Last Updated: Thursday - 07/22/2010

July 26, 2010

WCR Letters to the Editor

Catholic hospital's care left much to be desired

Re: "Catholic Hospitals Ensure Compassionate Care" by Mark Pickup (WCR, June 21).

Where is Christ in our Catholic hospitals? Our family had quite the opposite experience in a different Catholic hospital. This hospital also had a cross in every room and hallway but sadly we did not see the caring and dignity of life offered that Mark experienced.

The mission, vision and values that were touted were absent in our experience. The love of Christ was nowhere to be found. This Catholic hospital daily tried to convince our father to sign a DNR even after his refusal.

He was subjected to restraints and forced to go to the bathroom in a diaper, even though with assistance he could easily have used the toilet or commode. This was a degrading and humiliating experience for him as he lived independently. Eventually we were assisted by a team of practitioners that were helpful in sending him home.

A few weeks later we had need to go to emergency and we purposely selected a secular hospital and were quite surprised that the care was so different than our Catholic hospital experience even though there was not a single crucifix on their walls.

I am not saying that Catholic hospitals are bad or that the staff does not care but there is definitely something wrong with our health care system when it comes to treating the frail and elderly. Those without an advocate are clearly on their own.

How sad we feel no value in a dignified, compassionate end to their long productive lives. A cross on a wall does not guarantee compassionate care any more than my attendance at Sunday Mass guarantees I will be a better person.

Rita John
Edmonton

God always receives us with infinite goodness

God always receives us with infinite goodness

Thanks, Father René Belanger, for presenting God as a God who is love and who does not reserve hell for great sinners (WCR letters, June 14).

In Scripture the image of God is ambiguous. At times God says, "You shall not bow down to idols for I, Yahweh, am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents." At other times God says: "I am Yahweh, a God tender and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in everlasting love."

What is the true image of God?

For the last millennium, God became a God whose main concern was that Jesus came to "pay" - through his suffering and death - the debt that humanity owed God because of its sins.

Sadly, God has been primarily proclaimed as a God of wrath. Joseph Ratzinger in 1976 said this image of God is false and unbiblical.

Today, Christians want to bring out the overwhelming "goodness" of God. Is this not what the Edmonton Archdiocese is doing in its five-year theme: Nothing is more beautiful than Jesus Christ, the exact image of God?

As Jesus headed towards Jerusalem for his Easter experience, the Samaritans refused to welcome Jesus. James and John, angry, said; "Lord, do you want us to command fire (hell) to come down from heaven and consume them?" But Jesus rebuked them.

The Church has never affirmed as certain that any individual is damned and has always recognized that the workings of grace in each human heart are beyond our grasp.

Four years ago Pope Benedict said at an archbishop's funeral: "It is wonderful to think that, regardless of the series of sins of our life, it is enough to raise our eyes and see the Lord's gesture, who receives each one of us, when we die, with infinite goodness, with the greatest kindness."

Ubald Duchesneau, omi
St. Albert

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