Read, and Despair.

Dec 22, 2010 14:42

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, Fourth Edition

http://www.usccb.org/bishops/directives.shtml#partfour

ethics, religion

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Comments 20

fatpie42 December 22 2010, 16:14:04 UTC
Is this new?

Yeah, the Church's position on this stuff sucks, but that's hardly news.

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lil_shepherd December 22 2010, 17:37:06 UTC
No, it's not news that they're a load of bastards, but it's the first time I, personally, have seen this or read through it.

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fatpie42 December 22 2010, 17:59:16 UTC
Alright then. :)

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melodyclark December 22 2010, 17:40:04 UTC
The Catholic Church actually threatened to withhold humane services from any US state that legalized gay marriage. They also aid and abet pedophiles. They're despicable.

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lil_shepherd December 22 2010, 17:45:49 UTC
I didn't know about that threat. Richard Dawkins gets it in the neck for saying Catholicism is the second most evil religion. (He ought to have said 'sect', which would have been more accurate.) Yet one cannot help thinking he's right - and we both know which aggregation of sects he thinks is more evil...

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steamshovelmama December 22 2010, 19:42:57 UTC
Interesting...did he consider Islam the first?

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lil_shepherd December 22 2010, 19:48:13 UTC
I presume so. However, he, like anyone else with any sense, does not condemn all those who follow Islam as being evil, any more than all Catholics are. It is the leaders, the fundamentalist adherence to doctrine that forms the core danger to modern secularist society that needs to be condemned.

There are good people who are Catholic and good people who are Muslims, but a lot of the doctrine coming from the leaders of both (and particularly certain sects of Islam) stinks.

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steamshovelmama December 22 2010, 19:47:48 UTC
"Reproductive technologies that substitute for the marriage act are not consistent with human dignity"

Hmmm... that was essentially the point of Lewis's "That Hideous Strength".

I note that even an extra uterine pregnancy cannot be aborted which must be mean that the ugly, painful death of mother and child is considered consistent with the "human dignity" they keep prattling on about.

I just think all this worrying about and regulation of private sexual affairs is bizarrely prurient. Especially for a bunch of celibates. Does the attempt to maintain celibacy cause you to dwell incessantly on other folks sex lives - like being on a diet and dwelling incessantly on chocolate!

It just seems rather grubby and unhealthy.

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lil_shepherd December 22 2010, 19:52:27 UTC
I was led to this from a current post on Pharyngula about a Catholic hospital in Arizona where the staff aborted a fetus to save the mother, or else both would have died. The local Archbishop has excommunicated the nun who was part of the group who made the decision and withdrawn Catholic support from the hospital (though they weren't actually giving them financial support anyway) which basically means that Catholic patients and staff cannot take Mass in the hospital chapel. I personally think this is just as well, but it is punishing the patients.

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madfilkentist December 22 2010, 20:16:57 UTC
Both should have died for the sake of "the sanctity of human life," I guess.

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birdsedge December 22 2010, 20:49:25 UTC
But that's actually covered in the rules and regs if I read it right. Where an 'operation or treatment' is to save the life of the mother when without the intervention both mother and child will die before the child is brought to term. Admittedly it doesn't _say_ the operation or treatment includes an abortion, but if without one the result is a double death, what then?

'Directive 47: Operations, treatments, and medications that have as their direct purpose the cure of a proportionately serious pathological condition of a pregnant woman are permitted when they cannot be safely postponed until the unborn child is viable, even if they will result in the death of the unborn child.'

Sheesh! the rest of it's bad enough, but refusing a woman a lifesaving procedure doesn't cut it under anyone's rules.

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