As I was recently reading all of the reports about the president and White House’s attempts to discredit Dr. Anthony Fauci, I thought of this passage from Benedictine monk Sebastian Moore, where he refers to
“the resentment that is sometimes felt in the presence of an exceptionally good and courageous man. The desire to remove him is the desire to remove an unusually eloquent piece of evidence for the fact that we are called to full personhood. The most passionately protected thing in us is our mediocrity, our fundamental indecision in respect of life.” (The Crucified Jesus is No Stranger, p. 13)
For Moore, the dynamic of evil has to do with our denying our creaturehood, contingency and turning from this in fear and building an idolatrous image of ourselves.
In our context, because of the coronavirus we are experiencing in a new way on a national and global level our creatureliness, contingency and the vulnerability associated with sickness and death.
The president has denied the seriousness of the virus from the start and in the middle of the battle (he declared himself a “wartime president” at one point) has gone missing in action. He hasn’t met with Dr. Fauci since June 2 and the doctor hasn’t briefed the president in two months.
Rather, the president and his allies are attempting to get us to turn our attention away from the reality of the number of coronavirus cases and deaths and “Transition to Greatness” by opening back up for business, attending rallies, going to school in person.
Dr. Fauci, on the other hand, has said recently that we are “still knee deep in the first wave” of the coronavirus and has highlighted some of the harmful consequences of reopening too quickly. For the president and his allies, Dr. Fauci’s drawing attention to the reality of our contingency, suffering and death is inconvenient. And so he must be removed. Just to remind you: Dr. Fauci is our nation’s top infectious disease expert and we are in the middle of a pandemic.
Dr. Fauci, when he spoke to Jesuit high schools graduates in May (he is an alum of two Jesuit schools), said that the Jesuit emphasis on social justice and service is especially important “during the present unsettling times. Now is the time, if ever there was one, for us to care selflessly about one another.” The Jesuits picked up this understanding that full personhood consists in caring selflessly for one another from Jesus of Nazareth and passed it on to Dr. Fauci.
Sebastian Moore’s words still speak to us today. For those who need to passionately protect their mediocrity, and their “fundamental indecision with respect to life,” anything that smacks of full personhood in this sense, of the values of Jesus, must be removed. Is this ringing any bells?
