Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 3—August 23,1973
“Medical Ethics Must Be Universial”
SCOUTS OUT WEST - Cardinal John Cody of
Chicago gives Communion to Boy Scouts attending the
(NC Photo)
1973 Scout Jamboree West at Farragut State Park in
Idaho. Some 8,000 scouts and leaders attended Mass.
Physicians must not be hypnotized
into the practicing of poor medicine
because of social pressures, as is the case
with abortion.
“Make no mistake about it, abortion
is not only the cesspool of medical
ethics and morality; it is poor medicine.
“It ushers in an entirely new field of
medicine. To the traditional curative
medicine and preventive medicine,
abortion initiates a field of medicine
which I like to call extermination
medicine--a field which includes
euthanasia.
“Euthanasia is being presented by the
sweet-smelling phrase, ‘The right to die
with dignity,” just as abortion was
presented with terms such as
‘termination of pregnancy’ and
‘post-conceptional planning’.”
Dr. Papola asked:
“Where is there dignity when a
physician, who has been trained to
preserve life, intentionally gives a
patient an overdose of narcotics or
injects air into the patient’s bloodstream
because the patient has an incurable
disease?”
Dr. Papola continued:
“The psychiatrist who approves
abortion because of his pregnant
patient’s mental anxziety is admitting in
fact that he cannot treat his patient’s
mental anxiety. Should he therefore be
permitted to treat a non-pregnant
patient’s mental anxiety or depression?
“A physician who advises abortion
because his pregnant patient has some
cardiac or renal disease in fact is
admitting that he cannot treat his
patient’s renal or cardiac disease. Is he
competent, then, to treat the cardiac or
renal disease of a non-pregnant
patient?”
Dr. Papola said that a physician who
does an abortion today is using the
scalpel to solve society’s problems of
poverty, hunger, pollution and
population-problems which exist, but
problems whidh are not solved by a
physician’s knife.
“A woman whose child is aborted
because she is poor does not become a
rich woman after her child is destroyed-
her poverty remains. We do not solve
the problems of hunger by killing the
unborn children of people who are
hungry.
“Hunger and poverty are not
eradicated by mass sterilization to
prevent the future birth of poor or
hungry people. If it were that simple,
then the obvious solution to rid our
world of hunger and poverty would be
to exterminate all poor and hungry
people . . .
“It may be difficult to teach
Christian morality in our society today,
but physicians must not allow
themselves to be used to cover up this
failure of our society. If they do, while!
they may appear now to be the
defenders of the quality of life, in the
long run society will eventually look
upon physicians merely as the
technicians or mechanics of society’s
problems rather than the respected
defenders of human life.
“Catholic physicians must study and
develop methods of family planning
which are acceptable to the teachings of
the Church . . .rather than just be
opposed to artificial methods of
contraception.
“We must take a leading part in this
atomic age to develop methods of
improving the quality of life which are
acceptable to the teachings of the
Church.
“This new era of scientific
knowledge, with its nuclear devices,
computers, moon explorations and
undersea studies, must be programmed
to the teachings of Christ and we must
be the programmers.
“The time has come when we as
physicians must come out of the
catacombs, resist the pressures of our
communities, ignore the jeers of a
humanitic society and speak out, not
meekly as individuals or as divided
groups, but powerfully as strong,
national and international federations of
physicians dedicated to the preservation
of Christian principles in medical ethics,
thereby enforcing the sacredness of
human life, rather than reducing it to an
object of materialism.”
Canon Law Society Proposes
Bishop Selection Changes
WASHINGTON (NC) - A series of
proposals which would give greater
responsibility for choosing new bishops
to diocesan committees have been
presented to a U.S. bishops committee
by the Canon Law Society of America.
However, Bishop Bernard J.
Flanagan, chairman of the Committee
on Canonical Affairs of the National
Conference of Catholic Bishops
(NCCB), said that he foresees little hope
for adoption of the proposals, which
were the result of resolutions passed
at the society’s convention last year in
Seattle.
Present rules, which were adopted by
the Vatican in 1972, allow the bishops
of an archdiocesan region to consult
i n f o r m a 11 y - - a 1 though not
collectively-with clergymen and laymen
in choosing a bishop. The Vatican
regulations also permit the prelates to
forward their own list of qualified
candidates to Rome through the
country’s ap ,colic delegate. The list
does not have to reflect the opinions of
the diocesan level groups or individuals.
Under the society’s proposals, each
diocese in the country would establish
an eleven member committee- one
member appointed by the diocesan
pastoral council-of priests, religious and
lay persons that would draw up a list of
episcopal candidates based upon the
diocese’s needs.
The list would then be sent to the
diocesan priests’ senate which would
review the candidates and narrow the
list to not more than ten candidates.
This shortened list would be sent to
the bishop in the diocese who would
investigate the candidate and select,
solely from those candidates, the names
he will submit to the regional meetings
of the bishops.
Following a review by the NCCB’s
Committee on the Nomination of
Bishops, the president of the NCCB
would present the list of candidates to
the Vatican and send a copy to the
apostolic delegate, thus bypassing the
apostolic delegate’s influence in the
nominating process.
Bishop Flanagan, who heads the
Worcester, Mass., diocese said that he
expected the NCCB to consider the
proposals at its next meeting in
November.
He said, however, that the bishops
“would be very cautious about
abdicating a responsibility . . .into the
hands of a committee.”
The proposals, Bishop Flanagan said,
“would be a model for study,” but
implementation or adoption could not
be done quickly.
He added, that the 1972 Roman
Norms concerning episcopal
nominations “now provide for greater
consultation with priests, religious and
laity” than earlier procedures. Many
bishops are consulting more with
individuals as a result, he said.
Bishop Flanagan said that individuals
may now suggest names for nomination
and that “often the names of the men
that are presented are from other
dioceses.”
PHYSICIANS TOLD:
FACELIFT IN ST. PAUL -- A boy with a bike pays no attention to the
massive display of scaffolding which covers the front of St. Paul Cathedral
in St. Paul, Minn. The 58 year old structure is undergoing a facelift which
began last fall. Work includes drilling out old mortar and filling it in to
seal the surface. (NC Photo by Kati Ritchie)
WAIRAKEI, New Zealand (NC) -
Christian physicians must unite to
strengthen the individual physician who
must make daily decisions in the face of
rapid advances in medicine and the
breakdown of traditional morality, a
Catholic doctors’ conference here was
told.
Dr. Gino Papola of Philadelphia,
secretary-general of the International
Federation of Catholic Medical
Associations, told the meeting that
physicians “can no longer remain in our
local shells making decisions which at
times are forced on us by the thinking
of our local communities, especially in
matters concerning the dignity of
human life.”
Medical ethics
he said.
‘must be universal,’
“Physicians must not be led into
making decisions based on a philosophy
of situational ethics as is being done by
the proponents of abortion.
“Physicians must not be led to accept
indiscriminate sterilizations in the name
of population control. Physicians must
not be led like sheep into the arena of
genetic engineering in the name of
improving the quality of life.
“Human life must not be used as the
ball in the game of improving the
quality of life by the use of artificial
insemination and euthanasia.
Ancient Rule Picked
Over Social Security
NEW YORK (NC) - The provincial chapter of the New York-based Holy
Name Province of Franciscans Friars decided unanimously to rely on their
traditions instead of Social Security in caring for elderly members.
The 88 delegates, representing the 900 members of the largest U. S. unit of
the Franciscan Friars, voted for “fraternal security” in which sick and aged
members of the order are cared for through the work of younger friars and the
support of the people they serve.
The 765-year-old tradition of the Rule of St. Francis of Assisi: “If any of the
brothers falls into illness, the rest of the brothers must wait on him as they
themselves would want to be waited on.”
New federal legislation extends Social Security to members of religious orders
with the vow of poverty the same benefits already accorded to clergymen in
general. Coverage is optional.
Since 136 Franciscans of Holy Name Province have already passed the age of
65 and another 90 to 100 will reach that age in the next five years, provincial
authorities set up a special committee to investigate the possibilities of Social
Security. The committee recommended that the order not seek Social Security
coverage.
Sixty-three-year-old Brother Agapitus Rothmann of St. Francis Friary, Rye
Beach, N.H., seemed to sum up the reaction of the other Franciscans: “My dear
confreres, I became a poor friar and I’d like to live and die a poor friar, so please
leave me in peace with all your security.”
Reading From St. Paul No Way to Treat a Lady, Editorial States
BROOKLYN, N.Y. (NC) - St. Paul notwithstanding, women’s struggle for
equality will not be deterred if a husband-wife editorial team on the diocesan
Brooklyn Tablet newspaper has anything to say.
Marie Zirkel and her husband, Don, editor of the Tablet, have expressed the
opinion that Sunday, Aug. 26, would be the worst of all times for Churches to
schedule one particular reading from St. Paul’s writings.
Aug. 26 happens to be the day set aside as Women’s Equality Day in celebration
of the Women’s Suffrage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But also on Aug. 26
the second scheduled Mass reading will be a reading from Ephesians which said
“wives should submit to their husbands in everything.”
This unhappy coincidence raises some questions, the two editorialists wrote.
“Should lectors proclaim a reading with which they strongly disagree? If they
decide to present it in its historical context as a reading from St. Paul, should they
add the standard conclusion ‘This is the word of the Lord,’ when they don’t believe
it? Or should they precede such a reading with a disclaimer like ‘The views
expressed here are not necessarily those of the lector’?”
“Someone with a talent for backing into a buzz saw has created a tragicomedy of
the first order,” the couple wrote. They pointed out that recent liturgical revisions
have become sensitive to reactions of Jews, for instance. “Is the Church ready to be
sensitive to the feelings of married Catholics?” they asked.
They said the problem could be minimized if the lector were sure that the priest
in his homily would put St. Paul’s reading in perspective. There are three readings
and the priest can choose from any one for the topic of his homily.
“But for a priest to insist on the reading of Ephesians V, 24 and then offer ‘no
comment’ would be a copout, the writers said.
“The Epistles are not meant to be treatises in theology. They are letters, written
in particular circumstances, to a particular community, with particular problems, at
a particular time in history. They must be studied and explained in context,” the
Zirkels said.
“There are some families where the husband is head of the household, as Paul
prefers, and we surely do not object. There are some where the wife is, and they
operate quite successfully. Many, like ours, are more collegial, ruled by consensus.”
They said that one reader has informed them that a lector’s strike is scheduled
for Aug. 26. It would mark the second time a lector’s strike has been held to
protest the reading of St. Paul. The first one was last January and the Zirkels took
part in it.
This time, however, the Zirkels are not sure that a lector’s strike would best serve
the cause of women’s rights. ;
“It might be well to consider a substitute reading for Women’s Equality Day,”
the Zirkels said. They suggested Galatians III, 28 which reads: “There does not
exist among you Jew or Greek, slave or freeman, male or female. All are one in
Christ Jesus.”
J