Archdiocese to assess impact pandemic and restrictions had on Church in Vancouver

The Archdiocese of Vancouver will conduct a review of how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the Church in Vancouver, how the archdiocese responded, and what, if anything, should be done to improve responses in future emergencies.

The announcement of the far-reaching review was made March 23 and came while criticism mounted over the narrow parameters of a B.C. government pandemic review that will not be examining the consequences of Victoria’s pandemic-fighting orders, including restrictions on faith communities.

The archdiocese said it will assemble a working group to examine how the Church – including the archdiocese itself, all 77 parishes, and individual Catholics – responded to the pandemic, which was officially declared by the World Health Organization on March 11, 2020.

An archdiocesan spokesman said the working group will gather submissions from outside experts, clergy, and laity, and will consult with other faith communities on the impact of the disease itself, media, communications, social changes, and government measures on the Catholic community, as well as the archdiocese’s handling of the pandemic and various restrictions.

The working group will consider what has been learned from the past two years and identify areas for improvement.

Archbishop J. Michael Miller said the ongoing synod offers opportunities to consider how the pandemic affected the Church, from liturgy and sacraments, to the wellbeing of the Catholic community and the Church’s relationship with governments and faith communities.

The working group wants to complete its work by summer in order to capitalize on the ongoing public discussion regarding how governments, churches, and individuals should handle future pandemic responses.

Much of that discussion currently centres on the B.C. government’s internal review. As announced March 16 by Deputy Premier Mike Farnworth, the review’s terms of reference will focus only on how decisions were made, precluding it not only from assessing the impact of economic and public-policy decisions made by the government, but also from tabling any recommendations.

As well, the review team will not be assessing any lockdown, mask, or vaccinate-mandate policy orders issued by Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry.

Neither Farnworth nor the terms of reference mentioned any plans to assess whether the province’s established pandemic plan, adopted in 2012, was effectively implemented. That plan identified four policy spheres, with the economy being identified as the most important one, followed by public space, health care, and education. Each of the province’s health authorities was to have its own pandemic strategy.

Also missing from the review’s terms of reference is any public examination of the little-publicized provincial Unanticipated Consequences (UniCon) Working Group, which Victoria established early in the pandemic to monitor the effects of public-health orders and make recommendations on responses.

British Columbians can voice their opinions on the government’s handling of the pandemic by providing feedback by April 20.

In response to B.C. Catholic questions about the group and its work, a B.C. government official provided a link to a B.C. Centre for Disease Control webpage entitled “Societal Consequences of COVID-19.”  The page noted, “Measures implemented to slow the spread of COVID-19 and prevent severe outcomes and deaths also affect people’s physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and wellness, the health care system, environment, and economy.”

But while the website contains links to several reports released this month on subjects like mental health and substance abuse, racism, and unemployment, it contains nothing about COVID-fighting measures’ impact on spiritual health.

B.C. Liberal health critic Shirley Bond told The B.C. Catholic that the government should have launched a comprehensive, independent review of every aspect of the pandemic response.    

“That must include public health decisions and the impacts they had on various groups – including faith communities,” she said. “We need to look at how prepared government was going into the pandemic and what lessons need to be learned in order to ensure government is better prepared to respond to future crises.”

Bond’s former colleague in the B.C. Liberal caucus, Rich Coleman, said in an interview it is “highly disappointing” that the provincial review is so narrow. “I think what they’ve left out is all that is important,” said Coleman, who was an opposition MLA when the pandemic broke out and is now retired from politics.

Coleman, a member of St. Nicholas Parish in Langley, said in an interview that restrictions on religious gatherings “never ever got justified” by Dr. Henry. Incongruities such as orders that shut down church gatherings while still allowing hundreds of people to shop at a Costco were never adequately explained and therefore now need to be put under a public spotlight. “I think we deserve to know,” he said.

Coleman also said he had sought out “people that I knew from my former days in government” in an attempt to find the scientific basis for faith-gathering restrictions, “but at no time could I find anybody. And my concern has always been, ‘as you’ve made decisions, on what basis have you made them? You say you’ve made the decision based on science, but where’s the data that back up the decision?’”

One religious freedom expert believes the B.C. government didn’t consider the importance of religious faith when it closed churches during the pandemic because officials lack understanding of the nature of religious life.

“Government has an ignorance of the nature of sacramental worship,” said Rev. Dr. Andrew Bennett, Program Director for Religious Freedom and the Director of Faith Community Engagement at Cardus, a non-partisan think tank.

“They were also responding to so much fear stoked among the public,” he said in an interview with The B.C. Catholic. “They had the idea that we have to keep people safe, take prudential measures, vaccinate, distance, masks.”

The government’s failure to see the importance of having churches open likely contributed to questionable decisions such as harsh restrictions on churches while allowing liquor stores and restaurants to stay open, he said.

Asked about the need for a full and open review of the impact Henry’s restrictions had on faith communities, Philip Horgan, president of the Catholic Civil Rights League, cited a remark last year by B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson, who noted Henry never had to explain fully her decisions.

In a decision upholding restrictions on faith gatherings, Hinkson said, “Dr. Henry is really holding all the cards.”

Hinkson told the hearing, “When you deprive the complainants of the ability to understand how [Dr. Henry] got from A to B, the court can’t look at it, it really isn’t much of a review. It gives Dr. Henry absolute authority and if she chooses not to share her thoughts process with the court, there’s no oversight.”

Horgan said the justice’s observation “exposed the inadequacy of the outreach [to faith communities] by medical officers and questioned the extent to which those authorities took seriously religious freedom, generally.”

Speaking in a telephone interview from his Surrey office, Rev. Mark Peters, Canadian Pacific District Superintendent of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, said Victoria should have staged a full and open review of its pandemic measures.

“I think for the government to look at what it decided, how it communicated and implemented … would be a healthy part of any decision-making process,” Peters said. “And hopefully they learn something should they ever need to implement similar decisions in the future.”

He noted that government pandemic orders caused much polarization in society, including within church congregations and even families. The reconciliation that’s now needed may be aided with more knowledge about how the government decided on the measures that led to the disagreements, he said.

The government’s lack of transparency in making its pandemic-related decisions clearly needs to be reviewed, said Heidi Tworek, an associate professor and Canada Research Chair in History and Policy of Health Communications at UBC.

“I’m genuinely perplexed by it because I think it leads to suspicion,” Tworek told reporters. “This is quite strange, in a way, to have a review that is so limited, and I think that does raise questions as to what are going to be the findings that come out of it.”

She said in a later interview with The B.C. Catholic that the province’s review should include an examination of pandemic-restrictions’ impact on faith communities because it “could potentially be a very important question.”

“It is reasonable especially in light of, not only are we continuing to deal with pandemic, which we see throughout the world is definitely not over, [but also] and in terms of how we deal with preparations for future pandemics,” Tworek said. “Those kinds of reviews are actually very important.”

She noted that she participated in a study of nine countries’ responses to the pandemic six months after it began and found that in places like Senegal the government worked closely with faith leaders to develop and explain its measures.

 “The research that we did found that in places that integrated faith communities, it was one of many ways to ensure that you reached as much of the population as possible, that you worked with people of trust as intermediaries, that you tried to find ways to preserve what was important to people.”