Social Distancing and Human Flourishing

Social Distancing and Human Flourishing
(AP Photo/Antonio Calanni)
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In order to manage the COVID-19 threat, states and municipalities across the nation have required their citizens to “stay at home” and “shelter in place.” To ensure compliance with these directives, authorities have also ordered the closure of millions of businesses and other services. As these closures were implemented in region after region, a general pattern emerged. To prevent individuals from congregating in large groups, authorities first restricted access to centers of learning and houses of worship. Then they asked offices, restaurants, and places of entertainment to close. Finally, they ordered barber shops, gyms, and other so-called “non-essential” entities to cease operations, leaving open only select businesses, including grocery stores, pharmacies, and banks.

From one point of view, the order of closures and enforced “social distancing” appeared prudent. Halting large gatherings first, especially of the young and the elderly, aimed sensibly at protecting vulnerable populations from contracting and spreading the virus. Only eventually did it become necessary to restrict smaller gatherings also, after halting larger ones proved too little effective against contagion.

From another point of view, however, the order of closures exhibited our society’s diminished view of the human person. The current manner of staying home is aimed at merely sustaining human individuals in the most basic aspect of their being, namely their physical, animal life. As of now, public policy maintains individual access to little more than food, water, and the essentials for basic hygiene. Access has been restricted, if not hindered, to the goods of individuals’ social and economic life, and more tragically to the goods of their intellectual and spiritual life. Physical life is the sine qua non of human living, to be sure, but the higher goods of mind and spirit contribute necessarily to human flourishing. Jesus’ adage that “life is more than food” (Luke 12:23) recalls a universal truth.

However unwittingly, the government’s order of closures rendered judgment on the hierarchical ordering of human goods. Aristotle recognized this ordering more than two millennia ago, as did Abraham Maslow more recently. In contravention of the truth they perceived, we as a nation quickly jettisoned our higher goods as the more expendable. Schools were ordered closed and religious communities suspended services with little public debate. We surrendered the ordinary means of developing mind and soul for the promise of a quick securing of bodily life. This can sometimes be reasonable, but when unreasonable it is imprudent.

As a matter of public policy, we are betting that individuals will weather the current storm on Netflix and take-out, thus providing basic creature comforts but withdrawing the social, intellectual, and religious pursuits that render man’s animal life human. In effect, we are kenneling the human person, in neglect of his social, intellectual, and spiritual dignity. Again, the end of social distancing is good, even necessary, but the means require careful consideration.

Technology has stepped in valiantly to satisfy the intellectual and religious needs of newly isolated individuals and families. Schools everywhere are video-conferencing classroom instruction. Churches, synagogues, and mosques are live-streaming religious services. But the shortcomings of virtual teaching and virtual worship already appear evident. Education advocates have been quick to defend the superiority of in-person instruction over virtual learning, insisting that social interaction between teachers and students improves outcomes at all levels. Similarly, religious leaders find preaching to cameras artificial, and celebrating rites in empty churches dispiriting. The faithful, too, can wonder about the spiritual benefit they derive from watching televised ceremonies.

The inadequacy of virtual worship has been felt particularly in Christian communities, especially this week, Holy Week. Worshippers of an Incarnate God must necessarily incarnate the life of faith, including their praise and adoration of the Word-Made-Flesh. In Christian worship, God’s flesh and blood communicates with man’s flesh and blood, a mystery that cannot be conveyed adequately through wires and screens. Fellowship and sacrament constitute the ordinary means here, for which there is no known replacement.

On the Jewish calendar, this is also Passover Week. Many American Jews used Zoom to try to replicate Seder dinners. But it’s simply not the same. Family gatherings mean physically gathering with family.

Once the COVID-19 threat passes, social and religious leaders must work with civic officials to prepare for the next time that “stay at home” and “shelter in place” orders are needed. Together, they should develop public health policies that not only protect physical life but also provide for the higher needs of the human person. Happily, a civic guide lies already at hand. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees citizens freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and freedom of redress. Each of these freedoms points to goods that perfect the human person’s social and religious nature: the good of worship, the good of truth and communication, the good of friendship, and the good of self-governance. Policies for staying home and physical distancing can be developed that not only respect but also facilitate citizens’ prudent pursuits of these higher goods.

The instinct to preserve bodily life is basic and strong. Public officials are right to heed it. Citizens are right to make sacrifices for it. Certainly, we may be called upon to do it again. But life and health are best preserved when that life is properly understood and appreciated: the life of the uniquely social and religious animal.

 

Fr. Aquinas Guilbeau, O.P., is the prior and teaches moral theology at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. He also serves as senior editor of Aleteia.org (English edition).



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