“Uniting Healthcare with Holiness to Relieve Suffering”
Too often in medicine, we focus on interim “successes” rather than outcomes. There are various therapies in use that make patients look and feel better, but only temporarily. In the end, the patients suffer the same fate as if the therapy was never used at all, but it has added thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars to a hospital bill.
Following the Dobbs decision, the pro-abortion cheerleaders and their accomplices, the drive-by media, have gone into fully full-on Chicken Little mode. A simple court decision, correcting Roe v Wade, that even liberal superheroine Ruth Bader Ginsburg said was “bad law”(1), has been twisted into a fascist assault on women, at least as bad, or even worse than The Handmaid’s Tale.
Flowers for Laila
There once was a physician who evaluated people for their fitness and ability. Those found unfit were sent in one direction, those found to be “fit” or “worthy” were sent in another. The unfit were killed, while the fit were allowed to live. Over time, an entire race of people, those unfit, were practically exterminated. To this day, in the country where this took place, very few of these “unfit” can be found.
Catholic Healthcare International is developing a faithful Catholic medical school, which will be an independent institution, co-located on the campus of Benedictine College, in Atchison, Kansas, just outside of Kansas City. Among the questions asked about this venture is, why?
This weekend something strange happened. The Henry Hotel in Dearborn, Michigan hosted the first annual “Dirka-Dirka Fest and Comic-Con”. For those of you unfamiliar, “Dirka-Dirka” is the mock Arabic language sound used by the characters in the silly and profane “Team America World Police” movie, brought to the screen by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the same people who developed the “South Park” adult cartoon series that parodies, basically, everything. In the movie, various, crudely styled, Arab Claymation characters, including a mock Osama Bin Laden, utter “dirka-dirka”, or some variation thereof,
Protests and signs are theater. The economic power of 1.3 billion Catholics is a devastating weapon of mass destruction. What if the Archdiocese of Boston, and the Catholic Church, immediately severed all commerce with the Marriott corporation? What if the Archdiocese excommunicated any Catholic who cooperates, in any supportive manner, with The Satanic Temple?
One does not need to be Sigmund Freud or a PhD in clinical psychology to see that Dylan Mulvaney suffers from a profound and serious mental illness. In an attempt to soothe the demons in his head, Mulvaney has latched onto this trans-identity that is bringing him 15 minutes of fame, a few dollars and, maybe, a few peaceful nights of rest.
Dear readers, God bless you this Easter and throughout the year. By His sacrifice, we are cleansed and reborn, to do His work, in this world and the next. Is His sacrifice in vain for you?
The human body is a wonderful and intricately designed machine. It is a repository for the immortal soul while on earth. Physiologic systems hold endless complexity and wonderous interconnection to allow man to function, thrive and interact with the environment. And while atheists may say that this is all an evolutionary convergence of a trillion random cells over billions of years, the elegance of human anatomy and physiology, when rationally and objectively examined, is more than sufficient proof for the existence of God and intelligent design…
In the English language, there are certain words and phrases that convey meaning beyond their literal translation. Ultimately, such words and phrases become slang, which is a form of speech that conveys an idea or emotion, beyond what is written or said. For example, bestowing praise and excessive flattery on an individual for the purpose of currying favor with said individual is “buttering someone up” in slang.
Ectopic pregnancy is a sad and tragic outcome for about 2% of all pregnancies, or 1 in 50.(1) In an ectopic pregnancy, the fertilized ovum, instead of making its intended trip down the fallopian tube to implant in the uterus, instead implants elsewhere, usually in the fallopian tube itself …
I have never quite understood the appeal of Zombie movies and shows, particularly, The Walking Dead. After a couple of episodes, it was clear that the world was in a zombie epidemic and society quickly collapsed, with the requisite zombie attacks, blood, gore and roving bands of the “uninfected.” This is a common trope in the end-of-the-world, apocalyptic fiction genre.
Following World War I, under the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, Germany was forbidden from stationing military forces in the Rhineland. This is the area of Germany bordering France, Belgium and the Netherlands, loosely defined by land on either side of the Rhine River. Under the treaty, Germany could station no military forces anywhere on German soil west of…
In the past, we have discussed many aspects of Catholic bioethics as they apply to living human beings, born and unborn. Today, we find ourselves thinking about the human body, absent the eternal soul, that is, a corpse.
There is something fundamentally unsettling about a dead body.
We have previously discussed the horrendous behavior of physicians, particularly in Nazi Germany, conducting research on living humans. Time and time again, history has shown that physicians are not more ethical, villainous or virtuous than anyone else. They do hold a position of advantage over the general public,
Los Angeles has a terrible District Attorney. In most jurisdictions, the District Attorney is the chief prosecutor, or law enforcement officer, who leads a group of other prosecutors in bringing persons accused of committing crimes to trial and prosecuting them so that they will be punished for their alleged crime.
Recently, I saw a news story regarding the Actress, Anna Kendrick, and her relationship struggles. She provided the following quote to People magazine, “I was with someone — this was somebody I lived with, for all intents and purposes my husband.
The other night, I was watching “Bob’s Burgers” on one of the cable channels (I forget which one), when a remarkable commercial came on. “Bob’s Burgers” is an adult-oriented cartoon about a struggling proprietor of a hamburger restaurant and his eccentric family. It is quite clever, actually, and entertaining, without being too offensive. So, as I was watching this cartoon (around 8 PM, Central) a pharmaceutical commercial came on for a drug named “Apretude”. Even in the bizarre world of pharmaceutical-to-consumer advertising, this commercial reached a new and disturbing low.
Whether one calls it a child, fetus, embryo or clump of cells, at conception, the fertilized ovum is undoubtedly a human life. It is clearly alive and clearly human, albeit at a very early and unrecognizable stage. That early stage, however, does not make it any less human.
Abortion is the intentional termination of that human life and claiming otherwise is intellectually dishonest. The only honest discussion is, at what point is a human life worthy of protection?
Similarly, euphemisms like, “quality of life” and “meaningful consciousness” are used in the elderly and infirm to also make them less worthy of protection. The “scarce medical resources” straw man argument often surfaces here, that is, why use scarce medical resources on those who are afflicted with Alzheimer’s Disease, other dementias and severe brain injuries?
We Catholics believe that every human life, from conception to natural death is inherently and unconditionally valuable, regardless of age, disability, economic circumstance, parentage and any other modifier. Every human life, in the Catholic view, is in the likeness and image of God and equally deserving of protection. People can disagree, but those should be honest discussions.
“Reproductive health care” and “meaningless existence” are little different than the terms “special handling”, “evacuation” and “lebenswertes leben” (life unworthy of life), which the Nazis used to obfuscate extermination of Jews, Gypsies, the disabled and mentally ill. Anytime a human life is made less equal, because it is somehow less human and less worthy of protection, starts us down a slippery slope that has, over and over again in history, had horrific results.
Can’t happen in this era? Iceland has practically eliminated Down Syndrome by simply aborting each and every unborn human life with that diagnosis. Even those who believe abortion is acceptable in some circumstances, should be chilled by this. #prolife
