As the Spanish influenza epidemic was peaking in New York City in the fall of 1918, the managing editor of the Brooklyn diocesan newspaper took note in his weekly column that “Catholic churches were closed on Sunday in twenty-one States for the first time since America was discovered.” Then he recounted a conversation he’d had with a local woman that same day: 

We asked a lady if she went to Mass in the morning; she promptly answered in the affirmative; but, said we, “weren’t you afraid of getting influenza?” “No,” said she, “but if I stayed away from church I would be afraid of getting it.” It was sound Catholic philosophy.

Patrick Scanlan was two years into his fifty-one of running the Brooklyn Tablet, which built a national audience drawn to his combative style. He was eventually considered the dean of the nation’s Catholic press—the loudest supporter of Fr. Charles Coughlin when the radio preacher descended into his most obvious anti-Semitism in the late 1930s, and also of Senator Joseph McCarthy during his rise and fall in the 1950s.

That is, Scanlan made a career out of trafficking in the politics of resentment. There’s a glimpse of that in his objection to the temporary closings of churches during the extraordinary influenza outbreak: “To prohibit the people from congregating for a half hour or so on Sunday is to class the churches as a non-essential industry,” he wrote in an October 19, 1918 column. A century later, President Donald Trump spoke similarly when he said he would push governors to reopen churches immediately: “I’m correcting  this injustice and calling houses of worship essential.” 

This idea that the coronavirus pandemic and its restrictions on individual liberties are part of a conspiracy to undermine religious belief is seen in Scanlan’s heirs in conservative and alt-right Catholic media, and in such church figures as Cardinal Raymond Burke, Cardinal Gerhard Müller and the conspiracy-minded Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò.

Fortunately, Scanlan’s diocese has not followed suit during the coronavirus pandemic; officials at the Diocese of Brooklyn say temporary church closings were unavoidable. “Though there are many who doubt and even publicly speak out against the decisions made to close churches and maintain social distancing, please know that decisions like these have not been taken lightly,” Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio wrote in his Tablet column. That was especially so for the Brooklyn-Queens diocese, which is “literally at the epicenter of the crisis in New York City, which is the epicenter of the United States. We have had to resort to these desperate measures to prevent the further loss of life and spread of disease. Life is God’s great gift and we must protect it.”

That is the heart of the matter; it’s a pro-life issue. No one is denying the need for religious faith. Masses of New Yorkers sought consolation in worship after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack, and Catholic parishes performed their role admirably. But as much as one also needs Mass and the sacraments in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as the sense of community and connectedness that the liturgy embodies, it would not be life-giving to risk other people’s lives for it.

In the 1918 pandemic and now, dubious medical advice was used to buttress arguments that life can proceed without shutting down the places where large numbers of people gather. “The way to prevent yourself from getting it is to keep in good condition by going to bed early and rising early, sleeping with the windows opened, leading a regular life, eating regularly and simply, using cold water externally and internally several times during the day, and, above all things—taking long walks,” Scanlan wrote in his Tablet column, basing this on the work of the nineteenth-century German priest Sebastian Kneipp, a precursor of the naturopathic healing movement.

But long walks and good hydration notwithstanding, even healthy young people such as soldiers were vulnerable to an epidemic that killed 675,000 people in the United States; Scanlan’s predecessor as editor had died of influenza-induced pneumonia during his military service in the first round in March. Since there was no flu vaccine or antibiotic to treat secondary infections, isolation and quarantine were key to the response most health officials mounted. 

Within two weeks of Scanlan’s column, the Tablet was telling another story in an unsigned editorial:

It may be that our Catholic people are not really quite aware of the awful scourge that is upon us. One reason for our blessed state of ignorance is in the fact of the sane attitude of action of our Catholic authorities…. Masses are curtailed—there are now no High Masses—and other services shortened. The authorities have been acting cautiously, sanely, afraid to spread undue alarm. In cemeteries there are delays of burials wisely unannounced. The esprit du corps has been admirable. Nevertheless, the scourge is upon us. Priests and nuns are dying.

Still, the paper denounced the temporary closing of churches in Islip, a Long Island community then within the Brooklyn diocese, as “a disgraceful transaction.”

In 1918, as now, there was a range of opinion on whether churches needed to be closed. “The order of the Health Department closing the doors of the churches has already created much unnecessary alarm among the people,” Cardinal James Gibbons of Baltimore told the Baltimore Sun. “It was wrong to close them. Going to church soothes and quiets the faithful and at the same time brings to them a feeling of tranquility.”

Bishop Thomas F. Hickey of Rochester, New York, wrote in a pastoral letter that “In recognition of the word of duly constituted authority, we obeyed,” and noted that, “According to reports, our own city has suffered far less than other communities.” 

News of the epidemic was downplayed in most newspapers, where coverage of the frantic final weeks of the First World War dominated front pages. In the Boston Globe, the city’s decision to close churches played beneath the more shattering news that saloons could not offer bar service. “‘How Dry I Am’ to Be Tune in Boston,” the paper reported. “Churches and Bowling Allies Also Closed by Epidemic.”

The Catholic newspaper in Los Angeles, The Tidings, declared that the decision to close churches there “was entirely unnecessary and ill-considered…. However serious it was, the acute distress evident in other cities did not show itself here.”

Of course, it is likely that the measures LA authorities took had saved lives. A 2007 study found that closings of churches, theaters, schools, and other gathering places early in the 1918 pandemic reduced the peak death rates by half. It found that church closings were ordered in many cities, including Washington D.C., St. Louis, Seattle, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Newark, New Orleans, and Philadelphia.

New York City is conspicuously missing from this list; to Patrick Scanlan’s pleasure, the city’s Board of Health decided against closing schools or churches. The health commissioner, Royal S. Copeland, focused on staggering business hours to reduce crowding on the subway.

Opponents of the closings in other parts of the country pointed to this frequently, since New York was known to have the premier public-health program. The 30,000 deaths suffered in New York fell short of a clear-cut success, but the rate compared favorably with other East Coast cities. Perhaps more important was that the city took early action to control shipping traffic.

As the second phase of the influenza pandemic wound down in New York and the Great War drew to a close in Europe, it took women religious to warn Tablet readers that more was to come. “During the influenza epidemic we witnessed such scenes in our hospital as never before,” the Sisters of St. Joseph at St. John’s Hospital in Long Island City, Queens wrote. “Medical men warn us that we may have some new epidemic following the coming of many ships from the war-scarred zone of Europe. We have to do all in our power to have our hospitals ready.

It was sound Catholic philosophy.