Lack of compassion or something else? Why Canada's Catholic hospitals won't help patients die

We live in interesting times, eh.

In a story in The Globe and Mail, a Toronto-based Canadian national newspaper, a physician upset that a Catholic hospital won't participate in assisted suicide (although that term isn't used) gets heroic coverage.

The lede:

A Vancouver Island doctor is resigning from the ethics committee at a local Catholic hospital because it refuses to offer assisted dying on site, a stand that he says is unnecessarily causing critically ill patients more suffering as they are transferred to facilities dozens of kilometres away.
Jonathan Reggler, a general physician who makes daily patient visits to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Comox, said he knew the facility, like other faith-based hospitals across the country, had developed a “strict” policy of transferring patients asking for assisted deaths.
But it wasn’t until recently, he says, that such patients began streaming into St. Joseph’s – and transferring out – after a federal law came into force June 17 that legalized medically assisted dying for patients whose suffering is intolerable and whose deaths are reasonably foreseeable.
“We’re talking about very sick patients having to be transferred – people who are close to death – and it’s wrong,” Dr. Reggler said.

Later, the newspaper introduces the question of Catholic hospitals' continued funding:


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Yes, Jerry Falwell, Jr., spiked an anti-Trump column (Dang it, publishers do things like that)

Several times a year, either to students at journalism conferences or in a classroom at The King's College in New York City, I deliver a lecture that I call "Up Against the Wall: Getting along with administrators at private colleges."

The big idea of this talk is that private schools are difficult, but not impossible, places in which to do traditional journalism -- because in a private school the administration is both the publisher of the newspaper and the "local government" that student journalists need to cover.

The goal, I stress, is to do as much journalism as possible, with an emphasis on hard-news reporting. Thus, one of my guidelines -- while serving as newspaper advisor at two Christian private schools -- was to address campus controversies with real reporting, as opposed to taking the easy way out and writing splashy opinion columns.

This brings us, of course, to news reports about Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr., yanking an opinion column critical of Donald Trump out of the Liberty Champion. Here is the top of The Politico report on this development:

The president of Liberty University censored an article critical of Donald Trump, according to the sports editor of the school's official newspaper, the Liberty Champion.
The editor, Joel Schmieg, posted a statement on his Facebook account claiming it was Jerry Falwell Jr., the university's president and a Trump supporter, who spiked the column, which criticized Trump for lewd comments he made on a hot mic during a 2005 taping of "Access Hollywood."
"Yesterday I was told [Falwell] was not allowing me to express my personal opinion in an article I wrote for my weekly column in the Liberty Champion about Trump and his 'locker room talk,' " Schmieg wrote.
"I understand Joel's frustration regarding the situation," Cierra Carter, the opinion editor for the Liberty Champion, told POLITICO. "Our president has been very vocal with his opinions during this election season and we'd like that same privilege."


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Yes, journalism is a noble profession — so let's not bash everyone in the news media

I read a Facebook post today that I decided I had to copy and paste.

So here it is: 

I do not give Facebook or any entities associated with Facebook permission to use my pictures, information or posts, both past and future. Blah, blah, blah.

Whoops! Wrong post. That hoax has been disproven about a zillion times. Folks, please (please!!!) remember that Snopes.com is your friend when it comes to this kind of crazy claim.

But seriously ...

My friend Cheryl Bacon — chairwoman of the Department of Journalism and Mass Communication at Abilene Christian University in Texas — had a timely Facebook post today on journalism and the 2016 presidential election. She gave me permission to share it here:

Rant alert:
After months of Facebook posts about the two candidates and their many documented foibles, it seems this week that the entire Facebook world has grown weary of candidate besmirching and turned on the media. So, ponder this:
1. Yes, we have bias in media. But learn to recognize the difference between news content and commentary. Both are important and legitimate, but they are different. It makes no sense to rant about "the news media bias" based on what some commentators on Fox or CNN said. That's what they're supposed to do: offer commentary.
Read the stories on the front page of the newspaper. Listen to the stories in the actual newscast. When you read on the web, look to see if it's a column or opinion piece. Pay attention for crying out loud


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This just in! New York Times probes old, old, old divisions among American evangelicals

If I remember correctly, I wrote my first major feature story on growing divisions among American evangelicals in about 1986, while at The Rocky Mountain News (RIP). It focused on the work of Evangelicals for Social Action, a group that was relevant in Denver because of the work of the late (great) Denver Seminary leader Vernon Grounds (my next-door-neighbor, in terms of office space, while I taught there in the early '90s).

The group's most famous leader is Ron Sider, author of the highly influential book "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger" -- first released in (note the year) 1978.

The basic idea in the Rocky feature was that there was a growing number of evangelicals who simply did not fit under the already aging Religious Right label. In fact, many -- like Grounds and Sider -- never were part of that movement in the first place.

Folks in this "JustLife" crowd (with a few exceptions) were orthodox on essential doctrinal and moral issues, especially abortion and the defense of traditional marriage, but they were fiercely committed to economic justice, racial equality and peacemaking. They were already struggling to find political candidates -- Democrats or Republicans -- they could support in national campaigns. There were quiet arguments about whether it was right to support third-party candidates or to boycott some elections.

Does any of this sound familiar?

You got it! This is now breaking news in The New York Times, months after that wall-to-wall national media "Evangelicals Love Trump!" thing that helped create momentum for the Donald Trump brand in the GOP primaries. The headline at the Gray Lady proclaims: "Donald Trump Reveals Evangelical Rifts That Could Shape Politics for Years."

Let me stress that this is a good Times story, even if it is very, very, very old news.


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Genetics, ethics, race and playing God: StatNews profiles an intriguing researcher

Every so often, an article appears that is written with such grace and taste from an unexpected source. I’d never heard of StatNews.com, a year-old web site covering medicine, health care and life sciences started by John Henry, the billionaire owner of The Boston Globe.

Recently, it produced a piece about a Harvard genetics professor, who seems to be an agnostic, reaching out to the religious community to explain the latest research about the human genome. It could only have been done by someone who knows the genetics field but who could also grasp the theological objections by people not so familiar with it.

We are talking about big, big questions here.

RANDALLSTOWN, Md. -- Is the human genome sacred? Does editing it violate the idea that we’re made in God’s image or, perhaps worse, allow us to “play God”?
It’s hard to imagine weightier questions. And so to address them, Ting Wu is starting small.
Last month, the geneticist was here in a conference room outside Baltimore, its pale green walls lined with mirrors, asking pastors from area black churches to consider helping her.
Wu’s research focuses on the nitty-gritty of the genome; her lab at Harvard Medical School studies the positioning and behavior of chromosomes. But she’s also interested in improving the public’s understanding of genetics. She has gone to classrooms and briefed congressional aides. She has advised the team behind “Grey’s Anatomy.”
At a time of unprecedented access to genetic tests and plummeting costs for genetic sequencing, Wu believes people should know what scientific advances mean for them. The challenge is empowering communities that are skeptical of science because they have been underserved or even mistreated in the past.

The writer cuts to the chase, explaining that the issue is genome editing.


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Nigerian girls are released, news media say -- but most reports keep their religion hidden

Twenty-one of those kidnap victims in Nigeria have been returned to their parents -- a victory for that nation's government and for the alertness of mainstream media in this 30-month-long story.

What is not so alert is the recurring blindness of most media to the religious dimension of the conflict: the abduction of 276 schoolgirls, most of them Christian, by the jihadist gang known as Boko Haram.

We GetReligionistas have been giving very mixed reviews on the coverage. We've praised mainstream media for keeping an eye on the story, while criticizing the way they seem to dismiss the religious beliefs of captives and captors alike.

One (kind of) bright spot shines at the BBC, in its story on the 21 newly freed girls. The narrative conveys almost Passover-like imagery of deliverance from slavery:

One of the girls freed said during a Christian ceremony in Abuja: "I was... [in] the woods when the plane dropped a bomb near me but I wasn't hurt.
"We had no food for one month and 10 days but we did not die. We thank God," she added, speaking in the local Hausa language.
Many of the kidnapped students were Christian but had been forcibly converted to Islam during captivity.
Another girl said: "We never imagined that we would see this day but, with the help of God, we were able to come out of enslavement."
One parent said: "We thank God. I never thought I was going to see my daughter again but here she is... Those who are still out there - may God bring them back to be reunited with their parents."

Strong clues indeed about the faith of the girls and their families. The story would have been stronger still if the BBC had detailed the occasion for the reporting. The article says only that it was during a "Christian ceremony" in Abuja, the national capital. Wish they'd said what kind of ceremony, and who performed it. (It was a church service, as you'll see in a bit.)


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'Kum Ba Yah': AP serves up a vanilla puff piece on Hillary Clinton's 'private' faith

We've seen some rather shallow coverage of Hillary's Clinton faith this election cycle.

Here, here and here, for example.

Over the weekend, The Associated Press served up another such piece with this cheesy headline:

For Clinton, a daily dose of faith along with politic

AP's lede takes us straight into Clinton's private inbox (no, not that one):

At about 5 a.m. each day — maybe a little later on weekends — an email from the Rev. Bill Shillady arrives in Hillary Clinton's inbox.
The contents? A reading from Scripture. A devotional commentary. And a prayer. They're sometimes inspired by the headlines — focusing recently, for example, on the role of women in the Bible.
"I know she reads them, because she responds to me," says Shillady, executive director of the United Methodist City Society in New York. "We've had some interesting emails back and forth about some of the concepts."
It's no secret that Clinton is a lifelong Methodist. But Shillady — who officiated at Chelsea Clinton's wedding, led a memorial service for Clinton's mother, Dorothy Rodham, and gave the closing benediction at the Democratic National Convention — feels that many people don't really know how much her faith "is a daily thing."

Keep reading, and AP explains — with seemingly no need for actual sources — why Clinton keeps her faith so "private":


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New York Times says Pastor A.R. Bernard has evolved on marriage -- but how far?

Every decade or two, The New York Times hires a conservative columnist.

There are exceptions to the rule, but most of the time these conservative columnists are what critics refer to as "New York Times conservatives." This means that, while they may be Republicans who lean to the right on economics and global issues, they lean left on the cultural issues that really matter -- such as abortion rights and gay rights.

Is there such a thing as a "New York Times conservative" when it comes to religious leaders, and Christian clergy to be specific?

I raise this question because the Times -- in its Sunday magazine -- has produced a long profile of the Rev. A.R. Bernard, a pastor, author and civic leader who has deserved this kind of attention from the Gray Lady for a long, long time. He is an African-American megachurch star whose clout and fame has completely transcended that community label.

The Times even refers to him as smart and stylish. You can clearly sense this respect in the overture.

One Saturday in mid-September, the Rev. A. R. Bernard took to the blue carpeted stage of the Christian Cultural Center, the 96,000-square-foot megachurch he built 16 years ago at the edge of Starrett City, in Brooklyn, with his usual accouterments: a smartphone, a bottle of water and a large glass marker board that he would soon cover in bullet points drawn from the playbooks of marketing specialists. Mr. Bernard, 63, is tall and slender, and on this day he wore a distressed black leather jacket, a white polo shirt, bluejeans and white tennis shoes -- casual Saturday attire. On Sunday, you would find him impeccably tailored in a light wool suit and tortoiseshell glasses, looking more like the banker he once was than the pastor of a congregation of nearly 40,000.

So why do this piece now? Yes, Bernard has a popular self-help book out at the moment -- "Four Things Women Want From a Man." There are even hints that he is pro-monogamy. Oh my. Hold that thought.


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Godbeat nostalgia: 38-year Newsweek scribe Kenneth L. Woodward tells (almost) all

Godbeat nostalgia: 38-year Newsweek scribe Kenneth L. Woodward tells (almost) all

Kenneth L. Woodward had a remarkably long run as Newsweek’s religion writer (1964–2002) overlapping most of the newsmagazine’s heyday under Washington Post ownership. He’s out with a memoir whose title befits this blog: “Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama” (Convergent, $30).

The book will interest journalists first as a readable rundown of important religion events starting with the Second Vatican Council’s final phase. Also, Woodward muses about American culture’s radical change from his Ike-era boyhood centered on family, plus neighborhood, plus church, plus school.

This Memo treats a third aspect, nostalgia about Newsweek’s once-thriving Godbeat, a high-pressure gig with millions of readers and all those deadlines -- countless 3 a.m. closings.

Disclosure:  As Time’s religion writer for two decades, and a correspondent beforehand and afterward, I waged competition against Ken and the weekly we spoke of as “Brand X.”   
Newspaper types were mystified by New York-based writers drawing reportage from field correspondents, but it was a flexible, content-rich system. Woodward says in 38 years “the only really Newsweek-worthy Protestant convention I covered” in person was one Presbyterian assembly.

Depicting the decline of Newsweek to its present reduced status, Woodward says “you couldn’t really hear the death rattle until management began to close its news bureaus around the world.”  Readers also benefited from excellent editorial libraries and reporter-researchers like Time religion’s talented Michael Harris of blessed memory, a Cornell Ph.D fluent in Arabic, Greek and Latin.

Newsweek Editor Osborn Elliott, who formerly worked at Time, knew he was getting scooped on the big Vatican Council story. Applicant Woodward had given little thought to the Council, never read Newsweek, and had experience only at an Omaha weekly, but Elliott hired him thanks to a Catholic background, Notre Dame degree, and good clippings.


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