think hard, think well

Note: This is the second piece in a series, “Technologizing of Worship Before, During, and After COVID: Epistemology, Eschatology, and Presence,“ part of a larger project suggesting a pastoral response to COVID and lockdowns in the church. Read more and subscribe here.

How do we know what we are, as humans? How do we know what we know? On whom or what do we rely in order to determine what is safe and what is dangerous?

This is the first piece in a series, “Technologizing of Worship Before, During, and After COVID: Epistemology, Eschatology, and Presence,“ part of a larger project suggesting a pastoral response to COVID and lockdowns in the church. Read more and subscribe here.

If a 70-year-old man receives a cancer diagnosis with a six-month prognosis, but could extend his life possibly two years by chemotherapy that would make his life extremely painful—is it moral for him to refuse treatment? What about a 50-year-old man, offered a ten-year extension of unpleasant life through such a harsh six-month medical treatment? How should the costs of medical treatment, and the burden on family, factor into his decision? Who is fit to decide such things?

In the midst of a situation in which a serious communicable disease is present in the population, should it be permissible to hold religious gatherings? What about funerals or weddings? Extreme unction (“last rites”) in the case of someone dying from a disease that could be transmitted to the priest?

Is it moral to celebrate the Eucharist in the midst of a pandemic? How risky for the celebrant and the participants must it be, in order to be deemed too great a risk? How should the risk of transmitting the disease to others beyond the consenting participants be factored into the ethical calculation? How might it be acceptable to modify the structure of the celebration in order to reduce health risk?