Christian Pipe Smokers

Evangelical pastor Francis Chan went viral, as in the sermon Chan shared about Communion and his discovery of the scriptural and historical basis for transubstantiation — that the bread and the wine become the literal Body and Blood of Christ.

The sermon was maligned by many Protestants and praised by many Catholics, with speculation as to whether Chan is moving toward a conversion to Catholicism. Chan is an internationally recognized preacher and author, and former pastor of Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, CA, so his sermon came as a shock to many in the Evangelical world.

Chan began his sermon by sharing, “God has taught me so much in the last month or two. I feel like I’m on another level, like I’m so excited about the future because I feel like there’s nothing in store for me but greater and greater intimacy with God.”

He then acknowledged that, “There were some things about Communion that always bothered me when I read about it in Scripture.” Chan described the Scripture passages that did not fit in with his understanding of Communion as an Evangelical, and explained how he began to study the Early Church. Through this he discovered the scriptural and historical basis of Communion as the literal Body and Blood of Christ. Below is a clip of the full sermon:

► Show Spoiler

Tuttleview:

(Clip) Holy Communion, the Reason for the Gathering of the Church by Francis Chan [YouTube: 3.5 min]

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Brandon Vogt is a bestselling author of eight books and the founder of ClaritasU. (Credit: Courtesy to Crux)

[Editor’s Note: Brandon Vogt is a bestselling author of eight books and the founder of ClaritasU, which trains Catholics how to talk about their faith, especially hot-button issues. He works as the Content Director for Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. Vogt’s work has been featured by several media outlets including NPR, FoxNews, CBS, EWTN, Vatican Radio, Our Sunday Visitor, National Review, and Christianity Today. Vogt serves as a consultant to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Evangelization and Catechesis. He’s also on the board of the Society of G.K. Chesterton and serves as President of the Central Florida Chesterton Society. He spoke to Charles Camosy about his new book, What to Say and How to Say It: Discuss Your Catholic Faith with Clarity and Confidence.]

Camosy: Your forthcoming book, What to Say and How to Say It: Discuss Your Catholic Faith with Clarity and Confidence, comes after your award-winning and bestselling book Why I Am Catholic (and You Should Be Too). Can you tell us a little a bit about the journey that led you to this new book? What prompted you to write it?

Vogt: Sure! My previous book (Why I Am Catholic) was designed to make a positive case for Catholicism, especially to atheists, agnostics, and “nones,” those who don’t identify with any religion. The goal was to show how the Catholic faith is true, good, and beautiful, and why everyone should consider it.

This book approaches things from the other end. It responds to the most common reasons people give for not being Catholic, whether they doubt God exists, question the Bible or the Eucharist, or balk at the Church’s sexual moral teachings. So, it’s more a defensive resource. After my first book, lots of Catholics became more comfortable making the positive case for Catholicism. This book helps them answer the toughest objections they’ll hear in response.

I noticed that you ordered the chapters in such a way that the topics on God, Sacred Scripture, and the Eucharist come before topics on morality and ethics like abortion, sexuality, and gender. Can you tell us something about why you ordered the topics this way?

Yes, that was intentional. It’s simply the way evangelization should always proceed — from God, to Christ, to the moral life. Many people want to jump straight to debating abortion, same-sex marriage, or transgenderism, because those are admittedly urgent, contentious issues. But when it comes to evangelization, that’s the wrong starting point. The starting point is God and his objective order, then Christ and his Church, and then finally the moral life (notably, this is precisely how the Catechism of the Catholic Church is arranged.)

So, the order is very important. Suppose a non-religious friend sees you going to Mass, or Eucharistic adoration, and can’t make sense of what appears to be you worshiping a piece of bread. You want to help them understand, so you begin by referring to Jesus’ words in John 6 about the Eucharist, but your friend might raise the obvious question, “But the Bible is just full of myths, and historians aren’t even sure Jesus even existed. Why should I trust what the Bible says?” Well, you might be taken aback, but from there you could share good reasons to trust the Gospels, especially when they suggest Jesus is the divine Son of God, but that would only raise another question from your friend: “Well, how can I believe that Jesus is God when I’m not even sure whether God exists?” So, you see how if you start at the wrong end of the path, assuming things the other person doesn’t already believe, you’ll have to keep going backward before taking even one small step forward. That’s why it makes sense to start with God, then move to Christ and the Church, and then the moral issues.

A hundred years ago, you could be pretty confident that most Americans you spoke with believed in God or trusted the Bible. So, you could skip those steps. But that’s not true today. That’s why those fundamental topics appear first in the book. Increasingly, people are not just denying the Eucharist — they’re denying God exists at all, or that miracles are possible. So that’s where we need to start, with the basic foundational objections.

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(Credit: Pixabay)

[Editor’s Note: Clare McGrath-Merkle, OCDS, DPhil, is a philosopher of religion and author of the 2018 book, Bérulle’s Spiritual Theology of Priesthood: A Study in Speculative Mysticism and Applied Metaphysics. She also earned an ABD status in spirituality, focusing on the priesthood, an MTS, and an MA from St. John’s College, Annapolis. She spoke to Charles Camosy.]

Camosy: You’ve done a lot of work on the theology of the priesthood. Can you give us the short version of your central view or a couple central ideas that could give Crux readers some insight into how you are thinking about this topic?

McGrath-Merkle: My work has been focused mainly on the theology of the priesthood and its possible role, if any, in the crisis of sexual abuse and cover-up. The causes of the crisis are, of course, varied, but I have wanted to try to understand how this theology might have somehow contributed to a clerical identity prone to the abuse of power.

The understanding I’ve come to is that what we think of as the official theology of the priesthood is actually a 400-year-old revolutionary one, linked to clerical formation spirituality. Its underlying spiritual theology has influenced the training of seminarians up until Vatican II and has had a major resurgence since the 90’s. Interestingly, it hasn’t been of much interest to most systematic theologians.

This theology was proposed in the early 17th century by a little-known cardinal-Pierre de Bérulle, the founder of the French School of Spirituality, and is a rather psychologically and spiritually unhealthy one. Leading up to my research on the possible historical roots of the crisis as found in this theology, I explored some current serious psychosocial maladaptions in priestly identity in a 2010 article.

Arguably, Bérulle’s innovations have contributed to an unhealthy priestly identity and culture over centuries, principally through both an over-identification with Christ and an exaggerated sacrificial spirituality.

What was behind these innovations?

Bérulle wanted to form a new kind of priest during a time when clerical corruption was still rampant in France, a half century after the Council of Trent’s reforms. He particularly wanted to defend the Church against Protestant objections to the necessary role of the priest in the sacrifice of the Mass.

Interestingly, he made major departures from tradition when he tried to answer Protestant Reformers on their own terms — who had rejected St. Thomas Aquinas, particularly his conceptualization of the sacramental character of the priesthood.

If I could boil it down to one central idea, Bérulle asserted that the priest is not just an instrument of Christ, as Aquinas asserted, but is somehow connected to Christ as a part of His Person. In fact, Bérulle proposed that priests pray constantly so that they could give over their person to Christ, the Incarnate Word, so that He could then replace His Person with theirs.

In terms of pious rhetoric today, the idea that the priest is in some kind of essentialist relation to Christ is defended by insisting there is an “ontological” difference between the priest and laity. The word “ontological” merely points to something having to do with being. Many documents, books, and popular articles on both the theology of the priesthood and priestly spirituality are available today that refer to this “ontological” difference between priests and the laity. But, if it’s used to denote an essential difference, it’s metaphysically impossible, because if a priest’s essence changed, he would no longer be human.

Bérulle’s priestly identity is very different than the priestly identity proposed by Pope St. Gregory the Great — a more humble, service-oriented but still cultic vision of the priest, which I have also explored as one model for renewal in a 2011 article. Gregory’s pastoral manual served the Church for a thousand years before the Berullian priestly identity and spirituality took over.

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A nurse at a drive up COVID-19 coronavirus testing station set up by the University of Washington Medical Center wears a face shield, mask, and other protective gear as she waits by tents, Friday, March 13, 2020, in Seattle. (Credit: Ted S. Warren/AP)

As the world faces the unprecedented effects of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, thorny moral questions are arising.

From every level and sector of society, people are asking: What is the right thing to do?

From mundane issues such as how much toilet paper is too much toilet paper, to the life-and-death decisions being made in hospitals in northern Italy, ethical dilemmas abound.

Joseph Meaney is the president of the Philadelphia-based National Catholic Bioethics Center, and he told Crux that the Catholic moral framework is “centered on willingness to make sacrifices for others.”

What follows are excerpts of his conversation with Crux.

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Crux: First of all, this is probably the most drastic international event since World War II — with huge sacrifices being asked of people. Are these sacrifices justified?

Meaney: In a word yes. The Catholic moral framework is centered on willingness to make sacrifices for others. There are many people whose lives can be saved by taking extraordinary measures. These strong measures are justified and even necessitated by the real potential for overburdening the health sector, especially intensive care capacities, in various countries.

It has to be said, however, that effectively shutting down huge sections of modern economies comes at a tremendous cost. The ethical analysis of what we should do as societies needs to take into account the potential for more deaths resulting from the loss of employment and the economic hardships and potential civil disorder that will result from an extended disruption of the normal activities of nations.

One of the problems associated with the COVID-19 pandemic is the large number of hospitalizations which — as we see in Italy — can overwhelm healthcare systems. This leads to major ethical questions, primarily: Who gets help? What must be taken into consideration when making these decisions.

There is a medical-moral duty to deliver care, so no one should be refused medical help. The agonizing problem that is currently confronting Italy, and potentially other countries soon, is that certain very intensive therapies cannot be given to more than a certain number of patients at a time. There are only so many ventilators available, for instance. A just form of triage may need to be put in place. The medical term “triage” refers to sorting patients on the basis of their immediate treatment needs while keeping in mind their chances of benefiting from available therapies.

Succinctly speaking, objective criteria must be used to give the most limited intensive therapies to those most in need who can still benefit from them. It is tragic when a patient has so many organ system failures that they are extremely unlikely to survive, and it would also be wrong to prioritize these patients for the limited number of ventilators over other seriously ill patients who would likely survive if given this chance. Similarly, it would be unacceptable to place a patient on a ventilator when they could clearly survive without one and when others are at grave risk of death if they cannot receive this medical care.

I add that everything must be done to increase the quantities of scarce medical equipment that is needed at this time. Also, compassionate care, including pain medication, must be provided to all patients, even if they cannot receive all the therapies we would wish to provide.

COVID-19 disproportionately affects the elderly. The median age of fatal cases in Italy is 79.5. However, there are still a large number of younger people needing ventilation in the hospital as they recover. This has led to some proposals to refuse ventilators for people over a certain age. Given the limit of resources, and the relative expectation of recovery based on age, can that be ethical?

No. It would not be ethical to triage a person out simply on the basis of their age, disability, sex, etc. It is true that some elderly patients may not meet objective criteria for ventilator access in a crisis situation because they are dying and it is impossible to save them, but that can also be true of younger patients. We have to be very mindful of not discriminating. The slippery slope goes downhill very rapidly once one starts on that road.

[…]

Courtesy of: Robert A.J. Signer Ph.D., assistant professor of Medicine at the University of California, San Diego and Gary Warshaw, Art Director

[Gerald J. Beyer offers a guest post for CMT, reflecting on the practice of solidarity in the era of COVID-19. This post is partly a response to Kelly Johnson’s post “Pandemic and the Common Good” from yesterday.]

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In a pandemic solidarity requires being apart.

I have spent much of my career thinking and writing about solidarity. Generally, we think of solidarity uniting us, bringing us together in a common cause. Never did I imagine that I would write that solidarity requires being apart. But with rapidly rising coronavirus infection and death rates across the globe, the time has come.

According to Catholic social teaching, solidarity requires physically being with the marginalized and oppressed, in order to learn from them and understand their painful and unjust situations, and to work side-by-side with them in order to overcome their problems. As St. John Paul II put it, solidarity is learned through “contact” not “concepts.” However, in order to confront the coronavirus, which could possibly cause more than 2 million deaths in the United States alone without swift and determined action according to Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, solidarity demands of most of us that we stay physically apart from most people for an extended period of time.

Meanwhile, as of today beaches in Florida are still packed with sun worshipers. Some pubs reportedly remain open in Boston to celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day. Only today after Governor Northam of Virginia banned gatherings of 100 people, Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr. reluctantly conceded that Liberty University will have to move to online classes only (even though multitudes of universities had already done this early last week). Even some prominent politicians have recently opined that we should go out to “local restaurants” and “pubs” as long as we are “healthy.” Apparently, most Americans have not altered their lifestyle in the face of the coronavirus, and rising proportion (44%) do not see it as a “real threat” according to a March 17th poll.

Solidarity holds that each person is “really responsible for all,” as St. John Paul II stated in Sollicitudo Rei Socialis. Christianity maintains this is the case because Jesus Christ is truly present in every one of our brothers and sisters. We should therefore be concerned about everyone’s health and wellbeing, not just our own and our immediate family’s. As St. Paul reminds us, if one member of the body suffers, “all suffer together with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26, New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition).

In a society like the United States, where excessive individualism has overtaken American social consciousness for decades, as political scientists such as E.J. Dionne explained in his book Our Divided Political Heart, this understanding of solidarity has been largely rejected. The fact that many people are willing to prioritize their own “freedom” to enjoy pleasures right now over the lives of the most vulnerable to coronavirus makes this clear. In a situation like the present, solidarity with the vulnerable should be freely chosen. It should not take mandates from elected officials to stop the risky socializing that some people are still engaging in.

Why Social Distancing and What is It?

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What Social Distancing Is Not and When It Can’t Be Practiced.

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The River Church is shown Monday, March 30, 2020, in Tampa, Fla. The Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office has warned the megachurch about violating a safer-at-home order in place to limit the spread of coronavirus. The church is continuing to hold Sunday church services despite warnings for social distancing in order. (AP/Chris O'Meara)

Tampa, Fla. — Florida officials have arrested the pastor of a megachurch after detectives say he held two Sunday services with hundreds of people and violated a safer-at-home order in place to limit the spread of the coronavirus.

According to jail records, Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne turned himself in to authorities March 30 afternoon in Hernando County, where he lives. He was charged with unlawful assembly and violation of a public health emergency order. Bail was set at $500, according to the jail's website.

Hillsborough Sheriff Chad Chronister said in a news conference March 30 that he negotiated with the attorney of Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne to turn himself in to authorities in Hernando County. His church is located in Tampa.

Chronister said his command staff met with The River at Tampa Bay Church leaders about the danger they are putting themselves — and their congregation — in by not maintaining appropriate social distancing, but Howard-Browne held the services. The Sheriff's Office also placed a digital sign on the road near the church driveway that said “practice social distancing.”

“Shame on this pastor, their legal staff and the leaders of this staff for forcing us to do our job. That's not what we wanted to do during a declared state of emergency,” Chronister said. “We are hopeful that this will be a wakeup call."

The church has said it sanitized the building, and the pastor said on Twitter that the church is an essential business. He also attacked the media for “religious bigotry and hate.”

The county and governor’s orders require gatherings, including those held by faith-based groups, be fewer than 10 people to limit the spread of COVID-19. A live stream of the March 29 three-and-a-half-hour church service showed scores of congregants. In a Facebook post, Howard-Browne said coronavirus “is blown totally way out of proportion.”

[…]

Pastor Silas Malafaia delivers a sermon, transmitted live through social networks, inside the empty Assembly of God Victory in Christ Church, amid a lockdown to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sunday, March 29, 2020. "I’m asking, which is worse: coronavirus or social chaos?” Malafaia, one of Brazil’s most prominent pastors who leads the Assembly of God Victory in Christ Church, told The Associated Press. “I can guarantee you that social convulsion is worse.” (Credit: Leo Correa/AP)

RIO DE JANEIRO — Like every Sunday, Brazilian Pastor Silas Malafaia took the stage of his Pentecostal temple in a middle-class Rio de Janeiro neighborhood. But this week, he wore a T-shirt instead of a blazer and, behind the three cameras broadcasting to his legion of YouTube followers, were thousands of empty seats.

Brazil’s churches have landed on the front lines of a battle between state governors, who have introduced quarantine measures designed to contain spread of the new coronavirus, and President Jair Bolsonaro, who is actively undermining them and says a broad lockdown will ultimately destroy Brazil’s economy.

Brazil’s politically powerful evangelicals helped bring the far-right president to power in the 2018 election and Bolsonaro is letting them know they aren’t forgotten, political analysts said. The most influential pastors are backing the president’s radical coronavirus stance while begrudgingly respecting governors’ orders, and either canceling services or moving them online. There are signs some churches are disobeying.

“I’m asking, which is worse: coronavirus or social chaos?” Malafaia, one of Brazil’s most prominent pastors who leads the Assembly of God Victory in Christ Church, told the Associated Press. “I can guarantee you that social convulsion is worse.”

It mirrors the argument of Bolsonaro, who has urged governors to abandon lockdown and likened COVID-19 to a “little flu” that mainly threatens the elderly and those with preexisting health problems. On Sunday, he hit the streets wearing no gloves or mask and joined multiple gatherings, in defiance of recommendations from his own health ministry.

Bolsonaro, a conservative Catholic who married an evangelical in a service Malafaia administered, has zeroed in on the need to reopen the churches. “God is Brazilian,” he told people on Sunday, O Globo newspaper reported.

[…]

“The media say thousands and thousands of people are going to die,” Malafaia said in the interview. “All these catastrophic predictions, I want to reject them.”

Malafaia argued European-style confinement measures cannot be replicated in Brazil, where millions survive in the informal sector and a day without work can mean a day without food.

On social media, some pastors downplayed health risks posed by COVID-19, claiming one cannot catch the virus inside a house of God, but could be infected at home if failing to attend services.

[…]

This Monday, March 23, 2020, file photo shows medical supplies and a stretcher displayed before a news conference at the Jacob Javits Center in New York. (Credit: John Minchillo/AP)

ROME — The COVID-19 pandemic has caught entire communities and nations off guard, and the best way to tackle this global crisis is together as a global family, the Pontifical Academy for Life said.

“An emergency like that of COVID-19 is overcome with, above all, the antibodies of solidarity,” the academy said in a seven-page “note” published March 30 on its website.

With experts in the field of science and ethics, the papal academy wished to “contribute its own reflections” in order to foster “a renewed spirit that must nourish social relations and care for the person” during this pandemic, it said.

All 163 papal academicians were asked to take part, and the “Note on the COVID-19 Emergency” was the result of that consultation, the academy said in a news release. Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, academy president, gave Pope Francis a copy of the text during a private meeting in the Apostolic Palace March 30.

“The pope confided in me two of his concerns: how to help right now, especially the weakest; and for the future, how to come out of this (crisis) strengthened in solidarity,” including on a global level, the archbishop said in the written statement.

Titled, “Pandemic and Universal Brotherhood,” the text highlights what ethical standards must prevail when dealing with the care and support of both individuals and communities in health care as well as more “existential” concerns that often go ignored in a world increasingly focused on individual rights, isolationist national interests and a flood of data divorced from the people it represents.

It also includes understanding how to talk about God in this moment of crisis, it said, because “We cannot interpret the sufferings that humanity is going through according to the crude scheme that establishes a correspondence between (doing wrong) against the divine and a ‘sacred reprisal’ undertaken by God.”

The pandemic does not represent God’s wrath, because the disease affects most frequently and tragically the weakest and most vulnerable — the very people God loves and cares for the most, it said.

[…]

Even though hospitals and health care personnel are being faced with a tragic limit or shortage of resources, rationing must be avoided, the academy said.

Dramatic and painful decisions regarding treatment and care “cannot be based on differences in the value of a human life and the dignity of every person, which are always equal and priceless.”

[…]

Politically, nations must take a broader view that goes beyond national interests because responses cannot be limited to what happens within one’s own borders if they are to be effective, it said.

Viruses cannot be stopped, it said, “without effective cooperation and effective coordination, which addresses the inevitable political, commercial, ideological and relational resistances firmly.”

[…]

Individual freedom must be “collaborative for the common good,” and people and nations must resist the tendency “an epidemic can nourish to see in the other an ‘infectious’ threat.”

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Emergency medical technicians in New York City transport a coronavirus patient March 24, 2020. (CNS photo/Reuters/Stefan Jeremiah)

Washington — Casting the coronavirus pandemic as a moral issue, a Georgetown University forum explored how Catholic social teaching could be brought to bear. Because classes had been suspended at Georgetown, the forum was billed as an "online public dialogue."

"This crisis forces us to make lots of decisions, personal ones and civic ones," said Sr. Carol Keehan, a Daughter of Charity, who is a onetime nurse and former president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association. "Catholic social teaching is based on the belief of the God-given dignity of each person and the Gospel admonition to love our neighbor as ourselves."

Keehan added those mandates are "echoed in the founding documents of our country," particularly that "all are created equal" and "entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They provide a touchstone to evaluate critical decisions and perhaps avoid dangerous mistakes," she said.

"All will benefit greatly from using the principles of Catholic social teaching" during the pandemic, Keehan said, especially in making sure that no one is "left out or last in line during this pandemic. We look to Catholic social teaching and those founding documents" to make decisions. "Everyone deserves protection, the unborn to the elderly, the richest to the destitute, those born here and those who just arrived."

[…]

As a nation, "I think we've remarkably fallen down in a way I'd never expect," said John Monahan, senior adviser for global health to the president of Georgetown, and former counselor to the secretary and director of Global Health Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the H1N1 flu pandemic in 2009.

The pandemic "reveals the torn and fragile nature of or safety net," Monahan added. "Our unemployment insurance system covers way too few workers. Other countries have chosen to have far more robust social safety nets that workers can fall back on."

Keehan expressed discomfort over the "who lives and who dies" question bandied about in recent days. "If you've been in health care for any amount of time, you get a case of 'we have a patient with such and such a problem, we've got get him in the intensive care unit.' And the intensive care unit is fully and everybody in the intensive care unit we assume is supposed to be in the intensive care unit," she said.

"We've had these kinds of challenges before. It's never easy. We all work diligently to serve the needs of every patient," Keehan noted, adding, "We'll have to deal with these questions on an increased basis."

[…]

A priest and relatives pray as a victim of the COVID-19 is buried by undertakers at the Almudena cemetery in Madrid, Spain, Saturday March 28, 2020. In Spain, where stay-at-home restrictions have been in place for nearly two weeks, the official number of deaths is increasing daily. (Credit: Olmo Calvo/AP)

The European Un𝗂on’s top Christian leaders have called for the continent to show “our joint commitment to the European project and to common European values of solidarity and unity, instead of capitulating to fear and nationalism” during the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic.

The appeal came in an April 2 letter signed by Luxembourg Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the president of the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Un𝗂on (COMECE), and French Reformed Church pastor, the Rev. Christian Krieger, the president of the Conference of European Churches (CEC).

Hollerich and Krieger said the coronavirus crisis has “exposed the vulnerabilities and apparent certainties of our politics, economics and societies,” but at the same time are allowing people to “re-discover our common humanity as brothers and sisters.”

“We would like to pray with deep gratitude for all those who serve their fellow human beings with empathy and warmth by supporting them selflessly: medical doctors, nursing staff, providers of basic services, law and order forces — and persons involved in pastoral care. We wish to pray for all the people who are suffering during this crisis — in particular the sick, the elderly, the poor, the excluded and children experiencing family instability. We also remember all those who passed away in our prayers,” the letter says.

Turning to the European Un𝗂on, the two men called on the member states “to continue acting in a determined, transparent, empathic and democratic way.”

The letter comes as the COVID-19 crisis has caused fractures within Europe. Italy and Spain, the worst hit of the EU countries, have called on the bloc to issue so-called “coronabonds” — debt issued jointly by all the EU member states — to help stabilize their economies. They have been rebuffed by Germany, the zone’s economic powerhouse, and the Netherlands, another wealthy EU state.

[…]

In their letter, Hollerich and Krieger said they prayed for wisdom and strength among leaders at both national and European level.

“This is the time for all of us to demonstrate our joint commitment to the European project and to common European values of solidarity and unity, instead of capitulating to fear and nationalism,” the religious leaders write.

“Concrete expressions of this our shared European responsibility could, for example, be burden-sharing in the care for the sick, a facilitated exchange of medical materials, creative measures alleviating social, economic and financial shocks, as well as reinforced international cooperation and humanitarian assistance to support weaker health systems in needy regions of the world,” the letter continues.

[…]

Trinity Washington University in Washington donates a ventilator and other medical items to Children's National Hospital March 26. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)

News of life-saving ventilators being rationed, hospitals issuing blanket "Do Not Resuscitate" orders and politicians suggesting that some human lives are expendable in service of the economy have highlighted the importance of an ethical framework for decision-making during the coronavirus pandemic.

What used to be theoretical, textbook exercises have become real-life dilemmas for overburdened or soon-to-be-overburdened health care systems.

But Catholic bioethicists say clinical triage decisions, while important, are only part of a number of broader ethical concerns, including preventative strategies such as paid sick leave, truthful communication from political leaders and assistance with payment for testing and treatment.

Concern for the common good and for the most vulnerable populations become even more urgent during a pandemic, Catholic ethicists told NCR. And preparedness and prevention are as much moral issues as are end-of-life decisions.

Nearly 1,400 bioethicists and health leaders said as much in a letter to the White House and U.S. Congress dated March 21. The letter was organized by the New York-based Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute, and included a number of prominent Catholic signatories.

The letter demanded more government action to "enhance the public's health, protect the health of individuals, especially the vulnerable, and preserve the nation's vitality."

It urged the federal government to ensure the manufacture and distribution of needed supplies, commit to payment for COVID-19 care and treatment, and build a comprehensive, trustworthy communication strategy. Vulnerable populations such as those who are homeless or in prisons and immigrant detention centers must be a priority, the letter said.

"Responses to pandemics reveal the values and beliefs of a nation," the letter said. "Our belief in the equal worth of all persons compels these recommendations, but so too does a more utilitarian calculus, that recognizes that if we fail to protect others, our own safety and the nation's vitality are jeopardized."

The letter added: "Ethics requires that moral agents act to prevent preventable harms, that we recognize the equal worth of all members of society, and that we take special care of the most vulnerable among us."


Jesuit Fr. Andrea Vicini, professor of moral theology at Boston College, said the pandemic is a reminder that health is a social good. (Boston College/Lee Pellegrini)

A pandemic such as the COVID-19 one is a reminder that health is not an individual good but a social one, said Jesuit Fr. Andrea Vicini, a medical doctor and professor of moral theology at Boston College.

"My health is the health of the other, and the health of the other is my health," Vicini told NCR. "If we become aware of that connection, then we have to ask what we are doing to implement health services that benefit everyone."

Although the Hastings Center letter did not use the Catholic language of "the common good," its broader vision of justice in the face of the pandemic is helpful, said Vicini, who signed the document. "By helping to address the specifics of this situation, we want to continue to implement the vision of what type of society we want and how to care for humanity."

[…]


Shawnee Daniels-Sykes, professor of theology at Mount Mary University, Milwaukee, said even before the coronavirus pandemic, a patient's prognosis as well as any advance directives about their end-of-life care must be taken into account before deciding to use ventilators or other invasive procedures. (Mount Mary University)

[…]


Brian Kane, senior director of ethics at the Catholic Health Association, hopes the coronavirus pandemic prompts a larger conversation about how medical resources are spent. (Catholic Health Association)

[…]

wosbald wrote: ↑

Tue Apr 07, 2020 11:02 am

+JMJ+

Intra-Thread Trackbacks: pg 116 / pg 116 / pg 116 / pg 116


Triage and ventilator rationing not the only ethical issues in pandemic, bioethicists say [In-Depth]

Trinity Washington University in Washington donates a ventilator and other medical items to Children's National Hospital March 26. (CNS/Tyler Orsburn)

News of life-saving ventilators being rationed, hospitals issuing blanket "Do Not Resuscitate" orders and politicians suggesting that some human lives are expendable in service of the economy have highlighted the importance of an ethical framework for decision-making during the coronavirus pandemic.

What used to be theoretical, textbook exercises have become real-life dilemmas for overburdened or soon-to-be-overburdened health care systems.

But Catholic bioethicists say clinical triage decisions, while important, are only part of a number of broader ethical concerns, including preventative strategies such as paid sick leave, truthful communication from political leaders and assistance with payment for testing and treatment.

Concern for the common good and for the most vulnerable populations become even more urgent during a pandemic, Catholic ethicists told NCR. And preparedness and prevention are as much moral issues as are end-of-life decisions.

Nearly 1,400 bioethicists and health leaders said as much in a letter to the White House and U.S. Congress dated March 21. The letter was organized by the New York-based Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute, and included a number of prominent Catholic signatories.

The letter demanded more government action to "enhance the public's health, protect the health of individuals, especially the vulnerable, and preserve the nation's vitality."

It urged the federal government to ensure the manufacture and distribution of needed supplies, commit to payment for COVID-19 care and treatment, and build a comprehensive, trustworthy communication strategy. Vulnerable populations such as those who are homeless or in prisons and immigrant detention centers must be a priority, the letter said.

"Responses to pandemics reveal the values and beliefs of a nation," the letter said. "Our belief in the equal worth of all persons compels these recommendations, but so too does a more utilitarian calculus, that recognizes that if we fail to protect others, our own safety and the nation's vitality are jeopardized."

The letter added: "Ethics requires that moral agents act to prevent preventable harms, that we recognize the equal worth of all members of society, and that we take special care of the most vulnerable among us."


Jesuit Fr. Andrea Vicini, professor of moral theology at Boston College, said the pandemic is a reminder that health is a social good. (Boston College/Lee Pellegrini)

A pandemic such as the COVID-19 one is a reminder that health is not an individual good but a social one, said Jesuit Fr. Andrea Vicini, a medical doctor and professor of moral theology at Boston College.

"My health is the health of the other, and the health of the other is my health," Vicini told NCR. "If we become aware of that connection, then we have to ask what we are doing to implement health services that benefit everyone."

Although the Hastings Center letter did not use the Catholic language of "the common good," its broader vision of justice in the face of the pandemic is helpful, said Vicini, who signed the document. "By helping to address the specifics of this situation, we want to continue to implement the vision of what type of society we want and how to care for humanity."

[…]


Shawnee Daniels-Sykes, professor of theology at Mount Mary University, Milwaukee, said even before the coronavirus pandemic, a patient's prognosis as well as any advance directives about their end-of-life care must be taken into account before deciding to use ventilators or other invasive procedures. (Mount Mary University)

[…]


Brian Kane, senior director of ethics at the Catholic Health Association, hopes the coronavirus pandemic prompts a larger conversation about how medical resources are spent. (Catholic Health Association)

[…]

In this file photo taken on May 18, 2019, Matteo Salvini holds a rosary as he gives his speech during a rally organized with leaders of other European nationalist parties, ahead of the May 23-26 European Parliamentary elections, in Milan, Italy. Salvini — a divorced father of two children by two different women — kisses rosaries, invokes the Madonna and quotes St. John Paul II at political rallies in a bid to rally Italian Catholics behind his nationalist message. (Credit: Luca Bruno/AP)

ROME — In a grim sign of the times, a man entered a parish church in Italy’s coronavirus-ravaged north over the weekend and threatened the pastor, demanding money. In a typical robbery, the thief would have worn a mask and gloves; this time he deliberately had neither, implicitly threatening to infect the priest if he didn’t pay up.

The man eventually was captured by police, but the climate of fear his attempted shake-down illustrates has proven far harder to arrest.

Against that backdrop, Pope Francis yesterday opened perhaps the most unusual Holy Week of all time. With Easter just days away, debate continues to swirl about how accessible churches and pastors should be on the holiest day on the Christian calendar — and, for that matter, whether Easter ought to be celebrated next Sunday at all.

Despite that, polarizing Italian politician Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right Lega party, called in a television interview Saturday for churches across the country to be open for Mass on Easter Sunday, saying it would be a chance to entrust the struggle against the coronavirus to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

[…]

The populist Salvini is well-known for invoking Catholic symbols, including praying his rosary of the Madonna of Medjugorje during sessions of parliament and brandishing it at political rallies, despite routinely clashing with church authorities and Pope Francis over issues such as immigration.

His proposal to open churches for Easter brought swift reaction, including priests who took to social media to express opposition.

[…]

A different proposal wouldn’t open churches for Easter ahead of a green light from health officials, but rather delay Easter altogether until that green light comes.

A number of Italian priests and clergy have reacted with interest to a call from the Rev. Kwabena Opuni Frimpong, a Presbyterian and executive director of the Alliance for Christian Advocacy for Africa, for churches in his native Ghana to set their own date for Easter this year at the end of a four-week national lockdown imposed by Ghana’s President Nana Akufo-Addo.

The idea is that because Easter is already a movable feast, varying each year according to the lunar calendar, in principle it could be delayed until conditions allow for people to return to church.

Supporters of not celebrating Holy Week under quarantine cite a 1988 document from the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Paschalis sollemnitatis, which held with regard to the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday: “Following a very ancient tradition of the Church, on this day all Masses without the people are prohibited.”

They also appeal to the Old Testament’s 2 Chronicles, chapter 30, which describes a decision by the King Hezekiah of Israel and his assembly to delay celebration of Passover by a month because “the priests had not sanctified themselves in sufficient numbers, and the people were not gathered at Jerusalem.”

“What sense does it make to celebrate Easter without the people?” said Father Gennaro Matino, a well-known priest and theologian from Naples.

[…]

German Jesuit Father Ulrich Rhode, however, a professor of canon law at Rome’s Gregorian University, is dubious.

“Theoretically it’s possible, but we don’t know the future of this epidemic and you can’t take for granted that it’ll be over by May or June,” Rhode said.

Practically, Rhode said, a postponed Easter also would mean an extended Lent, “which would create problems from a liturgical point of view.”

“Besides which, it should be said that Easter celebrates the risen Jesus, which is valid even in dark times such as this — in fact, maybe in such cases it’s truly a feast of consolation,” Rhode said.

While a back-and-forth about delaying Easter may continue, there’s no evidence Pope Francis is considering it.

[…]

Robert P. George. (Credit: Courtesy to Crux)

[Editor’s Note: Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has served as Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the President’s Council on Bioethics. He has also served as the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology. His books include Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality and In Defense of Natural Law. He spoke to Charles Camosy about the current COVID-19 pandemic.]

============================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================

[…]

Camosy: There is lots of discussion right now about which policies and practices may limit the spread of novel coronavirus so that our medical capacity is not overrun. But there is less discussion about what will happen if certain places in the United States run out of medical capacity to treat victims of this disease. Why do you think we aren’t talking more about this increasingly likely scenario?

George: Although our grandparents and great-grandparents experienced the Great Depression, it was followed by victory in WWII, superpower status, sending men to the moon, cultural hegemony, triumph in the Cold War (despite the debacle in Vietnam), and an extraordinary economic expansion. Although, alas, some of our fellow Americans have experienced deprivation — true want — most who are alive today have not.

Moreover, we have come to expect that we will ultimately prevail over adversity, whatever it is. We take it for granted that things will turn out alright in the end. We can scarcely believe that it’s possible that they won’t. When we hear about a possible catastrophe — such as running out of medical capacity in a pandemic — we tend to assume that “somebody will do something to make sure it doesn’t happen.”

Some protocols for rationing limited health care resources focus on the relative need of patients and their relative chances for getting better. Others focus on things like age, cognitive ability, and physical capacity. What sorts of ethical considerations should guide hospitals, medical groups, and other institutions who are trying to decide how they will distribute their limited medical resources?

At the core or foundation of the answer to just about every important ethical question is the principle of the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family. In making decisions — including hard, even tragic, decisions about distributing limited medical resources — it is critical that we treat every person as equal in inherent worth and dignity to every other person.

We must avoid the temptation to treat some as superior (and others as inferior) because, for example, they are young and strong (rather than old and frail) or able-bodied (rather than physically disabled or cognitively impaired). The temptation to discriminate invidiously will present itself - about that I’ll give you a money-back guarantee.

Some people will want to throw over the radical egalitarianism (all human beings are “created in the image and likeness of God”; “all men are created equal”) of the sanctity of life ethic and replace it with a “quality of life” ethic that is amenable to decision-making by utilitarian calculation. We must be firm in our resistance to anything of the sort.

If some institutions decide to ration health based purely on age or disability, might they face lawsuits for violations US civil rights law?

Yes, our federal civil rights laws (as well as many state statutes) forbid discrimination based on age or disability. To its credit, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Civil Rights, under Roger Severino, has already spoken forcefully about the applicability of these laws when it comes to the care of patients and the allocation of health care resources. I’m glad they are getting out ahead on these issues, because, as I noted, the temptation to discriminate invidiously will come.

Some people will say, “why should that Down Syndrome person be given a ventilator when it could be given to someone who’s not ‘retarded’ and who can contribute more to society?” A fully sufficient answer should be: “because in fundamental worth and dignity, the Down Syndrome person is every bit the equal of any other person.”

But for some people, that will cut no ice. But here is an answer that will: “Because federal law forbids discrimination based on disability and you or your institution will be sued or prosecuted if you engage in such discrimination.”

[…]

wosbald wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 09, 2020 9:49 am

+JMJ+

Intra-Thread Trackbacks: pg 116 / pg 116 / pg 116 / pg 116 / pg 116


Robert P. George: We must be ‘firm in our resistance’ to discrimination in COVID crisis [In-Depth]

Robert P. George. (Credit: Courtesy to Crux)

[Editor’s Note: Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. He has served as Chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and the President’s Council on Bioethics. He has also served as the U.S. member of UNESCO’s World Commission on the Ethics of Scientific Knowledge and Technology. His books include Making Men Moral: Civil Liberties and Public Morality and In Defense of Natural Law. He spoke to Charles Camosy about the current COVID-19 pandemic.]

============================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================================

[…]

Camosy: There is lots of discussion right now about which policies and practices may limit the spread of novel coronavirus so that our medical capacity is not overrun. But there is less discussion about what will happen if certain places in the United States run out of medical capacity to treat victims of this disease. Why do you think we aren’t talking more about this increasingly likely scenario?

George: Although our grandparents and great-grandparents experienced the Great Depression, it was followed by victory in WWII, superpower status, sending men to the moon, cultural hegemony, triumph in the Cold War (despite the debacle in Vietnam), and an extraordinary economic expansion. Although, alas, some of our fellow Americans have experienced deprivation — true want — most who are alive today have not.

Moreover, we have come to expect that we will ultimately prevail over adversity, whatever it is. We take it for granted that things will turn out alright in the end. We can scarcely believe that it’s possible that they won’t. When we hear about a possible catastrophe — such as running out of medical capacity in a pandemic — we tend to assume that “somebody will do something to make sure it doesn’t happen.”

Some protocols for rationing limited health care resources focus on the relative need of patients and their relative chances for getting better. Others focus on things like age, cognitive ability, and physical capacity. What sorts of ethical considerations should guide hospitals, medical groups, and other institutions who are trying to decide how they will distribute their limited medical resources?

At the core or foundation of the answer to just about every important ethical question is the principle of the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family. In making decisions — including hard, even tragic, decisions about distributing limited medical resources — it is critical that we treat every person as equal in inherent worth and dignity to every other person.

We must avoid the temptation to treat some as superior (and others as inferior) because, for example, they are young and strong (rather than old and frail) or able-bodied (rather than physically disabled or cognitively impaired). The temptation to discriminate invidiously will present itself - about that I’ll give you a money-back guarantee.

Some people will want to throw over the radical egalitarianism (all human beings are “created in the image and likeness of God”; “all men are created equal”) of the sanctity of life ethic and replace it with a “quality of life” ethic that is amenable to decision-making by utilitarian calculation. We must be firm in our resistance to anything of the sort.

If some institutions decide to ration health based purely on age or disability, might they face lawsuits for violations US civil rights law?

Yes, our federal civil rights laws (as well as many state statutes) forbid discrimination based on age or disability. To its credit, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Civil Rights, under Roger Severino, has already spoken forcefully about the applicability of these laws when it comes to the care of patients and the allocation of health care resources. I’m glad they are getting out ahead on these issues, because, as I noted, the temptation to discriminate invidiously will come.

Some people will say, “why should that Down Syndrome person be given a ventilator when it could be given to someone who’s not ‘retarded’ and who can contribute more to society?” A fully sufficient answer should be: “because in fundamental worth and dignity, the Down Syndrome person is every bit the equal of any other person.”

But for some people, that will cut no ice. But here is an answer that will: “Because federal law forbids discrimination based on disability and you or your institution will be sued or prosecuted if you engage in such discrimination.”

[…]

wosbald wrote: ↑

Mon Mar 16, 2020 2:43 pm

+JMJ+

Perceived Discrimination toward Christians is Highest Living Among Christians [In-Depth, Analysis]

[…]

I want to push on why people might believe such things [i.e. that Christians are under threat]. I suspect that they are mobilized from elite communication and are not the result of personal experience. One way of checking that out without communication data is to see if these beliefs cluster geographically. That is, the elite rhetoric above suggests that Democrats and the non-religious are the source of the discrimination, so is perceived discrimination more common in parts of the country that are more secular?

The analysis draws on newly released survey data from the Voter Study Group called Nationscape. We’re used to big datasets like the CCES, but this one is a monster. In 2019, the Nationscape is composed of 155,000 interviews. It’s amazing in some ways, limited in others, but helpful for this analysis. They adopted the PRRI scheme of asking, “How much discrimination is there in the United States today against each of the following groups?” The groups included Christians, Muslims, whites, Blacks, Jews, women, and men. I’m going to focus on responses about Christians for this post.

I thought I’d start by examining which religious groups think that Christians are discriminated against. Shown below, it’s no surprise that evangelicals — white or non-white — are the most likely to believe this, while religious minorities and nones are the least. Catholics, mainline Protestants, and Orthodox Christians are in between. It’s not as if groups reject that there is any discrimination — even atheists admit that there probably is “a little” — though evangelicals believe that there is somewhere between “a moderate amount” and “a lot.”



The following figure shows how much Christians within each state believe that Christians face discrimination. If Christians are persecuted by the non-religious, then Christians in Vermont and Oregon would be on top of the list. However, the opposite is true — the highest reported values come from Christians in Mississippi, Alabama, and Tennessee. The lowest rates are reported in the northeast — Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire. This is not the pattern that the elite rhetoric leads us to expect.



[…]