His Eye is on the Sparrow

This song was made "famous" in Sister Act II, but it was first made famous by Mahalia Jackson.
This version is from the film "Member of the wedding", sung by Ethel Waters.

I chose the Ethel Waters version, because in her biography, she tells the story of her mother, lying on an old sofa, suffering and in pain from cancer and bedsores.

At that time, Ethel was a mere teenager, and could do little. But on her day off, she'd come over and help clean the room, and her mother would always ask her to sing this song.

In the US, the "culture of death" is being pushed more and more, usually using euphemisms, by the present administration, and if they manage their takeover of the medical system, expect in a few years that people will literally be dying because some bureaucrat decides they don't need care (because their "quality of life" index is too low).

But here in the Philippines, ordinary folks can manage to eat (albeit low protein meals of mainly rice) but can't afford medicine.

So our cook's husband, a tricycle driver, died of his high blood pressure (before we moved here) because they couldn't afford medicine for it.

Similarly, children die of infections, and moms die from lack of prenatal care or in childbirth, because they don't want to spend money. Even one of our distant cousins died slowly and painfully because of a fractured hip that was treated with bedrest, mainly because the delay in getting money wired from the US for the surgery resulted in pneumonia and bedsores that made surgery impossible.

When I worked as a doctor, at least I was busy and felt I was doing something to help: serving the Lord with my hands. But since retirement, I do little work--no one seems to want to "sponsor" me as a part time physician, and I can't work full time because of my husband, even if I knew the language well enough to see patients.

But now I have time to think and ponder on all the misery of the world, and all I can do is pray.

Sigh.

Stigmata and plumbing

It caught my eye that the other day was the feast of St. Veronica Guiliani.
(picture from wikipedia)

The name caught my eye, because her last name, of course, is similar to that of NYCity's ex mayor.

Frank Sheed once quipped that the definition of a saint was "an Italian virgin" and sure enough, she fits the description. Lots of pious stuff and a version of the stigmata to boot:

. In 1694 she received the impression of the Crown of Thorns, the wounds being visible and the pain permanent. By order of the bishop she submitted to medical treatment, but obtained no relief. ,

Usually at this point I quip she needed thorazine, not a doctor.

Oh yes: and you can still see her body, which in the way of saints and mummies, is still intact and lying in a church at her monastery in Italy.

But like St Teresa of Avila, she was quite down to earth, suggesting she might have been a mystic, not a schizophrenic or a hysteric.

For example:
In 1716 she was elected abbess and whilst holding that office enlarged the convent and had a good system of water-pipes laid down, the convent hitherto having been without a proper water supply.

I suggest that we mount a movement to make her the patron saint of Plumbers.

Right now, the patron saint of plumbers and builders is St. Vincent Ferrer, who never laid a brick in all his life, so I think they need their own saint.

how to remove ticks

Happy year of St. Paul

St. Paul's bones ( or someone else from the first century) is buried in his tomb.

and they found a picture of him from the catacombs dating back to 300 AD

Father Z has more stuff HERE

bye bye Pro life Ethicists

Years ago, I cornered a famous medical author at one of his speeches, and we discussed the teaching of medical ethics. I thought it was pretty bad (maybe because my readings were limited to the "apologists for death" who were on the forefront of the new medical ethics.


I thought I had a novel idea on how to instruct medical students in how to learn medical ethics: Why not use great literature?

For example, Tolstoy's story the Death of Ivan Ilych in mind: Where the dying man goes through denial and pain, while his family starts avoiding him.

It's a painful story, but in it we see a lot of the problems our patients face in death and dying.

The author looked at me strangely, and said: well, yes, but that's what the (then recently elected) Bush Bioethics panel had done.

And indeed, looked up the website I found that they had published such a book, and had excerpts on the web, that uses excerpts from great literature to begin discussions to teach ethics in medical schools or classes.

I should have guessed things had improved, since Bush had appointed Leon Kass to head the Ethics office.

I had read Kass' books, which were subtle and profound; they always made me think about consequences that are easily overlooked in our soundbite world.

And if you go to the website you will find a lot of books there, that not only discuss the dilemmas of medical ethics, they do so from various points of view and include discussions of subtle "side effects" on society that would result from embracing technological changes.

Such subtleties are often dismissed by more pragmatic, who pooh pooh such cautionary observations as exaggerated.

Later, Kass was replaced with Professor Pelligrino.

Pelligrino had long been marginalized by the bioethics community because he was pro life: He even defended the Hippocratic oath (how gauche).,

The opposition however to the bioethics panel was loud and constant, and it didn't help that some people who should know better took Kass' and others opinions out of context to call them right wing.

In actuality, the Bush panel had a wide range of ethicists, from all sides of the spectrum; but of course in this day and age unless one is 90% pro death it won't pass the test of the NYTimes.

But worry no more.

Two weeks ago, President Obama fired the entire Bioethics panel even though the panel was due to be changed next fall.

Apparently, those pushing the health agenda of the president couldn't wait, perhaps because they are busy pushing a health care bill that will probably be passed unread by Congress in the near future, as other recent bills on global warming and economic recovery were passed unread.

The the reason given for the sudden and premature firing of the entire panel was that the president didn't want a group to philosophically discuss all those nuances: he wanted a group that would develop a "shared conscensus", according to Reid Cherlin, a White House press officer.

President Obama will appoint a new bioethics commission, one with a new mandate and that “offers practical policy options,” Mr. Cherlin said.

But of course one suspects what this means is that the Obama administration wants a Bioethics panel to give him ethical cover for his health care policies, not one that will discuss the pros and cons and maybe show the overlooked pitfalls of things like medical rationing, legalized abortion paid for by all taxpayers, or not treating the elderly and the handicapped if some bureaucrat decides their quality of life is too low.

One only has to look to the British Health care system, where the bureaucrats of the N.I.C.E.(National Institute of Clinical Excellence) make the guidelines on what treatment is allowed and what treatment is inadvisable according to their "quality of life" calculation.

Similarly when Hillary Clinton was pushing the Clinton health care plan in the 1990's, she told Congress that the plan wouldn't withhold any medical treatment from a patient "unless it would not improve their quality of life".

In other words, one can easily imagine the US version of NICE telling doctors who wished to treat an older person, a handicapped or a retarded citizen, that the treatment would not "improve their quality of life" at all: It would merely allow them to live their own life, which (by the standards of many so called ethical criteria) was inferior.

And Nat Hentoff remarked: Improve their quality of life? Where is it in the constitution that says the government has the right to decide who won't get treated because of their quality of life?

When the now defunct Clinton Health Care plan was being pushed, one red flag to it's eventual agenda was that most of the ethicists advising the plan were pro euthanasia and pro rationing.

So one now waits to see how "fair and balanced" the Obama Bioethics panel will be.

(Draft) Obama's weekend Culture of death moveI

the NYTimes is happy that the Bush appointees on the bioethics council have been removed.

the reason? Because it tended to be philosophical, and provided in depth discussion of nuances instead of issuing a "consensus" decision.

Actually, I've actually read the documents they issued, and they are indeed nuanced.

How gauche: That a bioethics council had nuances.

In Contrast President Obama wishes one that gives concrete opinions: helping the government give ethically defensible policy.

This has things upside down.

This hints that they will be (to use the phrase of Nat Hentoff) "Apologists for death", giving good reasons why one should withhold treatment from grandmom for the greater good of society or allow euthanasia using the phrase "choice".

One reason to dread such hijacking of philosophy is the quote from Thomas Murray of the Hastings Center, talking about quality control studies.

Uh, fellahs, that is economics under the guise of medicine, and it is not philosophy.

And for the last 20 years, the Hastins Center has been at the forefront of the idea of withhholding medical care according to one's quality of life.

One reason that I was against the Clinton health care plan is that the bioethicists behind their plan were openly behind such rationing for the handicapped and elderly, and some were behind euthanasia.

Arthur Caplan was even worried, mentioning that although these ethicists were not involved in promoting their pro rationing/pro euthanasia agenda back then, he worried what their invfluence could have in the near future.

Silencing the church

There have been a couple of hints of how the voice of the church will be silenced by government groups for speaking on moral issues.

For example, the lay group "Catholic Answers" was reported to the IRS because it printed a "Voters guide" on Catholic issues (without naming names). They were eventually cleared of this charge, but the IRS decided that when they sent an email in 2004 suggesting that Senator Kerry should not receive communion, (i.e. without mentioning that you shouldn't vote for him) it was being political, so they were fined. But we all know the "sin" of Catholic Answers: it's anti abortion stance. And they are now counter suing the IRS for harassment.

If the elites of the country have decided that the issues such as abortion or gay marriage are merely "political" issues, they can report you to the IRS, and even if you are not guilty, you are punished.

To do this, they use "astroturf" organizations (i.e. organizations that appear to be grass roots organizations but are actually started and funded by those with a political agenda, and actually have few real members except for professional activists). For example, the complaints against Catholic Answers was done by "Catholics for Free Choice".

What people don't realize is that the cost and emotional strain of a lawsuit, which can go on for years and cost an organization hundreds of thousands of dollars, is enough to dampen the will of most pastors and bishops to speak on serious moral issues.

But the state of Connecticut has gone one step further.

Awhile back the state legislature tried to pass a bill mandating that "lay" groups take over the finances of the Catholic church.

This obvious threat against the church's independence and the First Amendment was withdrawn after a lot of bad publicity.

But during the threat, the local churches encouraged their parishioners to demonstrate against the bill, and some even hired buses to help their parishioners to do so.

Ah HA!. A "gotcha" moment.

The state of Connecticut now is saying that this action (on which was spent a measly $8000 dollars)and the fact that their website asked people to write the legislature to oppose a gay marriage bill means that the diocese is now to be considered as a lobby, since by law any "organization" that spends over $2000 dollars petitioning the legislature is a Lobbying organization and has to register with the state and submit frequent reports on every contact with the legislature. Anyone who was "lobbying" would have to identify themselves by wearing a badge. And the Church could be fined if the office of ethics received enough complaints about the church illegally lobbying for political issues.

But, unlike other "lobbies", this is assuming the Catholic church is an organization, not a group with 87 parishes and over 400 thousand members. This fact led Tim Carney at the Washington Examiner muse that if the law stands, it would mean that every priest giving a sermon would have to wear a button saying "Lobbyist" if he spoke on moral issues from the pulpit, and mused who was going to monitor every Sunday mass to see that their rules are enforced?

Supposedly, the Catholic church is protected by the first amendment, but of course this means taking it to Federal court and spending a lot of money to pay lawyers: money that could better be spent elsewhere.

Nor does the threat against the First Amendment stop there: Fox News reports that one local radio host, Harold Turner, who publicized the issue, wrote on his blog that people should "take up arms" and "make an example" of those sponsoring the bill was arrested for inciting violence, even though these phrases are usually taken to mean take up signs in a demonstration, or make an example of them by removing them from office.

So how does the saying go?

First they came for the Catholics, then they came for the radio hosts, and then they came for...well, I don't know.

But if I owned one of those small Christian radio stations that are all over the AM dial, I'd be worried.
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thanks for the headsup from GetReligion Blog.