Category: Religion

Whose Rights Come First: Doctors’ or Patients’?

Medscape

Arthur L. Caplan

Hi. I’m Art Caplan. I’m at the Division of Medical Ethics at the NYU School of Medicine. Conscientious objection—everybody seems to be talking about it these days. What are the rights of physicians, pharmacists, nurses, or other healthcare workers to say that something may be legal but they refuse to do it?

This issue has come up particularly as more and more health systems are merging. You see Catholic hospitals merging with secular hospitals. Catholic hospitals have a huge presence in the American world of hospitals and nursing homes, probably accounting for 40% of all facilities. When mergers take place, whose values predominate? . . [Full text]

(Project response: Freedom of conscience in healthcare: “an interesting moral swamp?”)

Church supports conscientious objection for medical professionals in Nuevo Leon

Catholic News Agency

Monterrey, Mexico, Oct 30, 2019 / 05:19 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Rogelio Cabrera López of Monterrey said Sunday he supports the reform of the Healthcare Law in Mexico’s Nuevo Leon state allowing conscientious objection for doctors and nurses.

Speaking to the press Oct. 27, Cabrera said that “conscientious objection is a universally established right; I think that sometimes the problem is how it is understood or put into practice.” . . . [Full text]

Position Paper of the Abrahamic Monotheistic Religions on Matters Concerning the End of Life

The position of Abrahamic religions on end of life and palliative care

News Release

Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development

Yesterday 28 October at the Casina PIo IV in the Vatican, 40 representatives of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian faiths signed the joint Position Paper of the Abrahamic monotheistic religions on matters concerning the end of life.

Invited by the Pontifical Academy for Life, presided over by His Excellency Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia, the religious, including the Prefect of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development Peter K. A. Turkson, have committed themselves in 12 points to stating that euthanasia and assisted suicide are morally and intrinsically wrong and should be prohibited without exception. Any pressure and action on patients to end their lives is categorically rejected.

A very important point for the mission of the Dicastery is that concerning  Health Care Workers that states that no health care worker should be forced or subjected to pressure to witness directly or indirectly the deliberate and intentional death of a patient through assisted suicide or any form of euthanasia, especially when such practices go against the health care worker’s religious beliefs, because there should be always respect for conscientious objection to acts that conflict with a person’s ethical values. This remains valid, continues the Paper, even if such acts have been declared legal at a local level or by categories of persons.

Very significant, the joint declaration also addresses the spiritual and material accompaniment of the terminally ill and their families, as well as the use of medical technology at the end of life and the promotion of palliative care.

Alberta Catholic doctors fear erosion of conscience rights

Grandin Media

Andrew Ehrkamp

Many Catholic doctors in Alberta are worried that they will soon be forced to provide referrals for medically assisted suicide, says the head of the provincial St. Luke’s Physicians’ Guild.

Dr. Mary Ellen Haggerty says a recent Ontario court decision sets a precedent that will lead to a legal requirement that any doctor in Alberta must provide that referral. For Catholics, such a referral would make them morally complicit in the act itself. To date the doctors have been protected by the Charter rights to freedom of conscience and freedom of religion if they refused to participate in assisted suicide and euthanasia, as well as abortion and other controversial procedures. . . [Full text]

Varadkar invokes St John Henry Newman in conscience debate

Taoiseach was responding to Labour leader’s call for end to clerics ‘instructing’ politicians

The Irish Times

Marie O’Halloran

Catholic politicians should look to the comments of newly canonised Saint John Henry Newman when considering issues of conscience, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.

Mr Varadkar made his remarks after Labour leader Brendan Howlin highlighted comments by Catholic primate Archbishop Eamon Martin last month at the Kennedy Summer School.

Archbishop Martin said Catholic politicians in particular had a responsibility to support laws that “uphold the dignity of every person from conception to death”. He also cautioned against politicians leading “parallel lives compartmentalised in to spiritual and secular spheres”.

Mr Howlin suggested that this idea of Catholic politicians “has the potential to be deeply problematic” as Irish society becomes more pluralist and multicultural. . .[Full text]