Tag: Douglas Farrow

Sacrificing hospitals, and freedom of conscience along with it

National Post

Douglas Farrow, Will Johnston

In 1639 three nuns got off the boat from France and began to build Hotel Dieu in Montreal, the first hospital in Canada. Over time, some 275 hospitals were built across our country by self-sacrificing Catholics who faithfully served the sick and dying out of love and compassion, without regard to their patients’ faith or lack of faith. Succeeding generations of Canadians have been grateful for the spiritual and physical care they have received at such places.

St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver is one of those Catholic hospitals. In keeping with its faith-based principles, it respects the Catholic sense of human dignity — meaning, among other things, that it does not perform abortions or participate in assisted suicide or euthanasia.

Ellen Wiebe, a physician who is also an abortion and euthanasia activist, together with a lawyer, Richard Owens, recently criticized St. Paul’s because it would not euthanize one of its dying patients, Ian Shearer. . .  [Full text]

 

 

Doctors who oppose abortion should leave family medicine: Ontario College of Physicians

LifeSite News

Steve Weatherbe

Family doctors who object to referring patients for abortions should think about switching specialties, the man overseeing the Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons’ revision of its ethics policy said this week.

Dr. Marc Gabel, a Toronto psychotherapist and past president of the college, told LifeSiteNews on Thursday that if his committee’s proposed revision of the college’s “Professional Obligations and Human Rights” is adopted, then if doctors refuse to refer patients to abortionists, or to doctors willing to prescribe contraceptives, they could face disciplinary action.

“If there were a complaint, every complaint is investigated by the complaint committee,” Dr. Gabel said. The complaint committee could deliver a mild private rebuke or turn over the matter to the disciplinary committee, which Gabel chaired for several years.

According to Dr. Carol Leet, the new president of the college, a doctor found guilty of professional misconduct by the disciplinary committee could face anything from remedial instruction to loss of his or her medical licence. . . [Full text]

 

Justin Trudeau and the Doctrine of Double Truth


Douglas Farrow, Professor of Christian Thought and Kennedy Smith Chair of Catholic Studies, McGill University.

Canadian prof: Justin Trudeau’s ‘doctrine of double truth’ leads to suppression of freedom

LifeSite News

Thaddeus Balinski

A McGill University professor said that Justin Trudeau’s pronouncements supporting abortion while at the same time describing himself as “very religious, very Catholic,” are an example of a “doctrine of double truth” that leads to suppression of freedom of conscience and freedom of religion.

Justin Trudeau’s views indicate “something can be fundamentally wrong according to sound religion, but fundamentally right according to sound politics,” said Douglas Farrow, Professor of Christian Thought and Kennedy Smith Chair of Catholic Studies, in a lecture delivered on October 29 as part of the CREOR Lecture Series on Religion, Secularity, Toleration at McGill’s Birks Heritage Chapel. [Full Text]