Before You Bash the Catholic Church..

There is a lot of controversy surrounding the Catholic Church these days. While such a powerful organization is bound to receive an undue amount of criticism and false claims brought forth by opponents for religious or political reasons, some of the controversy is justified. But, as with all information, one must often do a little fact-checking to get the whole story. The Church is, after all, still one of the most wealthy and powerful organizations in the world; the Pope is loved and respected- and obeyed- by over 2 billion people. To put it in a way that does a better job of getting across just how powerful the Church is, that is 33%, a full third of, the world's population; and kings, presidents and other power-hungry people the world over would love to have that wealth and power for themselves, or if they don't, they certainly don't want the Pope having it. What's more, anyone who has studied history for longer than five minutes knows that people like that are not above much in their lust for control, so why wouldn't they do everything possible to attack the Church?

A good example is brought to light by John L Allen, Jr, who, writing for the National Catholic Reporter, shares how some media, whether out of ignorance or for more sinister reasons, can be quite misleading in their reporting:

On Tuesday a piece in the U.K.-based Telegraph carried the following headline: "Muslims will become majority in Europe, senior Vatican official warns." An alarmist subhead added: "European Christians must have more children or face the prospect of the continent becoming Islamized, a senior Vatican official has said."

After some quick fact-checking, Mr. Allen discovered that the "senior Vatican official" the article referenced was an Italian priest named Fr. Pierro Gheddo, a missionary director and writer who has nothing to do with the Vatican, unless being Catholic automatically makes one a "Vatican official". The article did get one thing right, though; Father Gheddo is a senior, at 81 years old.

Another example comes from an MSNBC article in which the author examines the case of the refusal of a Catholic hospital to remove the feeding tube of a terminally ill patient. St. John's Medical Center in Tulsa, OK, like all Catholic medical institutions, has an end-of-life policy that is consistant with Catholic moral teachings- namely, that a living human should not be allowed to starve to death just because they are physically incapable of nourishing themselves. The Church certainly has the right to impose its moral treatment guidelines on those who receive treatment at one of its hospitals, but the author makes statements, such as "[t]he directive raises fresh questions about the ability of patients to have their end-of-life treatment wishes honored", making it seem as though the Catholic Church is seeking to impose its will on just anyone. The patient in question was an elderly stroke victim who had advanced directive to not be artificially maintained or revived in such situations.

But is the Church imposing its religious obligations on non-Catholics, or are non-Catholics who end up in a Catholic hospital surprised that the hospital is really Catholic? The article makes no mention of how the patient arrived at the hospital. Presumably via ambulance. If that is the case, then neither the victim nor her family might have had a choice in which hospital to be treated at, but since a quick Google search shows at least four hospitals in Tulsa, I see no reason why, once the patient is in stable condition, the family cannot have her moved to a hospital with less stringent policies, rather than accuse the Catholic hospital of not respecting their loved one's wishes. Instead of asking this question, Dr. Lachlan Forrow, a medical ethicist and palliative care specialist at Harvard, is quoted in the article as saying that if the Catholic Church does not change its medical policies, "patients and their families will arrive at the hospital in crisis and find that the care they want and need and have a right to as Americans is being refused."

That statement is a little more obviously biased. The implication is that patients at Catholic hospitals are not receiving proper treatment. Yes, the patient was admitted, cared for, and treated, and, since she is still alive, she is still being cared for by being fed. But the "medical ethicist", Dr. Forrow, would have us believe that the "care and treatment" the patient has a right to is deliberate starvation! The fact is that Catholic morality simply doesn't allow the deliberate taking of life, either that of oneself or another, whether through action or inaction, outside of a just war, which is defined such as to exclude 99% of wars in the last millenium. So a person is admitted to a Catholic hospital which, apparently still subscribing to the Hippocratic Oath, does everything in its power to save her. The story that follows claims the hospital is neither caring for nor treating the patient and is acting unethically. What a world. I think we could all benefit from learning a little more about the Church, its authority (and lack of it in many areas), and organization, before bashing it or immediately believing every negative thing we hear about it. Perhaps the extra knowledge could help, and extra knowledge is never really a bad thing, in my opinion.