RANT - COUNTER RANT: KNOWING WHAT YOU REALLY WANT

“There should be a less moralistic choice.”  This was the opinion expressed by a minister in this weekend’s Akron Beacon Journal in the letters to the editor concerning a local hospital joining the Catholic Health Care system.  Like so many people, this minister has been hoodwinked into thinking that there is some sort of neutral position when it comes to ethics.  He does not want fewer morals as he thinks he does, but a different set.

 

Let us begin with toying with idea of if there is a God or not.  If one does not believe that there is a God, the basis of moral grounding changes dramatically even if, on the surface, they may seem the same as Christian.  If there is no God, then there is no Creator.  If all that there is has no intelligent design behind it, then it is a fluke.  If it is a fluke, then it has no real meaning.  If it has no meaning it really can’t progress toward anything – it is simply what it is.  If that is the case, then a human being is no more wonderful than a stone.  (Many people like this idea.) 

 

If all that is the case, then the case for goodness, for morals, is entirely based on a social contract.  The social contract will be largely shaped by those with power.  So “I won’t burn your house down if you don’t burn my house down,” holds as long as the two home owners agree to the contract and are able to enforce it.  But if there is no absolute good, breaking the contract may really make someone mad, but in the end it doesn’t matter.

 

With this is the groundwork, those without power begin to lose out – those without a voice – who cannot defend themselves.  Abortions become a right for the woman, using people in other countries to make cheap goods for us makes sense, marriage becomes about the right of happiness for adults rather than the good of the community and the raising of children, and porn becomes enshrined as free speech.  Following close on those heals could be physician assisted suicide, euthanasia, and less care for the elderly, the poor and the troubled.  Slowly the edges erode away so that it is possible to fall into an undesirable and therefore less protected (or not protected) category.  This lead John Paul II to refer to this modern swing in society as a culture of death.

 

With a God however there is a Creator.  With a Creator there is a giveness and a love for that which is created.  If something is loved (with far more than a feeling) it has purpose and a goal.  If it has a goal it has meaning.  If it has meaning it has value and that value is simply in the created’s being, not in their power or usefulness.  Concepts of “the good” and right and wrong have much more traction, are clearer, easier to defend, more universal, and are easier to rectify when they have gone off track.  The baby in the womb, the sick, the elderly, the parent with dementia, the foreigner, they all have value because they are, not because of how they benefit us.  It is a culture of life.

 

Now, to remain neutral is not to stay out of these arguments but to make your own metaphysical claims about the human person and his worth.  These will become the foundations of a philosophy that will have implications in civil law and civility.  It will burn Judeo/Christian capitol (instead of enjoying its fruits) and the nuetralist’s presuppositions will lead him toward the lessening of the value of life.  Staying neutral is not staying out of it, it simply warps the only two existing systems and acts as a transition out of one toward the other.

 

The good reverend on Sunday was not asking for “less morals,” for he will be left with the exact same amount of morals the day after his wish comes true as the day before.  What he wants is a different set of morals.  God help his grandchildren if he gets it.

DIE HARD

If you think living a good Catholic life is challenging you haven’t seen anything yet. Try dying Catholic. The whole concept of what it is to be dead or when it is time to die is becoming rather nebulous. Technology is taking off more quickly than ethicists can follow, healthcare protocols morph right before our very eyes, and – this is very important – health care professionals are less and less trained in what Catholics need to know about life and death and in some cases don’t care as we have seen with certain institutions in our area.

There are some very good places – outstanding places. There are also those that do the bare minimum and even less but none-the-less claim that they have “Catholic services” so that they can check the little box off on their list of services.

I said Mass at one place recently in a room divided by a fabric screen. We have to constantly send people to the other side of the screen to try to kindly ask staff persons to stop talking at the top of their lungs. The room is a major highway for foot traffic. It opens onto the kitchen, a stairwell, as well as two major hallways. As people burst out of the kitchen or the stairway clamping their hands on their mouths once they saw what was going on we tried to carry on with the Mass. I kept telling myself, “John Paul could deal with such distractions so can I. Just pray.” But every time I told myself that it would be Okay it seems the interruptions stepped up a notch. It was all I could do to hold my temper when sheets of drywall were carted through the back of the room.

But what are you going to do? Stop having Mass and punish the residents?

But I digress.

Back to dying: All of a sudden you as a family member are faced with a decision about the life of a loved one. The doctor has given you the diagnosis and has asked you to make a decision. The suggestions that he supplies may or may not be not be in keeping with Catholic beliefs. It may be more in keeping with hospital administration wishes. So what do you do? Call a priest? I hate to tell you that priests are not always that well informed in this rapidly changing field. Take a class? Well, it’s too late now. And to be honest Catholics are not great about wanting to learn about such things until they are actually facing them – and then it is often too late.

Or there is the case of one institution not too about a half hour from here where the chaplains were told to practice Raiki on their patients even if they did not desire it. It was for their own good of course. But Catholics avoid this because we are becoming involved in something and dealing with powers we want nothing to do with. (But because a person is dying it’s Okay to force it one them for their own good?!?!)

I’m a little hot today.

We are contemplating trying to find a way to help alleviate this problem at least at this parish. Thoughts are bubbling about having a seminar about Catholic bioethics for health care workers in the parish. It would also be swell to start a help line of trained bioethicists but there is the problem of funding. Who will pay for the staff, the phone, and the materials? We can’t pay by the answer like some websites. “For the answer to this problem log on and send us your credit card number.” Meanwhile grandma needs your help.

This is a bit scattered I know but there is a lot going on out there and not a lot of people on which to rely. Hopefully you will deal with a good and sympathetic institution – but just as likely you won’t. You simply have to know your stuff. But how do you prepare for any possible event? If you have suggestions they would be appreciated.

IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS

This post is being written specifically for those who think they do not need to read it. It concerns a certain body of knowledge that many people do not find it necessary to know at the present and figure that when the time comes, there will be plenty of knowledgeable people and handy resources to help them through. Such is not the case.

Most likely one day you find yourself in need of this information. Life will be going on somewhat normally and all of a sudden people will be looking to you to make a decision. If you are lucky you will have a few days to decide. If you are not, you will have someone standing in front of you looking at the second hand of his watch and saying, “We need a decision.”

The body of knowledge is bioethics. Or more specifically Catholic bioethics. At the very moment you need the information the most, chances are you will not have ready access to it. Not everybody thinks like you do and not everybody has the same intentions that you do. Some people are simply avoiding lawsuits. Some people are making money. Some people are very sincere but have different values from you. Some people do not care. Nobody is as invested in the relationship in which you are asked to make a decision as you.

At this point you do not want to just call a priest and ask, “What should I do?” You want to know “whys” and options and true teachings of Christ not something easily grasped in desperate moments. You want to be able to say to others who are emotionally involved, “This is why our decision is alright,” not just, “Father said so.”

We also do not have a bioethics “hot line” though that would be very cool. As we have less and less priests, they are less and less available to be able to sit by a phone 24 hours a day, seven days a week just in case they are needed at the hospital. It is sad but nonetheless a fact. Far too many “chaplains” at hospitals, nursing homes, and even many hospices do not get extensive training in care for Catholics. For many it is just a section in a workbook that they turn to and it may very well be that they are not very invested so as to be able to enlighten you and know fine points.

Until this situation is corrected it is time to arm yourselves with knowledge.

MAY YOU LIVE TO SEE FIFTEEN DAYS

It seems internationally scientists are trying to establish fourteen days as the amount of time a person needs to live after conception before they are considered to be a human being. This is a fortunate discovery. With this clear-cut determination that means that experiments and such things as the harvesting of stem cells can be performed with no hint of moral lines being crossed. Being several decades past this mark I find myself rather relieved. I do feel for the preforteenthday non-humans however. I picture them (not that, I suppose, there is a “them” yet) sort of like the turtles that are born on the beach in the hundreds of thousands only to find most of their number decimated by hungry birds as they make their way to the safety of the water.

I was conceived back in the day when human beings were still human beings those first fourteen days. Lucky thing that. It seems rather poor sportsmanship to chip off one’s humanity at the beginning of one’s life. It would be fairer to declare someone un-human, say, at the last fourteen days of their lives. At least then they could have enjoyed eating trans fatty, deep-fried, foods and watching television re-runs.

It isn’t that preforteenthdayers don’t have everything they need to be humans yet. Regular scientists, not those Catholic ones, have pretty much come to an agreement that everything is there for the totality of a human person at conception. Already determined is the color of your eyes, if you will have a button nose, and barring outside influences how athletic you will be. Which all goes to show that I was pretty much predestined to be bald and only moderately intelligent from the get go. Wicked thing that.

So it is, perhaps, that preforteenthdayers are simply too small, too un-people-like looking, and don’t yet pay taxes. Not that anyone would judge the worth of another human being simply by their productivity, looks, or monetary worth or political influence. We are past all that now. It is simply that they are non-human. This should not surprise us too much. This is a very handy designation used throughout all of history to help us understand that it is Okay to treat other non-beings in such a way. Since they are not humans, we are not doing anything wrong. This has been a particularly helpful thing when needing slaves or are fighting an enemy, or when needing to do human experimentation.

So if both regular and Catholic scientists want to do experiments which would destroy that which does not exist for the 13 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds, their cause is a noble one. This might possibly help bring quality of life to mankind – unless, of course, you happen to be in the unfortunate position of being one of the ones not to make it past 14 days. But regular and Catholic scientists alike doing so one second past 15 days, and you have what we call in the big, beautiful (relatively speaking), and tax paying world as murder.

Besides, if we didn’t make this distinction, what would we do with all of these tiny humans sitting around in freezer drawers everywhere? Those pesky non-humans would just be a nuisance if born. It would be like the tenth plague in reverse. It is only acting responsibly that scientist have learned not only how to create life outside of the womb, but have also found a way of disposing of those preforteenthday non-humans. I only wish nuclear scientists, both regular and Catholic, would do the same thing with nuclear energy waste. Maybe we could declare nuclear energy water and just dump it in the ocean. That might do the trick.