The ‘Drive Confession:’ The Care of Souls in a Pandemic

Daniela Tarantino is Lecturer at the University of Genoa, Italy

«These are almost unprecedented times in the longhistory of the Church. Future generations will look upon this time as the long one Lent of 2020». With these words begins the message that the president of the American Bishops’ Conference, Josè Gomez, addressed to all faithful at the beginning of the Easter triduum by announcing for GoodFriday, a day of national prayer to put an end to thepandemic caused by Covid- 19. «This Holy Week will be different. Our churchesmay be closed – concluded Gomez – but Christ isnot quarantined and his Gospel is not in chains.Even if we cannot celebrate together, each of uscan seek God in the tabernacles of our hearts» [1].

In fact, the current pandemic state limits severely gatherings and participation in liturgies and sacramentals. The Catholic Church has worked to find ways and times to answer to the Covid-19 emergency. In order to pursue the salus animarum– according to the “signs of the times” – the forms of exercise of the munera ecclesiae has been adapted, first of all those related to the munus sanctificandi, since they demonstrate the efforts to be close to the people of God, who demands of an ongoing “sociality” m that is wounded by the pandemic [2].

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Attention: Physical Presence for Court and the Catholic Church

Matthew Cavedon is a criminal defense attorney in Gainesville, GA

Moving the world onto Zoom was not as dramatic a break from history as you might think. After all, it’s been 170 years since Marx & Engels wrote that “[a]ll that is solid melts into air.” In many ways, then, moving everything onto actual Wi-Fi is just another blip in a centuries-long trend of airier and airier “modernization”—that is, of more abstraction, of the move away from place and flesh and time into a new world of idea and identity and the instant. Why, then, does it feel so sad? Americans are not handling the COVID-19 pandemic well. A third of us are experiencing stress and anxiety. Why? Shouldn’t we be ready for this next stage of human evolution, away from conference rooms and handshakes and hugs? For at least twenty years, some say, we have all been “chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism—in short, cyborgs.” And yet we don’t seem to have assimilated very well.

Two sanctuaries of resistance to the technology trend—the courtroom and the Catholic Church—help explain why we can’t just effortlessly float off into the cloud as a species. Both have only grudgingly gone online in recent months, even as much of the business world breathlessly predicts that couches are the new offices. This is because both are expert in focusing attention. And that requires forming consciousness through the senses in ways that virtual reality does not allow.

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Redeeming Justice

Terri Y. Montague is a certified mediator with earned JD and MTS degrees from Emory University

 

In Christian tradition, Jesus Christ climaxes God’s redemptive love and action. Through Christ, God righteously restores and fulfills human being in and for community. Otherwise, unrighteous humanity tends towards a senseless existence that leaves the church groaning under the burden of a faithless mortality; humanity groaning under the burden of a heartless society; and Nature groaning under the burden of a ruthless humanity. In the logic of “Redeeming Justice,” the present pandemic and justice movements cohere and redemptively work together for good to advance and culminate promised restoration by restoring right relations and just action – in the church, in society, in Creation. This construct helps us to recognize and partner in God’s righteous reign in the world.

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