Bergamo, Italy, Mar 23, 2020 / 01:01 pm (CNA).- Mario Enzler’s mother always wanted a big family.
“My mother wanted twenty children, but got only me,” Enzler said with a laugh.
Enzler, a former Swiss Guard for St. John Paul II, is an Italian expat living in New Hampshire with his wife and five children. He is a professor at the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America.
His octogenarian parents live in the medieval city of Bergamo in northern Italy. They come to the United States to visit quite often, Enzler said, and he said his mother is already excitedly making plans to come and visit the US in July.
Normally, Bergamo’s biggest claim to fame is that it is the home diocese of St. John XXIII. The image of “Papa Giovanni,” as the saint is known, is everywhere.
But in the past few months, the city has garnered the less welcome distinction as an epicenter of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.
“If, God forbid, anything happens to them, I can’t get there right now,” Enzler said.
In the past week alone, more than 3,000 people have died in Italy after contracting the coronavirus. Among the dead are at least 60 priests this month, according to local media reports.
The Bergamo region has one of the highest rates of infection in Italy, with over 5,000 cases and counting.
The obituary section in the town’s newspaper, L’Eco di Bergamo, is normally 2-3 pages long; now, it is 10-11 pages long every day. The newspaper’s editor recently told the Washington Post that 90% of the deaths— the vast majority of which are elderly people— are due to coronavirus.
The Diocese of Bergamo has reported 20 diocesan priests and two religious who have died so far, and one was a close friend of the Enzler family. Bergamo’s mayor has encouraged the cremation of people who die of COVID-19.
Enzler said he is able to talk to his mother and father daily via video chat, and that they give him almost a daily update on who they know in the city who has died of the virus.
“What is really hard for my parents and for me is that there are no funerals,” Enzler told CNA.
“Some of the priests that passed away, my mom and dad had known them for 60 years. And they could not go to the funeral— that’s very sad.”
Although they are both remaining in their home, isolated from the outside world, Enzler fears for his parents’ safety. His father is diabetic, so he is aware that contracting the virus likely would be lethal for him.
Enzler first spoke to CNA last week; on March 23, Enzler emailed to say that his mother told him that his father is now exhibiting flu-like symptoms, including a fever and a dry cough.
He said there aren’t enough test kits in the city to test everyone exhibiting symptoms, so those with symptoms are instructed to treat the illness like the flu unless it gets much worse.
“Not much I can do from here besides putting everything at the feet of the cross,” Enzler said.
“My dad, despite being diabetic, is a strong man…a lot of people that got sick got well in a week or so, we will never know if they had the virus or not, all it matters they got better and they never abandon their faith.”
Enzler said his father shocked him the other day by telling him that having to rely on the army and other people for his daily needs is actually helping him to “rediscover the meaning of gratitude.”
“Now, I see myself saying thank you more every day to more and different people than I have in many years…coming from my dad, that got me emotional,’ Enzler said.
United in prayer
Enzler said his parents’ parish has done a good job of leveraging technology to keep the parishioners united in prayer.
Through an email chain, their associate pastor is encouraging his flock to pray prayers such as the rosary simultaneously, according to a schedule. Enzler said every time he talks to his parents on video chat, they are excited to tell him how many rosaries they prayed that day together.
In addition, the Diocese of Bergamo has opened a telephone service that offers free psychological and spiritual counseling and support.
“Look at these old people in Bergamo— throughout the day, isolated in their homes, they are united in prayer in specific moments. How beautiful that is,” Enzler observed.
On March 19, Pope Francis requested that all Catholics throughout the world pray a rosary with him at the same time. Enzler said that he suspects that a priest in the pope’s household— a friend of Enzler’s from Bergamo— is keeping the pope updated on the situation in Bergamo and on the simultaneous rosaries the faithful are praying there.
“The media is not talking about the thousands and thousands and thousands of Hail Marys that the elderly Italians are saying on a daily basis…they are praying to Mary, specifically, because they know that she will clean up this mess,” Enzler said.
Enzler said an old Italian proverb is helping to sustain his parents through this trying time: “Non tutti i mali vengono per nuocere,” which roughly translates to “Not all bad things come to damage you.” He said the pandemic is teaching people the meaning of redemptive suffering.
“I strongly believe that this crisis, because of the faith and the amount of prayers of the elderly, isolated in their houses— I think that this will have an impact on the younger generation,” Enzler said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of young adults, because of this, will rediscover their faith.”
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Since female “deacons” in the early Church were historically and now are decidedly not equivalent to male deacons (International Theological Commission in 2002, plus the sidelined Gerhard Cardinal Muller’s book: “The Priesthood and the Diaconate”, German 2000/English 2002), it seems the Pope Francis has four options.
He can either (1) invent a contradiction and throw the three-tiered sacrament of Holy Orders into complete chaos, or perhaps,(2) create a “deaconess” subcategory of deacon-like ministry that is no not-quite-an-ordination, or (3) simply reject any misguided advice (the term “inadmissible” comes to mind), or he can (3) remain silent.
Option Two seems to have been unwittingly pre-empted in recent years by the creation Lay Ecclesial Ministers. These ministers, as it was clarified in writing only at the last minute, serve by virtue of their sacramental Baptism and Confirmation, and not by any unspoken, grey-area-sort-of sacrament-ish Holy Orders.
How now to foster a category of service specifically for women and that does not look (speaking theologically) a hell of a lot like clericalism?
Other than Lay Ecclesial Ministers, another unmentioned and long-existing path for the laity is that of the “religious life”–very much in decline for reasons not mentioned. A new insignia and non-sacramental bucket list probably won’t reverse the post-Christian threats now eating away at the perennial Church.
Under the DOA Option One, would we now be tutored to look forward to a new set of amendments to the still-recent Catechism of 1994/97 (for which the same Cardinal Schonborn was the lead editor), that is, paragraphs 886, 896, 1256, 1538, 1554, 1570, 1569-74,1588, 1596?
And what are we to say of the implied marginalization of other ministries: Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Communion (sic Eucharistic Ministers), the ministry of welcoming, the ministry of teaching, the ministry of visitation, the ministry of (fill in the blank). Ministry inflation (like secular grade inflation) cannot be resolved by incrementally dissolving the Sacrament of Holy Orders, nor the Second Vatican Council’s “universal call to holiness.”
I wish someone could explain to me how this “conservative” mind , behind large chunks of the CCC, got to the place where he endorses nonsense after for so long being regarded as solidly reliable.
Probably for the same reason as Cardinal Oullet after he endorsed Amoris Laetitia. He either gave up after realizing that nobody would listen to his orthodox advise, or he is fearful of being put on a bus.
While Female Deacons are not explicitly prohibited, I think they should not be allowed given that in the minds of some it will open the door to women priests.
@Joe M – This Cardinal, for years, has vacillated between orthodoxy and heterodoxy. He has participated or allowed quite a lot of crazy or stupid things in his diocese. He is quite the contradiction and I have never been able to figure him out. He seems content to be blown about whichever way the wind blows.
Schönborn should be drug tested.