[Dialogue] The Church and the Flu Spong's guest speaks out.

[KroegerD@aol.com]

February 08, 2006 
The Church and the  Flu

Dear Friends,  
This week I introduce you to the first guest columnist of this year 2006.  
Each year I try to identify four unique voices of those who labor in the same  
area of life that I find myself working. They are people who either have 
thought  about things in a new way or even those who have thought about new things. 
I  take great pleasure in making these voices better known. Today I present to 
you  a piece that in my knowledge no one else has addressed. It was authored 
by one  of the most gifted clergy in this generation.  
The Rev. Dr. Phillip Cato may be the most intellectually stimulating priest  
from my own church that I have ever known. Raised, as I was, in Charlotte, 
North  Carolina, he did his undergraduate work at Duke University, got his Master’
s in  Divinity degree from the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, 
Massachusetts  and then after some time serving congregations mostly in North 
Carolina, he  pursued and received his PhD degree from Emory University in Atlanta. 
His field  of study was “The Intellectual History of the Western World.” That 
broad and  all-inclusive subject has always intrigued me just as Phillip’s 
mind has done.  In addition to serving churches Dr. Cato also had a career as a 
chaplain in the  United States Naval Reserve  
I had the pleasure of being Dr. Cato’s bishop for a number of years and his  
incisive intellect made a profound difference to me and to our diocese. He is  
now retired, but in his retirement he is active in both the congregations and 
 the intellectual life of the Diocese of Washington, D.C. Most people in this 
 church of ours would not think about the subjects Phillip addresses but, 
typical  of his career, Phillip has never been left at the starting gate. He is 
generally  far ahead of most of us.  
Several weeks ago, the New York Times reported the one-day drop of over 25%  
in the price of Pilgrim Pride Corporation Class B stock that is listed on the  
New York Stock Exchange. The story accompanying this slide revealed that this 
 Company, located in Texas, is the second largest poultry business in 
America,  topped only by Tyson’s Foods of Arkansas. The collapse of the stock price 
in  Pilgrim Pride Corp. was attributed to softness in the sale of chicken in 
the  European market, causing Pilgrim Pride to lower its guidance for the next  
quarter. The drop in demand was attributed to the public’s move away from  
chicken in the light of the Avian or ‘bird flu’ scare. On January 11, a CNBC  
program talked about the need for American business to prepare for the  
possibility of a ‘bird flu’ pandemic. No one I know of in the Christian Church  has 
begun to address the state of preparation inside our churches for such an  
eventuality. Then along came Phillip Cato and, typical of his whole career, he  
was on top of this neglected issue.  
I welcome your responses pro and con, to this article, as I do with all of  
our guest columnists. I hope you will have suggestions about how the churches  
can operate if public gatherings are forbidden in an epidemic, or if receiving 
 communion becomes too dangerous as a way of passing on the infection. If the 
 volume justifies it I will print a sampling of your letters in a future 
column.  I will also pass on all letters you write on this subject to Dr. Cato.  
John Shelby Spong  
The Church and the Flu  
Americans seem not to be much aware that we are facing a catastrophe of  
apocalyptic proportions and are woefully unprepared to deal with it. The October  
8th New York Times carries a chilling account of our nation’s present 
unprepared  ness to deal with an expected pandemic of avian flu.  
Gardner Harris provides a very detailed preview of the Bush administration’s  
381 page Pandemic Influenza Strategic Plan to deal with what he characterizes 
as  “what could become the worst disaster in the nation’s history.” The 
numbers  cited by the government’s plan, prepared “for internal Health and Human 
Services  use only,” are that more than 1.9 million Americans would die and an 
additional  8.5 million would require hospitalization costing in excess of 
$450 billion. The  quarantines that are planned would, at best, only serve as a 
delaying tactic.  
Our recent national experience with the hurricane disasters in the Gulf  
States gives us no reason to be confident that our government has the capacity  to 
deal with such a pandemic with any degree of efficiency or efficacy. The  
recent photo opportunity of the President with the chief executive officers of  
the major pharmaceutical companies does little to still what should be real  
fears about the consequences of this expected outbreak.  
Simply hoping that this virus will not evolve into one that has a human-to-  
human transmission capability is a dangerous expression of naiveté with  
potentially deadly results. Expecting our government to come to our rescue is  
equally naïve.  
Few of us are so familiar with our national history that we would still be  
carrying the lessons of the 1918-1919 epidemic that killed between 20 and 40  
million people. It cost more lives than the four-year Black Death Bubonic 
Plague  of the 14th century, and it began in Kansas, and only very recently has 
been  confirmed as an avian flu.  
This is no time for the churches to sit idly by and wait to be overtaken by  
events. Out recent experience with the hurricanes found not only the national  
and local governments unprepared; the churches were equally unprepared.  
We function by gathering our congregations. How will we function when that is 
 too dangerous to do? We share a common cup in communion, allow intinction,  
during which fingers frequently are in contact with the consecrated wine, 
shake  hands at the Peace and at the door, gather in coffee hours, classes, and 
other  groups, and expect our clergy and some laity to come and minister to us 
when we  are ill or in the hospital.  
Military chaplains and other committed clergy and laity are disposed to join  
the first responders when there is a disaster. Many of these persons are  
untrained for this role and will inevitably be among those most at risk. Only  
recently we observed a saints day for the martyrs of the Memphis yellow fever  
outbreak in the 19th century. It is not reasonable to assume that there will 
not  be more martyrs as church people attempt to minister to those in need.  
The Church, nonetheless, has an obligation to address other than  
institutional concerns. When we are true to our calling, we can be a significant  moral 
voice in the culture. A pandemic of any sort will present us with a myriad  of 
moral conundrums.  
A pandemic will overwhelm our medical resources. There will not be sufficient 
 medications to protect the vulnerable. Since so many now have limited or no  
access to healthcare, it is unlikely that a significant portion of our 
citizens  will know where to turn for help. The first resort of emergency rooms will 
be  overwhelmed and will have to turn the sick away. Many will require 
assistance  with respiratory difficulties and that equipment and it will not be 
available.  Hospital and clinic rooms will be filled to overflowing. And when 
large numbers  of affected persons die, there will not be sufficient morgue 
facilities to  accommodate them. Burials with gathered family and friends will be 
not only  impossible but unwise. It is not clear how we will treat the dead with 
dignity.  
When there has to be an allocation of scarce resources among people of uneven 
 standing in the culture, the resources typically go first to those we depend 
 upon to help us, then to those who can afford them, and to those who have  
sufficient power to command them. Already some communities have discussed who  
will receive the resources and in what order. Inevitably, the moral calculus  
will consider who is of the most value to the rest of us and the allocation of 
 assistance will flow to those persons.  
The young, the old, the infirm, the poor, and others who are seen as  
vulnerable or of questionable worth to the future will be at most risk for being  
left out.  
The Church’s theologians, ethicists, and Biblical scholars have an obligation 
 to be deeply involved in the planning and calculations of those who are 
thinking  about the consequences of a major pandemic. But until we have gathered 
and  thought through these issues ourselves, we are unprepared to make any  
significant contribution to the decision-making process. We cannot sit idly by  
and wait for the government or military social planners to fix the terms of our 
 country’s response to a major health crisis. If we have not wrestled with 
the  moral and religious issues which would emerge, it is unrealistic to assume 
that  someone else will do that in an informed way.  
Too many of us are bad news averse. Far too many of us think that if we  
simply ignore a problem, it will somehow be taken care of, or will simply go  
away. We all have the hope that we will be among those who dodge the bullet this  
time. If this pandemic breaks out, and accomplished healthcare professionals 
in  the CDC, at the NIH, and elsewhere are reasonably confident that it will, 
we  will simply have to deal with it.  
It is time for the Church to wake up, and stop, like most of the public,  
expecting that someone else will get ready for this potentially huge event in  
the not too distant future. The government has been worrying about this for  
years; it is time for us to figure out how we will prepare to respond.  
The Reverend Phillip C. Cato  
_Note from  the Editor: Bishop Spong's new book is available now at 
bookstores everywhere  and by clicking here!_ 
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0060762055/agoramedia-20)   
Question and Answer
With John  Shelby Spong 
Dr. Judy Cook, a practicing psychiatrist writes via the Internet:  
Just read your latest mailing with great delight but sadly must comment that  
there are too many educated people who are still ignorant about the origins 
of  homosexuality including - sadly - many members of my medical community. I  
recently went to a church in New Mexico where the pastor was a physician as 
were  several “high rolling” members, who made it quickly clear to me that they 
were a  branch of the (Episcopal) church that separated from those who let 
homosexuals  in. I was both disgusted and amused because, in looking round me, 
there were  numerous homosexuals in the church group. As a psychiatrist, I am 
probably more  aware of this than the “ordinary” member. Had I been more than 
visiting, I  probably would have made a loud noise about the whole thing as I 
have in other  churches. I applaud you for your continuing efforts to bring 
reason to society  about this issue as many others of us also do in our own 
ways.  
Dear Dr. Cook,  
Thank you for your letter and your witness. Prejudice dies hard. I am pleased 
 to learn that the American Psychiatric Council will lend its weight to gay  
marriage. We are in a transition between a new consciousness and old  
definitions. The new consciousness will win but as with every human struggle to  
emerge from ignorance, there will be casualties long after the issue is decided.   
I hope you will speak out regularly.  
John Shelby Spong 
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