Pope tells priests to go out and meet the coronavirus sick

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All of our local working priests except 1 are retired, many over 80.

So, tell me, where could the non-retired priest come up with a bio-hazard suit? Steal it from a hospital or first responder???
 
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So the non-Pope priests are cannon fodder?

We need priests desperately in our parish and our diocese. Nothing would suit Satan more than having them all, out of compassion, dying. And leaving the faithful without recourse to the Eucharist and other sacraments.

No Priests. No Sacraments. Not the right answer.
 
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ricmat said:
So the non-Pope priests are cannon fodder?
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I’m not sure what the process is at other hospitals, but ours has always provided bio suits for priests whenever needed. It doesn’t have to be for in-house patients either…just a need. While every hospital might not do this, I bet many do.
 
Thank you for that insight. I was not aware of that.

At this point, though, I suspect that the suits are in short supply in the hospitals as well.
 
Pope Francis has only one lung…did you know that?
 
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ricmat said:
At this point, though, I suspect that the suits are in short supply in the hospitals as well.
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That I’m not sure about. Hospitals always have patients in isolation and any personnel needing to enter his/her room would need to be suited up so they keep a large supply to begin with. I’ve heard of the shortages of masks for the general population but I haven’t heard of any hospitals having problems yet…they may, I just haven’t heard!

Hospitals are also very generous to other hospitals experiencing shortages of items so it may be awhile before they actually run short. We would have shortages of flu test kits (the normal flu types) sometimes during especially bad flu seasons but always got enough from other labs to tide us over. I’m curious what the numbers of Corona Virus test kits are here in the US and if we can only get limited numbers which is why we aren’t testing in larger numbers. There can be multiple reasons if we aren’t getting kits, not necessarily China’s fault.
 
No I wasn’t aware that the Pope has only 1 lung.

Does it make a difference to this discussion?

He’s asking other Catholic priests to minister to Corona Virus patients . And at that point, some will contract the virus and die soon thereafter. Some will contract the virus and not show symptoms for a couple of weeks, during which they will be giving communion to LOTS of people, who will then contract the virus, and die. And then the priests die themselves (some of them).

I’m sorry, 1 lung or 2, this suggestion by the Pope seems to be misguided.

I do agree that we should all pray for Pope Francis, as we pray for others as well.
 
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My concern would be that the 30-year-old priest in good health could be infected and go on to infect other people who are not 30 and not in good health.
 
He lost one lung to tuberculosis when he was about 20 y.o.
It is a respiratory disease,and he should be among the most protected elderly. Probably his doctor is being very serious about it. I don’t envy him…
Also, it is the hospitals and doctors who allow or not allow a pastoral visit and always under the norms required for isolation zones, so they may or may not get to see every person, but if they can and are allowed to, there is the opportunity to visit.
There have been infectious diseases in hospitals, viruses, which have required strict isolation, and visits of this sort,when possible, have been done for pastoral purposes, Communion…
In other words, it isn’t something wreckless but under strict control and permission of the hospital, nurses and doctors, not that the priests are on their own and against any protection for themselves and for the patients.
Prayers for all involved.
 
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I don’t think he is at all misguided. We are looking at the situation from a purely human perspective and he is reminding us that there is much more and that priests are called to serve. People are scared, things are changing and they need reassurance. Also when we panic (in general), we tend to ostracise people, now because of country of origen or because they are ill, we need such reminders. I like seeing that our pope is ontop of things.
 
ricmat said:
So the non-Pope priests are cannon fodder?

We need priests desperately in our parish and our diocese. Nothing would suit Satan more than having them all, out of compassion, dying. And leaving the faithful without recourse to the Eucharist and other sacraments.

No Priests. No Sacraments. Not the right answer.
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It’s a strain of coronavirus, not the zombie apocalypse.

Clergy tending to the sick is an ancient ministry of the Church and sometimes they encounter situations that risk infection, which isn’t much different from medical staff or educators.
 
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do_justly_love_mercy said:
My concern would be that the 30-year-old priest in good health could be infected and go on to infect other people who are not 30 and not in good health.
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Priests who minister to the seriously ill follow protocols enforced by the hospitals and are very aware of the need to not spread infection. Otherwise, the issue of priests spreading disease would have already come up in the flu or other contexts.

This is hardly the first time priests have had to minister to contagious people during epidemics in the modern era. It is likely they will use good sense and also likely that many of the priests doing this work will be those already involved in being hospital chaplains who know what they’re doing.
 
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You make a good point. Panic is being used as a tool to blame certain people (politicians for example), scare people into doing illogical things, etc.

My point is that many parishes and diocese are very short of priests already. If we lose these priests to death, or merely to being “out of commission for a while”, this exacerbates the priest shortage and results in nobody to say Mass, etc. Our diocese cannot afford this. If you have a bunch of priests sitting around with nothing else to do, perhaps this is a good idea.

Those that put themselves purposely in high risk danger, and contract the virus will spread it around to many uninfected people before they even know they’ve contracted it. I don’t consider this to be a charitable act. Being a hero to one infected person while putting many more in danger in my opinion is not a good trade-off.

But we can agree to disagree.
 
I’m not familiar with zombie apocalypse. I have heard of “typhoid Mary”.

There are no vaccines, or cures at this point for Covid19. The only remedy (to prevent more spreading around) that has been proven to work is isolation. If the priests have enough time on their hands to minister to a covid sufferer, and then go into isolation for a month or so, I suppose you could make a good case for it.

But in general, tending to the sick, with the side effect of making many more people sick is not a good idea.
 
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ricmat said:
But in general, tending to the sick, with the side effect of making many more people sick is not a good idea.
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What do you think anybody that works in a hospital does? This isn’t something that is magically unique to priests. Priests and pastors and therapists and counselors and nurses and doctors and a few other miscellaneous people are in close proximity to the sick on a regular basis and they take all of the necessary precautions. People aren’t machines or objects and it’s not solely about treating their physical conditions. They also need love and their soul (rightfully) longs for the Sacraments.

There’s a very long precedent in the history of the world of people and entire populations becoming dehumanized during plagues and epidemics and the Church has consistently resisted this tendency, which comes from our fallen nature. The Pope isn’t saying something new and shocking: he’s echoing something said by over 200 Popes before him. Ministering to the sick is a work of mercy.
 
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OurLadyofSorrows said:
In Australia this virus is in teenagers and the young.
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It’s in the young everywhere… the elderly are simply the most vulnerable to the most serious symptoms. This is nothing new. With respect, what is the point of these types of statements other than to stoke panic?
 
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Actually China has sent Italy a large amount of containment suits and respirators for free as their issues are largely under control.
 
TK421 said:
People aren’t machines or objects and it’s not solely about treating their physical conditions. They also need love and their soul (rightfully) longs for the Sacraments.
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You seem to believe that anybody that disagrees with you lacks compassion. That’s quite a leap.

In addition to compassion God gave us the gift of rational thought, and logical thinking, and prayer. We need to use all of these.

And I repeat, again… If a priest is out of commission because he is dead or quarantined, how many souls can he save with the sacraments? How many non-infected will NOT be able to attend a daily or weekly Mass, or receive the Eucharist? How many (non-infected) will be able to receive the last rites, how many will not be able to confess their sins?

Are they less important than the those infected with the virus?
 
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