It is a great irony that those who are most strident that they ‘follow the science’ regarding the protection from COVID provided by face masks, social distancing, etc., seem just as likely to be driven to acts of senseless violence against those who reject their views as the Crusaders and Inquisitors of the post-Schism West whom they love to condemn for their barbaric religious fanaticism (and they were unnecessarily brutal; this is not meant as a defense of the latter’s actions):
https://www.britannica.com/event/Albigensian-Crusade
https://www.ctpost.com/news/article/Bridgeport-man-charged-with-beating-74-year-old-15845300.php
http://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/world-news/20201015/cops-beat-man-death-not-wearing-mask
The COVID scientism warriors are thus no more rational than the clerics and soldiers of the Middle Ages they decry. Indeed, they are driving us towards a remarkably similar society in some ways. Consider how closely the methods of the Inquisition resemble various proposals for COVID quarantine centers and such like:
After consulting with canon lawyers, the inquisitor would sentence those found guilty at a sermo generalis, or public homily. Judicial penances were imposed on those who had been convicted of heresy and had recanted. The most common punishments were penitential pilgrimages, the wearing of yellow crosses on clothing (which was feared because it led to ostracism), and imprisonment.
The inquisition employed two kinds of prisons, both staffed by laymen. One type was the murus largus, or open prison, which consisted of cells built around a courtyard in which the inmates enjoyed considerable freedom. The other type was the murus strictus, a high-security prison, where inmates were kept in solitary confinement, often in chains. Heretics who admitted their errors but refused to recant were handed over to the secular authorities and burned at the stake. There were usually not many cases of this kind, because the chief aim of the inquisitors was to reconcile heretics to the church. On rare occasions, however, large public executions did take place, as at Verona in 1278, when some 200 Cathars were burned.
--Edward Peters, https://www.britannica.com/topic/inquisition/Early-modern-Europe
Just as with the old Inquisition, for those guilty of the new ‘heresy’ of denying conventional COVID ‘truths’, they are to be throw into prison camps of one sort or another, or marked (with a smartphone app that they are ‘unclean’/unvaccinated/etc.), or, as above, abused physically in some way:
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/GOP-continues-to-draw-attention-to-long-dormant-15844562.php
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/20/asia/china-shijiazhuang-covid-quarantine-intl-hnk-scli/index.html
Fr Stephen Freeman has recently written about the elevation of strong personal feelings to the level of a religion (bolding added):
On a daily basis, I have become increasingly aware of the “religious” nature of almost the whole of modern life. That might seem to be an odd observation when the culture in which we live largely describes itself as “secular.” That designation, however, only has meaning in saying that the culture does not give allegiance or preference to any particular, organized religious body. It is sadly the case, however, that this self-conception makes the culture particularly blind to just how “religious” it is in almost everything it does. I suspect that the more removed we are from true communion with God, the more “religious” we become. It is, I think, an idolatrous substitute for true existence, and a misguided attempt to impose an order and meaning that we ourselves create. Our social life thus becomes dominated by our continual efforts to convince (or compel) others (or to convince ourselves) to accept a worldview and way of life that has no true existence apart from our own efforts to make it so.
--https://www.pravmir.com/the-religious-nature-of-modern-life/
‘A misguided attempt to impose an order and meaning that we ourselves create’: It would be hard to find better words to describe what the COVID scientism warriors are trying to force upon those who disagree with them.
--
Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to the Union!
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