In the News: Profiling, Prince, Peaceniks and more!
A round-up of recent religion news. Continue Reading →
Tag: aid in dying
In the News: Bernie, Bagels, Buddahs, and more!
A round-up of the week’s religion news. Continue Reading →
The Patient Body: Old Philosophical Certainties
“The Patient Body” is a monthly column by Ann Neumann about issues at the intersection of religion and medicine. Continue Reading →
The Danger of Winning
By Ann Neumann Is a revisionist history of abortion rights being used–by journalists, supporters, and lawyers–to curtail Supreme Court rulings on other rights like same sex marriage. Is “fear of the backlash” just a stubborn frame? Continue Reading →
The Conscience Clause: It's Not Just About 750,000 Hospital Employees
There’s much more at stake in the discussion about conscience clauses than who gets the bill for the pill.
By Ann Neumann
On January 20th Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that contraception would be covered free-of-charge in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the Obama administration’s stifled, delayed-release attempt at reforming health care. The announcement included an exemption “for churches and houses of worship, but not for other religious institutions such as hospitals, universities and charities.” Women’s rights groups cheered the decision, having feared the worst after the record of “compromise” this administration has established.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) did not cheer; they immediately orchestrated a campaign that included letters read at mass and heavy lobbying of conservative lawmakers and activists, peculiarly claiming that the decision was an affront to religious freedom. It was yet another sparkling demonstration of the access that bishops have over health care legislation. The Pope himself took the opportunity of a visit with U.S. bishops and military leaders on January 19th to lament the erosion of religious freedom, saying:
When a culture attempts to suppress the dimension of ultimate mystery, and to close the doors to transcendent truth, it inevitably becomes impoverished and falls prey… to reductionist and totalitarian readings of the human person and the nature of society.
Prohibit families from deciding when to have children, he threatened, or risk the specter of totalitarianism! Or rather, Comply with Catholic teaching and be free! Continue Reading →
The Conscience Clause: It’s Not Just About 750,000 Hospital Employees
There’s much more at stake in the discussion about conscience clauses than who gets the bill for the pill.
By Ann Neumann
On January 20th Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that contraception would be covered free-of-charge in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the Obama administration’s stifled, delayed-release attempt at reforming health care. The announcement included an exemption “for churches and houses of worship, but not for other religious institutions such as hospitals, universities and charities.” Women’s rights groups cheered the decision, having feared the worst after the record of “compromise” this administration has established.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) did not cheer; they immediately orchestrated a campaign that included letters read at mass and heavy lobbying of conservative lawmakers and activists, peculiarly claiming that the decision was an affront to religious freedom. It was yet another sparkling demonstration of the access that bishops have over health care legislation. The Pope himself took the opportunity of a visit with U.S. bishops and military leaders on January 19th to lament the erosion of religious freedom, saying:
When a culture attempts to suppress the dimension of ultimate mystery, and to close the doors to transcendent truth, it inevitably becomes impoverished and falls prey… to reductionist and totalitarian readings of the human person and the nature of society.
Prohibit families from deciding when to have children, he threatened, or risk the specter of totalitarianism! Or rather, Comply with Catholic teaching and be free! Continue Reading →
The Bishops, Proving Me Right
I shouldn’t take any credit for predicting the actions of the most predictable institution on the globe, but I’ll take it anyway. I made the case at The Nation last week that the USCCB’s recent statement on aid in dying would lead to broader crack-downs on end of life rights, privacy, and awareness. I was right. According to a new report at Crisis Magazine and a press release from the bishops today, they’ve targeted Catholic professors at four universities: Georgetown, Marquette, Santa Clara and Boston College. How did the bishops identify the academics they wanted to discredit? Writes Patrick J. Reilly at Crisis:
The professors’ efforts came to light during a Cardinal Newman Society investigation in 2005, following news reports of a legal brief filed by 55 bioethicists in opposition to “Terri’s Law,” a Florida measure that empowered Gov. Jeb Bush to ensure that the comatose Terri Schiavo received water and nutrition. As reported in “Teaching Euthanasia,” an exclusive report in the June 2005 issue of Crisis, multiple professors at Catholic universities had taken positions on end-of-life issues that seemed to conflict with Vatican teaching.
I Think I Know Jack.
by Paul Creeden:
Dr. Jack Kevorkian is the subject of You Don’t Know Jack, an HBO film, which premiered on the cable network in April. Al Pacino plays “Dr. Death,” as Kevorkian was dubbed in 1956 after he performed, in his role as a pathologist, a photographic survey of the pupils of dying patients. Kevorkian has a documented fascination with death and with helping people accept their deaths as an opportunity for medical advancement and he was reportedly fired from a pathology job in 1958 for suggesting that prison inmates be encouraged to volunteer their organs for medical experimentation. Continue Reading →