Chairman's Blog
Gaudete Sunday in Holy Trinity Hethe
Last Sunday Fr Tim Finigan very kindly came to the Church of Holy Trinity, in the village of Hethe outside Oxford, to celebrate the Mass of Gaudete Sunday. I am very pleased that despite the Coronavirus this went ahead: it is one of a quarterly series of Masses in this important historic church, and we have not been able to have the last two of them.
The Bell case and the trans project
My latest on LifeSite.
Puberty blockers are widely deemed safe, reversible and medically necessary, lawyers for the Tavistock [medical clinic] maintained. Lawyers for [plaintiffs] Bell and Mrs A argued that trans teens should have to go before a court before being able to access the medication.
Since the ruling, the consensus that puberty-blockers are “safe, reversible, and medically necessary” has vanished like snow on the desert. The U.K.’s National Health Service, and also the BBC, has systematically removed links to the radical transgender-affirming charity Mermaids, which represents the view condemned by the High Court. The two entities have also edited out the suggestion that the extremely powerful drugs used to prevent puberty taking place can be reversed; as a matter of fact, the scant research done on the subject suggests the opposite. Even more significantly, they have removed emotive references to suicide. It is the link to suicide that is the basis for the claim that interventions with the aim of gender transitioning can be “medically necessary.”
Schellhorn Prizewinner announced
** WINNER OF SCHELLHORN PRIZE FOR SACRED MUSIC COMPOSITION 2020 ANNOUNCED **
The EF in Latin America: from the FIUV survey
Cross-posted from Rorate Caeli.
Recently, the FoederatioInternationalis Una Voce (FIUV), of which I am Secretary, conducted a survey of its member associations and other contacts to supply information for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith: to supplement the survey of bishops the Congregation had itself initiated. We received a large number of responses, including from almost every Spanish-speaking country.
There are many dioceses for which we had no reports, in Latin America, where there are almost certainly no EF Masses taking place; in Canada and the USA, on the other hand, we are more likely to have missed out on places where there are celebrations. This means the graph probably understates the contrast.
Of greater value than figures, I believe, are the personal testimonies of the people filling in the survey. I offer a selection here, anonymised to protect the individuals and groups concerned. I will let them speak for themselves, from a full range of experiences, both good and bad, in seeking the Church’s ancient liturgy.
These quotations are translations from the Spanish. The original Spanish can be seen in a Spanish-language version of this blogpost at the Adelante la fe blog here
If anyone would like to join the FIUV’s list of local contacts, please email me at secretary@fiuv.org
From Argentina
We were treated with contempt on the part of the bishop.
(another diocese)
We are segregated and labelled, by the clergy and laity with positions in the diocese, as execrable traditionalist recalcitrants, when we only wish to offer our Lord the honour he deserves…
The Ordinary is totally hostile. He has forbidden kneeling for Holy Communion. He has persecuted all who want to celebrate Mass in the Extraordinary Form.
(another diocese)
To make clear the attitude of the bishop, and of many priests, they reject not only the celebration of the EF, but every public manifestation of religiosity and devotion, as Phariseeism.
(another diocese)
The Ordinary has rejected requests from separate stable small groups, claiming that ‘it would be a cause of division in the diocese.’
(another diocese)
I have been denied the possibility of baptizing my children according to the Extraordinary Form.
(another diocese)
Neither the current nor the former Bishop have shown any hostility towards the EF. The Motu Proprio has applied very calmly.
(another diocese)
The Ordinary respects the faithful who desire [the EF] but he does not promote it, probably out of fear of progressive priests, or through their influence.
From Chile
The Ordinary shows no opposition to Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form. However, he does not exercise control or sanction over those parish priests, administrators, and ordinary lay people, who harass and/or hinder the faithful attached to the Extraordinary Form, when they refuse to comply with the standards of Summorum Pontificum, or when they exercise unfair discrimination against the faithful of the EF.
(another diocese)
We (the Coetus Fidelium) was asked to leave one parish by the parishioners, and we have since then asked successive bishops to establish a Personal Parish, Quasi-parish, or Private Association of the Faithful. We have never even had an acknowledgement of receipt of these requests … The current Ordinary assigned us a church that was disused and we have restored it to use with the contributions of the Faithful.
From Columbia
The Archbishop did not wish to satisfy the request of the faithful, and furthermore has forbidden a priest who celebrated [the EF] by threatening him. The Archbishop relentlessly pursues the anyone who celebrates the Traditional Mass.
(another diocese)
We have been disturbed by priests and local groups who say that this Mass should no longer be celebrated, that it is a forbidden Mass, and that the Pope has said nothing about it. Some priests have said that this Mass takes the people away from God.
From Costa Rica (a diocese where there are celebrations of the EF every Sunday)
The Ordinary has communicated with priests and faithful explaining the conditions which make the EF possible and how it can be accessed. He’s an excellent man who’s not afraid of the drastic decisions the Costa Rican government has made.
From the Dominican Republic
…we are ignored, we only learn from contacts with the clergy that we are not at all well regarded.
(another diocese)
He is a good Shepherd, very attentive and solicitous for his flock. But his attitude to the EF has been very neutral. 80% of the clergy frown at those of us who request Mass in the EF.
From Honduras
We have spoken to the Bishop but he does not agree very much with the traditional Mass and has even made mocking comments. He says whoever wants Tridentine Mass should go to France, with reference to the SSPX. He is totally against it, and has even instilled fear in diocesan priests who would like to celebrate it.
(another diocese)
We’re labelled as retrogrades. For lack of information and knowledge of the Church, the faithful who attend the Novus Ordo tend to condemn (for example) those who receive Holy Communion on their knees and on the tongue. …
When it was heard that several faithful asked for Mass in the Extraordinary Form, the Bishop threatened them with excommunication, and met with the clergy to threaten the faithful.
From Mexico
Since the creation of our Association, [the Ordinary] has been increasingly open and willing to collaborate. He has been generous in terms of the space and expansion of the movement in the Diocese.
(another diocese)
The Ordinary welcomed us with kindness and gave us the requested facilities.
(another diocese)
They have been trying to isolate us in obscure churches with small congregations, in order to limit Catholics’ exposure to the EF. However, the Bishop has assigned us a priest and a place. He’s allowed the EF, but he didn't want to broadcast it. He has discouraged the diocesan clergy from establishing regular EF celebrations.
(another diocese)
[the Holy See is requested:] To clarify through the Bishops’ Conference that they should not prohibit the celebration of Holy Mass in the Extraordinary Form, nor frighten the faithful interested in it, who are often victims of harassment and false accusations.
(another diocese)
…despite having sought hearings with the Bishop, we have not been received and we are forced to go to places outside the Diocese
(another diocese)
Despite having made several requests for a meeting in order to be able to put our request in person, we have not received a response, only a verbal response was sent which placed unwarranted conditions on the application of Summorum Pontificum and asking us not to invite the parishioners to celebrations of the EF. The group of faithful has found a celebrant, place, ornaments; however, we don’t count on the authorisation of the Ordinary. …
[Request to Holy See:] the group of faithful is loyal to the service and support of the Holy See, and is fully committed to prevent [EF Masses] from becoming an additional burden on the diocese. However, if they continue to encounter obstructions some faithful might resort to places that are not in full communion with the Holy Catholic Church.
(another diocese)
[The Ordinary] is very overbearing and claims that he can ban that Mass. Adding that the Traditional Liturgy is something ‘extraordinary’ that is, once or twice a month and nothing more, and that it is not possible that in the 21st century there are people attached to this Rite that has already been superseded.
(another diocese)
The Auxiliary Bishop has always been very attentive and generous to community at our chapel. The previous Ordinary was very generous and always made us feel part of the Diocese.
(another diocese)
With the previous Ordinary we had a relationship where he let us celebrate and work. With the current one things have been very difficult. First of all, he forbade us to celebrate Mass, and already years later people of the diocese, during a programme of ‘Popular Devotions’, let us celebrate a Mass in the Basilica, which was at its maximum capacity. As a result of this Mass many people began to ask through social media about whether this Mass was held on a regular basis, to which the organisers responded that it was something extraordinary and that was only celebrated on that one day. …
[Request to the Holy See] Perhaps one way would be for the bishops themselves to be aware of Summorum Pontificum and its contents, as well as to respect it. In addition to promoting it among the faithful so that they know what it contains, and not just calling us ‘Lefebvrists’, or excluding us from the activities of the local church.
(another diocese)
From what we have observed, it will be difficult to get an interview with the Ordinary in the short term as his secretary has a negative perception of those who follow this form of Holy Mass, and does not pass our request to interview the Archbishop.
(another diocese)
[The Ordinary] told us that he had no interest in the EF because there were other pastoral priorities.
(another diocese)
We have been treated with great generosity and respect. We feel like a small active group that is part of the diocese.
(another diocese)
He has welcomed our requests with paternal generosity and respect. We’re very grateful to him.
(another diocese)
He is a very pastoral Bishop who receives and cares for the small flock attached to the Traditional Mass
(another diocese)
The Ordinary has been attentive to all our requests. He has been very generous, although his auxiliary bishop is not as favourable as he is to the EF. …
Although the Ordinary has supported EF, the Rector of the Seminary and some of the formators are often very hostile to seminarians interested in the EF. Whenever a seminarian expresses an interest in the EF he is invited to leave the seminary for an alleged absence of vocation.
(another diocese: one of several with no public celebrations)
A year ago seminarians of the FSSP were visiting and asked to be allowed to celebrate the EF in some parishes including the Cathedral, and at the last minute they were forbidden. The diocesan Chancellor issued a statement labelling the Traditional Mass as invalid, but some priests came out in defence of the Traditional Mass and offered the use of their churches.
From Paraguay
He’s been open to the possibility, but he’s never made a decision. So the celebration of the EF is never allowed to the faithful.
(another diocese)
The hostility of the ordinary is clear; he permits nothing prayed in Latin, he rejects modesty such as veils or the systematic wearing of skirts, he does not promote the divine office, and is against the liturgical celebration of any Sacrament according to the ancient rite.
Some small countries, grouped together to preserve their anonymity.
While the Ordinary has always been distant from us, and has delivered words of contempt to us, on the other hand I recognise that he has so far acceded to the requests we have made to him through the mediation of priests.
(another country)
The diocese has set out to ridicule and suppress any movement related to the Extraordinary Form.
(another country)
[The Ordinary] does not grant appointments and even less does he respond to formal letters requesting the Holy Tridentine Mass. Unofficially we have been informed that the Extraordinary Rite is forbidden in the diocese. Several priests have tried to approach the Ordinary and have receive only threats, or have been removed from their parishes.
(another country)
He rejects everything concerning Tradition.
(another country)
The times I’ve approached the Ordinary through the correct channels, he has made himself available. The current bishop is not reluctant to help us. But the clergy are either reluctant or indifferent.
Some worries about Macron's war on Islamism
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| Something nice to look at. Mass at St Augustine's, Ramsgate, celebrated by Fr Christopher Basden, during the 2019 St Catherine's Trust Summer School. This photo is to adorn a new version of the LMS information flyer soon to be printed. |
Emmanuel Macron, President of France, has ordered a crackdown on Islamic extremism following the beheading of schoolteacher Samuel Paty, in the name of free speech. As the Free Speech absolutists at Spikedhave pointed out, however, this turns out to include policing the views of 10-year-old schoolchildren, who expressed sympathy with Paty’s murderer. Given that Islamic extremism, however one wants to define it in detail, is a set of ideas, I suppose it's not so surprising if countering it, in defense of free speech or for any other reason, includes intervening in the exchange of ideas.
The French state also tries to combat these ideas less directly, not only by silencing those who disagree, but by obliging them to listen, or look at something. This was essentially what cost Paty his life. In accordance, it seems, with French educational policy, he had, as Spiked expresses it,
dared to show some of Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons of Muhammad to his pupils during a lesson on why the liberties of thought and speech are so essential to the French Republic.
Bear in mind two important facts: that among other reforms, Macron is outlawingalternatives to France’s state schools (private schools and homeschooling), and that these cartoons are painfully obscene, with Our Lady, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Trinity, among their targets. I will not link to any from here… For myself, if I were obliged, on pain of imprisonment, to send my children to a state school, and if my children were then obliged to view blasphemous anti-Catholic images, then I would not, of course, behead the teacher in the street, but I certainly would not be happy about it.
Another way the French have tried to tackle the world-view of Islamism is by the enforcement of codes of dress and behaviour. So Muslim school girls are punishedfor wearing skirts that are not short enough: well, not just Muslim girls I assume, and indeed nuns in habits can be dragged off French public beaches. The sight of armed police threatening to pepper-spray women on beaches for being too modestly dressed is something truly new which the French have brought the world.
It is obvious that what Macron is concerned about is not freedom of expression in the normally accepted sense of the term, but adherence to a specific set of values, as dictated by the state. Not only that, but showing children cartoons and forcing them to wear short skirts is not a way of tackling their ideas rationally, through argument, but by bullying and humiliation. This is France’s post-Revolutionary, rational, secular, and supposedly freedom-loving state at work. In the words of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was an inspiration for the Revolution, if people’s ideas prevent them from being truly free, then they should be “forced to be free”.
As the history of totalitarianism has shown, such techniques can have at least some degree of effectiveness. If people see the most exalted symbols of their world-view dragged through the mud, metaphorically or indeed literally, this tends to break down their allegiance to them. It can also lead to a violent reaction, however. Since France, for all its faults, is not actually a North Korean re-education camp, there is reason to worry that the present policy will prove to be counter-productive. It is also, obviously, deeply unjust.
It would not normally be controversial to say that showing children indecent images is wrong. It is an offence against purity and a form of child abuse. If the indecent images are also calculated insults against religious figures—showing Muhammed or the Holy Trinity engaged in sexual acts, for example—then in most countries it would fall foul of hate speech legislation, and perhaps human rights protections. It is one thing to say that people should be allowed to publish such images; it is quite another to forcechildren to view them. Indeed, this stands on its head the usual libertarian defense of indecency: that people are not obliged to view it.
I’m not a free-speech absolutist: I don’t think that the free exchange of ideas necessarily leads to the truth, for example. In Medieval Europe Church and state, with varying degrees of success, attempted to prevent the spread of heresy: thought cannot be policed directly, but the spreading of dangerous ideas can be, up to a point. Today the targets of the suppression of ideas are anti-vaccination conspiracy theories and strange ideas about 5G mobile networks, ideas which are considerably less harmful to public order, let alone to the immortal soul, than the ideas of the Lollards, which inspired sacrilegious violence in late Medieval England.
In order to suppress dangerous speech, whether it be the idea that vaccines are bad for you or the Lollard's favourite, that veneration of the Blessed Sacrament is idolatrous, you need to have a conception of what is good and what is bad. Macron’s problem is that his conception of the good apparently includes indecency and blasphemy.
Faldstool covers given to Corpus Christi, Maiden Lane
The Coronavirus epidemic made it easier in some ways to complete the project--a lot of distractions disappeared!--but a lot more difficult to deliver them, since we didn't simply want to bung them in the post. We have finally managed it, Deo gratias.
The Guild's usual autumn retreat 2020 had to be cancelled, but the spring 2021 Sewing Retreat one will take place (we hope) in February as planned, and booking is already open for the autumn Retreat in November 2021. These take place in Douai Abbey, Friday to Sunday, with the Traditional Mass.
Go to the Guild blog for updates, to join the mailing list, or to hear about other sewing events, such as the sewing day taking place in Oxford this very Saturday...
Support the Latin Mass Society
Sticker wars in Oxford and Edinburgh
After a pause due to everyone being confined to their homes due to the coronavirus, the war of the fly-posted stickers is hotting up. In Edinburgh, someone has posted stickers on street furniture saying, “Seahorses ARE horses. Hotdogs ARE dogs. There is no debate. #WarOnWomen.” Another says, “I © JK Rowling.” Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter series of children’s books, has been attacked for not supporting the trans agenda.
I have seen similar stickers in the streets of Oxford. What the reports tend not to say is that this is a conflict of two sides. Certainly in Oxford, stickers asserting the existence of women (“Woman: noun. Adult human female”) are a response to a long sticker and graffiti campaign by trans activists. Last October, I captured images in Oxford of stickers saying “Oxford [heart] our trans sisters” and spray-painted “Trans happiness is real.” Posting stickers is a form of vandalism and is illegal, as is graffiti, but although the perpetrator was boasting about it on Facebook, where full personal details could be viewed, the local police had better things to do than enforce the law in this case. When someone started posting stickers from an alternative point of view, the reaction was very different.
Seeing lamp posts, poles carrying street signs, parking-ticket machines, benches, post boxes and so on covered in stickers, some partially torn off by irritated humans or the effects of the weather, contributes to an impression of lawlessness and neglect. Along with litter from fast-food outlets blowing about the gutters and homeless people sitting in doorways, central Oxford, which is of course a World Heritage Site, can look pretty slummy. Perhaps the police really do have more pressing priorities, but it doesn’t take much imagination to anticipate the consequences of allowing one side in the most contentious cultural issue of the day to have the run of public spaces for their propaganda, in a city full of students. Yes, someone is going to go into competition.
Read the whole thing.
LMS Launches the Iota Unum podcast series
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| Another image from the Bedford Pilgrimage |
David Starkey attacks the Real Presence
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| The 'commixtum': High Mass for the LMS Pilgrimage to Our Lady of Guadaloupe at Bedford |
Having been “cancelled” by various charities and academic institutions for racism, David Starkey has taken to a new, British, anti-woke magazine, The Critic, to snipe against the “trans” phenomenon, as the champion of common sense against the “experts”. How does he do this? By comparing gender ideology to Catholicism.
In case anyone of intellectual self-respect was inclined to feel sorry for Starkey, allow me to fisk this strange article for you. The idea, you see, is that when transsexuals tell us that they can change sex just by saying so, so the Church says that the bread and wine is changed into the Body and Blood of Christ just by a priest saying some words. This is terribly neat because Starkey can then say that trans ideology is taking us “back to the Middle Ages”.
I should point out in passing that his characterisation of trans ideas is off the mark. As I understand it they take more or less the opposite view to that attributed to them by Starkey: they think that sexual identity is discovered, not invented or asserted, and it is discovered by feelings, not by words. Be that as it may, Starkey’s characterisation of Catholic doctrine is extremely strange. Catholics do not believe that bread and wine can be made into the Body and Blood of Christ by mere assertion: a process, as he puts it,
in which words replace action, the abstract the concrete and pseudo-grammatical structures are imposed (in Russell’s phrase) on “the world-structure”.
The crucial idea entirely missing from Starkey’s article in the action of God: for transubstantiation to take place God must intervene to change the substance of bread into the substance of Christ’s Body, just as Christ changed water into wine, but in this case leaving the bread looking like bread.
In truth it is not clear exactly what Starkey’s objection to transubstantiation actually is. At one point it seems to be the fact that the Consecrated Host still has the appearance of bread: as if it were impossible for one thing to look like another. A crocodile can look a lot like a log floating in a river: if there is a problem here Starkey needs to explain what it is.
At another point Starkey quotes Bertram Russel’s criticism of the notion of Aristotle’s theory of substance, in which Russell claims that substances are subjects of sentences—essentially, nouns—in order to claim that Aristotelians confuse language with reality. But not all the things picked out by nouns are substances in Aristotle’s theory, and while he thought there was a connection between language and reality, the idea was that language and thought reflect reality, not the other way round.
Starkey’s fundamental misunderstanding resembles the idea popular in the Protestant polemics of times past that Catholic theology is super-subtle nonsense and ordinary Catholics are its dupes. This trope may appeal to Starkey’s dislike of experts, but it implies a very low view of ordinary Catholics. The real problem with the polemic, though, is that complex theology and philosophy generally do not lead Catholic doctrine, but follow it.
In this case the point is easy to prove. The use of the term “substance” in relation to the Real Presence did not begin with the followers of Aristotle. In order to be reconciled to the Church, the former heretic Berengarius affirmed in 1079 that the bread and wine “are substantially changed”, and thereafter are the Body and Blood of Christ, not just symbolically, but “in truth and substance”. Yes, it’s all there in Denzinger, §355. When Starkey says that Aristotle’s theory of substance “was adopted wholesale by the Scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages”, he is referring to a process which began when Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics first appeared in Latin, almost exactly a century later.
Starkey refers to Thomas Hobbes’ attack on Catholic teaching:
it took a lot of learning to spout such nonsense. On the other hand, [Hobbes] observed, the “common sort of men seldom speak insignificantly”.
But the Catholic teaching on the Real Presence has always been understood and defended by the ordinary Catholic faithful, the “common sort of men”, because it’s meaning is perfectly clear. The Consecrated Host, whatever it lookslike, really is the Body of Christ, just as Jesus Christ said it was in the Gospels. Technical language was not necessary to convey this truth to Catholics for the first ten centuries of the Church; it became necessary in response to people like Berengarius, or Wycliffe as quoted by Starkey, who sought to turn a simple assertion of fact—a mysterious, miraculous, fact, but a fact all the same—into something terribly complicated about symbolism, which they apparently found easier to believe.
If Starkey wants to defend common sense against the experts, he must ask himself why he has joined the ranks of desiccated intellectuals such as Wycliffe, Hobbes, and Russell to mock the beliefs of the simple faithful.
The new normal
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| Viewing Mass through the window at the back of SS Gregory & Augustine, in Oxford |
Some people are excited about a post-Covid future, since the epidemic and government responses to it have had some good results, such as cleaner air, and have speeded up some processes they regard as positive, such as a move of economic activity online. For the World Economic Forum, which may perhaps be beginning to regret popularizing the phrase “the Great Reset” (too late now), a bright future beckons. All we need to do is “adapt”. Well, I don’t mind if some tedious and pointless meetings in the future take place online, and if that means that some people take fewer long-haul flights, that’s great. But I’m not sure they have really thought about the cost.
Suppose we come out of the epidemic with a much lower tolerance of face-to-face meetings, whether for health reasons or because we’ve adapted to working from home so we can’t so easily go to a meeting room in our workplace. Certainly, a lot of people, myself included, who’d used the internet for video conversations only infrequently up until 2020, have now had to get used to this way of communicating. So, this is possible. It is clear to me, however, that what this means is a greatly impoverished quality of human interaction. It simply isn’t as easy to have a meeting of minds online. I don’t know exactly why. No doubt it is some combination of the loss of social cues when one can’t see more than the other party’s face, the imperfect sound reproduction, the time lags, and the difficulty of inserting oneself into a monologue or conversation, and similar factors, to say nothing of technical problems. Whatever it is, it is real, certainly in my personal experience, at the level of large group meetings, at the level of intense one-to-one conversations, and everything in between. I fear that as we get used to it, what we will be getting used to is meetings where half the participants are playing solitaire and we’re all just going through the motions.
Suppose, again, we come out of the epidemic with a significant shift to online commerce, whether for health reasons, or simply because so many physical shops have closed down. Internet shopping has been a big growth story for years but there was a long way for this trend to go, and the epidemic has undoubtedly speeded up the process. Is this is a good thing? I won’t shed any tears over out-of-town megastores, which already had the impersonality of internet shopping without the convenience. But the swift disappearance of shops where we can examine unpackaged goods and talk to live, human, assistants is a massive blow not only to our quality of life but also to efficiency. Some things you need to see before you can make a meaningful choice about buying. The reason small bookshops and “mom and pop” grocery stores and the like had not all disappeared already by the beginning of 2020 is that they were valued: people wanted to use them. Being suddenly deprived of that option adds nothing to human welfare.
Suppose, finally, we come out of the epidemic, if we ever do, with a significantly heightened concern about hygiene. If people with colds are expected to stay at home or wear a mask, where people hesitate to shake hands, and try to keep their distance in social interactions. We’ve seen “compensation culture” make life difficult for children’s sports and playgrounds, and practically impossible for sectors of the medical profession in some places, so I think such a turning of the dial of risk aversion to an extreme setting is a very real possibility. What would this mean? Certainly, the business model of restaurants, cinemas and the like will need to be drastically reconsidered, and either they’ll be much more expensive, or impossible. More broadly, such a development would affect our experience of human interaction in a profound way. It would cut us off from natural human contact: being close to friends, of getting to know a stranger, of sharing space with people. It will also cut us off from the shared experience of watching live sport, of films, plays, and concerts: to say nothing of the liturgy. The atmosphere, the ability to pick up other people’s responses as well as to have one’s own, to what is going on, is simply impossible if we are all spread out, or online.
I have been talking about consequences of the epidemic and associated restrictions which may follow quite naturally from the current period. Things could be much worse if there are ongoing legal restrictions. I fear that even without significant ongoing restrictions imposed by the state, there will be no “return to normal”. If states step in to shape the “reset”, then anything is possible. It won’t all be good.