Jesuit editor reflects on ‘bodies and stories in the time of coronavirus’ (Father Antonio Spadaro, SJ)

“In this time of modified rites, broken practices, habits dispersed by evil, stories replace bodies that — transubstantiated from desired attachments into potential infections — cannot crowd each other but only greet each other from a distance,” writes the influential editor of La Civiltà Cattolica. “Except they don’t share the same roof, like families or communities, both possible sites of quarantine that mix up rhythms, relationships, nightmares and desires.”