Social Distancing in the Church of England

Despite the fact that the term "Social Distancing" has only been coined in the last few months, Martyn Percy reports in this week's Church Times that the Church of England has been practising it since 1662.

He refers to the Sunday 8.00am Book of Common Prayer eucharist -
"Minimal eye contact with your neighbour. Sit at the back of the church and apart from others, ideally in your own designated pew, despite there being plenty of room at the front. No exchange of the Peace or any other awkward gesture or unnecessary physical proximity is required. A nod to the priest when you leave, perhaps - no handshake, lest one be corralled into a rota for making the coffee or mowing the churchyard."

By this continued ritual the church consecrates social distancing at the beginning of every week.

Why we shouldn't eat bats

¹³ ‘And these you shall regard as an abomination among the birds; they shall not be eaten, they are an abomination: the eagle, the vulture, the buzzard, ¹⁴ the kite, and the falcon after its kind; ¹⁵ every raven after its kind, ¹⁶ the ostrich, the short-eared owl, the sea gull, and the hawk after its kind; ¹⁷ the little owl, the fisher owl, and the screech owl; ¹⁸ the white owl, the jackdaw, and the carrion vulture; ¹⁹ the stork, the heron after its kind, the hoopoe, and the bat.     [Leviticus 11:13-17]

¹¹ You may eat any clean bird. ¹² But these you may not eat: the eagle, the vulture, the black vulture, ¹³ the red kite, the black kite, any kind of falcon, ¹⁴ any kind of raven, ¹⁵ the horned owl, the screech owl, the gull, any kind of hawk, ¹⁶ the little owl, the great owl, the white owl, ¹⁷ the desert owl, the osprey, the cormorant, ¹⁸ the stork, any kind of heron, the hoopoe and the bat.      [Deuteronomy 14: 11-18]

Apart from the zoological error of classifying bats as birds, both these passages clearly indicate that bats are considered unclean and must not be eaten.

Bats are about the most pathogen-laden animals in the world. Bats can carry up to 5,000 different pathogens or more. In recent decades there has been a great increase in the number of human infections associated with bat viruses. Nevertheless, bats are regularly eaten in many parts of the world, including China.

So far, it is believed that the current coronavirus pandemic called COVID-19 originated from bats at a “wet market” in the megacity of Wuhan, China. It is also thought that one or more pathogens were transmitted there from bats to humans. All kinds of wild and exotic animals were sold there until the government shut this market down.

Studies have shown that bats can carry hundreds of different types of coronavirus and that the COVID-19 genome is at least 96% the same as the genome of a coronavirus in bats, making it fairly certain COVID-19 came from bats.

After the SARS outbreak in 2002-2003, which was believed to have been caused by people eating bats, China was criticized for not outlawing the eating of bats. But when COVID-19 was discovered to have originated from bats at the wet market in Wuhan, China responded (in January 2020) by banning the eating of bats.

So don’t be fooled by the preachers telling us that the pandemic is God’s judgement on mankind for some other sin. It is nothing of the kind. It is the natural consequence of ignoring God’s laws in the first place.

Pandemics in Bury St Edmunds

I have just discovered an intriguing article outlining how the town of Bury St Edmunds dealt with various pandemics in the past. The procedures seem remarkably similar to those being used to combat the coronavirus pandemic we are dealing with at the moment. Relevant extracts are quoted below. The full article can be found at:   https://drfrancisyoung.com/2020/03/17/how-bury-st-edmunds-dealt-with-past-pandemics/

“Plague returned in 1589, causing the Feoffees of the Guildhall Feoffment (who informally ran the town in the absence of a Corporation) to erect tents to house plague victims. The houses of infected families were boarded up to prevent anyone entering or exiting, while the parish constables were paid to take food and other necessities to the afflicted.”

“Bury’s worst ever outbreak of the plague occurred in the summer of 1637, when 10% of the town’s population (about 600 people) died within nine months. People remained in their homes and trade came to a standstill; contemporary accounts describe grass growing in the streets. It was during this outbreak that St Peter’s Hospital on Out Risbygate was used as a ‘pesthouse’ (quarantine for those infected with the plague) while the bodies of the dead were buried in the pit opposite.”

“The ‘plague stone’, which is now located outside West Suffolk College is reputed to have been where people were required to wash their coins in vinegar in a cavity in the stone before they entered the town during 17th-century outbreaks of Plague.”

“Bury was not affected by the infamous outbreak of plague that devastated London in 1665, largely because the Corporation implemented strict measures to prevent any contact between Bury and London and sealed the gates of the town.” 

“Even in the Middle Ages, it was well understood that self-isolation was a way to protect the population at large from infectious disease. However, by the 17th century the social classes dealt with epidemics very differently, with the poor barricading themselves in their houses in the hope of escaping infection while the wealthy left the town for the countryside. In one respect, the wealthy who fled were right that the close quarters living of early modern urban life contributed to the spread of disease, but by leaving the town they also ended up infecting other places if they themselves were carriers of the disease. For most, all they could do was wait out the pestilence while trying to have as little contact with others as possible.”

St Edmund - Patron Saint of Pandemics

Further to my comments yesterday about re-instating St Edmund as Patron Saint of England, I was unaware that two attempts have already been made to achieve this. Research reveals that -

"An attempt was made in 2006 to have St Edmund reinstated as patron saint of England. A petition was handed into Parliament but it was rejected by the government.

In 2013 another campaign was launched to reinstate St Edmund as patron saint. This was the ‘St Edmund for England’ e-petition, backed by the Bury St Edmunds based brewery, Greene King."

What is even more intriguing is the fact I have just discovered that St Edmund is considered to be the Patron Saint of pandemics!  You may ask why? Further research reveals the following -

"The idea of invoking St Edmund’s protection against infectious disease springs, essentially, from his instrument of martyrdom – arrows. In the Bible and in Christian tradition, the metaphor of arrows is used for infectious disease. St Sebastian, the Roman martyr who was tied to a tree and pierced with arrows, was invoked against the plague from an early date, and St Edmund occasionally appears alongside St Sebastian in medieval depictions, suggesting that a popular tradition of St Edmund as a plague saint existed in medieval England. However, no evidence survives that St Edmund was thus promoted by St Edmunds Abbey, even though the monk John Lydgate (Edmund’s biggest late medieval promoter) wrote about the plague.

Instead, the idea of St Edmund as a plague saint took off in the French city of Toulouse in the 17th century. Since at least the late 15th century, the Basilica of Saint-Sernin in the city had claimed to be in possession of the body of an English royal saint who came to be identified with St Edmund (a strange claim, given that Edmund’s body had been in Bury St Edmunds since the 10th century). In 1631 the city was ravaged by a terrible outbreak of plague and the Consuls invoked the saints enshrined at Saint-Sernin. When they invoked St Edmund, the plague came to an end – securing Edmund a place as one of the holy protectors of the city of Toulouse. "

So what better time than now, during this period of lockdown, to call for St Edmund's reinstatement as our patron saint?

Time to Ditch St George?

George was a Roman soldier, thought to have been born into Greek nobility in Cappadocia – modern Turkey – in 280 AD. He is said to have served the Emperor Diocletian as a Tribune in the province of Palestine.

A proud Christian, George refused to renounce his faith when Rome later chose to purge its ranks of outside influence during the Great Persecution.

He was imprisoned, tortured, dragged through the streets of the Palestinian city of Lydda and finally beheaded on 23 April 303 AD, rather than apostatise.

All very good but, as far as we know, he never visited Britain. So how did he come to be England's patron saint?

Well apparently George’s martyrdom inspired King Edward III to make him England’s patron saint in 1327 – replacing the local favourite, St Edmund.

George is also honoured as the patron saint of Bulgaria, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Georgia, Greece, Lithuania, Palestine, Portugal and Serbia; of the regions of Aragon and Catalonia in Spain; and of the cities of Beirut, Genoa, Istanbul, Moscow and Venice.

It seems to me he is spread a little too thinly! In view of the fact that we have now "Brexited" perhaps we ought to leave him to all these other countries and petition for the return of St Edmund.

Bad News and Good News

A recent study has shown that parents dropping their children of at school by car increases the level of fine particulates in the area by three times. Some of this even gets into the classrooms nearest the road. Fine particulates are the ones that can do most damage as they can be inhaled deep into the lung.

When schools are open again perhaps it is time to start making the kids walk or cycle to school (or if it's too far, go by bus). I know they don't like it but it will help save their health and the planet.

The coronavirus pandemic has led to a huge drop in demand for petrol and clothes. This has caused prices to drop - obviously bad news if you are a producer but great news for customers as the rate of inflation has now dropped to 1.5%.

Austria and Sweden have each unplugged their last coal-fired power station from the grid. Belgium has already done so, and at least a dozen other European countries plan to do so by the end of the decade (the good news) ........ but scientists say it is already too late to prevent the rapid loss of sea ice in the arctic during the summer months (the bad news). The loss of large amounts of ice-cover, and therefore reflectivity, mean that the arctic will warm up even faster than before (the even worse news). However, it does mean that more ships from northern Europe can use the route along the north coast of Russia to reach the Far East, which is 40 per cent shorter than the normal route via the Suez canal. (a bit more good news).

Today is Earth Day

Earth Day (April 22^nd) was initiated in 1970 after a huge oil spill in California prompted 20 million Americans (10% of the population at the time) to take to the streets in a mass protest demanding more environmental awareness. It has been held on April 22 ever since, which makes this year its 50^th anniversary. With climate change now getting rapidly out of control it has never been more relevant.

We started Lent studying the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book, “Saying Yes to Life”. If you stopped reading it when our meetings were curtailed due to Covid19, I urge you to finish reading it now and look up some of the many internet references it provides, particularly those relating to A Rocha.

Also look up www.earthday.org and learn more about Earth Day.

The good news coming from the Covid 19 pandemic is that pollution has been greatly reduced. Almost all flights have been grounded, offices closed and cars taken off the roads. Estimates put the potential drop in CO2 emissions (over 2019 figures) at 5.5% globally (7.5% in the US.).  In Delhi, Bangkok and São Paulo residents have expressed disbelief at the unusually clean air in cities usually choked with pollution. But this reduction in emissions is still way off what we’d need to prevent 1.5 degrees Celsius of global heating. To hit this, global emissions would need to fall by 7.6 per cent every year this decade.

See:  www.wired.co.uk/article/coronavirus-climate-change for more details.

The coronavirus outbreak gives us a chance to refocus our priorities in a concerted effort to reach net zero by 2050.