A not insignificant number of clergymen are at this time praying for scientists to come up with a vaccine for the coronavirus that led to the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet if prayers are limited to this sole goal, this would certainly constitute a problem from the standpoint of the faith.
A catholic priest recently pointed out to me that, even if science discovers a vaccine while we the faithful continue to lead sinful lives, other worse pandemics would arise as demonstrated by the secret of Fatima in relation to the prophecy of the onset of World War II.
The real problem, possibly, is the salvation of our souls, something many Catholics tend to forget. We are risking going down the path of death if, as believers, we limit our implorations to God solely to eradicate this virus. To be sure, the first instinctive invocation for help that comes from the hearts of men in any emergency is for the saving of their lives. Yet this ought not to be the only invocation we should make.
As Mgr Crepaldi, archbishop of Trieste, has recently observed, the Latin term salus means health in the sanitary sense as well in its ethical-spiritual – hence religious – dimension. The experience we are undergoing with the coronavirus bears witness once more that these two dimensions are interconnected. It is for this reason one should not forget the importance of saving one’s soul in addition to the body.
This is implicit in the words of Our Lord, well known to all Christians: “He who wishes to save his life, will lose it; but he who loses his life for My sake, will save it. What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and then loses his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul?” (Matthew 16: 25-26).
Paraphrasing Christ’s words, we could ask what will it profit man to find the coronavirus vaccine to save his body, if he subsequently loses his soul? The fact is that modern man has lost sight of this perspective, because he has lost his sense of sin.
Pius XII, one of the greatest popes of the 20th century, foresaw this phenomenon in his radio message of October 26, 1946, broadcast at the close of the Boston Catechetical Congress of the US. In that message, the pontiff announced that: “...possibly the greatest sin in today’s world is men beginning to lose their sense of sin”.
In the 21st century, we can safely affirm that this sense of sin has definitely been lost. In our modern times, mankind lives with an ‘anesthetised’ conscience; one may still bear a vague sense of guilt or some form of a guilt complex but this no longer constitutes a sense of sin. And this is because God has vanished from the horizons of society.
In our modern times, mankind lives with an ‘anesthetised’ conscience; one may still bear a vague sense of guilt or some form of a guilt complex but this no longer constitutes a sense of sin
It is sin, not the coronavirus that produces the only real infection that we should fear, namely that which contaminates the soul. This infection today is also propagated through iniquitous laws, contrary to God’s commandments, vaunted by men as liberation achieved by modernity, or through, what is termed by certain clerics, as “pastoral-doctrinal updating required by a faith which keeps up with the times”.
The authentic vaccine we need should be administered against those iniquitous laws that cry out to heaven for justice, such as those promoting abortion, euthanasia, artificial insemination, norms combating so-called ‘homophobia’ and those promoting gender ideology.
If Christians fail to understand this, or worse, approve such legislation; if they are no longer capable of reacting against the ever-rising tide of blasphemous and sacrilegious manifestations; if they fall into the idolatry of the modern world; if they affirm that the sixth commandment no longer constitutes mortal sin; if they promote cohabitation more uxurio and divorce; if they insist that there should be no further mention of sin but solely of ‘complications’ and ‘fragility’; then they should not be surprised if God replies that He cannot assist them, with the result that nothing, apart from what the prophet Daniel called “the abomination of desolation”, remains.
Yet Christians are well aware of Christ’s warning: “Go now, and sin no more” (John 8: 11). Through a loss of understanding of the gravity of sin, everything is reduced to the material dimension and, consequently, physical death terrorises man more than his spiritual demise. This is what we are witnessing with this pandemic, tragically among so many Christians. What good are they if they no longer bear witness to their faith? When the Son of Man returns on this Earth, will He find faith?
These are the questions the faithful should pose, with the awareness they have in keeping the flame of truth alive until Christ’s return.
Some years ago, Mgr Luigi Giussani wanted to recover a substantial part of the Catholic literature censored by the Marxist hegemony that has dominated the Italian cultural landscape since the end of World War II. He convinced a publishing house to produce a book series entitled The Books of the Christian Spirit.
One volume in this series, namely the novel by Henri Daniel-Rops (1901-1965) entitled Death, Where is Your Victory?, left me enthralled. In that fictional work, one of Daniel-Rops’s characters, Fr Perouze, says: “The only life is that which comes from the struggle for our soul (...). The men of today despise this truth (…), they have banished sin from their daily lives and their books and have hence fallen unwittingly into a river of mud in which they are perishing.”
It is hoped that in the present emergency created by the COVID-19 pandemic, all men, believers and otherwise, will recover that conscience which allows them to humbly recognise themselves as sinners, in order to save their souls before their bodies.
Gianfranco Amato is Italy’s leading pro-life lawyer and is an honorary member of the Maltese Society for Christian Civilisation – Pro Malta Christiana.