them in — see any number of Orthodox Jewish ceremonies — greater than the public health? The answer: Money. Houses of worship need cash — especially the Catholic Church, which has been dolling it out in settlements to molested former altar boys. And it’s much harder to control the faithful and thus the coffers when they’re not physically in front of you. (Me, I’ve been going to church online since March and sending in a monthly check. But when you’re on hand, there’s a tendency to give more, because you’re physically there for that second collection, that Christmas wreath sale in the back of the church, etc.)
Look, there’s no question that everyone has been affected adversely by the virus, some more than others. And when you are the some rather than the others, there is a tendency to claim “no fair.” Why do restaurants get to have outdoor dining in the streets, taking parking spaces away from other small businesses, as one local business owner complained to one of my reporters. Why liquor stores — clearly a demon form of entertainment for Amy though not, we imagine, for Brett — and not houses of worship?
Here’s the answer, kids: In every catastrophe, one group will have a natural advantage over another. The asteroid that hit the earth 66 million years ago ultimately destroyed the dinosaurs but paved the way for new life forms, including us. As President John F. Kennedy, an indifferent Catholic, put it: “Life isn’t fair.” Unfortunately for organized religion, it is a long, sit-down, indoor, communal thing — not a winning strategy in a pandemic.
But the pandemic doesn’t destroy faith. It doesn’t deny your relationship with God. Quite the opposite. It should strengthen it, because a real relationship lies in the heart and the mind and in the way we treat humanity, which includes putting public safety before sitting in a pew and daydreaming how long it will be till we can leave and go to lunch.
And Neil, here’s another thing to consider when thinking about whether the pandemic trumps public worship at the moment: The dead don’t go to church.