[ad_1]
The Portuguese Episcopal Conference defended this Friday that the covid-19 pandemic is an occasion to change mentalities, that is, in preferential access to health for those who have more money and in response to the loneliness of the elderly.
“We know that there are not unlimited resources”, but “the concept of profit in health is problematic, when it becomes the decisive criterion”, considered the Portuguese Episcopal Conference (CEP) in a document entitled “Pastoral challenges of the pandemic to the Church in Portugal ”, published this Friday.
While the CEP takes the opportunity to express “appreciation and gratitude” to the decision-makers, health service providers, heads of schools and supportive institutions that have helped fight the pandemic, the disease raised several questions.
“The problems posed by this pandemic are not only health, economic or social, but should be an occasion to provoke a change in mentality and cultural upheaval,” says the document.
One of the issues to change, argues the CEP, is “the concept of profit in health.”
“We know that there are not unlimited resources”, but “the concept of profit in health is problematic, when it becomes the decisive, exclusive or main criterion”.
Although we all say that “we are in the same boat”, health is not the same for everyone, depending on whether you have the possibility of using the private health service or not, he says.
“If we do not manage to change this binomial -life and health-, where the equal dignity of all is measured, we will not have a just and supportive society”, considers CEP, recalling that “the right to life is not only the right to live” , but also have “conditions for a dignified life without discrimination.”
Another problem that the CEP claims to have become inevitable with the pandemic is loneliness, especially among the elderly.
“The question of the elderly and the idea that they are disposable is a scandal that has been revealed in all its brutality,” admits the Episcopal Conference, arguing that we must “isolate ourselves from the virus and not from the elderly.”
For CEP, covid-19 showed that there is no responsiveness to loneliness.
“With the pandemic, we run the risk of leaving behind segments of the population that were already fragile and who have seen their situation worsen. This time it makes us look with concern at the scandalous gap between rich and poor, between privileged and underprivileged. In many places, the sick, the elderly and the disabled suffered more severely ”, describes the CEP, adding that racial prejudice also persists. “People from the peripheries, especially migrants, refugees and prisoners, have been the most affected by this pandemic,” he recalls.
These questions show that “our society needs a Church that is a ‘field hospital’, ready to help, to care, to shelter, as it has been in so many moments of crisis,” defended CEP, encouraging parishes and dioceses. wonder if they have been and how they could be.
Furthermore, the CEP acknowledges, it is necessary to “discover another way of being Church.”
“The closing of the churches to community celebrations at the beginning of the pandemic should have opened our eyes to discover another way of being Church, made not only of liturgy and prayer, but of daily life,” he says, adding that a solution can be on the internet.
“Digital media can make the virtual ‘almost real’ and serve to bring closer, share and build links”, that is why the Church is using these media “for prayer, catechesis, training, education, communication and telework” .
In addition, it is necessary to “call the young people” who have “always change in DNA”.
“Without the attentive listening of young people, without their vision of the Church and the world, there will be no adequate renewal and pastoral conversion,” admits CEP, noting that Portugal is preparing World Youth Day for 2023.
The covid-19 pandemic caused at least 1,818,946 deaths derived from more than 82.6 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report prepared by the French agency AFP.
In Portugal, 6,972 people died out of 420,629 confirmed cases of infection, according to the most recent bulletin from the Directorate General of Health.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected in late December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
[ad_2]
