Congress’s inquisition of Dr Anthony Fauci on July 29 was completely unsatisfactory. Not only did Fauci invoke the Fifth Amendment more than 100 times when questioned about his handling of the pandemic, but the Senate committee has since voted to hold him in contempt and refer the matter to the Justice Department.
Indeed, the man personally profited during the draconian pandemic restrictions, church closures and the isolation of individuals and families posed as a sweet, misunderstood old man. This posture is expected from a man who openly admits that he does not practise his Catholic faith, yet who has simultaneously bragged for years that his moral compass was formed by Jesuits at Regis High School and the College of the Holy Cross – institutions he credits with giving him “intellectual rigour, integrity and service to others”.
In reality, Fauci is sad evidence of where the lukewarm, modern-day-Jesuit variety of Catholicism leads: the suppression of authentic faith and a focus on self-aggrandisement.
Just look at Fauci’s handling of the pandemic. While he was invoking the Jesuits in interviews and retirement tributes, the authoritarian Covid-19 regime he spearheaded effectively locked churches and emptied pews nationwide. Public Mass was suspended. Funerals were capped at a handful of masked mourners. Last Rites were delayed or denied. The sacraments were filed under “non-essential” – even as liquor stores stayed open and Fauci’s wealthy friends partied undisturbed. Meanwhile, the man forcing Catholics to spend months without the Eucharist, elderly men and women to die alone and my grandmother to receive Last Rites through a window was enriching himself through their sacrifice.
Fauci’s treatment of churches alone is evidence of the fragility of Jesuit Catholicism. Jesuits have become infamous for treating Catholicism like a set of broad guidelines rather than an essential way of life and holiness. Jesuits such as the prominent public commentator Fr James Martin have become infamous for watering down basic truths of the Faith or otherwise spewing openly unorthodox beliefs in the name of “compassion”.
It is unsurprising, then, that the Jesuit-educated Fauci’s guidance deemed churches and Mass “non-essential” during the Covid-19 pandemic and sought to penalise those who attended or led services. Any faithful Catholic knows that the Eucharist is truly the physical body and blood of Jesus and should be received as often as possible to remain close to Our Lord and receive his graces for our daily life. Faithful Catholics recognise that Mass and the sacraments – such as Last Rites, Baptism and Confession – are essential spiritually and mentally. Under Fauci’s guidance, however, churches were shuttered nationwide – sending the overt message that faith is optional when inconvenient.
To be fair, Fauci himself did not sign closure orders. Yet his apparent scientific authority – which he later admitted was often arbitrary and not proven to help mitigate the pandemic – was the authority on which those orders leaned.
What is more, Fauci had little to say when numerous wealthy elites were caught partying and gathering in open violation of Covid-19 pandemic rules. For example, California governor Gavin Newsom was caught maskless at an indoor dinner party during the pandemic while his own constituents were arrested for far lesser infractions of Covid restrictions. The former president Barack Obama similarly celebrated his 60th birthday with a massive outdoor celebration on Martha’s Vineyard with hundreds of attendees.
While my family watched Mass on television at home and hospitals were prohibited from allowing visitors to the dying, it seemed Fauci was turning a blind eye to his wealthy peers.
Perhaps this was because Fauci’s escalating net worth during the pandemic promised that he would soon be one of them. From 2019 to 2022, Fauci and his wife’s household net worth grew by more than $3 million to more than $11 million, thanks to his government salary, investments and his dubious practice of having staff assistants sign him up for cash prizes. For example, Fauci won the $1 million Dan David Prize for “defending science” in 2021. When Fauci’s team learnt that he had won, they reportedly celebrated by telling him: “You’re rich!” Another aide told him: “I want my 15 per cent.”
Fauci’s focus on winning million-dollar prizes while Americans suffered death, isolation and spiritual starvation is a shocking indictment of his alleged Jesuit values of “integrity and service to others”.
The truth is that Catholicism, for Fauci, has always functioned less as a moral compass than as a costume that was quietly set aside whenever it might cost him something. He speaks of the “intellectual rigour, integrity and service to others” he absorbed at Regis and Holy Cross, yet abandoned Catholics and other people of faith nationwide when they desperately needed the honesty and service Fauci claims to champion.
When Americans were begging for a priest at a hospital bed, watching a funeral through a laptop screen or waiting months to receive the Eucharist again, that formation was nowhere to be found.
Long after the cable-news clips of Fauci invoking the Fifth Amendment have been forgotten, Fauci’s legacy will remain the same: the man who abandoned Catholic values and basic human integrity to enrich himself and seek short-term fame.
Years of public service and a lifetime of Jesuit formation, and when it finally came time to explain himself – to give the honest accounting his own Catholic upbringing supposedly demanded of him – Fauci said nothing at all. That silence is the most damning thing he has done yet.
