"It Isn't Just Us": The Korean Catholic Church's Responses to Corona-19 as Seen in Diocesan Bulletins

Abstract

The ceasing of public Catholic Masses just before Ash Wednesday 2020 in response to Corona-19 posed a significant problem as it meant Catholics could no longer easily receive Holy Communion, the center of Catholic faith life. Thus, one might have expected the Korean Catholic Church to oppose the limitation or cancellation of religious gatherings. But in fact, the opposite happened, with the Catholic Church being singled out for its support of such policies. This paper explores this response of Catholic leaders to Corona-19 and the theology that undergirded it through an examination of the bulletins of two archdioceses, Seoul and Daegu. It argues that the bulletins promoted a particular Catholic theology that understood adherence to public health measures as analogous to love of neighbor, and that such acts of love would bring a triumph over the virus. However, for such efforts to succeed they had to extend from Korea to embrace the entire world, particularly disadvantaged countries. Moreover, this study also argues that rather than being treated as a singular event, Corona-19 was understood as akin to issues like climate change, which were presented as sharing the same root cause of human selfishness.