Neither Lawful Nor Ethical . . . Rationing Health Care During The Pandemic?

By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD

With the coronavirus sweeping the nation, and in some places overwhelming the medical response, there is increasing talk about rationing health care.
The New York Times has reported that state health officials there have met to discuss what factors to take into consideration, such as age, health, and likelihood of survival, in making the determination of who will get full care and who will only be provided comfort care with the expectation they will die.
In Washington State, The Seattle Times has reported that hospital officials there are meeting with ethics committees planning on how to, if necessary, ration healthcare. Cassie Sauer, chief executive of the state’s hospital association, is quoted as calling this a “crisis standard of care,” creating guidelines for health care workers on which patients should be treated and which should be left to die.
Sauer says her state is also working on triage plans to serve “the greatest number of people who are likely to survive.” She says since the coronavirus appears to be the most serious among the aged and those with underlying health problems, decisions will most likely be made along those lines. “They will be less likely to receive care, and more likely to die,” she said.
Medical and hospital workers in other states are having similar discussions about how to ration health care, if necessary, and who are the favored to receive treatment and who are not. And, are the elderly and disabled disfavored in this equation?
Families wonder, do we have to worry if our elderly family members are properly cared for during this pandemic, or simply left to die? What about our siblings or children with disabilities or Down syndrome? Will health-care workers simply keep them comfortable while they die without treatment? And how about my 75-year-old ex-Marine uncle who still runs a mile each day, is he too old for treatment?
Dr. Charles Camosy, associate professor of theological and social ethics at Fordham, writing in the New York Post, says:
“Bioethicists like me disagree over which values should guide rationing, but we generally agree about focusing on those who can benefit from the treatment. If the age of a patient makes it unlikely she would benefit, the hard truth is that limited resources will likely go to someone else. … Continue Reading

Pope Francis leads Palm Sunday mass at the Vatican | 5 April 2020

The Politics Of A Pandemic . . . The Lord Arises While We Shelter Behind Closed Doors

By DEXTER DUGGAN

Now that we’re mostly told or ordered to stay home because of the coronavirus, in nations around the world, what if the next step is that our Internet, phone, and social-media connections somehow go down?
What was more or less tolerable confinement, keeping company with our electronic connections, becomes more or less imprisonment without them. What if our ability to keep in touch with acquaintances and local and national developments becomes lost?
The springtime of liberation represented by Easter was being reversed by seeing the stone rolled back into place to seal the tomb all over again. The most joyous celebration of the Christian calendar seemed more likely to be celebrated behind closed doors, although not yet having to hide from commissars wearing red stars.
Two centuries ago, a handwritten letter from New York City to the West Coast could go on a sailing ship around the tip of South America before it came up northward to reach pioneer San Diego.
Will we be more or less sent back to those distanced days at a lot faster pace than the speed of a sailing ship? Even if communication isn’t actively censored, it could be strongly impeded.
Moreover, in an April 1 video, President Donald Trump warned of the threat that drug cartels, terrorists, criminals, and other actors will try to exploit the coronavirus pandemic for their gain, but the U.S. won’t let that happen.
Candidate Joe Biden and other Democratic Party figures began suggesting that their party’s in-person presidential nominating convention this summer be canceled or delayed due to COVID-19. Delayed, with the effect that their nemesis Trump could remain in the White House longer? Surely not.
Would the summer nomination and November election processes somehow be turned over to anonymous electronic control rooms that could work their magic while voters were kept confined? Improbabilities have gained a way of turning into realities. … Continue Reading

The Virus And Its Discontents

By CHRISTOPHER MANION

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” — President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his Inaugural Address, March 4, 1933.

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Responding to calls for panic from the usual suspects, our old friend Dr. Angelo Codevilla channels Machiavelli. “Whoever controls the people’s fears becomes master of their souls,” said power’s most able advocate. A century later, Thomas Hobbes upped the ante. A people obsessed with fear of an untimely death must surrender all their rights to an all-powerful Leviathan, who would then protect them — maybe.
A people afraid? Maybe somebody else, but not us, right? Not even with the Wuhan Virus breathing down our necks? Well, some thirty years ago Russell Kirk argued that a freedom-loving people, if forced to choose between chaos and security, would always opt for security. “Great nations have ended in slime,” he wryly observed to a crescendo of applause.
So, returning to those fomenting “fear itself,” Codevilla zeroes in: “Why then do so many in high places advocate this global shutdown so vehemently? And does the question answer itself?”
Codevilla is a longtime critic of the elites. In “America’s Ruling Class,” a groundbreaking essay written ten years ago, he described the fundamental battle between the elites and their inferiors, whom he called the “Country Party” (comprising those whom Hillary Clinton helpfully branded the “Deplorables”). And, speaking of the Ruling Class and its role in the Wuhan Virus crisis, he asks, “Why then do so many in high places advocate this global shutdown so vehemently? And does the question answer itself? … Continue Reading

Fear The Lord, Not The Virus

By REY FLORES

How many of us took our Holy Mass for granted? Not only the Mass, but all of the sacraments, and even sacramentals like holy water. Here yesterday, gone yesterday.
Yes, even holy water. I hope that most of you keep a stash of sacramentals in your homes, things like holy water, blessed salt, and beeswax candles, because there’s no telling when all of this Chinese Wuhan virus mess will be over.
How many of you are actually “attending” either a televised or online Mass during this current situation? I have been. It’s obviously not the same, but at least society can use technology for something other than celebrity gossip, video games, and pornography.
Thankfully many Catholic parishes are still offering adoration, Confessions in some circumstances, and the simple ability to walk into a church and pray.
Yes, these are strange times indeed. Never in a million years did I imagine I would be living in a world where we had to give up so many of our freedoms. Never did any of us think how hot a commodity toilet paper would become!
While people are knocking each other over in the grocery aisles of our nation, I’m reaching out to my rosary more than ever. As people grow more paranoid every day, people should instead be asking themselves what is truly more important. Is it our temporal life here on Earth, or is it our eternal soul which is more important?
I’m sure we’re all very burnt out with this whole situation; but what else is there to talk about?
For those of you out there still blessed and fortunate enough to surround yourselves with your loved ones, by all means take full advantage of this opportunity to appreciate every little thing about your spouses and children. Please be especially attentive to and aware of the older folks in our families and communities. They are probably scared half to death with all they are witnessing unravel before their very eyes.
Are we simply going to spend these next moments of our lives panicking, wringing our hands, biting our nails and trusting in man and not God? Are we to fear this “virus” more than we should be fearing the Lord? … Continue Reading

But Why Not Scold Pols By Name?. . . Phoenix Bishop Writes Strong Column Against Pro-Aborts

By DEXTER DUGGAN

PHOENIX — In a full-page feature in his tabloid-size diocesan newspaper, the bishop of the Catholic Diocese of Phoenix strongly denounced the claim that “Protecting Abortion Access is a Catholic Value.”
“This is a lie. This is a damned lie,” Bishop Thomas Olmsted wrote in the March issue of The Catholic Sun, putting “damned lie” in italics. His column was headlined, “‘Damned Lies, and Living the Gospel of Life’.”
Olmsted said that “such a twisting of the truth, one of many produced by a culture of death, can only come from the pit of hell.”
He also denounced any Catholic political candidate who believes in this attitude as “a Judas of our day.”
Accompanying his monthly column was a photo of pro-abortion demonstrators outside the U.S. Supreme Court, some holding posters about abortion access being a Catholic value, as the court heard arguments on March 4 about a Louisiana law requiring abortion clinics to follow customary medical standards, June Medical Services v. Russo.
However, as is frequently the case with Catholic prelates, Olmsted failed to point out some pertinent political, but not ideological, considerations that voters need to know.
Although Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, a left-wing New York Democrat, directly threatened two Supreme Court justices who were appointed by pro-life Republican President Donald Trump, Olmsted only referred to “a prominent politician (who) threatened two sitting justices.”
Olmsted wrote, “Access to homicide for our most innocent brothers and sisters is a Catholic value? Nothing could be further from the truth. Any candidate for office believing or asserting such a twisted lie is malevolent and/or confused on a fundamental level; any Catholic candidate doing the same is a Judas of our day.”
March 25 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of St. John Paul II’s pro-life encyclical whose title translates as The Gospel of Life. Olmsted said it “has proven to be prophetic” and “is full of both charity and clarity.”
The bishop went on to point out that as of March 25, “we begin as Catholics a national year of service entitled ‘Walking with Moms in Need’.” He said he was communicating with leaders in the diocese “regarding a fruitful approach to this call to service in our time.” … Continue Reading

The Silencing Of The Sacring Bell

By JAMES MONTI

The story has been told countless times for a century. As sunset descended upon London on Monday, August 3, 1914, just a day before England’s entry into World War I, two friends were gazing out the window of the British Foreign office contemplating the tranquil scene of the lamps in Saint James Park being set alight.
One of these two men, the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, wistfully remarked, “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our life-time” (Sir Edward Grey, Twenty-Five Years: 1892-1916, volume 2, London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1925, p. 20).
It was in the midst of the deepening confrontation between our Lord and the Pharisees that would culminate in His sacred Passion that He said to His disciples, “We must work the works of him who sent me, while it is day; night comes, when no one can work” (John 9:4).
For two thousand years, the onset of darkness has remained a powerful metaphor. Within the ambit of Holy Week we see it in the dramatic successive extinction of candlelight during the Office of Tenebrae. During the three days of Holy Thursday to Holy Saturday that Tenebrae commemorates, there comes also the extinction of a familiar sound.
As the Gloria is sung at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, there is a festive yet strangely ominous eruption of bell-ringing. For when the Gloria is finished, the bells all fall silent, including the bell of consecration, the sacring bell. In fifteenth and sixteenth-century Spain, it was the custom when placing the Blessed Sacrament in the Repository at the end of the Eucharistic procession of Holy Thursday to place inside the urn-like tabernacle of the Repository also the sacring bell, to “bury” it there, as it where, a potent gesture symbolizing the cessation of Mass for the three days to come.
The Easter Triduum, it seems, has come early this year. In a twelfth-century English homily the Triduum was called the “still days,” the world coming to a standstill to contemplate the Passion and death of Christ. A great stillness and silence has descended upon much of our country, and most painfully upon our churches. For many of us, the sacring bell has fallen silent, and we do not know when we will hear it again. … Continue Reading

A True American Hero

BY JOE SIXPACK

During a desperate battle on Guadalcanal in World War II, an American soldier threw himself on a Japanese grenade that landed among his mortar crew. The soldier survived the blast, but was horribly wounded and maimed. The chaplain visited the young man in an army hospital and asked him, “Why did you take that million to one chance and risk your life that way?”
The soldier smiled and replied, “It was like this, Father: I had gone to Confession that morning, so I was ready to die, but I didn’t know if the other guys were ready.”
This great American hero drives home a point about death and our need for Confession perfectly. Death is the most rude of all visitors. He never announces himself, and he always comes when we least expect and are least prepared for his visit. Even if we won’t go to Confession regularly because we are sorry for having offended God, we should at least prepare ourselves for that most dreaded visitor: Death.
“But, Joe,” you say, “I’m not a bad person. Why do I need to go to Confession regularly?” Obviously I can’t be your conscience, but I do have a good understanding of human nature. After all, I’m a human…believe it or not. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to recognize that Catholics aren’t utilizing the confessional as they should.
We live in a culture where what was once viewed by polite society as wrong is today the norm. We think nothing of dressing immodestly, using artificial contraception, or even fudging on our taxes. Yet virtually everyone goes to Communion at Mass, but hardly anyone shows up for Confession.
All of our sins — original and actual, in the case of an adult — were washed away in Baptism, but that sacrament of initiation doesn’t protect us from the sins committed afterward. Jesus understands human nature perfectly, because He both created it and lived it, so He established the Sacrament of Penance so we could find reconciliation to God from the sins we commit after Baptism. … Continue Reading

Bishop Strickland . . . Abortion And Solidarity With Children

By MOST REV. JOSEPH STRICKLAND

Pope St. John Paul wrote in his seminal encyclical on life, “To claim the right to abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom: ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin’ ( John 8:34).”

We are called to stand in solidarity with those who have no voice. To accept legalized abortion in the law and purport to “privately oppose it” is a perversion which promotes a counterfeit notion of freedom.

In the Joy of the Gospel ( Evangelii Gaudium), Pope Francis wrote: “(A)mong the vulnerable for whom the Church wishes to care, with particular love and … Continue Reading

The Corona Apocalypse

By DEACON MIKE MANNO, JD

One of the difficulties in writing a weekly column is the lag time between writing and actual publishing. As I write today the coronavirus has almost totally shut down the entire world — especially my little part of it. What it will be like when this is published is anyone’s guess, but it appears that the virus and its continued effects will only grow worse, God help us!
There are some bright spots, however. Here in Iowa, and many other places, Sunday and daily Masses have been suspended “for the duration” — whatever that means. I can no longer do hospital visits since only patients and authorized hospital workers are allowed admittance. Through all of this there is a clamoring from the faithful over their loss of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist.
While I, too, miss those things, the result demonstrates that the faith is still alive in the faithful, and for most the Sunday obligation, from which we have been excused, is not an “obligation” but a welcome respite from the cares of this world where we can meet and worship our Maker in a regular, life-enhancing way. And it is also a reminder that here in the United States, we are still free to do so.
The difficulty is, I think, that the Sunday obligation was an easy way for most of us to find time for the Lord. Now we have to actually think and do something that might at first feel a bit uncomfortable, like a family rosary or other devotion. So one suggestion is this: Many parishes, such as mine (St. Augustin, Des Moines) are open for Eucharistic adoration, many on a 24-7 basis. Keeping company with our Savior and humbling ourselves before our God is never an action we should regret and now it might be more important than ever. Remember God’s message from Chronicles:
“I have heard your prayer, and I have chosen this place for my house of sacrifice. If I close heaven so that there is no rain, if I command the locust to devour the land, if I send pestilence among my people, and if my people, upon whom my name has been pronounced, humble themselves and pray, and seek my presence and turn from their evil ways, I will hear them from heaven and pardon their sins and revive their land” (2 Chron. 7:12-14).
Faith and Scripture are always so comforting during difficult times. Let’s try and remember that after the current crisis ends. … Continue Reading