“Those In Authority Must Retain the Public’s Trust.” The Catholic Bishops Have Spoken.
Posted on | November 16, 2025 | 3 Comments
Mike Magee
“The key is trust. It is when people feel totally alienated and isolated that the society breaks down. Telling the truth is what held society together.”
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The words above seem to be contemporary – written in the midst of ICE raids on helpless immigrants, drawing comparisons to Selma, Alabama years ago. And, in fact, they mirror comments by Evangelical Christian religion columnist, David French, this morning describing ICE actions against immigrants as “indiscriminate and brutal – We will look back on them with national shame.”
Surprisingly, the words above were voiced sixteen years ago in Washington, D.C. It was October 17, 2006. The HHS/CDC sponsored workshop that day was titled “Pandemic Influenza – Past, Present, Future: Communicating Today Based on the Lessons from the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic.”
The speaker responsible for the quote above was writer/historian and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health historian, John M. Barry. His opening quote from George Bernard Shaw set a somewhat pessimistic (and as we would learn 14 years later, justified) tone for the day: “What we learn from history is that we do not learn anything from history.”
This was two years after the close of the 2002-2004 SARS epidemic with 8,469 cases and an 11% case fatality, and six years before MERS jumped from Egyptian camels to humans, infecting over 2,500 humans with a kill rate of 35% (858 known deaths.)
Specifically, John Barry was there that day in 2006 to share lessons learned from another epidemic, the 1918 Flu Epidemic. That epidemic affected an estimated 1/4 of the US population and resulted in 675,000 deaths among 103 million citizens (.065% mortality). The Covid-19 epidemic a century later affected 1/3 of our population, resulting in over 1.2 million deaths among our 340 million citizens (.035% mortality).
Barry’s primary message that day was that communication breeds trust, and without trust, society breaks down. His comments ring true two decades later. He said:
“The key is trust. It is when people feel totally alienated and isolated that the society breaks down. Telling the truth is what held society together.”
“The fear was so great that people were afraid to leave home or talk to one another. Everyone was holding their breath, almost afraid to breathe, for fear of getting sick.”
“False reassurance is the worst thing you can do. Don’t withhold information, because people will think you know more. Tell the truth— don’t manage the truth. If you don’t know something, say why you don’t know, and say what you need to do to know. Drown people with the truth, rather than withhold it.”
“The final lesson of 1918, a simple one yet one most difficult to execute, is that…those in authority must retain the public’s trust.”
Barry’s primary message was that communication breeds trust, and without trust, society breaks down. But clearly that day, there was also a bit of a self-congratulatory air, an arrogance that today rings naive. John Barry said, “Today, I think, as opposed to back in 1918, we don’t have as much of a problem with misinformation…I want to emphasize that it is not likely that public health officials would tell outright lies.”
With Covid came Trump and his sycophants and a barrage of “outright lies.” And that was just during his first term. Barry’s theory (that mistrust can destroy societal order) was and continues to be put to the test. And its not just with ICE on the streets and RFK Jr. now at the helm of HHS. It extends as far and as wide as human imperfection can undermine human goodness.
Pope Leo XIV said as much last week with these words, “This is a time of really reflecting on what’s happening, and to not be afraid to respond to the need to defend the dignity of people.” And the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, in their annual conference last week, wasted no time sending Trump and his supporters a clear message. They stated, in part, “We as Catholic bishops love our country and pray for its peace and prosperity. For this very reason, we feel compelled now in this environment to raise our voices in defense of God-given human dignity.” This weekend, they took to the pulpits, and French says that Evangelical Christian pastors need to follow suit, or they will long regret it.
Barry’s words, now two decades old, are fresher and clearer today than the day they were first spoken on October 17, 2006. “The key is trust. It is when people feel totally alienated and isolated that the society breaks down. Telling the truth is what held society together.”
The President, and those in his orbit, are clearly unable to tell the truth.
