Olmstead Aims And Fires Canon Law At St Joseph's

Olmstead says no Jesus in the chapel at St Joseph's hospital in Phoenix.

I hope everyone had a peaceful and joyous Christmas.  I know I did in spite of the fact I was unable to engage in the usual consumer binging I have been known for in the past.  This Christmas was the Christmas of well wishing and home made gifts.  It was a good Christmas in it's very simplicity and I enjoyed it immensely.
Now onto some other thoughts.

Over the past couple of days I have been immersed in the blow back from Bishop Olmstead's decision to rescind the Catholic status of St Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix.  Over at dotCommonweal there is an extensive discussion surrounding the medical decision and whether it qualified as a direct abortion.  The NCR has four or five articles dealing with the hospital's response to Olmstead both before and after his decision,  and over at America, Fr. Jim Martin has posted a synopsis of other folks commentary some of which is very good.  And then I feel compelled to add this link from frequent reader Jim McCrea about a Dr. Phil show "When Good People Do Bad Things".  The show details some of the current research on responses to authority figures including Stanley Milgram's work in the sixties which was sort of a shot heard round the psychological and educational world.  Both science and history say good people will do very bad things if they believe they've been given permission to do so by a respected authority figure.  It was important for me to keep this in mind as I read the convoluted reasoning being used by conservatives to justify Olmstead's actions. 

Part of that convoluted reasoning allows conservatives to place pregnancy and pregnant women in a different and unique class when it comes to self defense.  In this case it seems a pregnant woman is not engaging in an act of self defense, but an act of promoting her survival at the expense of the child.  She is not defending her life. She is selfishly promoting her own survival.  The idea that a mother might be defending the right of her other children to have a mother does not enter this equation. Nor does the fact that in this case both mother and child would die.  Two deaths, half orphaned children, and a widower were God's will for this family. God sometimes allows difficult situations to test us and thwarting his will is cowardly and faithless. Hmmm...... 

This kind of thinking allowed one commenter to compare Sr McBride's failure to let both mother and child die with Abraham's willingness to off his son Isaac. I guess the implication was that Sr McBride failed the test of acting in accordance with God's will. The commenter called this kind of situational obedience a 'terrible beauty'. I tend to see it as spiritual selfishness and moral cowardice.  If that's the kind of God Catholics are supposed to believe in, I'm not much of a Catholic. I could not in conscience waste a mother's life I could save for some hugely abstract moral thought about the sanctity of fetal life or obeying an especially bizarre notion of God's Will.  Especially in view of the fact there are other children in the equation and the Church makes all kinds of other loop holes for other types of killing and murder.

Which is the point I keep coming back too.  Why is pregnancy the one situation in which one life must at all times be subordinate to another?  Why does pregnancy automatically demand the sacrificing of the maternal life to the pre born life?   I don't get this as there is no such situation for men.  We do not tell a father that he must donate his two kidneys to a child in renal failure even though said donations won't allow the child to live and will certainly result in his own death.  In point of fact, Catholicism doesn't demand any father donate any part of himself at any time to insure the life of one of his children.  Catholicism only demands that kind of ultimate sacrifice of pregnant women.  Why is this?  What makes fetal life more innocent and precious than day old post born life--or any other life?  What makes fetal life important enough to mandate excommunication when it's ended directly, but this is not true for any other time in any other human life---- except the Pope's life.  Come to think of it Phoenix mother equals Ali Agca doesn't make much moral sense either.

Quite frankly it boggles my mind that a fetus is deemed more important than the life of a mother who already has four children, even when the fetus can't be saved. This then isn't about life per se, it's about a principle in Canon Law. And in Olmstead's case, he is not defending life or Canon Law, he is using Canon Law to promote his own authority.  That's just mind blowing to me. Where is the living Jesus in this move?  I guess like the pregnant mother, Jesus too is subordinate to Canon Law and Olmstead's authority.  Olmstead has certainly shown this is so because he has also decided there will be no Masses nor Eucharistic presence at St Joseph's.  Olmstead has decreed no Jesus will be present at St Joseph's.  He has used Canon Law to directly abort Catholic Jesus from St Joseph's. 

That last really really angers me. I mean really angers me.  It's spiritual malpractice of the worst sort, but that does seem to be what we can expect from a certain of bishop.  And of course, there is no real Canon Law to deal with the situation of a bishop gone amok.  How convenient for Olmstead.

When Two Deaths Are Morally Better Than One

Sister Margaret McBride is now ex Catholic Margaret McBride. Funny how the hierarchy can work at light speed when it comes to women and women's issues, but at a snails pace when it comes to their issues.

An Irish nun, a Catholic hospital, a dying mother, an abortion, and...

Father Tim - IrishCentral.com - 5/16/2010

My friends,

It has not taken long for news of the excommunication of an Irish nun in the misbegotten state of Arizona to reach around the world, even to the far-off mission in which I am blessed to serve.

You can read the whole story here, but in brief: Sister Margaret McBride, a longtime and faithful worker at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix with some pioneering accomplishments helping the poor to her credit, has been excommunicated by local Bishop Thomas Olmsted. Sister Margaret was a member of the hospital's ethics committee, which faced a terrible decision. A patient with an 11-week-old fetus was dying in the hospital from a rare heart condition, in which the strains of pregnancy can tip the balance between life and death. (Because the mother was dying, the fetus was also dying. A major technicality that seems to have escaped Olmstead, but not the medical community.)

Founded in the then-"Wild West" by the Irish Sisters of Mercy, steeped in Catholic tradition and famous for its outreach programs to the impoverished and especially the large undocumented immigrant community, it was a wrenching choice. Doctors and medical experts were unanimous in their belief the mother would die unless her pregnancy was aborted.

Sister Margaret agreed with the hospital committee, and the abortion was performed.

Bishop Olmsted reacted even faster than the medical staff, which was facing an emergency life-and-death decision. Sister Margaret McBride is now Margaret McBride.

"An unborn child is not a disease. While medical professionals should certainly try to save a pregnant mother's life, the means by which they do it can never be by directly killing her unborn child. The end does not justify the means," the bishop declared. (Except the fetus dies either way, don't you get this? Is the mother then to forfeit her life for nothing?)

Olmsted added that if a Catholic "formally cooperates" in an abortion, he or she is automatically excommunicated.

"The Catholic Church will continue to defend life and proclaim the evil of abortion without compromise, and must act to correct even her own members if they fail in this duty," the bishop said. (Without sanity or compassion as well.)

Although I cannot disagree with the bishop's theology and support the Church's protection of the sacredness of all life, I suspect he needs "medical" treatment himself: a strong injection of reality.

Most important is a simple reality: If the mother of an 11-week-old fetus dies, the fetus will also die. It is too soon in life for the child to survive outside the womb no matter what the hospital might try. That means two deaths. Is there really a morally defensible reason for two innocents to die when one can live? It's a hackneyed phrase, but what would Jesus have done? (No, there is no justifiable moral defense for allowing two innocents to die when one can be saved. To maintain otherwise makes a mockery of any pro life stand because then the stance is not pro life, it is murderous propaganda.)

Over the years, the Church's solid wall guarding all life has allowed an exception or two. For example, while euthanasia and so-called "mercy killing" is condemned, the Church has made it clear that there is no need to use "extraordinary means" to preserve life when, in the best judgment of all and with prayerful reflection, there is no real hope for the patient's recovery. Of course, this does not mean a call to the murderous "Doctor" Kevorkian, but usually the withdrawal of life-support equipment that is filling the patient's lungs with air and his heart with blood in a way that is more mechanical than medical.

In this matter, the Church has taken good counsel from the world of science to make a just and merciful clarification in doctrine. But while there has been considerable debate within the Church about the kind of dilemma faced by St. Joseph's Hospital, no "exceptions to the rule" on abortion have been forthcoming. (If this particular situation pertained to men, you can bet there would be pastoral exceptions. See pedophile abuse scandal.)

It is long past the time to reconsider this. If all life deserves our protection and is sacred to our Creator, then a mother's life is just as worthy as her child's. How has this become lost in the battle over abortion? (My guess is a woman loses her equal innocence the minute she engages in sex and stops being a 'Holy Virgin'.)

Bishop Olmsted is an intelligent and compassionate man. Like most in the religious community, he has spoken out forcefully against Arizona's immoral new "law" that is nothing more than an attack on the humanity of those who have sought a home and a life in America. While all agree that immigration reform is badly needed, human attack dogs and "camps" are not part of the answer. "Illegal" or not, a sick immigrant is welcome at St. Joseph's Hospital, even if the Diocese must foot the entire bill. God's Mandate to love all as one means charity for all.

It also means forgiveness, in this case, for Margaret McBride. She has spent a long career doing God's Own Work on earth, and even if you believe that she has erred in this heartbreaking moment, I believe her Catholic Ministry should continue.

In a world in which many, if not most people walk past the poor and suffering without a second's thought, Margaret McBride heard God's Call to Love and made answering it her life's work. I pray that Bishop Olmsted will deeply reflect on all Margaret McBride has done in the Name of God and the Church, and reconsider his decision so that the poor may continue to feel the love of Sister Margaret McBride.

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Situations like this make me very very angry. It is precisely in this kind of case that pro life theology becomes murderous propaganda at the service of someone other than God.

Sister Margaret McBride may be excommunicated in the eyes of Bishop Olmstead. She is not in my eyes. Her decision and that of the hospital was the pro life decision. To state other wise is to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that one is nothing more that an irrational ideologue perfectly willing to execute mothers for the sake of the ideology. In my book withholding life saving treatment for no reason most certainly qualifies as a form of active execution. In this case not treating this woman would have been murder and undoubtedly left the hospital and it's individual medical personnel open to all kinds of malpractice liability issues. I wonder if Olmstead would have opened his coffers to pay off those law suits. Somehow I doubt it.

Using Patients And Catholic Hospitals For The New Evangelization

In the Catholic Health Care System the ethical decisions of the beginning of life and the end of life are the Bishops, not yours, not an ethics committee.

Reproductive Crisis? Do Not Proceed to a Catholic Hospital

Angela Bonavoglia - Hffington Post - 6/702010

So many things are galling about Phoenix Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted's excommunication of Sister Margaret McBride, a member of St. Joseph's Hospital Ethics Committee, for approving the termination of the life-threatening, 11-week-old pregnancy of a 27-year-old mother of four that it's hard to know where to begin. But surely one of the most urgent issues this case raises is the danger faced by any woman who sets foot in a Catholic hospital in the midst of a reproductive crisis.

Just to recap, late last year a critically-ill pregnant woman was brought into St. Joseph's suffering from pulmonary hypertension. Her pregnancy posed such a burden to her heart and lungs that carrying it to term almost certainly would have killed her. Sister Margaret approved the decision of the physicians, the patient, and her family to terminate the pregnancy.
When Olmsted learned that this procedure had taken place, all hell broke loose. Without a scintilla of empathy or sympathy for the dying woman and her family, Olmsted said: "The direct killing of an unborn child is always immoral, no matter the circumstances." Since the abortion was not "indirect" (i.e., the byproduct of another procedure necessary to save the mother's life, such as removing a cancerous uterus), the correct moral action, according to Olmsted and the Phoenix diocese, was this: Let the mother and the fetus die.

We do not know how often such decisions come up in Catholic hospitals. Nor do we know if any go the other way -- that is, the beliefs of the Olmsteds of the Church prevail and discharge is followed by a funeral. What we do know is that Catholic hospitals, charged with abiding by the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, pose a real danger to women's health and lives.

"One of the most troubling areas is in the treatment of reproductive emergencies," says Lois Uttley, director of the MergerWatch Project, which works with communities facing Catholic-non-Catholic hospital mergers to preserve reproductive health services. A miscarriage in progress is an example of the emergencies Uttley is referencing. When it happens so early in pregnancy that the fetus cannot survive, the pregnancy has to be terminated quickly. Unfortunately, explains Uttley, in some Catholic hospitals, this isn't what happens; the fetal heartbeat has to stop before doctors can do the procedure.

The disturbing findings of a report published in late 2008 in the American Journal of Public Health bear this out. The researchers set out to explore the impact of residency abortion training on the medical practices of a sample of ob-gyns. In the course of conducting their interviews, they got an unexpected glimpse into the conflicts posed by the Directives for physicians attempting to manage miscarriages.

One doctor working at a Catholic hospital reported receiving a woman whose pregnancy "was very early, 14 weeks," with "a hand sticking out of the cervix," indicating that "clearly the membranes had ruptured and she was trying to deliver." Because there was still a fetal heart rate, the ethics committee refused to approve the abortion; they sent the woman to another institution 90 miles away. (This scenario could easily happen in large Western States where Catholic hospitals are frequently the only source of medical care in smaller communities and the next hospital really is ninety miles away. It's one thing when this happens because a hospital doesn't have the expertise or equipment, but refusing an emergency procedure any doctor could do is a different story.)

Another doctor, at an academic medical center, reported that a Catholic-owned hospital called to ask her to accept a pregnant miscarrying patient who was already septic and hemorrhaging. She urged them to do the uterine aspiration themselves, but they refused. That doctor accepted the patient and did the procedure, but saw this case as a form of "patient dumping." She reported the hospital for an Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act violation. (As well she should have.)

Obviously and fundamentally, the question is this: Why does a woman lying at death's door have to worry about whether a procedure that will save her life violates the so-called "ethical" Directives of a religion she doesn't belong to or long ago abandoned, Directives that treat women as disposable delivery systems for new humans, while flying in the face of standard, approved medical practice?

One answer is that the original conscience clauses, approved by Congress after the passage of Roe v. Wade, have been bastardized. They now apply not only to people -- physicians and nurses who oppose abortion -- but to institutions whose "consciences" trump not only the patient's own conscience, but also violate her right to informed consent and to medically indicated care. (If Catholic hospitals can't in their 'conscience' provide basic emergency care they should close their doors to all but like minded Catholics.)

We need more research into how often and in what ways physicians compromise patient care as a result of the Catholic Directives. But for now, the experience of the nameless, faceless, pregnant woman who Bishop Olmstead would have sentenced to death (rather than having her live "the rest of her existence having had her child killed," which is how the diocesan statement put it) is a cautionary tale.

Unless you are a deeply devoted Catholic and want your local bishop to make your most intimate medical decisions, when the ambulance pulls up, be ready. Have your own ethical and moral directive saying: Do Not Take Me to a Catholic Hospital. If for no other reason than this: there may not be a Sister Margaret in the house. (This decision coupled with the recent Directive 58 on palliative care, which also ignores patient desires irrespective of religious affiliation, is more than reason enough to carry such a card.)

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The medical ramifications for Catholic hospitals and their patients has actually been a bigger deal to me than the excommunication of Sr. McBride. Decisions made which place the conscience of an institution over the direct wishes of patients may not matter much on the East Coast but it is a big deal in larger states with few communities that are big enough to support multiple hospitals. In many cases the first medical hospital opened under the auspices of a Catholic missionary group and it is still the only hospital. The idea of a ninety mile transport of a critical patient under these guidelines is all too real.

Out in the West we all come to terms with the fact these situations may very well happen to us and that we may in fact die in transit. But I don't think too many of us women are prepared to die in transit because the local Catholic hospital places fidelity to the dictates of the USCCB over the reality of their ability to save our lives.

I still maintain that this was a dictatorial political move on the part of Olmstead and had nothing to do with pastoral concern. Why else fail to mention that Canon Law also calls for the excommunication of the parents who must have made the final decision? Why single out McBride if this was not strictly for the purposes of reigning in Catholic hospitals, to force them to comply to USCCB directives. I also wouldn't be surprised if Olmstead and his pro life absolutist saw this situation as another potential legal battle in restricting access to legal abortion.

In general the abortion debate centers around the availability of legal abortion as a means of birth control. The debate rarely gets into the 'life of the mother' end of things. This is the loophole that absolutists see as the beginning of the slope that leads to full legalization. If a legal case can be made for Catholic hospitals which closes this loophole, it's another legal victory in the war to make abortion legal in the abstract but impossible in reality. This is exactly the kind of case which pro lifer's would love to take before this current Supreme Court. It would hardly shock me if this Court decided an institutional conscience trumped a woman's right to life.

The USCCB and the Vatican have been using the US Catholic medical system to leverage the American political system. It started first in the Terry Schiavo case and resulted in Directive 58, which was based on the personal opinion of John Paul II. Olmstead has taken this one step further in Phoenix. Not surprising that a bishop would assert his canonical authority over Catholic hospitals shortly after the Catholic Health Association took the opposite position from the USCCB on health care reform and it's supposed promotion of abortion. The CHA stand undercut this use of the Catholic health care system for the USCCB's 'evangelization' program.

This is a story that won't die because it shouldn't die. There are more agendas at work here than just whether or not Sr McBride deserved excommunication. In the meantime what's the life of one poor mother or the religious life of one poor sister when it comes to jamming USCCB ethical directives on the rest of us. So what if we die, or have to live on tubes until it bankrupts our family, it's for the good of our souls. In the meantime I have a directive which precludes Catholic hospitals for end of life care--for the good of my life.

I Seek Answers To A Fundamental Question

This is not true for orthodox bishops and Catholic Hospitals and pregnant women.

The previous post precipitated a really good discussion about some of the salient points and questions involved in Bishop Olmstead's decision with regards to revoking the Catholic status of St Joseph's Hospital.  Since the Catholic Health Association has come out in defense of the hospital, I am quite sure we haven't heard near the last on Olmstead's decision.  In the linked article there is mention of a similar situation in Baker, Oregon involving Bishop Robert F. Vasa. The following is taken from Wikkipedia:

In February of 2010, according to a December 21, 2010 Catholic News Service online article about the status of another formerly Catholic hospital, Bishop Vasa had stated that St. Charles Medical Center in Bend, Oregon, located within the Baker Diocese, "had "gradually moved away" from the church's ethical directives and can no longer be called Catholic. As a result of that decision, Mass is no longer celebrated in the hospital's chapel and all items considered Catholic were removed from the hospital and returned to the church. The hospital retained the St. Charles name and a cross remains atop the building."

What I find interesting about Vasa is that he too is a protege of Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska.  Like Olmstead, Vasa is considered very orthodox and places abortion on the pinacle of the Catholic moral pyramid.  He has stated that those who support any form of abortion are guilty of heresy.
It looks as if the proteges of Fabian Bruskewitz have decided their very own personal mission is to take on the Catholic Healthcare system in the US and in the meantime the USCCB stays silent.  I don't find that silence very surprising given they have never censured Bruskewitz in any way for his refusal to adhere to the Dallas Charter.  He is the only bishop who has refused and he was quite snarly and deprecating in his refusal:

Some woman named Patricia O'Donnell Ewers, who is the chair of something called 'A National Review Board for the Protection of Children and Young People,' has said that her board 'calls for strong fraternal correction of the Diocese of Lincoln.' The Diocese of Lincoln has nothing to be corrected for, since the Diocese of Lincoln is and has always been in full compliance with all laws of the Catholic Church and with all civil laws. Furthermore, Ewers and her board have no authority in the Catholic Church and the Diocese of Lincoln does not recognize them as having any significance. The words attributed to Ewers seem to confirm the suspicion that the members of her Board are unfamiliar with Catholic teachings, Catholic ecclesiology, and even the basic rudiments of the Catholic Catechism. Rather than concerning themselves with the Diocese of Lincoln about which they appear completely ignorant, Ewers and her colleagues would occupy themselves in a better way by learning something about the Catholic religion and the traditions and doctrines and laws of the Catholic Church. The Diocese of Lincoln does not see any reason for the existence of Ewers and her organization.

For Bruskewitz, Olmstead, and Vasa the sole issue of importance seems to be their own unchallenged authority in their own dioceses. It doesn't matter what the issue might be, eventually it comes down to their right to exercise sole authority in their diocese.  They are their diocese as is amply evident in the language used by Bruskewitz in the above quote. Too bad there is no such protocol for bishops using the papal "we".

But I have a different question.  It's a question stemming from the discussion on the previous post.  It's about original sin and it's effects.  I was taught original sin was present at conception as a result of the sexual activity involved in conception--hence, Mary was conceived without original sin. However, when I looked it up in the current catechism as it's found on the Vatican website I found that although we are BORN with original sin no one knows how it's transmitted:

403  Following St. Paul, the Church has always taught that the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination towards evil and death cannot be understood apart from their connection with Adam's sin and the fact that he has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the "death of the soul".

The next paragraph then goes on to say no one knows how original sin is transmitted, but it's most certainly part of human nature.  Which of course means something different than being born with original sin.  This is more like saying original sin is part of our very DNA.  And yet the way these orthodox bishops go on about abortion, placing the fetus in a category of life all it's own, I am led to believe birth somehow triggers the effects of original sin, which up until that point have been dormant or something.  I don't even want to get into the line original sin is the 'death of the soul", but I suspect some day I will.

So it turns out there must have been a change in conceptualization of the transmission of original sin from one described in terms of inheritance to one in which we are unsure of it's transmission but we all suffer it's consequences the minute we draw a breath.  Hence it becomes possible to make a somewhat logical case that the pre born state is somehow more innocent than the born state.  From there it could follow that pregnant women commit heresy if they act on the thought their own lives are equal to the fetal life within them and deserving of the right to continue in circumstances such as in the Phoenix case.

Guess what, I don't buy this at all, but I am beginning to understand why there might be such a disconnect between those of us who were catechized in one notion of original sin and those who are catechized in the current thinking which was published under JPII's authority in 1992--well after the abortion wars started.

I can't help but wonder if the addition of a huge grey area in original sin was purposely done in order to promote a theology which places a woman's life subordinate to fetal life in order to strengthen the Catholic abortion case.  Wouldn't be the first time such a thing has happened and I doubt it will be the last, but in the meantime women are at risk and the disconnect between the Catholic medical community and Episcopal authority will only get wider.

Catholic Religious Tyranny Takes A Mother's Life In Ireland

Irish Times photo by Brenda Fitzsimmons of protesters Wednesday night outside Ireland's Dail

 

 

The following is a very very sad story. It should be read by every woman of child bearing age in the US, because if Roman Catholic bishops and Evangelical Pro Life proponents ever get their theocratic way, this situation could and most like will happen in all our hospitals, and not just Catholic ones.

 

Savita Halappanavar was not Irish and was not Catholic, but like many Irish Catholic women she found Catholic hospital care neither hospitable nor caring.  Not when it comes to pregnant women.  For them the heart beat of a non viable fetus holds their lives hostage to the absolutism of Catholic abortion teaching.  The following is from the Irish Times.

Woman 'denied a termination' dies in hospital

 Kitty Holland and Paul Curren - Irish Times - 11/14/2012
Two investigations are under way into the death of a woman who was 17 weeks pregnant, at University Hospital Galway last month.
Savita Halappanavar (31), a dentist, presented with back pain at the hospital on October 21st, was found to be miscarrying, and died of septicaemia a week later.
Her husband, Praveen Halappanavar (34), an engineer at Boston Scientific in Galway, says she asked several times over a three-day period that the pregnancy be terminated. He says that, having been told she was miscarrying, and after one day in severe pain, Ms Halappanavar asked for a medical termination.
This was refused, he says, because the foetal heartbeat was still present and they were told, “this is a Catholic country”.
She spent a further 2½ days “in agony” until the foetal heartbeat stopped.

Intensive care

The dead foetus was removed and Savita was taken to the high dependency unit and then the intensive care unit, where she died of septicaemia on the 28th.
An autopsy carried out by Dr Grace Callagy two days later found she died of septicaemia “documented ante-mortem” and E.coli ESBL.

A hospital spokesman confirmed the Health Service Executive had begun an investigation while the hospital had also instigated an internal investigation. He said the hospital extended its sympathy to the family and friends of Ms Halappanavar but could not discuss the details of any individual case.
Speaking from Belgaum in the Karnataka region of southwest India, Mr Halappanavar said an internal examination was performed when she first presented.
“The doctor told us the cervix was fully dilated, amniotic fluid was leaking and unfortunately the baby wouldn’t survive.” The doctor, he says, said it should be over in a few hours. There followed three days, he says, of the foetal heartbeat being checked several times a day.
“Savita was really in agony. She was very upset, but she accepted she was losing the baby. When the consultant came on the ward rounds on Monday morning Savita asked if they could not save the baby could they induce to end the pregnancy. The consultant said, ‘As long as there is a foetal heartbeat we can’t do anything’.
“Again on Tuesday morning, the ward rounds and the same discussion. The consultant said it was the law, that this is a Catholic country. Savita [a Hindu] said: ‘I am neither Irish nor Catholic’ but they said there was nothing they could do.
“That evening she developed shakes and shivering and she was vomiting. She went to use the toilet and she collapsed. There were big alarms and a doctor took bloods and started her on antibiotics.
“The next morning I said she was so sick and asked again that they just end it, but they said they couldn’t.”

Critically ill

At lunchtime the foetal heart had stopped and Ms Halappanavar was brought to theatre to have the womb contents removed. “When she came out she was talking okay but she was very sick. That’s the last time I spoke to her.”
At 11 pm he got a call from the hospital. “They said they were shifting her to intensive care. Her heart and pulse were low, her temperature was high. She was sedated and critical but stable. She stayed stable on Friday but by 7pm on Saturday they said her heart, kidneys and liver weren’t functioning. She was critically ill. That night, we lost her.”
Mr Halappanavar took his wife’s body home on Thursday, November 1st, where she was cremated and laid to rest on November 3rd.
The hospital spokesman said that in general sudden hospital deaths were reported to the coroner. In the case of maternal deaths, a risk review of the case was carried out.
External experts were involved in this review and the family consulted on the terms of reference. They were also interviewed by the review team and given a copy of the report.

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As I write this there are major protests occurring in Ireland and elsewhere.  More are scheduled for the weekend. Irish legistlators who mandated the fetal heart beat rule, the very one used in American Catholic hositals, never thought a thing like this could happen.  Not in Catholic Ireland.  Well it did, and it can happen again, and it can happen in any Catholic hospital whose staff let their bishop make their medical decisions for them.

It is the very kind of situation that prompted Phoenix's St Joseph hospital to act on their own initiative and save the life of the mother when the fetus couldn't survive with or without the mother.  For saving a life a bishop excommunicated the director of the ethics board.  St Joseph's is no longer a Catholic affiliated hospital by order of the same bishop. They are free to act on accepted medical ethics. I have no doubt that Ireland will re evaluate both it's legislation regarding abortion and it's foundation in inhumane Catholic absolutism.  This was a woman who held no Catholic beliefs but still died needlessly because of Catholic beliefs.  That seems fundamentally wrong in a modern democratic nation. 

It makes me sick that in this case, and I grant it's unique, that a woman lived three days in agony because a medical staff refused to act on their certain medical knowledge because a law was based on a moral absolutism which took any medical decisions out of their hands.  That is unless they wanted to do the truly humane and Christian thing and break the law.  They should have. 

 

Jamie Manson Hits A Homerun.

This is taken from Catholica. AU.  Australia is another Western country where the laity may have had enough.  Tom McMahon is an American married priest whose essays in Catholica.Au are well worth reading.

This is a solid, powerful statement from someone who is tired of the way things are progressing in the Church.  I wish I had written it, but brothers and sisters, it sure does give voice to my own insight and anger.  And yes, some of that anger is self directed.  The entire NCR article is here.


..........The St. Patrick’s saga is but one example of the fascinating fear that many Catholics seem to have of calling church leaders to accountability the way they would elected officials, educators, and other non-clerical folk. This double standard that Catholics have in dealing with the clergy, I believe, is a result of the internalized clericalism that the laity inherited as part of their Catholic inculcation. (especially us cradle Catholics.)


Critics of the institutional church frequently point to the corrosive arrogance of the Catholic clergy as the root cause of so much abuse of power. It is important, however, to consider the extent to which the clericalism of the laity enables these abuses to take place, and to reflect on the multitude of ways this phenomenon affects a spectrum of Catholics, including some of our most progressive voices.

I have seen the effects of lay clericalism among professors at Catholic colleges and universities, who fret about discussing controversial issues about gender and sexuality in an academic forum. Tenured scholars, who are exponentially more educated than most Roman Catholic priests, can quickly become terrified of the reactions of bishops to their academic programs. (It broke my heart and almost my spirit, to see what Morlino's mandatum and Focus students did to one of my most cherished priest professors.)

I have seen lay clericalism in parishes considered “prophetic” because of their commitment to social justice, service to the poor, and welcoming of marginalized Catholics. And, yet, in many cases these progressive voices will not challenge the parish priest, even when he makes decisions that compromise a parish’s legacy of advocacy.


I know many lay women and men who have labored on parish staffs and have suffered the fruits of lay clericalism. Regardless of a lay minister’s education level, years of experience, and ministerial gifts, parishioners almost always have a submissive “preferential option” for the priest -- even if they disagree strongly with his policies and practices. A lay person’s degrees and pastoral presence are no match against the power of simply being “Father.”  (Or your Eminence.)

So often it is the clericalism of the laity, rather than the clericalism of the clergy, that undermines the power of the laity in our church.

No one knows what the future holds. People are waiting to see how the ordinariate in England progresses, and what the Church of England does next. But what remains with me is the joyful relief and commitment of these newcomers. At last, they feel, they are understood and wanted. 

Though many have rejected the paternalism of church teachings, especially on issues of sexual morality, so many Catholics have not been able to wipe away the residue of experiencing the Catholic clergy as a disapproving parent, capable of banishing us from the love of God. (The same attitude is extended to "the Church."

In the comments section of one of the NCR reports on the Ratigan case, several readers noted that Hess would surely be fired eventually for exposing both a predator priest and the mishandling of the case by a bishop who is a favorite of traditionalists.

Responding to this claim, an anonymous commentator, seemingly connected with St. Patrick’s, responded emphatically: “If this principal catches any grief over this[,] a full riot will occur at St. Pat's[.] I will help incite it. We will not let mis-conduct by the diocese punish our excellent school and its stellar leader.”
I pray that this person’s convictions will find support within St. Patrick’s lay community.

By risking their relationship with the institutional church in order to uphold a layperson of integrity, the laity of St. Patrick’s have the opportunity to join the growing ranks of Catholic communities that refuse to collude in the hierarchy’s abuse of power, like the administration of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, Ariz.

As the tales of the institutional church’s deception and negligence continue to mount, lay Catholics must stop making themselves subservient to their imagined notions of the power of the hierarchy, and must instead allow themselves to be channels of the power of God that is made manifest through sacrifice, courage, and truthfulness. 

They must recognize how their internalized clericalism may be impeding their prophetic participation in the Spirit’s unfolding work in our church.

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I have just a few things to add to what Jamie has written.  I told a friend of mine that the Finn fiasco in Kansas City seems to have ignited real honest anger in a lot of  people.  I don't know why that would be, except that Finn sort of proves even the most devout and pious and traditionally conservative of bishops is not any different than the most liberal and secular.  When it comes to the priesthood, for almost all of our bishops,  there is no bridge too far when it comes to valuing priests over the laity.  But in point of fact it might just be Finn's unbelievable comment about not having enough priests that was the spark that brought out all this anger.  There is no rational reason Catholicism has a priest shortage. None.  This one idiotic statement of Finn's, used to justify his failure to act in the case of a real problem priest,  may just actually be the bridge too far.

I now really strongly believe the Church has lost the laity in the West.  It's not a question of when the Church will fold it's tent, but rather, when the laity will recognize the vast vast majority of us have already had enough, we just couldn't admit it, but now are getting ready to act.  The new question is what happens now?  Well, there is a gathering of laity in Detroit over Pentecost weekend, June 10-12.  I suspect the Spirit will be blowing pretty strongly in Detroit that weekend.  I wish I could go, but the Spirit is sort of suggesting I stay where I'm at and honor some other commitments. I will be thinking, praying, and following it very closely.  There's an anger rising through out the Catholic West, and it's not against secularism.  It's against clericalism.  It just has to change and permanently.

For me personally there was another NCR article that had even more impact.  It's this one on the Anglican Ordinariate.  It was this paragraph at the end of the article: 

No one knows what the future holds. People are waiting to see how the ordinariate in England progresses, and what the Church of England does next. But what remains with me is the joyful relief and commitment of these newcomers. At last, they feel, they are understood and wanted.

I just couldn't compute that one thousand Anglican's are made to feel 'understood and wanted' at the expense of tens of millions of Catholics, both men and women, who don't feel either understood or wanted.  In my book that's abusive.  That's clericalism protecting clericalism.