Physician-assisted death called a ‘grave sin’ that contradicts the teachings of the Catholic church
By Jon Hernandez
Catholic priests in B.C. can still offer funeral services in physician-assisted deaths, despite new controversial guidelines that prohibit the act for bishops in Alberta and the N.W.T.
“We will not refuse funerals for people to everybody who has had assisted suicide,” he said on CBC’s Daybreak South, adding that priests do have compassion for instances where patients are undergoing extreme and unmanageable pain.
“If it’s a case that somebody in a moment of extreme pain made a choice — I’m sure, in many of these cases, we will be able to celebrate a funeral,” he said.
The bishop’s statements directly contradict the orders given by the Alberta/N.W.T. group, which clearly states “such a request for funeral rites must be gently but firmly denied” and refers to assisted-death as both “evil” and “morally unjustified”.
Physician-assisted death has been hotly contested by the Catholic Church, which instead calls on palliative care and pain management as effective tools for treating people with serious illnesses.
But in June 2016, the Canadian government approved physician-assisted death across the country under several conditions and limiting it to adults facing ‘foreseeable’ death and undergoing a “grievous and irremediable” illness.
According to Corriveau, under the federal conditions, it is likely that at least some pastors in B.C. will provide funeral services.
The Public Religion Research Institute is out with another fascinating report on one of the most significant religious trends of our time: the dramatic rise in disaffiliation, or, as some call them, the “nones.”
PPRI found that a fully a quarter of all Americans, and a whopping 39% of young adults, now say they have no religious affiliation, making the unaffiliated the largest “religious” group in a country long known for its high levels of religiosity.
And while the rise of the “nones” will continue to make headlines and shape culture for a long time to come, there is another largely unnoticed trend lurking in the numbers: just how much the growth in the nones has been fueled by the disaffiliation of Roman Catholics. According to PPRI:
While non-white Protestants and non-Christian religious groups have remained fairly stable, white Protestants and Catholics have all experienced declines, with Catholics suffering the largest decline among major religious groups: a 10-percentage point loss overall. Nearly one-third (31%) of Americans report being raised in a Catholic household, but only about one in five (21%) Americans identify as Catholic currently.
The Catholic rate of disaffiliation dwarfs the rate for any other faith tradition; the next biggest “loser” in terms of disaffiliation are the mainline Protestant denominations, which saw a 4.5-point loss, while white evangelical denominations saw a net drop of only 2.2 points, largely because they have both a lower rate of disaffiliation and a fairly robust rate of new adherents.
Meanwhile, the faith of no faith saw a nearly 16 percentage point increase. According to PPRI’s Director of Research, Daniel Cox, 36% of all those who left their childhood religion were Catholic. This means that Catholics are punching above their weight in adding to the growth of the nones in terms of their overall representation in the population.
And while 21% of the total population currently identifies as Catholic, only 15% of young adults ages 18–29 say they are Catholic, which is not a particularly encouraging trend line for the Catholic Church.
Overall, the majority of people (60%) say the reason they left their church of origin was because they stopped believing in its teachings. However:
…those who were raised Catholic are more likely than those raised in any other religion to cite negative religious treatment of gay and lesbian people (39% vs. 29%, respectively) and the clergy sexual-abuse scandal (32% vs. 19%, respectively) as primary reasons they left the Church.
Cox also notes mixed-faith households seem to be an especially important factor behind the high rates of Catholic disaffiliation. “Catholics who are raised in mix-faith households tend to disaffiliate at really remarkable rates—only 39% of Catholics raised in religiously mixed households stay in the faith, versus two-thirds of those raised in solidly Catholic households.”
The other point that the PPRI study makes clear is that while the “nones” are often portrayed as “seekers” or “spiritual but not religious,” the data present a far murkier picture. The study found that nearly 60% of the unaffiliated are what PPRI calls “rejectionists”: they “say religion is not personally important in their lives and believe religion as a whole does more harm than good in society.”
Another 22% are “apatheists” who say “religion is not personally important to them, but believe it generally is more socially helpful than harmful.” Only 18% were found to be “unattached believer” who say religion is personally important to them. That means that religion is unimportant for fully 80% of the “nones.”
In addition, “Only four in ten unaffiliated Americans identify themselves as being very (14%) or moderately (26%) spiritual. Nearly six in ten say they are only slightly spiritual (26%) or not at all spiritual (32%).”
“The bulk of the unaffiliated are not carrying on faith traditions or seeking different types of spiritual activity. Most don’t give a lot of thought to religion and God in general,” said Cox.
One of the more remarkable things about the growth of the unaffiliated, said Cox, is the recent surge in the unaffiliated. “Between the mid-1990s and the 2000s, the rate was relatively modest. But in the mid-2000s it goes gangbusters and you get a 10- to 11-point increase that is being driven by one factor: millennials.”
He points to structural reasons for the high rate of disaffiliation among millennials, including the high rate of divorce in the early 1980s when the millennials where children. “It’s more complicated raising children in a religious context in joint custody arrangements,” Cox said.
But it’s also worth noting, given the high rate of Catholic disaffiliation and the fact that one-third of Catholics gave the clergy sex-abuse scandals as their primary reason for disaffiliation, that the trend line begins to tick up just as wave after wave of revelations about hidden abuse scandals became public.
In his address to new bishops attending their annual formation course, the Pope urged them to make mercy pastoral, to do their utmost to reach out to God’s people and be close to fragile families. In the seminaries, he advised them to aim for quality not quantity and not to trust those who retreat into a rigid way of thinking
Francis to newly-appointed bishops: “The world is tired of dishonest charmers, fashionable priests and leaders of pointless crusades”
By iacvopo scaramuzzi
“The world is tired of dishonest charmers… And, I dare say, ‘fashionable’ priests and bishops. People sense this, the people of God have this sense and they refuse and distance themselves when they recognise narcissists, manipulators, defenders of their own causes, leaders of pointless crusades.” Pope Francis addressed a long speech to newly appointed bishops attending a training course in Rome, touching on a number of aspects relating to their ministry. He started with the importance of making mercy pastoral, in other words “accessible, tangible and possible to find,” “mercy” being “the essence of what God offers the world”. Bishops, Francis said, must be capable of seducing and attracting men and women of our time to God, without “complaints”, “leav[ing] no stone unturned in order to reach them, and spare no effort in recovering them”. Bishops must also be capable of initiating their Churches (“Today we ask for too much fruit from trees that have not been sufficiently cultivated”). Francis then asked them to take special care of “the structures of initiation of your Churches, especially the seminaries”, focusing on the “quality of the discipleship” rather than on the “quantity” of seminarians. The Pope beseeched bishops “to act with great prudence and responsibility in welcoming candidates or incardinating priests in your local Churches”. Francis also invited bishops to be close to their clergy, who were placed along their path “by chance” as well as families with their “fragility”.
“Ask God, who is full of mercy, what the secret is for making his mercy pastoral in your dioceses,” Francis said in his speech to the 154 new bishops (16 from missionary territories) who took part in the annual training course jointly organised by the Congregation for Bishops and the Congregation for the Oriental Churches. “Mercy must form and inform the pastoral structures of your Churches. … Do not be afraid of proposing mercy as the essence of what God offers the world because there is no greater thing the heart can aspire to. As my venerable and wise predecessor taught, ‘it is mercy that puts an end to evil,” Francis said quoting Benedict XVI, adding two rhetorical questions: “Can our insecurities and mistrust perchance inspire tenderness and consolation in the midst of solitude and abandonment?”
To make mercy “accessible, tangible and possible to find,” the Pope recalled first and foremost that “a remote and indifferent god can even be ignored, but one does not so easily resist a God Who is so close, and wounded out of love. Goodness, beauty, truth, love – this is what we can offer to this begging world, even if it is in half-broken bowls. However, it is not about attracting to oneself. The world is tired of dishonest charmers. And, I dare say, ‘fashionable’ priests and bishops. People sense this, the people of God have this sense and they refuse and distance themselves when they recognise narcissists, manipulators, defenders of their own causes, leaders of pointless crusades. Rather, seek to follow God, Who already introduces Himself before your arrival. … God never gives up! Instead we, accustomed to surrender, who often give in, preferring to allow ourselves to be convinced that truly they were able to eliminate him and invent bitter discourses to justify the idleness that blocks us in the immobile sound of vain complaints. It is horrible when a bishop complains.”
Secondly, the Pope said it is essential to “initiate” those who are entrusted to pastors: “Please, I ask you to have no other perspective from which to look upon your faithful other than that of their uniqueness; leave no stone unturned in order to reach them, and spare no effort in recovering them. Be bishops capable of initiating your Churches in this abyss of love. Today,” Francis underlined, “we ask for too much fruit from trees that have not been sufficiently cultivated. The sense of initiation has been lost, and yet the truly essential things in life may be reached solely through initiation. Think of the educational crisis, the transmission of both content and values, emotional illiteracy, vocational paths, discernment in families, the search for peace: all these require initiation and journeys guided with perseverance, patience and constancy, the signs that distinguish the good shepherd from the hireling”.
Francis focused his attention especially on the formation of future priests: “I urge you to take special care of the structures of initiation of your Churches, especially the seminaries. Do not allow yourselves to be tempted by numbers, by the quantity of vocations. Seek instead the quality of the discipleship. Do not deprive seminarians of your firm and loving fatherly touch. Let them grow until they are free to be with God “as calm and peaceful as a child weaning in its mother’s arm”, not prisoners of their own whims, overcome by fragility but free to embrace all that God asks of them, even when this is not as pleasant as the maternal womb was at the start. Beware also of seminarians who retreat into a rigid way of thinking – there is always something ugly beneath the surface”. “I also beg you to act with great prudence and responsibility in welcoming candidates or incardinating priests in your local Churches. Remember that from the very beginning the relationship between a local Church and her priests is inseparable, and a vagrant clergy in transit from one place to another is never accepted”.
Finally, quoting the parable of the Good Samaritan, the Pope said bishops should be “capable of accompanying”: “Be bishops with a heart wounded by a mercy like this, tireless in the humble task of accompanying the man that God, ‘by chance’, has placed in your way.” Francis had another request for bishops: “Accompany first, and with patient care, your clergy” and “reserve special accompaniment for all families, rejoicing with their generous love and encouraging the immense good they bestow in this world. Be watchful, above all, of those that are most wounded. Do not pass over their fragility.”
“I am pleased to welcome you and to share with you some thoughts that spring to the Successor of Peter’s mind when he has before him those who have been “fished” from God’s heart, to lead his Holy People,” the Pope had started by saying. “May God save you from rendering this thrill fruitless, from taming it and emptying it of its ‘destabilising” power”. Let yourselves be destabilised, it’s good for bishops,” Francis said. “Many people these days mask and conceal themselves. They like to construct personalities and invent profiles. … They are unable to bear the thrill of knowing that they are known by Someone Who is greater and Who does not despise our littleness, Who is more Holy and does not reproach our weakness, Who is truly good and is not scandalised by our wounds. May it not be so for you,” he concluded, “let that thrill run through you, do not remove it or silence it”.
The archbishop of Newark, John J. Myers, issued a statement Wednesday standing by Paramus Catholic High School’s decision to fire an employee because she’s in a same-sex marriage, asserting that her lifestyle could “create confusion and uncertainty in the moral formation” of students.
Myers’ statement — which one cleric said reflects the church’s resistance to a changing secular society — went out to all parish and school communities within the four-county archdiocese and was shared with the media by the archdiocese’s public relations office.
A harsher critic, however, said the statement highlights the contrast in Myers’ lenient treatment of priests accused or suspected of sexual abuse, as opposed to employees whom the church discovers to be in same-sex marriages.
The seven paragraph statement was offered as a response to media inquiries about the litigation filed by Kate Drumgoole, 33, of Bogota against Paramus Catholic, school President James P. Vail and the archdiocese. Drumgoole claims she was discriminated against when administrators fired her — not for being gay, but for being in a same-sex marriage.
Drumgoole’s marriage to Jaclyn Vanore, 29, both of whom are Paramus Catholic graduates, was made known to school officials by Vanore’s estranged sister, who posted their wedding pictures to Facebook pages associated with the school and Vail’s personal account. The pictures were never viewed publicly, according to her attorneys.
After meeting with Drumgoole, administrators said she no longer had “plausible deniability” and terminated her as dean of guidance and as head girls’ basketball coach.
As part of her employment, Drumgoole was required to sign a contract agreeing to abide by the tenets of the Catholic Church.
“When someone involved in Catholic education ministry offers a public counter-witness to Catholic teaching, he or she does not teach the Truth or further the mission of the Church,” Myers said.
“Such actions can create confusion and uncertainty in the moral formation of the young people he or she encounters,” the archbishop’s statement continued. “When that happens, the Church must be free to take corrective steps to maintain the identity and the integrity of her mission. This right is protected by the United States Constitution as well as federal and state law.”
Christopher Westrick, an attorney for the school, Vail and the archdiocese, tried to have the lawsuit dismissed, arguing that it involved the separation of church and state. In his motion Westrick said that the defendants did not violate New Jersey laws against discrimination because within the law, churches are allowed to require employees to subscribe to their tenets.
He argued the defendants’ conduct is protected under the First Amendment, which guarantees the free exercise of religion and freedom from government interference.
Drumgoole’s attorneys argued that her job did not consist of ministerial duties and that other employees who are divorced, living with people of the opposite sex or have children out of wedlock were not fired. They also said that the school adopts some of the state’s anti-discrimination laws, thereby making it subject to all of them.
Eric Kleiner, Drumgoole’s other attorney called her courageous for fighting “forces that are much more powerful than her.”
“Such heroism will not be muted or diffused or lessened by the extremely harsh and divisive language given by the Archbishop,” he said.
Superior Court Judge Lisa Perez Friscia last week denied the school’s motion to dismiss, allowing the case to move forward to a yearlong discovery phase in which Drumgoole’s attorneys could interview staff and faculty and have access to school documents and policies.
The case drew the attention of hundreds of alumni, parents and former faculty of Paramus Catholic who signed an online petition demanding that Drumgoole be rehired. It also was covered widely in the media.
Myers acknowledged the criticism.
“Much has been said in recent days about respect, diversity and mercy,” Myers said. “I agree that these qualities are important to the mission of the Catholic Church, especially through the ministry of Catholic education. Every person deserves to be treated with dignity, to be given respect, and to be shown the qualities of mercy.”
But, he said, “the invitation to join in the life of the Church does not include an invitation to alter or redefine what the Church believes and teaches, nor is it an invitation to allow others to define the identity, mission and message of the Church.”
“Even Jesus recognized that some people could not or would not accept His teaching,” Myers’ statement continued. “He was saddened when they walked away from Him, but He never altered His teaching. Nor shall we do so today.”
Drumgoole’s attorney, Lawrence Kleiner, said Myers’ statement “is taking an issue that has already divided its members and turning it into a chasm.”
In a 256-page document titled “The Joy of Love,” Pope Francis in April reiterated church teachings that gays should be welcomed with respect and dignity. But he resoundingly rejected same-sex marriage and said that gay unions cannot be equivalent to a marriage between a man and woman.
The positions are the same as those adopted by bishops from around the world who met in Vatican City in October 2015 for a three-week synod.
The Rev. Thomas Reese, a senior analyst at the National Catholic Reporter, a publication owned and largely run by laypeople, said gay marriage is “one of those areas where American culture is changing faster than the Catholic Church.”
Societal opinions about gays and same-sex marriage have changed quickly over the past 30 to 40 years, he said. But the Catholic institutions believe their employees should observe the moral example of the church.
“You’ve got these two things in conflict,” Reese said. “These things are going to be worked out over time. I think the church is going to become more accepting of their employees having these unions. But where the Catholic Church is right now, you’re going to see these things blow up.”
Reese said he believes some institutions look the other way. “It’s when these things become very public that bishops become involved and lawsuits get involved,” he said, adding, “I’m old enough to remember when Catholic teachers got fired when they got divorced. We simply don’t do that anymore.”
Mark Crawford, the state director of the New Jersey Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, called Myers’ statement “hypocritical.”
“He’ll protect those clergy he knows abused children yet hold these hard-line positions against people who love each other,” Crawford said. “It’s so backward.”
“This is what we’ve come to expect from our archbishop, unfortunately,” he said. “Hopefully, Francis will send a new shepherd our way that is more understanding, compassionate and fair.”
“Who is going to save our Church? Do not look to the priests. Do not look to the bishops. It’s up to you, the laity, to remind our priests to be priests and our bishops to be bishops.”
– Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Archbishop Sheen was right, as usual. Our pastors cannot lead us out of the current crisis in the Catholic Church, because they, as a group, do not recognize the nature of the crisis. In fact, despite the abundant evidence all around us, they are not prepared to admit that there is a crisis. They do not see the problem, because they are the problem.
The crisis is—let’s speak plainly—a crisis of clerical corruption. Our priests and especially our bishops have failed as Church leaders, because they adopted the wrong standards of leadership. They are using the wrong yardsticks to measure success and failure. And this clerical system tends to perpetuate itself: bishops train and promote priests who adopt the same skewed standards.
(It should be obvious, I hope, that I am making sweeping generalizations. There are many exemplary priests, and some of them become fine bishops. But the most energetic and evangelical clerics, I would argue, rise to leadership despite a system that rewards timidity and complacency. Individual priests may be holy men, but the clerical system is corrupt. By that I mean that while there are both good men and bad men in the system—as in any human institution—the good men are unable to establish control and institute reform.)
In June 2002, I was one of the scores of reporters covering the historic Dallas meeting of the US bishops’ conference. With the sex-abuse scandal at its peak, and ugly new stories exploding across the headlines every day, the atmosphere crackled with a sense of urgency, if not outright panic. The American bishops were under intense public pressure to take decisive action, and they did; the “Dallas Charter” was born. Even before they left Dallas, the bishops were proclaiming the Charter a great leap forward in the handling of sexual abuse, congratulating themselves for their achievement.
But the reporters who covered that event had a very different perspective. Because of the unprecedented media interest, the scores of journalists were set up in a separate hotel ballroom, watching the proceedings of the bishops’ meeting on a video screen. As the bishops’ discussions ran on, reporters naturally talked to each other, exchanging thoughts on the event. We quickly found that we all essentially agreed. Never in my career as a journalist have I seen such unanimity among the reporters covering a controversial event. Writers from conservative or liberal publications, from Catholic or secular media outlets, experienced hands and newcomers to the religion beat—all were saying the same thing. We were all shaking our heads and telling each other: “They don’t get it.”
Now think about that for a moment. Today the Dallas Charter is touted by Church leaders—not just in the US but in Rome as well– as the gold standard for handling sexual abuse. Bishops in other countries are advised to establish similar policies and procedures. The US bishops’ advisers, who framed those policies and procedures, are invited to address international seminars. Yet when the Dallas Charter was being devised and approved, the reporters watching the process were saying, “They don’t get it.”
What the bishops “didn’t get” is the simple, stark reality that they were the problem. Yes, certainly the priests who molested young people were a huge problem. But the secondary shock—the scandal that rattled public confidence in the Catholic hierarchy—was the realization that many bishops had covered up the scandal. Worse: that many bishops had lied to their people. And not just the bishops: during the “Long Lent” of 2002, Americans had learned about a culture of omerta in the clergy, a habit of mendacity. In Dallas the bishops talked about how to discipline wayward priests; they said very little about how to restore trust in their own leadership.
Is it any surprise, then, that the public still has not regained confidence in the Catholic hierarchy? That part of the sex-abuse scandal has still not been addressed. Consequently the rest of the Dallas Charter can be viewed with a jaundiced eye, by cynics who note that the polices and procedures are devised, supervised, and enforced by men who have not proven trustworthy in the past.
Media interest in the crisis of clerical abuse has subsided gradually during the past decade. The stories no longer command front-page headlines. There is no longer a frontal assault on the citadels of the Catholic hierarchy; it is now a cleaning-up operation, with lawsuits and the resulting bankruptcies filling space at the bottom of the news feed.
For the secular media, the sex-abuse scandal has lost its initial excitement since those wild days in 2002; there are no longer Pulitzer Prizes to be won on this beat. For the “official” Catholic media—the diocesan outlets and the publications sold in church vestibules—the topic is an unpleasant one, and prudence suggests adherence to the party line that the Dallas Charter has been a success.
Within weeks after that June 2002 meeting in Dallas, Bishop (now Archbishop) Wilton Gregory of Atlanta, then the president of the US bishops’ conference, placidly announced that the scandal was past history, and unquestioning Catholic journalists have been echoing that claim for years. The clerical culture, though badly shaken by the scandal, regrouped and recovered its own confidence. But the “new normal” is set at a distinctly lower level, as measured by Mass attendance, confidence in the hierarchy, Catholic influence on public affairs, and clerical morale. The events of 2002 are history, but the lingering effects are evident to anyone who looks for them.
Many bishops and priests recognize how far and how fast the situation has deteriorated in recent years. But the champions of what I have called the “clerical culture” do not. As parishes and parochial schools close, as childless families are destroyed by divorce, as prominent Catholic politicians endorse the “Culture of Death,” they continue to insist that the faith is “vibrant,” the future is bright. They will not initiate the needed reforms, because they see no need. They don’t get it.
If reform from within the clerical ranks is improbable, what hope do we have? The hope that Archbishop Sheen offered us: the realization that the future of the Church is in our hands, that the laity must come to the rescue. Earlier this week Jeff Mirus explained how lay people and lay movements have responded to the crisis:
The point is that the crisis of faith experienced by bishops and priests, which made life so difficult for lay people who really care, actually led to an astonishing contribution to Catholic renewal precisely by the laity themselves.
Archbishop Sheen predicted that the laity would save the Church. Jeff Mirus reports that the laity are saving the Church. The reform has already begun.
This does not mean “the fight is o’er, the battle won.” On the contrary, the struggle is only beginning. But loyal lay Catholics, formed in the crucible, have emerged with a stronger faith, a deeper commitment; they will not be satisfied with timid leaders. We will “remind our priests to be priests and our bishops to be bishops.” In the long run, the young bishops and younger priests will be our own sons and grandsons. And you can count on this: they will “get it.”
