Former German Health (sic) Minister Jens Spahn Apologises (sort of)

That's about all we'll ever get. Remember these people and their ilk, for they'd rather you forgot about their conduct

So, let’s shift countries for a moment, shall we? Here’s an interesting piece—an interview with former German Health Minister Jens Spahn (in office 2018-21), which you’ll might be interested in. Of course, if you’re yelling that this reeks of a kind of limited handout, well, it might well be as the piece appeared in PRO, a Christian Media Outlet, on 2 Dec.; the interview was conducted by Martin Schlorke. The below translation and the emphases (Italics = the interviewer) are mine, followed, as usual, by a few bottom lines.

[Caption reads:] Mr Spahn, who do you have to ask for forgiveness?

During the Corona pandemic, Jens Spahn was responsible for the health of 80 million Germans. The CDU politician spoke to PRO about his faith, forgiving, and mistakes.

PRO: Mr Spahn, you have written a book entitled: ‘We will have to forgive each other a lot"’ Who was the last person the politician Jens Spahn forgave?

Jens Spahn: In case of doubt, myself.

And others?

You have that little forgiveness in everyday life in every relationship, it happens regularly, even [lol] when dealing with colleagues.

Asked the other way round: Are you someone who forgives quickly?

I’m generally someone who doesn't hold grudges, even if that's not exactly forgiving. But I’m not someone who carries old stories around with me for a long time. I can come to terms with such things relatively well. In fact, no one has actively asked me for forgive him or her for a long time, and I could have forgiven them.

What does to forgive someone mean to you?

For me, forgiveness is especially about the one who forgives. From my point of view, it is important to be merciful. The opposite would be implacability. Of course, it’s about working through and discussing mistakes. And in a way that acknowledges the circumstances and does not harden them. But it is not about denying or glossing over mistakes. The willingness to forgive also presupposes the knowledge that one could have made mistakes oneself.

In your book you write about a theologian who ...

... tweeted that some things were unforgivable. I find it strange that a Christian theologian speaks of ‘unforgivable’. That’s not how I learned it. Christians should always be able to forgive.

You were Minister of Health during the Corona pandemic. Looking back, who do you have to ask forgiveness from?

If I think about this question in groups, it is definitely families with children. It’s not that we didn't see the consequences of the Corona policy for them, but overall, I would say that we belatedly considered the consequences of a psychological or physical nature appropriately. We had a very strong focus on the elderly and vulnerable or on keeping the economy going. In relation to that, there was too little focus on children and families.

Would you understand if families, for example, do not forgive you for these failures?

Sure. It was a very hard time. To this day, there are people who won’t shake my hand.

Even colleagues?

No, strangers at events. I can feel a bitterness and resentment. I can understand it somehow. On the other hand, human coexistence doesn’t work well like that. People make mistakes—everyone. This is true on a small scale as well as on a large scale. Resentment is not how family works, it is not how community works, and it is not how society works.

Some of your party colleagues have enriched themselves in the procurement of medical masks. Can you forgive them?

(Inhales deeply) If you stay in the categories that a Christian must forgive, then yes. But I can’t understand how anyone could do such a thing. What happened there is simply not o.k. It is shabby.

It doesn’t sound like a willingness to forgive.

If I were sincerely and honestly asked for forgiveness, then I would be able to forgive it on a personal level. But that doesn’t change the assessment of what happened.

‘We will have to forgive each other a lot’ is the title of your book. The sentence comes from a speech in the Bundestag. How did it come about?

Actually, the idea emerged over a longer period of time, especially in conversations with Hendrik Wüst. Even at the beginning of the pandemic, it was clear that everyone got it wrong at one time or another and that we had to be careful that this was not a time for apportioning blame, but a time when we also needed to be willing to forgive. The sentence finally became famous when I said it in the Bundestag. However, the sentence was not planned.

The sentence could also be perceived as a blank cheque for mistakes.

Those who want to understand the sentence maliciously will indeed understand it in exactly the same way [alluded to a moment ago]. My team also had this fear after I said the sentence. According to the motto: afterwards they will say again that you wanted to clear yourself from the start. But I believe that only a small minority understands this sentence in this way.

At Corona demonstrations, on the internet, or at events: You were met with hatred everywhere. How did you perceive that?

From my perception, the very emotional and radical behaviour of some people started with the issue of wearing masks in schools. But all the decisions around the Infection Protection Act [see below, the bottom lines] also intensified it. What I find regrettable is that many of these people are no longer willing or perhaps able, in their overall constitution or world view, to engage in a conversation. Having a conversation also means listening and, in case of doubt, assuming that the other person could also be right. Incidentally, this also applies to me when I seek such conversations. Hate and agitation lead to speechlessness. And speechlessness is not good in society [having been in power, which did so much to censor other voices, this is a very disingenuous consideration].

How can we succeed in inviting these people to talk again?

You can only extend this invitation again and again and try to engage in the conversation. The only recipe is: talk, talk, talk and listen, listen, listen. And we politicians must try to convey that we are acting with good intentions. This idea that we took pleasure in imposing restrictions or limiting people's personal freedom is simply wrong. But my experience is that many are still reachable.

Thousands of Germans have died due to a Corona infection. Could Health Minister Jens Spahn sleep well at night?

It could not be the goal of our policy to prevent every infection and every death. That was always clear to me personally [too bad he didn’t act like that; or spoke out]. Sickness and death are part of life. Rather, our goal was to protect the health system from being overstretched [again, I call BS: healthcare services were stretched well before Sars-Cov-2 ‘appeared’, and as Health Minister he knew that]. I have worked for this goal to the best of my ability. If we had taken measures to prevent every death, we would have had a form of state action in Germany that would have thoroughly deserved the accusation of a Corona dictatorship [no comment here]. But that was not the case.

Nevertheless, you bore a great responsibility.

Yes, of course the responsibility was enormous. And it was also clear that a lot depended on my decisions. I was not only responsible for people’s health, but also for the economic, social, and societal consequences. And the fact that my political actions also had consequences naturally preoccupied me.

What gave you support and peace during this time?

My family and partnership, my home, and a primal form of trust in God. I grew up with Catholicism. Ever since I can remember, we have prayed in our parents’ house. The church is a hundred metres from my parents' house. I grew up with bells ringing, went to a Catholic kindergarten, a Catholic primary school, and an episcopal secondary school [i.e., Catholic private high school].

What did this growing up in Catholicism teach you about forgiveness?

The knowledge: People make mistakes, but they can also be forgiven. They can be forgiven with sincere repentance. That gives me a basic serenity. But not in the sense that I can do what I want because there is the possibility of confession. But with the knowledge that I cannot be perfect because man is not perfect.

Do you go to confession?

I haven’t been to confession for a very long time, not formally to a priest.

Rather?

I often have a dialogue with God. Or with another person. You can also confess something to them.

Have you also prayed for wisdom or an end to the pandemic in such conversations with God?

No, praying is not something explicit for me. Whenever I go to a church, I light a candle. Those are the little moments when I feel connected to God. When I’m at my parents’ house, the same prayer is always said at the lunch table. It's short, but it’s always there. That’s what Christianity is about for me too. It gives structure beyond faith and creates moments of peace and pause—and for me, that includes prayer at different times of the day or occasions.

Do you also pray alone before meals?

To be honest, I do that rather rarely. But as soon as I’m with my parents, I’m back into this structure. I would even say that I’m more liturgy-focused than Bible-focused [that is so absurd, in my opinion, for what Mr. Spahn is saying is that he’s o.k. with the ritual but couldn’t really bring himself to live ‘his’ faith. Pathetic].

So, you could pray the liturgy by heart now?

I couldn’t recite it to you alone right now [not even the Lord’s Prayer or the Creed? This is even more pathetic, Mr. Spahn]. But if you want me to speak along with the congregation, it would work. You could put me in a congregation right now and I could recite along with the congregation every text—no matter how long it’s been since I’ve spoken it.

I can reassure you, that’s how many Protestants feel.

But Protestants can’t confess. They always have to behave. (laughs)

So, you are happy to be a Catholic?

Yes, even if there is a lot to complain about with the Church. But I appreciate the institution, the liturgy, the greater hullabaloo. For me, a Catholic mass is simply something special. The Catholic Church can do that better. Of course, one can argue about the ‘better’, but I like it.

You have just mentioned some negative aspects of the Catholic Church. E.g., you can’t marry your husband in the Catholic Church.

But I couldn’t marry a Protestant either, could I? [fair enough]

But you could get blessed.

That’s one of the things I’m struggling with. I’m not talking about the sacrament of marriage. But guinea pigs, motorbikes, or houses can be blessed. But not two people who love each other. I find that very irritating. It’s like forgiveness—you should also be able to bless everyone [valid, I think].

Let’s talk about the pandemic again. In the daily newspaper Die Welt, you wrote in November 2018—even before the pandemic—about the dignity of the sick or dying. During the pandemic, people died alone, without relatives or pastors in hospitals and care facilities. Does that correspond to your idea of dying with dignity?

No. No, it was terribly hard. It was not dying with dignity.  

Was that not clear to you when you decided on the measures?

When we first decided on these measures, we could not foresee the implications in all their breadth. That it will be fundamentally hard, if visits to hospitals or funerals are restricted, that is true. At my aunt’s funeral, for example, only ten people were allowed. The family has to decide who can come. That is not dignified. There’s no two ways about that.

Why did you still decide that way?

It was what we thought was right in the situation. It was about reducing contacts. Especially in nursing homes, this virus has raged brutally and cost many lives once it was in. We wanted to prevent that. But this total isolation, thank God, we didn’t do it again.

So, would you decide differently today?

From today’s perspective, yes, without a doubt. In the end, it is a question of weighing things up—admittedly, a difficult weighing up. We cannot protect people 100% from the virus. The question is: do we try to protect 80% or 99%? If you opt for the 80%, significantly more people die [for a virus with a survival rate of 99+%, I’m not convinced here]. It is not so easy to weigh this up. We have tried to make it better each time.

In the book you write that the sentence ‘We will have to forgive each other a lot’ sounds like something from a church sermon. Would you have made a good priest?

(Laughs) I don’t know. I don’t find theology uninteresting. But whether I would be a good parishioner in the sense of what good pastoral care really has to do, I don’t know. You also have to know your limits.

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Bottom Lines

This is as weird an interview as it gets; granted, a lot of it has to do with the odd choice of media, but since no other media outlet has so far dared to ask at least some of these questions, it’ll have to do.

Leaving aside the utterly pathetic personal statements of Mr. Spahn (which I think I’ve addressed in the squared parentheses), what I find most troubling boils down to three points:

First, Mr. Spahn has apparently never really bothered to read up on ‘the science’; very early on, Covid featured a wealth of heterodox voices and dissenters, from John Ioannides to the Great Barrington Declaration to Peter McCullough, as well as many others. This is extremely clear from the softball questions—and Mr. Spahn’s evasive answers. While I don’t know anything about post-interview editing (which I consider highly likely), not asking hard questions allows both the interviewer and Mr. Spahn to get away with it.

Second, it was known quite early on that closing down schools and daycare centres was a bad idea; politicians left and right did it anyway. While I as an affected parent (back in Switzerland, not as much since moving to Norway) can appreciate his candour, what I still miss is an honest reflection of this. Today, we know so much more about the age distribution, risk ratios, and the role of natural immunity in children and adolescents, that I call Mr. Spahn’s blissful ignorance and empty verbiage a disgrace. Sometimes, Mr. Spahn, it’s better to say nothing.

Third, in all fairness, Mr. Spahn was asked, however implicitly, about censorship. Of course, he gave an answer that didn’t relate to this question. I call BS here, too, especially since there’s only two options: Mr. Spahn didn’t understand what this meant; or he was lying through his teeth. Either way, he shouldn’t be a cabinet-level official, eh?

In the final analysis, this is a plush interview; it says more about the current state of legacy media than it does about the subject matter. That said, I do think this is about as much as we’ll ever get in terms of an apology.

To get a feel for how this is, keep in mind what Danish media creators did in January 2022:

'We failed you': Denmark’s Ekstrabladet holds that 'media…have been almost hypnotically trusting of the government’s Covid narrative'—and admits failure

Lest you like to take me up on the personal faith part: I grew up a Catholic, too, and I left the Church when I was 18 or 19 because I was able to understand the rank hypocrisy of the people I attended mass with each Sunday. I’d have a lot to say there, but I feel it would distract from the substance of the above.