A law professor defends physicians’ right to conscientious objection
By Professor Michael Quinlan, 18 May 2017
As abortion, euthanasia and other controversial procedures become more widespread, conscientious objection for healthcare workers is becoming a flashpoint for controversy throughout the Western world. Some doctors and ethicists have argued that conscientious objection itself is unethical because doctors are required to fulfil any legal request that their patients make.
MercatorNet interviewed Professor Michael Quinlan, dean of the law school at the Sydney campus of the University of Notre Dame Australia, about this contentious issue. He has just published an article on the situation in Australian jurisdictions.
MercatorNet: Opponents of conscientious objection complain that patients could suffer if doctors refuse to provide a service. But how about doctors? Do they suffer if they cannot live consistently with their consciences?
Michael Quinlan: Yes, they do and in a number of ways. Some doctors faced with provisions which prevent them from living consistently with their conscience will retire or move to a State which does respect conscience. Not all doctors will be in a financial position to take those steps, so some will comply with the law – after all generally speaking we expect citizens, and especially professionals, to comply with the law.
Just as there is growing evidence of what is called “moral distress” being experienced by ex-servicemen and women, so there is growing evidence that health practitioners who act against their conscience can suffer from “moral distress.”
This is not just a bad feeling. Moral distress can adversely impact on self-respect, self-esteem, patient care and job satisfaction. Feelings of helplessness, frustration, guilt, sorrow and anxiety can manifest in physical and mental illness. Moral distress can cause burnout and early retirement from the profession. It can also lead to desensitising of one’s conscience and to increased risk of doctors developing indifference to patients and a weakening of their ability make ethical decisions.
Most discussions of conscientious objection to abortion frame it as a moral judgement on the procedure. But isn’t it also possible to see it as bad medicine – the wrong answer to a woman’s distress?
There is certainly evidence that some women do suffer adversely from induced abortions. Symptoms can include depression, low self-esteem, self-destructive behaviours, relationship difficulties, substance abuse, suicidal ideation and anxiety. Such symptoms are not confined to women who undergo late term terminations and emerge after short or long periods of time have elapsed.
Reardon, Coleman and Short’s study of medical evidence from half a million women in Denmark found significantly higher mortality rates within one to ten years of woman who have had early or late abortions. Women should be informed of these medical risks but they should also be given real alternatives to consider and those alternatives – material and medical – should be real.
Nobody likes “conscience clauses”. Those who appeal to them resent being treated as an exception; those who oppose them think they are unfair. Do conscience clauses have a future or will they become narrower and narrower and fade away?
I don’t know that it is true to say that nobody likes “conscience clauses.” Conscience protections are actually not all that uncommon in Australia. Parliamentarians in the major political parties at least enjoy conscience votes in issues such as abortion. Federal law and the laws of most states and territories provide privilege from disclosure of confidential religious confessions. Conscientious objectors to military service are protected from conscription in the Commonwealth Defence Act.
The law protects those whose religious beliefs prevent them from voting at all or from voting in an election if it is held on a particular day of the week from fines for failing to vote. The Australian Cricket Board was able to accommodate the religious objections of a Muslim player to having to wear a uniform promoting alcohol. The Canterbury-Bankstown Rugby League club was willing (at least until recently) to accommodate the religious objections of one of its star players to playing football on a Sunday. Medical professionals of conscience need to be clear on their position and make their voices heard – in their professional organisations – but also in the public square.
Conscientious objection must have some limits. Can a Jehovah Witness doctor refuse to do blood tranfusions? Or a Muslim doctor refuse to examine women?
In a multi-faith, multi-racial and multi-cultural pluralist country like Australia I think that it is generally reasonable to accommodate positions held by medical professionals – and other citizens – as much as possible. Some issues may be able to be accommodated in some but not other circumstances.
Perhaps in a large public hospital with sufficient staff it might be possible for patients to be well cared for without requiring a doctor who has a conscientious objection to blood transfusions or to examining particular patients to be accommodated. Of course there do need to be some limits on conscientious objection. As Professor Iain Benson has observed “[a]ny legal regime is necessarily involved in line drawing and there is nothing inherently offensive about that.”
Some have argued that if doctors object to performing legal procedures, they should find another job as a plumber or child care worker? How would you respond?
Those who make this argument tend to ignore the fact that we do live in a multi-faith, multi-racial and pluralist society. Just as there are some doctors who have a conscientious objection to abortion, so too are there patients who have such an objection. Patients have a right to obtain medical treatment from doctors who understand their religious worldview and who share that viewpoint.
Policies and legislative provisions that discourage “pro-life” doctors from joining or remaining in the profession may deprive patients from access to the services of health practitioners who share their views about the value of embryonic human life. Some patients would never countenance the termination of a pregnancy no matter the risks to their own physical health or no matter the physical or other challenges that their child might face. Such women who do not want to feel pressured into termination because their unborn child might be a Downs syndrome child or be pressured into a “selective reduction” if they are carrying twins.
Such patients want their doctors to support them in their decisions and to give them and their children whole hearted and supportive medical care. Provisions which force doctors out of the profession act to reduce – not to increase – patient choice.
What are the weak points in the armour of resolutely secular thinkers who argue that doctors should perform all legally requested procedures?
This sort of argument actually tends only to be made in relation to abortion services. Elective surgery is not normally something that doctors must do. So, for example, many paediatric doctors refuse to perform circumcisions on baby boys. Essentially these arguments seek to put patient autonomy as a governing principle and to assert that doctors owe obligations to society because society gives them something of a monopoly.
When you think about it, though, no one seems to argue that doctors must subjugate their own interests entirely to those of their patients. No one argues that doctors must carry out every legal operation a patient requests or that they must provide every legal medication that a patient requests.
We expect – we want – we need – doctors to be ethical people who are not driven solely by profit. We need doctors to refuse to carry out medical procedures which might earn them money but which they think would not be best for their patient’s health and wellbeing. We don’t expect and we don’t actually want our doctors to give us antibiotics that we don’t actually need. We want them to tell us what they think is actually in our best interests even though our Google inspired medical view conflicts with theirs.
We don’t expect doctors to subordinate their interests to those of their patients generally. We don’t expect them to work for free or to make house calls or never to take holidays at their patient’s request. Those who want all doctors to provide abortion services must be honest in their arguments. If they want to argue that all doctors must provide abortion services – but not other medical services – they must explain what exactly makes abortion different and overcome the powerful arguments against such compulsion.
This article by Professor Michael Quinlan was originally published on MercatorNet.com under a Creative Commons Licence. If you enjoy this article, visit MercatorNet.com for more or click here to read the article on their site.
Professor Michael Quinlan is Dean of the School of Law, Sydney at The University of Notre Dame Australia.
The following essay, by Doug Mainwaring, originally appeared at Public Discourse: Ethics, Law and the Common Good and has been reprinted with permission. The original post can be viewed here >>
This world does not need men to selfishly take whatever we want, especially if the price is the welfare of our children. Our children don’t need superheroes—just quiet, unsung, ordinary, everyday heroes who answer to the name “Daddy.”
When I was taking my first few steps out of the closet in the late 1990s, a guy who called himself Tex offered me a short version of his life story over drinks at a Dupont Circle bar. The conversation took an unanticipated turn: he explained that his current partner had moved halfway across the country, leaving behind an ex-wife and kids. Tex would sometimes answer the house phone (this was before cell phones) and would hear a small voice cautiously ask, “May I please speak to my Daddy?” This was his partner’s eight-year-old daughter calling from somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Tex said that it troubled him deeply that his partner’s daughter had to ask permission of a stranger in order to speak with her daddy.
When I think of this little girl, my thoughts drift to folks like Alana Newman and others who have anonymous sperm donors for fathers, many of whom have daily asked that same question in their hearts. May I please speak to my Daddy?
When I started speaking out about the dangers of same-sex marriage for children, I found it difficult to get proponents of genderless marriage to engage in intellectually honest one-on-one discussions. Then I realized: at least half the people who wanted to clobber me with bumper sticker slogans were products of broken marriages.
In early 2013, following my participation in a panel discussion, a young man accused me of being unfair to gays, lesbians, and their children. So I took a chance and asked him point blank: “Did your parents divorce when you were a child?”
He was a little stunned by the personal question, but he answered, “Yes.” The smugness left his face.
“Did you live with your mother?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see much of your father?”
“No. I almost never saw him.”
“Did you miss him? Did you wish you could be around him more?”
“Yes. Of course,” he answered, with a bit of wistfulness.
“Did your parents’ divorce increase your happiness—or your sadness?”
“Sadness.”
“So your parents dismantled your home and set up two new structures that put their needs first, not yours. In fact, they were structures guaranteeing your continued unhappiness. You learned to live with it, because as a child you had no control whatsoever over their actions, but these new structures weren’t necessarily built with your best interest in mind.”
“Well, no. I didn’t get to vote on the matter. I was a kid.”
“Exactly. So why would it be different for children of gays and lesbians who are denied either their father or mother? Do you really think two moms or two dads is exactly the same as having both mom and dad around to love and care for you? Seriously? Would having an extra mom around the house really have satisfied you, or would you still have an unanswered yearning in your heart for your Dad?”
“I see.”
“Then why would you want to condemn other children to be fatherless? Or motherless?”
He got it. He didn’t like it, but he got it—and then he walked away. I have no idea if he changed his mind, but at least he had finally actually heard and listened to an opposing point of view—one that resonated with him.
As I walked away, I thought to myself, “To be intellectually honest, I can’t keep speaking publicly against the dangers of genderless marriage without also simultaneously speaking about the objective evil of divorce for kids.” Divorce is an exponentially larger, far more pervasive threat to children than the prospect of gays raising children without moms and lesbians raising children without dads. I sighed. There is a lot to undo and set straight.
The Prodigal Dad
After my wife and I had been divorced for a few years, it was not unusual for her to call and ask me to drive to her house because our youngest son was out of control. When I would arrive, I found turmoil. He had gotten angry about something, and that had triggered a rage completely disproportionate to the issue. He would yell and scream and kick, then isolate himself in his bedroom. No trespassers allowed. It was gut-wrenching to witness this. Thankfully, he would calm down after a while and return to normal.
His rage would, in turn, trigger discussions with my ex-wife. What were we going to do about his behavioral problem? Did he require medication? Did he need to be spanked? Did he need psychological help?
After this happened a few times it became abundantly clear to me exactly what he needed. Our son did not have a behavioral problem. He needed just one thing: he needed his parents to get back together and to love each other. The slicing and dicing of our family had thrust unbearable stress on this four-year-old’s tender psyche. His Dad and Mom were the culprits responsible for this, yet we were approaching this as if it were his problem.
Our little boy bore no blame, but I sure did.
It took a few more years for my ex-wife and me to fully come to our senses. In the meantime, our kids came to live with me. This was not a solution, it was simply a stopgap means of de-escalating an uncomfortable situation. While this solved some problems, it created others and remained a wholly unsatisfying answer.
To justify remaining divorced and maintaining two households, we adults were enforcing a charade, demanding everyone else around us—especially our own children—pretend that our selfish pursuits and our inability to “work things out” were just fine. In reality, we had done nothing more than slough off our problems and dysfunction on our kids. We were alleviating our own stresses by heaping them on our children.
Wonderfully, after a dozen years, we finally dropped the pretense and are once again husband and wife, married with children. There has been a lot of healing since then, some of which has been a complete surprise. And we’ll never know what additional potential difficulties our kids have been spared.
A Lesson from Hollywood
Never before in history have children been born with the explicit purpose of being deprived of either a mom or a dad. Yet children who are brought into this world to satisfy the wants of gay and lesbian couples enter the world in exactly this way. They live with the knowledge that one of their biological parents will remain forever an enigma, a phantom.
Until recently, children were viewed as a pure gift from God. Now new laws undefining marriage are producing the sad result of undefining children as well, reducing them to chattel-like sources of fulfillment. On one side, their family tree consists not of ancestors, but of a small army of anonymous surrogates, donors, and attorneys who pinch-hit for the absent gender in genderless marriages.
Though it may seem a strange source, the 1998 Disney movie The Parent Trap (a remake of the 1961 classic starring Hayley Mills) can teach us a lot about kids growing up with two gay dads or two lesbian moms.
In the movie, two girls who look remarkably alike, Hallie Parker and Annie James, bump into each other at an exclusive New England summer camp. They soon discover that they are twins who were separated shortly after birth, and they concoct a scheme to switch identities and trade places. Each so desperately wants to meet her missing parent that she is willing to change appearance, hairstyle, mannerisms, voice, and accent and to move to a foreign country just to have a few surreptitious, stolen days with the mom or dad for whom she longs.
Hallie lives with her dad in California wine country in a beautiful hillside mansion with a swimming pool and stables. She has a handsome dad who is a fabulously successful vintner. In short, she has everything—but she still yearns for the mom who has been denied her. Meanwhile, Annie lives in a mansion in a posh London suburb. Her beautiful mom is a world-famous dress designer. She has servants to wait on her and a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce at her disposal. Yet Annie likewise yearns for the dad who has been denied her.
Both these girls lead enviable fairytale lives. But viewers watching this film, the majority of whom enjoy far less material wealth and security, feel sorry for both girls, because each is missing a parent. This irony is precisely the point of the movie.
It’s interesting, too, that Hallie’s aunt lives in the home and serves as a sort of surrogate mother figure, while Annie’s maternal grandfather lives with her and her mom, serving as a paternal figure for Annie. Even though both these wonderful, upbeat, loving single-parent households have a closely related, caring family member of the opposite sex present, a Grand-Canyon-sized hole persists in Annie’s and Hallie’s hearts.
In the movie, adults are responsible for dividing children. In the case of children produced for genderless marriage, adults are responsible for depriving them. Deprivation is permanently, irrevocably etched into the hearts and souls of human beings created for genderless marriages. Children who are engineered for gay marriages face impoverished lives from the day they are born, as two men snatch a baby from their rented surrogate’s womb, denying their child perhaps the only opportunity he or she might have had to experience a mother’s embrace. This missed opportunity is as close as their child will ever have come to touching someone who is, sort of, their mom.
As she grows older, her yearning for mom will be dismissed, hushed, laughed away, and not taken seriously. After all, dad sees no need for a woman in his life. Why should his little girl or boy? To yearn for a mom becomes an insult to the wifeless man or male couple raising her. Better to suffer in silence than risk upsetting dad or dads by bringing up the greatest of taboo subjects.
Each one of us needs to thoroughly think through the unintended, unconsidered consequences that lurk—or are purposely obscured—behind our acceptance of genderless marriage, and more importantly, our society’s continued shrug of the shoulders over both divorce and single-parenting. We adults yawn when it comes to these issues. Children everywhere have a different response: they cry themselves to sleep.
When It Comes to Fatherhood, Men Need to Be Men
Men who divorce, men who marry other men in order to raise children, or who anonymously sell their sperm—all follow in Esau’s footsteps. Except it is not our own birthrights we are trading for a mere bowl of soup. It is our children’s. We do so callously, selling their greatest treasure—growing up with their biological parents, with an intact biological family—very cheaply.
This world does not need us men to selfishly take whatever we want, especially if the price is the welfare of our children. Men are supposed to do the opposite: men are meant to protect their children from unhappiness, loneliness, and other threats. Real men don’t victimize their own children for their own benefit. They protect, they shield, absorbing stress and hardship rather than deflecting it onto their children. Men stand in the breach.
When it comes to fatherhood, our culture needs men to be men. For some, that may mean relinquishing certain dreams or our own yearnings. More and more, our culture is dominated by men who are self-interested and cowardly. C.S. Lewis would tell us we are a generation of men without chests.
Pope Saint John Paul II informed us, “Original sin attempts, then, to abolish fatherhood, destroying its rays which permeate the created world, placing in doubt the truth about God who is Love” (emphasis his). During this current age, marriage, family, and even gender are undermined in every conceivable way, and fatherhood in particular is under relentless, violent attack. It is up to us men to courageously fight back.
Our children deserve better. They don’t need superheroes; just quiet, unsung, ordinary, everyday heroes who answer to the name “Daddy”—not spoken over a phone, but whispered into our ears as they safely and contentedly rest in our arms.
The World Evangelical Alliance’s (WEA) newly launched Peace & Reconciliation Network (PRN) is co-hosting an Eastern European Conference on Peace, Reconciliation and Social Justice in Chisinau, Moldova, on May 17-22, 2017. Focused specifically on the unique context of CIS1 countries, the conference aims to establish a regional network that enables participants from different nations to together address the needs and challenges of their region.
Co-sponsored by Micah Global and INFEMIT Europe, the conference invites Christian leaders from the Baltics, Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Georgia, Armenia and Central Asia with some 150 participants registered so far. Speakers include Micah Global International Director Sheryl Haw, Dr. Chris Wright (UK), Dr. Peter Kuzmic (Croatia), Dr. Ester Petrenko (Latvia), Dr. Fiodor Raichinez (Ukraine) and Dr. Johannes Reimer, WEA’s Director for Peace & Reconciliation.
“As Christians, we are called to be agents of peace and reconciliation. The Bible is full of stories and instructions where God calls us not only to be reconciled to Himself but also among each other. Jesus saying the peacemakers are blessed and will be called ‘sons of God’ is just one example,” Bishop Efraim Tendero, Secretary General of the WEA, commented and added: “Conflict is the root cause of so much suffering: poverty, loss of life, forced migration, and more. Lack of education and opportunities due to prolonged conflict situations also robs people of their hope for the future and makes them vulnerable to human trafficking and exploitation. Therefore, if we as believers can contribute to restoring peace and help accomplish true and lasting reconciliation, we will also have prevented other suffering as a result.”
Speaking about the specific Eastern European and Central Asian context of the conference, Dr. Johannes Reimer who heads up the preparations states: “The Evangelical Alliance movement and the movements towards unity in Eastern Europe and Central Asia in the past have only had limited success. The launching of an Eastern European network for Peace and Reconciliation and Social Justice creates a unique opportunity to foster unity and joined action of evangelicals in the region. At the same time the region is facing numerous ethnic post-Soviet-made tensions. Evangelicals in the region and the WEA movement in general are able to contribute to finding creative solutions strengthening both, the Church in particular and society in general.”
The WEA PRN has only recently been relaunched under the leadership of Dr. Reimer who has been working with the WEA as Commissioner for Peace & Reconciliation to Russia/Ukraine since 2014 and brings extensive experience in the field.
At a strategy conference in the Netherlands earlier this year, its five-pronged T-R-A-I-N strategy was affirmed as foundation for rolling out regional, national and local peace networks. TRAIN stands for Teaching of peace and reconciliation processes, Restoration in communities post-conflict, Assisting with resources and personnel, Initiating peace alliances, and Networking for knowledge and resource transfer.
“To bring peace and restoration we need to equip local and national players with new capacities, so that they are able to engage with their community in unrest. TRAIN not only helps to assists actors for peace and restoration but also to initiate alliances where there is no peace initiative existent. It uses resources from the global network to teach and to establish centers to train them,” Dr. Reimer comments.
Commissioner Christine MacMillan, Associate Secretary General for Public Engagement whose portfolio includes the PRN, said: “We as Christians have a Savior depicted and named as the Prince of Peace. Addressing conflict he walks into chaos with gifts of forgiveness, truth and healing. Our Peace & Reconciliation Network is gaining the skills and intention to enter darkness with conversations that explore peace and discover reconciliation.” > To learn more about WEA’s peace & reconciliation engagement, visit: wea.peaceandreconciliation.net
> To contribute to WEA’s peace & reconciliation work in general or the upcoming Eastern Europe conference in particular with a gift, click here Picture: Dr. Reimer speaking at a peace & reconciliation conference co-hosted by WEA and its Ukrainian partner “Bearer of Peace” in Kiev, Ukraine earlier this year.
1 CIS stands for Commonwealth of Independent States, the majority of which are former Soviet Republics.
How Will Your Church Participate in #WorldRefugeeSunday on June 18 & 25?
Over 65 million people have been forced to flee their homes in what has become the biggest refugee crisis that the world has ever known. Today, 1 in every 113 people worldwide are forcibly displaced, the majority of whom are women and children. The World Evangelical Alliance (WEA) calls on churches to observe World Refugee Sunday this coming June 18 or 25 and participate in prayer and action, responding in practical ways to God’s call to ‘love the stranger as yourself.’ Using the hashtags #WorldRefugeeSunday and #RefugeeHighway, churches can share about their activities on social media and inspire others to join.
“World Refugee Sunday gives us an opportunity to learn about the realities and needs of refugees, to pray for them and with them, and to consider how we can practically engage with refugees,” said Bishop Efraim Tendero, Secretary General of the WEA. “Together with the Refugee Highway Partnership, the European Evangelical Alliance and other partners, we have prepared a variety of resources to help churches and individuals participate and begin to make a difference in their own community.”
“God has given us a mandate to love the alien as we love ourselves (Leviticus 19:34). I am encouraged to see a growing number of churches worldwide leaning into this divine calling to actively seeking the welfare of refugees by offering both practical assistance and a supportive community,” said Tom Albinson, WEA Ambassador for Refugees and Displaced People.
“God has always called His people to be a blessing to the nations. The Church is now facing a great opportunity to do just that. In the same way God used refugees to be a blessing to others, including Joseph, Moses, Ruth, David, Esther, Nehemiah, Daniel, Jesus, Philip, and others, the Church will find blessing as we seek the welfare of strangers today,” he added.
Commissioner Christine MacMillan, WEA’s Associate Secretary General for Public Engagement who heads up WEA’s Refugee Task Force, challenges churches and believers to also reflect on a refugee’s situation on a personal level.
She said: “We as Christians are often overheard to be saying: “I go to church.” Finding ourselves in church on World Refugee Sunday, may have us contemplating ‘church going’ as only a starting point. When some 65 million people wake up every day, what would we overhear them saying? Factors indicate their experience could be summarized as: “I am going further away from my home as place, security and community.” So where do our journeys intercept? For too many their journeys are unending and so for the Church may a named Sunday become an unending determination to welcome strangers as friends coming home.” Share with us what you and your church are doing on World Refugee Sunday 2017 using the hashtags #WorldRefugeeSunday and #RefugeeHighway! Find resources such as:
– the Refugee Highway Map – stories of refugees in the Bible – videos, banners & posters – and more!
Speaking from his apartment at Vatican’s Domus Sanctae Marthae guesthouse, Pope Francis gave an 18-minute talk at the TED 2017 Conference. He touched on the need for “togetherness” during a time of political upheaval all over the globe.
TED’s international curator, Bruno Giussani, observed that Pope Francis’s rhetoric was “a clear reference to the increasingly sectarian and hate-filled political space.”
Expounding on this year’s TED conference theme, the 80-year old pontiff touched on topics including climate change, the immigration crisis, global inequality, and the prevailing despair about the world’s future.
Translated from Italian, here is the complete transcript of Pope Francis’s 2017 TED talk.
Good evening, or, good morning, I am not sure what time it is there. Regardless of the hour, I am thrilled to be participating in your conference. I very much like its title—”The Future You”—because, while looking at tomorrow, it invites us to open a dialogue today, to look at the future through a “you.”
“The Future You:” the future is made of you’s, it is made of encounters, because life flows through our relations with others.
Quite a few years of life have strengthened my conviction that each and everyone’s existence is deeply tied to that of others: life is not time merely passing by, life is about interactions.
As I meet, or lend an ear to those who are sick, to the migrants who face terrible hardships in search of a brighter future, to prison inmates who carry a hell of pain inside their hearts, and to those, many of them young, who cannot find a job, I often find myself wondering: “Why them and not me?”
I, myself, was born in a family of migrants; my father, my grandparents, like many other Italians, left for Argentina and met the fate of those who are left with nothing. I could have very well ended up among today’s “discarded” people.
And that’s why I always ask myself, deep in my heart: “Why them and not me?”
First and foremost, I would love it if this meeting could help to remind us that we all need each other, none of us is an island, an autonomous and independent “I,” separated from the other, and we can only build the future by standing together, including everyone.
We don’t think about it often, but everything is connected, and we need to restore our connections to a healthy state. Even the harsh judgment I hold in my heart against my brother or my sister, the open wound that was never cured, the offense that was never forgiven, the rancor that is only going to hurt me, are all instances of a fight that I carry within me, a flare deep in my heart that needs to be extinguished before it goes up in flames, leaving only ashes behind.
Many of us, nowadays, seem to believe that a happy future is something impossible to achieve. While such concerns must be taken very seriously, they are not invincible. They can be overcome when we don’t lock our door to the outside world.
Happiness can only be discovered as a gift of harmony between the whole and each single component. Even science—and you know it better than I do – points to an understanding of reality as a place where every element connects and interacts with everything else.
And this brings me to my second message. How wonderful would it be if the growth of scientific and technological innovation would come along with more equality and social inclusion. How wonderful would it be, while we discover faraway planets, to rediscover the needs of the brothers and sisters orbiting around us.
How wonderful would it be if solidarity, this beautiful and, at times, inconvenient word, were not simply reduced to social work, and became, instead, the default attitude in political, economic and scientific choices, as well as in the relationships among individuals, peoples and countries.
Only by educating people to a true solidarity will we be able to overcome the “culture of waste,” which doesn’t concern only food and goods but, first and foremost, the people who are cast aside by our techno-economic systems which, without even realizing it, are now putting products at their core, instead of people.
Solidarity is a term that many wish to erase from the dictionary. Solidarity, however, is not an automatic mechanism. It cannot be programmed or controlled. It is a free response born from the heart of each and everyone. Yes, a free response!
When one realizes that life, even in the middle of so many contradictions, is a gift, that love is the source and the meaning of life, how can they withhold their urge to do good to another fellow being?
In order to do good, we need memory, we need courage and we need creativity. And I know that TED gathers many creative minds. Yes, love does require a creative, concrete and ingenious attitude. Good intentions and conventional formulas, so often used to appease our conscience, are not enough. Let us help each other, all together, to remember that the other is not a statistic or a number. The other has a face. The “you” is always a real presence, a person to take care of.
There is a parable Jesus told to help us understand the difference between those who’d rather not be bothered and those who take care of the other. I am sure you have heard it before. It is the Parable of the Good Samaritan.
When Jesus was asked: “Who is my neighbor?” namely, “Who should I take care of?” He told this story, the story of a man who had been assaulted, robbed, beaten and abandoned along a dirt road. Upon seeing him, a priest and a Levite, two very influential people of the time, walked past him without stopping to help. After a while, a Samaritan, a very much despised ethnicity at the time, walked by. Seeing the injured man lying on the ground, he did not ignore him as if he weren’t even there.
Instead, he felt compassion for this man, which compelled him to act in a very concrete manner. He poured oil and wine on the wounds of the helpless man, brought him to a hostel and paid out of his pocket for him to be assisted.
The story of the Good Samaritan is the story of today’s humanity. People’s paths are riddled with suffering, as everything is centered around money, and things, instead of people. And often there is this habit, by people who call themselves “respectable,” of not taking care of the others, thus leaving behind thousands of human beings, or entire populations, on the side of the road.
Fortunately, there are also those who are creating a new world by taking care of the other, even out of their own pockets. Mother Teresa actually said: “One cannot love, unless it is at their own expense.”
We have so much to do, and we must do it together. But how can we do that with all the evil we breathe every day?
Thank God, no system can nullify our desire to open up to the good, to compassion and to our capacity to react against evil, all of which stem from deep within our hearts.
Now you might tell me, “Sure, these are beautiful words, but I am not the Good Samaritan, nor Mother Teresa of Calcutta.” On the contrary: we are precious, each and every one of us. Each and every one of us is irreplaceable in the eyes of God. Through the darkness of today’s conflicts, each and every one of us can become a bright candle, a reminder that light will overcome darkness, and never the other way around.
To Christians, the future does have a name, and its name is Hope. Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naïve and ignore the tragedy humanity is facing. Hope is the virtue of a heart that doesn’t lock itself into darkness, that doesn’t dwell on the past, does not simply get by in the present, but is able to see a tomorrow.
Hope is the door that opens onto the future. Hope is a humble, hidden seed of life that, with time, will develop into a large tree. It is like some invisible yeast that allows the whole dough to grow, that brings flavor to all aspects of life.
And it can do so much, because a tiny flicker of light that feeds on hope is enough to shatter the shield of darkness. A single individual is enough for hope to exist.
And that individual can be you. And then there will be another “you,” and another “you,” and it turns into an “us.” And so, does hope begin when we have an “us?” No. Hope began with one “you.” When there is an “us,” there begins a revolution.
The third message I would like to share today is, indeed, about revolution: the revolution of tenderness.
What is tenderness? It is the love that comes close and becomes real. It is a movement that starts from our heart and reaches the eyes, the ears and the hands. Tenderness means to use our eyes to see the other, our ears to hear the other, to listen to the children, the poor, those who are afraid of the future. To listen also to the silent cry of our common home, of our sick and polluted earth. Tenderness means to use our hands and our heart to comfort the other, to take care of those in need.
Tenderness is the language of the young children, of those who need the other. A child’s love for mom and dad grows through their touch, their gaze, their voice, their tenderness. I like when I hear parents talk to their babies, adapting to the little child, sharing the same level of communication. This is tenderness: being on the same level as the other.
God himself descended into Jesus to be on our level. This is the same path the Good Samaritan took. This is the path that Jesus himself took. He lowered himself, he lived his entire human existence practicing the real, concrete language of love.
Yes, tenderness is the path of choice for the strongest, most courageous men and women. Tenderness is not weakness; it is fortitude. It is the path of solidarity, the path of humility.
Please, allow me to say it loud and clear: the more powerful you are, the more your actions will have an impact on people, the more responsible you are to act humbly. If you don’t, your power will ruin you, and you will ruin the other.
There is a saying in Argentina: “Power is like drinking gin on an empty stomach.” You feel dizzy, you get drunk, you lose your balance, and you will end up hurting yourself and those around you, if you don’t connect your power with humility and tenderness.
Through humility and concrete love, on the other hand, power – the highest, the strongest one – becomes a service, a force for good.
The future of humankind isn’t exclusively in the hands of politicians, of great leaders, of big companies. Yes, they do hold an enormous responsibility. But the future is, most of all, in the hands of those people who recognize the other as a “you” and themselves as part of an “us.”
We all need each other.
And so, please, think of me as well with tenderness, so that I can fulfill the task I have been given for the good of the other, of each and every one, of all of you, of all of us.
Thank you.
His Holiness Pope Francis Bishop of Rome Pope Francis is the Bishop of Rome and the Head of the Roman Catholic Church.
“Labour will not be introducing a private members bill on euthanasia” Andrew Little MP, Leader Labour Party.
MEDIA RELEASE FEBRUARY 11, 2017
For more information, see the Right To Life New Zealand Inc Press Release on Scoop.
British Actress, Comedian, broadcaster, Liz Carr, known internationally for her work opposing assisted suicide as a disability campaigner as well as her role in the BBC forensics drama, Silent Witness, has been in Melbourne, Australia for the last few weeks with her show: Assisted Suicide: The Musical.
Part of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, Liz’s show is incredibly funny as it is poignant. Simply put; it is a great night out designed to make people think about the issue of assisted suicide. Pegged by Liz as a ‘Ted Talk with show tunes’ the show is a rollicking feast of songs in the great tradition of show tunes interspersed with Liz talking to the audience about her experiences and concerns about assisted suicide.
John Counsel summarized well in his review:
For me, the lasting impression was of how reasonable Liz’s arguments are. There’s no dogmatic, in-your-face demand to accept any specific position. Yes, there’s plenty of confrontation and strong language… but it’s not directed against anything except entrenched, predominantly-emotional stances that simply won’t stand up to rational examination. And she covers just about every imaginable angle. The overwhelming take-out from this 90-minute entertainment is just how ill-considered and irrational most of the pro-suicide arguments really are, and how rational and reasonable the alternatives are. It’s about LIFE, not death. And it’s about showing better solutions for LIVING with dignity.She also skewers popular pro-suicide buzzwords like “choice”, “dying with dignity”, “mercy killing”, etc and presents a cogent case for people with disabilities, against a clever tapestry of the stark realities experienced in countries and states around the world where assisted suicide is already legal. It’s a sobering wake-up call, delivered with clinical precision, couched in terms that can only be considered rational and lucid — yet disarmingly kind and intensely human.
Each night in the auditorium a lonely, empty chair faces Liz and the cast during each performance.
A sign on the chair reads: Following an invitation from Liz Carr and Company – RESERVED – Premier Daniel Andrews The chair has remained empty.
A cynic might conclude that the empty chair and the sign itself are something of a ‘trick-of-the-trade’; a vaudevillian artifice to add some extra dimension to the performance. To know Liz Carr would be to instantly dismiss such accusations. After all, the show is all about bringing information and experience to the debate which includes all politicians and certainly the Premier of Victoria. As Western Australian disability advocate, Sam Connor told the South Australian Parliament last year, ‘We don’t have loud voices; we don’t have unlimited funds; we don’t have glossy campaigns; we don’t have articulate public figures…and that’s why you need to listen harder because we are the people that are going to die as a result of this legislation.’ That is one reason why Liz Carr’s show is so important and why behaving like the proverbial ostrich is both disrespectful an dangerous.
Other Members of Parliament have seen the show and others also joined with their colleagues to hear Liz give a briefing in Parliament before the show commenced. Not all will have had an open mind on the subject, certainly; but to their credit they heard Liz out. And if informed consent is to be the hallmark of access to assisted suicide legislation, then surely giving up 90 minutes one evening to become informed about the issues that many in the disability community hold in this matter isn’t too much to ask? As Liz told Victorian MPs recently:
Opposition to these bills is usually marginalised as being religious and that’s very useful to do if you don’t want to listen to it, but actually if we want to introduce a bill like this, we have to listen to all sides of course, and we have to not diminish their view.I have met with disabled people all over the world in this issue. Why does it involve us? Because it’s very easy to shut up disabled people, and go this is not about you. This is about terminally ill people. In the public perception, in the media, and in medical terms there is such a fine line between disability and terminal illness, that we become one in the same.
Nor is Liz’s attempt to engage Premier Andrews about trying to embarrass him into coming. Liz has contacted the Premier’s office with an invitation; she has invited him again and again on social media, on national television and in the pages of the local newspapers. This is about genuine and necessary engagement with the issues; about an informed decision.
Readers will instantly understand that the Premier is an important figure in such debates having the ‘yeah or nay’ on what is debated in the parliament and what debate time is allocated. Moreso for Daniel Andrews in this instance because the move towards an assisted suicide bill expected to be introduced later this year was his call, with his endorsement and his support.
How can any polity make such grave decisions about life and death without hearing the concerns of communities who have skin in the game? A ‘head-in-the-sand’ attitude or a claim to be ‘too busy’ or worse, apathy or prejudice further marginalises those whose life experience is often precisely about marginalisation, discrimination, lack of opportunity and not being listened to. Again, as Liz observes:
Legislation is therefore unsafe already, because not everybody already starts out as having equal value under the law or in the medical profession or in public perception. I remember Stella Young talking about this a lot: can we have death with dignity, until we have dignity in life?
In Australia where every major infrastructure project requires an extensive (and expensive) environmental impact study that underpins development with assurances that our flora and fauna, waterways etc. are protected from harm, isn’t it only reasonable that any threat to human life and flourishing be treated with equal or greater weight? Isn’t it just and proper that we consider the risk; any risk of wrongful death a bridge-too-far just as we did when we banned capital punishment?
Legislation is always about winners and losers; about those who benefit and those who might be disadvantaged; but rarely is the disadvantage so severe as to be about life itself.
And so the empty chair remains as a powerful and poignant metaphor. Not good enough Mr. Andrews! Go looking for the ‘small voices’ and not simply the squeakiest of wheels. That’s a different story and one that must be heard.
WEA Media Release
