Weekly THIS AND THAT for June 15, 2008: Hospital Ethics Strike Home

This and That
Hospital Ethics Strike Home


Dear Friends,

I recently had an experience of a family member back home who is very ill being treated poorly at the Catholic hospital where she is a patient. It just so happens that a friend of mine is also a doctor on staff at the hospital. In my need to “do something” I wrote to him asking if he thought it might help to remedy the situation by sending a letter to the Director of the Hospital, whom I also know, as a way of correcting the abuses I thought had been inflicted on our family. He wrote back the following letter. I am sure you will find it interesting because it falls back – not on the hospital to do something – but on you and me.

Fondly,
Father Nicholas

Dear Nicholas,

I am going to apologize before I even start because I can go on and on about this subject. First of all, let me stress – our Catholic hospital is NOT alone in their thinking or actions. Unfortunately medical care, ethics, and compassion have been on a steady decline for sometime.

There are many reasons for this, some being, lawyers, insurance companies, money and the increased complexity of patient care. But the reason goes far deeper than the medical profession because the problem, I believe, lies in the society of today.

We live in a world that appears to have lost its moral moorings, in an age where ethics have become obsolete. Think back 20 years and tell me how many workplaces had mandatory seminars on sexual harassment; how many schools had seminars on how “not to touch” our children; and how many teachers were told not to discipline. Today medical ethics, business ethics, environmental ethics, and legal ethics are not only serious endeavors, but they are required curricular studies in respected professional schools across the land. Ethics has been spoken of as a “growth industry.”
Why? Because we as a society have allowed morality and ethics to be superseded by science, deleted by psychology, and dismissed as emotive by philosophy. This has driven society into rewriting the rules, so that utility has replaced duty, self-expression has unseated authority, and being good has become feeling good. To many, life has become a pinball game, whose rules, though they are few, are all instrumental, and not meaningful in themselves, except as a means to the player’s enjoyment. It’s as if we are adrift in uncharted seas and have tossed away the compass.

Not so long ago the Times Literary Supplement referred to a society that has never made a movie of Leonardo DaVinci, but has produced three about Joey Buttafuoco – famous only for having had a teenage love, Amy Fisher, who shot his wife! What kind of example is this for our children?

What kind of example are we giving our children when the most important thing is getting into an Ivy League school, their GPA, their success in sports and being the best in everything? What kind of example is it for our children when we scream at the umpire from the sidelines because we disagree with a call, when we skip church because we are tired, lazy, there’s a good game on TV, or we have to take our kids to soccer? What kind of a society are we when sports are more important than religion? What kind of society are we when the next deadline or dragging our children to ANOTHER after-school activity is more important than sitting down to a family dinner?

We are so focused on power, fame, money and instant gratification that we seem to have little regard for human life. This has led to such a breakdown in the human family and in human interactions in general. Just look at communication – some of the advances are great, but our children think communication is more about machines than human interaction. How are they ever to learn compassion, caring, and mercy when they are hidden behind emails, text messages and cell phones? Just think of the lives that are destroyed by emails written with anonymously because the person is too “small” to own up to their own words. Years ago these words would have gone unsaid but now we have given them a platform. To think that we now have to teach our children about cyber-bullying and sexual predators online! It’s easier to teach them about dangers that are seen than unseen.

I read a book once, and the author skips my kind at the moment, but he/she gave a helpful illustration on how we should live life. He/She said we are like a fleet of ships sailing in formation to a particular destination. Now if the fleet is going to arrive safely without mishap, three things are necessary. First, the individual ships must be seaworthy. Their insides must be in good working order so they can keep afloat, steer well, and have the motive power to make the journey. Second, they must be aware of the other boats so they don’t bump into one another and so cause harm to themselves and others. Third, they must have some idea about where they are heading – why they are afloat in the first place. It will be of no use if, after a good journey, they end up in Calcutta when they were supposed to get to New York!

The first of these we could describe as individual morality – virtues, vices, and character building, which we don’t hear much about from our modern ethical philosophies. We have got to keep ourselves shipshape for the journey. The second we could call social ethics – how to get along with one another and help, rather than hinder, others on the journey. The third issue is – why are we here at all and where are we supposed to be going? Many modern philosophers avoid this last issue, as they have no answer to it. And yet, this is the most important question of all. For morality to be of any use there must be some point to it all. We have got to know our destination!

Of course we know that Christianity provides the answers to these three basic questions. It gives clear guidance as to how to keep ourselves in good working order. It gives very clear instructions on how we should relate to one another and why. More than that, and most importantly, it gives us a clear purpose for making the journey in the first place, a purpose that reaches well beyond the confines of this brief earthly existence. In addition, it tells us how to get aboard the fleet and how to deal with calamities along the way. In this journey, no shipwreck need be final.

Finally, it gives the motive power to see the journey through to the end, an end which is only a greater beginning.

This is a very complex issue, Nicholas, and I do not believe one that will be fixed by a letter to anyone. I would save your words. The hospital Director knows very well what she’s up against – it is just difficult to solve when it is not a hospital we need to change, but a society.

You are right that the hospital is a Catholic Hospital just as Our Lady of Grace is a Catholic Church and we both know from experience that there are people that belong to both that live very unchristian lives.

Sorry for the “Soap box,”
Arthur