I teach adult theology. Catholics grow up hearing all about the horrors of sexual sins and missing Mass. Rarely are they taught the Church's moral teachings on the rights of laborers, our insistence on universal access to healthcare, or the very grave harm caused by lies.
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We have a POTUS who was repeatedly briefed by public health/national security officials that #COVID19 was going to cause immense harm to the U.S.—costing human lives. The POTUS went on TV and called it a "Democratic hoax," that the U.S had the situation under control. He lied.
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We have Congressmembers who likewise received closed-door national security briefings informing them of what was coming. Publicly, they declined to take steps to protect the American people. Privately, they sold off their stocks and secured their financial standing. They lied.
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We have an economic system in which a plurality, even majority, of U.S. workers are not paid a living/just wage, cannot afford adequate medical care/out-of-pocket expenses—and many of these individuals are being required to show up for work during a pandemic.
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During the weeks that the U.S. could have been mobilizing industries to manufacture masks, gloves, ventilators, and supplies to support healthcare workers, the POTUS and many other senior officials prioritized corporate profits, campaign partisanship, and personal wealth.
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In Christian theology, there are 2 types of evil—natural evil and moral evil. A virus, like an earthquake, is a natural evil. It's no one's fault. But the failure of political leaders to protect human life is a moral evil. In truth, the U.S. response to #COVID19 is an atrocity
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But the reason we're having so much trouble convincing adult Catholics/Christians of just how evil this economy, this healthcare system, this government's response is... we spent all our energy in youth group telling them not to have sex. We didn't/don't teach social justice.
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It's like math. The injustice and evil of the current moment require advanced moral calculus, but we convinced most Christians—when they were young—that they'd never need to know anything more than multiplication tables. So they CAN'T even comprehend how evil this is.
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Pope Francis has been attempting to shake the world from its moral complacency, critiquing "the throwaway culture"—the elderly we'd sacrifice to jump start the stock market; "an economy that kills"—the hourly workers delivering groceries who don't get sick leave.
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But it's not just Pope Francis. John Paul II, Benedict, Paul VI, John XXIII, back at the very least to Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum, have been relentlessly criticizing the global capitalist order that sacrifices human lives at the altar of corporate profit.
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The damnable thing—especially for us Catholics—is that we have categorically failed to teach this to people, from their youth. High school kids hear chastity talks from Theology of the Body but never get exposed to the economic justice of Laborem Exercens.
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If your local parish priest or confirmation catechist never told you, the Catholic Church insists on a just wage, universal access to health care, and the defense of human life above financial profit. This is doctrine. These are truths of the faith, shared by most Christians.
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The #COVID19 #coronavirus is a natural evil. But our profit-obsessed economic system, our lack of universal healthcare, and the Trump Administration's unrepentant mendacity about this threat, which will cost lives... those are all moral evils. And they are grave ones.
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