Source: Slate
Pope Francis praised health care workers and criticized those who are protesting restrictions imposed by governments to stop the spread of COVID-19 in a New York Times op-ed. The piece is an adaptation from the pontiff’s new book but the timing raised more than a few eyebrows considering it was published less than a day after the Supreme Court struck down restrictions on religious services that had been put in place due to the pandemic.
In the piece, Francis recalls when he was seriously ill with pneumonia while he was a young man studying for the priesthood. “I have some sense of how people with COVID-19 feel as they struggle to breathe on a ventilator,” he said. As he has detailed before, Francis wrote about how he made it through thanks to nurses who understood his illness better than doctors and increased his dosage of antibiotics and painkillers. “They taught me what it is to use science but also to know when to go beyond it to meet particular needs,” he wrote. “And the serious illness I lived through taught me to depend on the goodness and wisdom of others.”
Suggested reading by Zia H Shah MD, Chief Editor of the Muslim Times for religion and pandemic
Covid 19: Religious Versus Scientific Perspectives, Now that We Have Two Vaccines?
How the Fields of Neurology and Psychology Started in the 19th Century, Out of Religious Dogma
Did God Speak to the Fundamentalists of All Abrahamic Faiths Over the Weekend?
‘God is with us’: Many Muslims in Pakistan flout the coronavirus ban in mosques
When Not Going to Jumma is a Huge Blessing
Maulana Abdul Aziz, 6 others booked for violating govt order
Ultra-Orthodox Israeli town of Bnei Brak under lockdown
Virus Soars Among Ultra-Orthodox Jews as Many Flout Israel’s Rules
India confronts its first coronavirus ‘super-spreader’ — a Muslim missionary group with more than 400 members infected
Pastors sue California governor over coronavirus restrictions on church gatherings
Reading the Quran and the Bible Literally Means Demons and Jinns Will Rule Humans
Categories: Catholic Church, Catholicism, Catholics, Fundamentalism, Health, Pope, Religion & Science, The Muslim Times
(CNN)Last month, I wrote that Amy Coney Barrett would help to usher in a new post-truth jurisprudence on the Supreme Court. While I had cited her anti-science statements on climate change, her arrival on the court has created a new 5-4 majority against public-health science at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
When it ruled this week against New York state’s decision to limit religious gatherings in a few high-incidence parts of New York City, the court proved the dangers of scientifically illiterate judges overturning government decisions that were based on scientific evidence.
The immediate effect on New York City is moot because the state had already lifted the particular orders under review. The grave, imminent danger lies in the rest of the country, where public health authorities will feel hamstrung to restrict religious gatherings even when the virus is spreading out of control.
The two cases under review were brought by two religious bodies: the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn and Agudath Israel of America, an Orthodox Jewish group. Both objected to stringent limits on religious gatherings in particularly hard-hit neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The court’s five conservative justices, a new majority with Barrett now on the bench, argued that the state’s limits on religious gatherings violated “the minimum requirement of neutrality” to religion under the First Amendment.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/27/opinions/scientifically-illiterate-scotus-covid-decision-sachs/index.html