Catholic News 2

Vancouver, Canada, Nov 8, 2016 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Only months after the Canadian Parliament approved legal assisted suicide, Catholic hospitals, palliative care centers and individual doctors have been put on the defensive amid calls to require them to help patients kill themselves.

Five doctors have filed a legal challenge against the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario for its policy that requires doctors who refuse to participate in assisted suicide and abortion to refer those patients to other doctors.

“In my view, it’s the future of Catholic healthcare that's at stake,” said their spokesman, Larry Worthen. “No other jurisdiction outside of Canada where assisted suicide is legal requires referral.”

He said the college has been “extremely aggressive” in its handling of their case. The doctors are being cross-examined about their religious beliefs. One is Catholic, while four are evangelical Christians.

The college has authority to regulate the practice of medicine in the Ontario province. Refusal to comply with its policies could cost a doctor his or her medical license.

The doctors have the support of the Christian Medical and Dental Society of Canada, the Canadian Federation of Catholic Physicians' Societies and Canadian Physicians for Life, though they face increasing legal costs, Canadian Catholic News reports.

The Attorney General of Ontario has sided with the college, with a spokesperson deeming its policy “a reasonable balance between the sincerely held religious beliefs of objecting physicians and the important state interest in ensuring vulnerable patients are able to access legally available medical procedures.”

The three doctors' groups are part of the new organization called Coalition for HealthCARE and Conscience, which includes the Catholic archdioceses of Toronto and Vancouver.

Bishop Ronald Fabbro of London, who is president of the Assembly of Catholic Bishops of Ontario, said the province’s bishops have agreed to make conscience protection a top priority.

The Canadian parliament legalized assisted suicide in June on orders from Canada's Supreme Court.

In British Columbia, a local health authority suggested requiring that all publicly funded institutions provide assisted suicide services, including Catholic hospitals and hospice care.

Archbishop J. Michael Miller of Vancouver wrote in protest of the proposal.

The proposal followed strong criticism of a Catholic hospital in Vancouver that transferred an elderly man in severe pain to another hospital because it would not provide assisted suicide.

Ian Shearer, 84, suffered multiple afflictions, including a spinal condition and sepsis. In late August he requested a doctor-assisted suicide at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, which does not provide assisted suicide because it is Catholic.

Shearer was transferred to a hospital about 2.5 miles away. His daughter Jan Lackie alleged that the trip and inadequate pain control put him in agony.

The ambulance arrived three hours late. In order to ensure he was mentally lucid to give legal consent to assisted suicide, his pain drug dosage had been reduced. According to Lackie, there was also a shortage of the narcotic drug in his ward. She added that she wanted religious-operated facilities, like hospitals, nursing homes and hospices, to be required to allow assisted suicide.

“We have nine judges who said ‘Yes’ to medical assistance in dying,” she said. “I don’t understand how the Vatican has so much power, even here in Canada.”

Shaf Hussain, a spokesman for the hospital’s parent group Providence Health Care, said the health care group finalized a policy this summer that arranges to transfer patients as comfortably as possible when they voice a desire for assisted suicide.

“We’ll be working with our partners in the health care system to ensure the patients’ needs do come first … and to minimize the discomfort and pain,” he said.

St. Paul’s Hospital does not host the medical assessment or the signing of consent forms required by the assisted suicide law.

“Life is sacred and the dignity of the person is important,” Michael Shea, president of the Catholic Alliance for Canada, told the National Post. “These organizations neither prolong dying nor hasten death, and that’s a pretty fundamental value for them.”

Shanaaz Gokool, who heads the pro-assisted suicide group Dying with Dignity, charged that facilities that do not provide assisted suicide cause suffering for transferred patients and deny them a right to a legal procedure in places where faith-based health care organizations are the only provider.

“This is going to be a real issue, and it’s going to be a real issue across the country,” Gokool said.

The Canadian newspaper the Catholic Register in an Oct. 13 editorial drew a warning from the controversy.

“What is playing out in Vancouver is just the beginning,” it said. “Catholic and other faith-based institutions across Canada will face increasing public and political pressure to set aside religious and conscience objections to facilitate assisted suicide.”

The editorial noted that organ transplants and other surgeries are routinely referred to other hospitals, and Catholic hospitals are not forced to perform abortions.

“But the assisted-suicide lobby offers no such hint of religious tolerance or accommodation when it comes to their issue,” the Catholic Register said.

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Vatican City, Nov 8, 2016 / 12:18 am (CNA/EWTN News).- There is a roadmap for dialogue with Islam, and its three landmarks are peace, justice and education, says a leading bishop on the subject.

Bishop Miguel Ayuso Guixot, secretary of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, explained: “on a theological level, differences still remain, and they are known. Beyond any theological difference, however, we take each other’s hand, to build together the common good.”

There is a “diverse and rich dialogue with many Islamic institutions,” the bishop told CNA Nov. 4.

Bishop Ayuso discussed how the dialogue with Islamic institutions is progressing. He gave special mention to the restoration of relations between the Holy See and the Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, which, along with its companion university, is the most prominent institution of Sunni Islam.

Al-Azhar had broken relations with the Holy See back in 2011, when the Grand Imam Ahmed el-Tayeb labeled Pope Benedict XVI’s reaction to Christmas attacks on Alexandria churches as “interference” in Egyptian internal affairs.

Only this year has the Holy See succeeded in restoring dialogue with this institution. Bishop Ayuso made a first visit to Al-Azhar on Feb. 16 and met with the Mosque’s deputy imam, Abbas Shuman.

Then the Grand Imam el Tayeb came to visit Pope Francis in the Vatican on May 23. There, he decried Islamic extremist attacks against both Christians and Muslims.

Bishop Ayuso made follow-up visits to Al-Azhar July 13 and Oct. 23.

The aim of these frequent visits is to prepare a meeting in Rome to mark the official restoration of dialogue between the Holy See and Al-Azhar. This meeting should take place in April 2017, though no official date has been set.

“The dialogue we are entertaining with Al-Azhar,” Bishop Ayuso stressed, “is aimed at organizing joint initiatives to promote peace.”

This is the first landmark of the map for dialogue, the bishop said. He added that “in our initiatives, we will focus on a revision of the religious discourse and on how this religious discourse is renewed within our communities, both Muslim and Christian.” This is the commitment for peace, as “a new narrative would be able to prevent many dark paths recently taken in the name of religions.”

Justice, which is “the twin sister of peace,” is the second landmark on the roadmap, said Bishop Ayuso. This means that “we have to insist on much in relations among religions, so that these good relations will lead everyone to have the sacrosanct right to citizenship for everyone.”

“Members of every religion,” Bishop Ayuso underscored, “must all feel citizenship in their country, so that they can take part in building the common good and the social good.”

This is why Al-Azhar and the Holy See are called “to work together on the issue of religious freedom,” the bishop said.

The third landmark of this roadmap is education. The bishop said ignorance is the reason for many evils, adding “we always experience how great religious ignorance is.”

Religious leaders “are called to undertake again within their community the commitment to give a sound religious education,” the secretary of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue maintained.

“This education should be founded on the respect for the other person, as well as giving information on the other person that can enrich personal identity,” since “identity must always be preserved and valued.”

Bishop Ayuso spoke with CNA amid an international symposium sponsored by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, the International Dialogue Centre, and the Lebanon-based Adyan Foundation.

The symposium, titled “Mercy as a Universal Value,” took place Nov. 3-4 at the Pontifical Gregorian University. Pope Francis delivered opening remarks to the representatives of different religions gathered there. He decried acts of violence, kidnappings, and terrorism, especially in the name of religion.

Bishop Ayuso stressed that the effort aimed to provide a place to share different religious views on mercy so that religious communities can “collaborate together to serve humanity.”
 

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