Admit It, Learn from It, and Don’t Repeat It

When most Americans celebrated this month’s national holiday with fireworks and barbecues, did you refer to the day as “Independence Day” or “The Fourth of July”? Over time, society has changed this holiday’s moniker to the benign “Fourth of July,” and only senior citizens seem to recall this holiday should be a time for patriotic concerts and speeches remembering America’s gallant beginning. The fireworks shot off on July 4 were supposed to be commemorating the “rockets red glare and bombs bursting in air” – symbols of our forefathers’ fight for independence – but most of today’s generation doesn’t get the connection.

The writer and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel once said:

Without memory, there is no culture. Without memory, there would be no civilization, no society, no future.

If today’s older generations stop remembering the patriotism of past Independence Days and today’s younger generations aren’t taught the true, fundamental reason why July 4th became a holiday, the significance will soon be lost forever. However, I’m actually not writing this column to talk about the importance of remembering what happened 250 years ago. I’m writing to talk about the importance of remembering what happened starting 170 weeks ago.

It was in March 2020 that both the Church and State started making a lot of mistakes with their overreaction to the Covid-19 pandemic. We need to remember what happened so that it shall never happen again.

I’m not implying by calling it an overreaction that Church and State made a mountain out of a molehill. I know the coronavirus pandemic caused out-of-the-ordinary cases of illness and death and was more than a mere molehill. But I am saying Church and State made a mountain out of…let’s say…a Bunker Hill. Forcing healthy adults and children to take oppressive, overbearing precautions was – pardon the pun – overkill. The elderly and adults with multiple comorbidities certainly needed to take precautions when it came to Covid-19, as it was a virus that was overwhelmingly affecting their groups, but Church and State turned this prominent hill into a mountain when they expected all ages and health statuses to cower, cover, and cooperate with ridiculous edicts.

We can grant grace to any decisions that were mistakenly made in the initial weeks of the pandemic due to sudden fear and the dissemination of unreliable information. The March 2020 report from the Imperial College of London was the big propaganda piece that kicked off our country’s pandemic pandemonium by predicting Covid-19 would cause 2.2 million deaths in the United States. The media pushed out this unreliable report, and without any opposing reports given any airtime by the media, let alone any credence by government officials, the majority believed the horrific prediction. From there, human nature caused most people to be willing to do whatever government and health officials told us.

Famous college football coach Paul Bear Bryant said:

When you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat it.

My concern is the majority of politicians, bureaucrats, journalists, and Church leaders who made mistakes in overreacting to covid with draconian lockdowns and hateful bigotry toward those who didn’t fall into line with mask and vaccine mandates have never admitted they were wrong. Thus, learning from these mistakes won’t take place and things will repeat themselves when Covid-25 or some other “unprecedented event” befalls our country and our world.

We must never forget the oppressive British government and the freedoms we gained in 1776 with the American Revolutionary War and the Declaration of Independence. Similarly, we must never forget the freedoms we lost in 2020 and the two years following with the relinquishment and denial of our civil rights, bodily rights, and fundamental right to worship. Don’t ever forget that:

• churches were locked shut;
• sacraments were canceled;
• reception of the Eucharist was stopped;
• visits to loved ones dying in hospitals weren’t allowed;
• funerals were either canceled or at best consolations weren’t allowed; (this video is very disturbing on how mourners – who you know were hugging each other just prior to and right after entering the funeral home – were treated during the funeral ceremony);
• weddings were postponed;
• schools were shut down;
• masks were forced on children and toddlers, let alone adults;
• people were arrested for playing outdoors at a park, paddling alone in the ocean, and having family gatherings at home;
• people who refused an experimental inoculation and thus couldn’t show “their papers” (remembrances of Nazi Germany) were kept out of restaurants, refused entrance to sporting events, shunned by much of society including friends and family, and even fired from their jobs.

In those initial covid years, numerous studies and reports tried to break through the government’s and propaganda media’s prison-like walls and in recent months many more are finally in public view, showing that masking, 6-foot distancing, and a vaccine not only does not stop covid but is even worse. These once-censored and still often disparaged studies and reports show that masking and distancing cause educational loss and social/emotional harm, and the vaccine causes injury and death. These buried articles and analyses countered the mainstream propaganda on Covid-19 precautions and remedies and thus weren’t allowed to see the light of day by the corporate media, AMA, CDC, WHO, and state and national government officials.

I would bet the majority of Americans never knew about the following oppositional facts and counter-arguments regarding covid treatments and diktats if all they read and listened to were traditional broadcast news and government bureaucrats. This list of 31 sources of oppositional facts that I found in one sitting of online searching could easily expand to 131 more if I researched a bit longer: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31.

Powerful organizations and figures like the CCD and White House – along with most Catholic Bishops and the Pope himself – censored opposing information from being publicized, and canceled, blamed, and in some cases fired anyone who avoided masking, opposed closing so-called “non-essential businesses” such as churches, and refused getting inoculated with a “vaccine.”

Pope Francis implied it was sinful and selfish to deny taking the covid jab by calling it a “moral obligation” and saying, “Ethically, everyone has to get the vaccine.” He required employees and visitors to the Vatican to be inoculated, and he even removed a Bishop who opposed vaccine mandates.

If you know my personal story, my Seattle Archbishop, pastor, and superintendent formed a trifecta to force me out of my 40-year job as a Catholic school educator because I wasn’t willing to get injected with what my well-formed conscience knew was an abortion-connected and untested “vaccine.”

Even beyond the vaccine mandates, too many Archbishops locked up churches, too many priests refused to give the Sacraments, and too many Catholic school superintendents refused to let students return to school in a timely manner. Or when the Catholic superintendents finally removed the padlocks on school doors, they forced students to wear “face diapers” without any proof this stopped transmission but with much proof, this hindered their social and academic development.

Don’t ever forget that in many states, churches were told to lock down while pot shops and liquor stores were allowed to remain open, and yet the priests and bishops in those states didn’t complain and didn’t appear the least skeptical of government agencies’ hypocritical, illogical, and obviously politically-driven directives.

Don’t ever forget that a citizen couldn’t receive a Sacrament, but he could buy Scotch because drug and alcohol establishments were considered so-called essential businesses. We Catholics needed our shepherds to fight the government edict of closing churches by using the government’s own language of essential business to argue that nothing is more essential – both in the Bill of Rights and for our eternal souls – than to be able to worship.

With seemingly wall-to-wall clergy genuflecting to their government bureaucrats rather than to their God, I sadly believe the answer to the following questions is most likely, “no”:

• Have any of these Church leaders – from Pope Francis to Archbishop X to Father Y to Catholic School Superintendent Z – learned from their mistakes?
• Have any of them admitted they were wrong to force an abortion-connected vaccine on Archdiocesan employees, to require masking kids, to close church doors and halt liturgies and sacraments?
• Have Catholic Church administrators and pastors conceded that, once they did open their churches, that is was both an overreaction and secularizing of sacred spaces to wrap yellow caution tape around church pews like they were crime scenes and to turn their sacred spaces into warehouse-looking-buildings by sticking arrows on the ground showing where to walk at the magical 6-foot distance when receiving Communion?

I don’t expect most government officials or the mainstream media to be humble, reliable, and truth-tellers, but I do expect the Pope, bishops, and priests to be. As our freedoms were lost and the right to practice our faith kicked to the curb due to overreactions and poor decisions about the coronavirus, much of the country’s trust in the so-called medical experts and in government agencies was destroyed. But worse for authentic Catholics, much of our confidence in our Church leaders was shattered. Unsurprisingly, many Catholics who were kicked out of church in 2020 during the stopping of public Masses never returned to attending Mass after the church doors were reopened.

Any way you look at it, Church clergy let us down with their initial reactions to covid in 2020 and then continued illogical decisions in the two years following. They let us down by not vociferously directing us to follow the 2,000-year-old advice to turn to the Lord for hope but instead directing us to turn our attention to a president, a governor, and an immunologist. They lost our respect by making their foremost concern the fear of the temporal, physical harm that a virus might do to their and their parishioners’ fleshly bodies while disregarding concern for their flocks’ eternal souls, which is what is called for in their job description.

They forgot the words of the great Catholic thinker and author, St. John Vianney:

Oh, my children, how sad it is! Three-quarters of those who are Christians labor for nothing but to satisfy this body, which will soon be buried and corrupted, while they do not give a thought to their poor soul, which must be happy or miserable for all eternity. 

We expect our popes, bishops, and priests to be more concerned with the supernatural than the natural. They didn’t go to medical school to be the ones to take care of our physical bodies. They went to seminary and were ordained to look out for our spiritual souls. When priests are ordained, they promise to “preach the Gospel and teach the Catholic faith” and to “celebrate faithfully and reverently the mysteries of Christ, especially the sacrifice of the Eucharist and the sacrament of Reconciliation, for the glory of God and the sanctification of the Christian people.” At no time when they receive the sacrament of Holy Orders do priests promise to look after the bodily needs of the people or to embrace the edicts of their county’s department of health.

Do these fearful clergy realize that a version of “Do not be afraid/do not fear” can be found said by Jesus, angels, or future Saints a whopping 365 times throughout Scripture? No other phrase is repeated this often! You hear an angel tell Mary, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God” (Luke 1:30). There is the time Jesus told his disciples, “Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows” (Luke 12:7). In the Old Testament, we hear Moses tell the Israelites, “Be strong and bold; have no fear or dread of them, because it is the Lord your God who goes with you; he will not fail you or forsake you” (Deuteronomy 31:6). I could continue with 362 more Bible passages where the word of God is reminding us – and reminding our pope, bishops, and priests – to turn to Him in trust and prayer while setting aside panic and irrational alarm.

Jesus was an innocent man sentenced to death, and yet He was still able to say regarding his tormentors, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” So, I should be willing to do likewise and assume the mistakes the clergy made in 2020-22 to lock up their churches and Catholic schools, to stop administering the sacraments, and to fire Catholic employees for not taking the covid “vaccine” were done out of ignorance.

However, if the priests and other Church leaders are either going to plead ignorance or just aren’t going to admit they made mistakes in how they responded to the pandemic, can we at least expect them to learn from these mistakes so, in the future, they will stay within their areas of authority to promote and promulgate the Faith?

In a similar fashion, if you weren’t one of the minority who in 2020 spoke out, stood your ground, and refused to mask up or shoot up, but instead was one of the majority who uncritically acquiesced to whatever authorities told you regarding covid-connected directives and commands, would you do me a favor? If – or I should say, when – the next unprecedented crisis occurs in our country, whether it’s another pandemic or some other national calamity, would you vow here and now to commit to four things?

1. That you will not blindly follow bureaucratic diktats and, like sheep, follow silly commands (such as the masking rules when at a restaurant);
2. That you will fight for your and your neighbors’ civil liberties;
3. That you will demand your priest and bishop tend to your spiritual soul more than fearing bodily ills;
4. That you will follow the admonition from Scripture and “Be not afraid!”

It took 40 years after World War II before the American government apologized for the mistake it made in incarcerating 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent during the war. Similar to that moment in history, but hopefully in a much quicker fashion, I pray that today’s government and religious leaders have learned that “when you make a mistake, there are only three things you should ever do about it: admit it, learn from it, and don’t repeat it.”

The shameful aberrations which forfeited our civil liberties and squashed our religious freedoms, that the leaders, authorities, and officials of both Church and State allowed during the Covid-19 pandemic, must never happen again.