The New Abortion Pushers: Making Abortion a “Seamless Part of Health Care for Women”
Published July 24, 2010 | 
As abortion doctors are diminishing in numbers, the abortion-rights crowd is trying to mandate that hospitals provide abortion services…
By Gary Bauer, Human Events, July 24, 2010
Statistically, it’s been a rough few years for the abortion-rights crowd. The numbers of abortions, abortion providers and abortion facilities have declined, and numerous polls have discovered a majority pro-life America for the first time in decades.
Perhaps worst of all, the number of medical students training to perform abortions has plummeted. As Susan Hill of the National Women’s Health Foundation told the Washington Post last year, “Our doctors are graying and are not being replaced. …The situation is grave.”
Not that pro-lifers believe this is any time to relax. Abortion remains the most common surgical procedure for American women. And many of the pro-life political gains of the last decade are being rolled back by the most pro-abortion President and Congress in history.
What’s more, as Emily Bazelon described in a recent New York Times Magazine piece titled “The New Abortion Providers,” the abortion-rights movement has embraced a bold new strategy to reverse abortion’s decline—to push abortion from the periphery to the mainstream of medicine.
The essential problem for abortion advocates is that too few ob-gyns are training to perform abortions. This is because abortion was relegated to the margins of medical practice for decades. As abortionist Warren Hern explained in 1994, “Most physicians regard abortion as a stigmatized operation done by people who are otherwise incompetent and can’t do anything else.”
So, abortion activists have been trying to attract young doctors, Bazelon writes, by building “residency programs and fellowships at university hospitals, with the hope that, eventually, more and more doctors will use their training to bring abortion into their practices.”
They’ve started groups like Medical Students for Choice, and pushed for institutional changes such as requiring that ob-gyn residencies train for abortion in order to receive accreditation.
Another way abortion rights activists have tried to make baby-killing more attractive to young doctors is by shifting where abortions are performed—from stand alone facilities like Planned Parenthood to hospitals, where abortionists and their victims cannot be easily identified by pro-life protestors.
The specter of anti-abortion violence is present throughout Bazelon’s piece. Just as the liberal media have taken a few instances of racially insensitive signs at Tea Party events to try to impugn the whole movement as racist, abortion advocates have long exploited the unacceptable instances of abortion violence to malign the entire pro-life cause.
Bazelon mentions last year’s George Tiller murder and the 1993 murder of abortionist David Gunn. She even describes how a young abortionist dreamt she had been blown up in a clinic bombing.
But pro-life violence is remarkably rare, and is rightly condemned by the pro-life community without hesitation. The National Abortion Federation cites only a few violent incidents and one lethal attack, Tiller’s murder, over the last decade.
It is more likely that the increasingly discernible violence of abortion has prompted more soul searching even among young pro-choice doctors. As former NARAL head Kate Michelman wrote last year, “[Ultrasound] technology has clearly helped to define how people think about a fetus as a full, breathing human being.”
Bazelon reassures readers that only doctors who want to train and perform abortions will have to. “Medical residents with a moral or religious objection can always choose not to participate in abortion training,” she writes.
But there is ample evidence that abortion will be forced on doctors and hospitals. As American Values’ writer Daniel Allott and attorney Matt Bowman wrote last fall in the Catholic World Report, “The shrinking number of doctors willing to perform or train for abortions has made mainstreaming the procedure a matter of industry survival. And it has therefore made conscience protection an intolerable obstacle to the so called ‘right to access’ abortion.”
Professional medical boards have been trying to mainstream abortion training in medical schools for years. In 2007, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) stated that healthcare providers may not exercise their right of conscience if it would “constitute an imposition of religious or moral beliefs on patients.”
President Obama says he supports “robust” conscience protections, but he overturned a Bush provision to enforce conscience protections at the federal level. Under Obamacare, which passed without a conscience clause, it is likely pro-life doctors will be forced to assist in abortions or risk losing their jobs.
“The bold idea at the heart of this effort,” Bazelon wrote in her New York Times piece, “is to integrate abortion so that’s it’s a seamless part of health care for women—embraced rather than shunned. This is the future. Or rather, one possible future.”
But the most important effect of the abortion-movement’s strategy to impose abortion will be to force pro-life doctors and hospitals to choose between participating in the moral evil of abortion and abandoning the field.
If that future becomes reality, the “bold idea” of mainstreaming abortion will result in the shunning of doctors who take seriously their oath to “first, do no harm.” And that would be a tragedy of the first order.
Former presidential candidate Mr. Gary Bauer is president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=38241
America is NOT a Democracy
Published July 24, 2010 | Dr. James Stoner, Dr. Paul Rahe of Hillsdale College and Joseph Postell of the Heritage Foundation discuss a Republic vs. a Democracy.
1913 – 16th & 17th AMENDMENT
Published July 24, 2010 | In 1913, the Federal Reserve was created. The Federal Progressive Income Tax was created. And the Progressives cleverly shifted power from the States to Washington by introducing the 17th Amendment.
Michael Voris: The Drift 07-23
Published July 24, 2010 | It takes almost nothing to begin to drift away from the faith.
To view online: http://www.realcatholictv.com/free/index.php?vidID=vort-2010-07-23
This program is from RealCatholicTV.com
Michael Voris: The Horse you Back 07-22
Published July 24, 2010 | Be careful who you back in politics.
To view online: http://www.realcatholictv.com/free/index.php?vidID=vort-2010-07-22
This program is from RealCatholicTV.com
Kids and Video Screens
Published July 24, 2010 | ….Kaiser’s researchers interviewed more than 2,000 kids between the ages of eight and eighteen. They found that, on average, the participants in the study spent seven and one-half hours a day using these devices!….
By Mark Earley, Catholic Exchange, July 24, 2010
If I asked you what your teenage children are doing right now, you might not know. But the New York Times and the Kaiser Family Foundation have a pretty good idea.
According to a recent Kaiser study, if your teenager is awake and isn’t in school, he or she is staring at a screen a smart-phone, a computer, or watching television.
The authors claimed to have been “shocked” by the results.
Kaiser’s researchers interviewed more than 2,000 kids between the ages of eight and eighteen. They found that, on average, the participants in the study spent seven and one-half hours a day using these devices! What’s more, that figure understates the amount of time American kids devote to consuming media and other related activities.
For instance, it does not include time spent actually talking on these smart-phones or sending and receiving messages. That adds another one and a half hours to the total. When you add time spent doing several media-related things at once, that is multi-tasking, American kids spend the equivalent of eleven hours a day tethered to an electronic device.
The authors were “stunned” because they believed that media consumption among kids had already maxed out when they last measured it in 2005. What didn’t take into account, either then or now, is what drives the heavy usage: dread of being bored.
As one 14-year-old told the Times, “I feel like my days would be boring without” my smart phone. It’s not only him. As New Testament scholar Ben Witherington recently wrote, smart-phones “are seen as the cure for boredom.”
This “boredom” is “in most cases…the state of mind of those who lack imagination and therefore require all kinds of stimuli to prevent them from losing interest in things, and even in life.” That’s why people, adults as well as kids, are “constantly fiddling with their cellphone.” The alternative to all this fiddling is being alone with your own thoughts, which terrifies people used to the constant stimulation provided by our media-saturated culture.
Happily, parents can help their kids to avoid this trap. The Kaiser study found that parents can make rules limiting this kind of mindless media consumption and that their children will follow them. It won’t be easy but, then again, swimming against the cultural tide never is.
Speaking of swimming against the tide, even more important than rules and limits is teaching our children that we don’t need constant stimulation. On the contrary, being quiet and still is an essential part of the Christian life. We are told “be still” so that we may learn who God is. God spoke to Elijah in a still small voice.
Neuroscientists tell us that many, if not most, of our most creative and productive moments come when we step back from all the stimulation and let our minds be free. In other words, what many people call “boredom” is good for us in ways that the constantly-stimulated can’t begin to imagine.
We’re not talking about letting our minds wander just anywhere. What we’re told to do is invest our life in a relationship with Christ. In His word, in prayer, and in meditation.
Unplugging and stepping back for some time alone with God is yet another reason for us to unplug our kids and ourselves and risk being bored. For all the right reasons.
This update courtesy of BreakPoint.
Heavy Dose of Reality!
Published July 24, 2010 | Excerpt: ….Given that Americans tend to replace presidents when the economy is struggling, can we predict that Obama will be a one-term president? I don’t think so. The presidential campaign of 2012 could be a repeat of 1936 (FDR’s first run for re-election). The historical record shows that many voters in 1936 were disappointed about the terrible shape of the overall economy after four years of New Deal programs. Many who were unhappy about the economy voted for Roosevelt anyhow. Why? Because they were benefiting personally from his massive spending programs…..
SOURCE: “More Lessons from History: How Obamanomics May Play Out”, By Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson, Catholic Exchange, July 24, 2010 (Entire article found below)
More Lessons from History: How Obamanomics May Play Out
Published July 24, 2010 | …When private businesses serve customers poorly, their revenues decline. If their losses are severe enough, they fold. Exactly the opposite happens with bureaucracies. If they fail to get the job done, Congress typically appropriates more funds for them…..
By Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson, Catholic Exchange, July 24, 2010
The grand lesson of the 20th century is that Big Government retards economic progress.
The evidence of this lesson goes beyond the socialist countries and their dramatic economic failures. Several decades ago, as a young economist, I encountered repeated studies that showed a high correlation between two macroeconomic phenomena: The larger the government’s share of a country’s GDP, the slower the rate of economic growth tended to be. Conversely, economic growth flourished where government was relatively small.
Many Americans seemed, and still seem, impervious to this lesson despite our own history. The same correlation was evident in the 1920s, when President Harding cut the size of federal spending in half, leading to a decade of prosperity, and in the 1930s, when the economy tanked under Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt and their huge expansions of government.
Despite this clear historical evidence, President Obama is committed to growing government. He has increased federal spending to over 27 percent of GDP, up from 20.5 percent when George W. Bush left office.
Obama indisputably favors the public sector over the private. When Michelle Obama gave her famous speech a couple of years ago, urging young people to avoid working for profit-seeking (i.e., private) companies, she was doing more than simply expressing an opinion: She articulated her husband’s agenda.
It started on day one, when Obama staffed his cabinet and other top positions in his administration with a record-low percentage of people with private-sector experience—fewer than 10 percent (the historical average is near 40 percent).
Since then, he has consistently worked to bring more and more people onto the government payroll. He increased the number of paid positions in Americorps by 224 percent; Teach for America by 94 percent; Peace Corps, 24 percent. The health-insurance bill created dozens of new agencies. The just-passed financial reform bill creates a new bureaucracy with an initial budget of nearly a billion dollars per year.
One source recently reported that Team Obama is revoking contracts with private firms and transferring the work to government employees. The government even hires former employees of the private contractors, giving them significant pay-and-benefit hikes. That may be good for them, but at a time of record budget deficits, finding ways to increase the costs of government doesn’t make economic sense.
In his compact 1944 classic, Bureaucracy, economist Ludwig von Mises explained why bureaucracies are inherently uneconomical. Whether under socialist or democratic governments, bureaucracies are not disciplined by the profit-loss calculus. Insulated from the competitive marketplace, they become bloated and inefficient.
When private businesses serve customers poorly, their revenues decline. If their losses are severe enough, they fold. Exactly the opposite happens with bureaucracies. If they fail to get the job done, Congress typically appropriates more funds for them. We saw this with FEMA after Hurricane Katrina, and the same dynamic will play out with Obamacare, too, unless it is repealed. It’s the nature of the beast.
No society can afford to bear the costs of many bureaucracies. As much as Obama prefers government workers, most people need to be in the private sector generating the wealth that government appropriates for bureaucratic functions.
This implies that Obama has veered down a dead-end detour. He wants government agencies to be in charge of this, that, and the other thing, but how can we pay for it all? A bureau-centric policy agenda inevitably impedes economic growth.
Obamanomics, in short, ignores two economic truths: Expanding government’s share of GDP cripples economic growth. So does a proliferation of new government bureaucracies. From this we may predict that Obama’s policies will saddle us with continuing economic sluggishness.
Given that Americans tend to replace presidents when the economy is struggling, can we predict that Obama will be a one-term president? I don’t think so. The presidential campaign of 2012 could be a repeat of 1936 (FDR’s first run for re-election). The historical record shows that many voters in 1936 were disappointed about the terrible shape of the overall economy after four years of New Deal programs. Many who were unhappy about the economy voted for Roosevelt anyhow. Why? Because they were benefiting personally from his massive spending programs.
Obama’s stimulus plan has been and will continue to be spent in ways that benefit targeted groups. His recent request for another $50 billion to give to teachers, firefighters, and police (traditionally, these have been locally funded public employees, and therefore independent of Washington) is just one example of Obama’s politically strategic spending.
Obama has ignored the economic lessons of history, but he has taken to heart the political lesson of FDR’s formula for electoral success. It would be prudent and timely for us citizens to grasp both the economic and political lessons of our history.
Editorial: Homosexual Activity, Catholic Teaching and Scandalmongering
Published July 24, 2010 | By Deacon Keith Fournier, 7/23/2010, Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)
‘the sins of priests’ call us all back to conversion of heart and life
We must not participate in the kind of scandal mongering which this article seems to be attempting to promote. In the words of the Pope, ‘the sins of priests’ call us all back to conversion of heart and life’.
The reports passed like lightning through the blogosphere on Friday, July 23, 2010. They were recast in numerous stories as though each had its own source. They all stemmed from a sensationalist cover story in the Italian magazine “Panorama” entitled “The wild nights of gay priests”. The writer claimed to have tracked three Catholic priests who were actively living homosexual lifestyles and frequenting homosexual bars in Rome. What does this story in “Panorama” of Italy have to teach Catholics concerned with the challenges facing the Church?
We must not participate in the kind of scandal mongering which this article seems to be attempting to promote. In the words of the Pope, ‘the sins of priests’ call us all back to conversion of heart and life’.
CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic online) – The reports passed like lightning through the blogosphere on Friday, July 23, 2010. They were recast in numerous stories as though each had its own sources. They all stemmed from a sensationalist cover story Italian magazine “Panorama” entitled “The wild nights of gay priests”. The writer claimed to have tracked three Catholic priests who were actively living homosexual lifestyles and
frequenting homosexual bars in Rome.
I immediately attempted to ascertain more facts. When I saw numerous reports from news sources which promote the homosexual lifestyle, my antennae went up. Soon, the reliable “Catholic News Agency” filled in the gaps with a report entitled “After exposé, Vicariate of Rome asks clergy leading ‘double lives’ to leave priesthood” which we offered to our global readership. The Vicariate of Rome assists the Bishop of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI.
The Vicariate responded with courage. They did not deny the story but defended the overwhelming majority of holy and faithful priests in Rome. They questioned the motivation behind the alleged expose, “the purpose of the article is obvious: to create scandal, defame all priests … discredit the church and – in another way – put pressure on that part of the Church defined by them as ‘intransigent, that strives not to face the reality’ of homosexual priests.” They insisted that if the story proves true, the priests involved were living “double lives”, not being morally “coherent”, were injuring all other priests, should reveal themselves and leave the priesthood.
They affirmed, “we firmly adhere to what the Holy Father Benedict XVI has repeated several times in recent months: ‘the sins of priests’ call us all back to conversion of heart and life and to be vigilant so as not to ‘pollute the faith and Christian life, damaging the integrity of the Church, weakening her capacity of prophecy and testimony, tarnishing the beauty of her face’.” We should all make such an affirmation.
The teaching of the Catholic Church regarding homosexual sexual activity as morally disordered, constituting grave sin and against the Natural Law which binds all human beings is unequivocal. Among the clearest summaries was one set forth by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in the “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons” promulgated in 1986 by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith. Here are a few of the insights:
“The Church, obedient to the Lord who founded her and gave to her the sacramental life, celebrates the divine plan of the loving and live-giving union of men and women in the sacrament of marriage. It is only in the marital relationship that the use of the sexual faculty can be morally good. A person engaging in homosexual behavior therefore acts immorally.”
“To choose someone of the same sex for one’s sexual activity is to annul the rich symbolism and meaning, not to mention the goals, of the Creator’s sexual design. Homosexual activity is not a complementary union, able to transmit life; and so it thwarts the call to a life of that form of self-giving which the Gospel says is the essence of Christian living. This does not mean that homosexual persons are not often generous and giving of themselves; but when they engage in homosexual activity they confirm within themselves a disordered sexual inclination which is essentially self-indulgent”. Continue reading
FactCheck.org Confirms: Obamacare Dollars Were Set to Fund Abortions before Controversy
Published July 24, 2010 | By Kathleen Gilbert, July 23, 2010, LifeSiteNews.com
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The non-partisan fact-checking site FactCheck.org has vindicated the National Right to Life Committee’s (NRLC) claim that federal monies were on the brink of funding abortions in state high-risk insurance pools before the matter was exposed by NRLC, prompting the Obama administration to retroactively enforce Hyde-amendment restrictions.
The controversy erupted a week and a half ago, when NRLC revealed that abortions would be funded under a $160 million Pennsylvania program, a fact that contradicted the repeated assurances of President Obama and pro-life Democrats that abortions would not be funded under the federal health care law. The pro-life organization also unearthed similar funding problems in New Mexico and Maryland.
The Health and Human Services Department (HHS) responded to the concerns raised by NRLC in a statement, suggesting that an abortion funding ban for the high risk pools was already implied in the health reform law. However, Planned Parenthood and NARAL both expressed shock at the HHS’s ”clarification” that only abortions in cases of rape, incest, and threat to the mother’s life would be federally subsidized under the high-risk plans; both groups condemned such a funding ban as a clear change in the law.
Now Brooks Jackson of FactCheck.org has agreed with both NRLC and the pro-abortion groups that nothing in the law would have prevented abortions from being funded under the high-risk pools.
He wrote that the NRLC was correct to point out that the Pennsylvania plan was flawed because, while it appeared to exclude “elective abortions” from federally-subsidized coverage, it failed to define the term “elective abortions,” rendering the statement meaningless.
LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) had twice asked Pennsylvania state insurance officials to clarify the meaning of “elective abortion,” but a spokesperson would not answer the question, but simply referred LSN to the HHS statement.
“The term ‘elective’ isn’t defined, and so isn’t very meaningful,” wrote Jackson. “So — when all the verbal smoke is cleared away — the solicitation states that the program ‘will’ cover ‘only’ abortions that are legal. That doesn’t leave out much.”
Shortly after the HHS announced that it would apply Hyde restrictions to the high risk pools after all, NRLC Legislative Director Douglas Johnson said that, “It is certainly clear that [HHS officials] were not imposing any abortion restrictions until now, until it became a matter of controversy.
“[HHS officials] were not applying any kind of guidance that would keep states from submitting such a plan [approving abortion coverage], and they weren’t denying approval when a state did submit such a plan,” he said.
Jackson wrote that the Pennsylvania Insurance Department’s spokeswoman Melissa Fox responded to further questions from Factcheck.org by justifying the proposal’s vague language, saying that the “aggressive timeframe to submit proposals” required that the writers of the proposal “insert ‘placeholder’ language absent specific guidance from the federal government on the benefit package.”
“So the story now is that in the haste to meet a deadline, ‘placeholder’ language was inserted, to be adjusted later,” Jackson concluded. “But whatever Pennsylvania officials intended, the stated federal policy is now clear: No abortions will be covered by the temporary risk pools except for those in cases of rape or incest, or to save the life of the mother.”
The FactCheck.org article does not address in depth the New Mexico plan, whose Federal High Risk Pool initially listed “Routine Maternity/Elective Termination of Pregnancy” as a covered benefit under the section “Hospital/Facility Services.” When the Associated Press contacted the agency about that plan, a spokesperson initially claimed the coverage would remain unchanged, before calling the AP back to say that officials had begun “correcting the package so it will not have elective abortion coverage.”
NRLC also discovered earlier this week that a third high-risk pool proposal in Maryland had not applied Hyde restrictions on abortion funding, and that no guidelines were given by the HHS to do so.
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Maryland Plan Indicates HHS Approved High Risk Pools With No Abortion Requirements
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10071909.html
HHS Moves to Block Abortion Funding in High-Risk Pools Following Controversy
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10071511.html
NARAL Enraged, USCCB Cautiously Pleased with HHS ‘Clarification’ on High-Risk Pool Abortion Funding
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10071606.html
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10072302.html
GOSPEL & MEDITATION: Rolling Up the Sleeves and Gathering the Sheaves
Published July 24, 2010 | July 24, 2010
Saturday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Father Robert DeCesare, LC
Matthew 13: 24-30
Jesus proposed another parable to them. “The kingdom of heaven may be likened to a man who sowed good seed in his field. While everyone was asleep his enemy came and sowed weeds all through the wheat, and then went off. When the crop grew and bore fruit, the weeds appeared as well. The slaves of the householder came to him and said, ´Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where have the weeds come from?´ He answered, ´An enemy has done this.´ His slaves said to him, ´Do you want us to go and pull them up?´ He replied, ´No, if you pull up the weeds you might uproot the wheat along with them. Let them grow together until harvest; then at harvest time I will say to the harvesters, “First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles for burning; but gather the wheat into my barn.”´”
Introductory Prayer: Lord, I believe in your Church. I believe that it is the sacrament of salvation, and that you have chosen to lead me to heaven. Lord, I hope in you. I hope in you because you have gone to prepare a place for me in heaven. Lord, I love you because you loved me first. I love you for giving yourself up for me on the cross.
Petition: Forgive me, Lord, for offending you, and help me to make reparation.
1. Verdant Farm or Barren Wasteland? Lord, you have given me the gift of Baptism and of being your child. “Baptism is God´s most beautiful and magnificent gift” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1216). This gift you have given me is something that I do not deserve. I was born with original sin, and yet, out of your infinite goodness and mercy, you have chosen to nourish my barren field and offer me the Kingdom of heaven. Through the life-giving waters of the sacrament of Baptism, you have taken my field that used to be wasteland and desert and have made it flourish. You have sown wheat in my field so that it may yield abundant fruit.
2. A Tainted Field? Lord, even though you have grafted me into your family through Baptism, there are times when I forget the goal of my life, which is heaven. I am weak, and because of my weakness, at times I taint my field with weeds. “Certain temporal consequences of sin remain in the baptized, such as suffering, illness, death, and such frailties inherent in life as weaknesses of character, and so on, as well as an inclination to sin that Tradition calls concupiscence, or metaphorically, ‘the tinder for sin’ (fomes peccati); since concupiscence ‘is left for us to wrestle with, it cannot harm those who do not consent but manfully resist it by the grace of Jesus Christ.’ Indeed, ‘an athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules’” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1264).
3. God Never Gives Up On Me Lord, even though I have let weeds grow in my field where there was once only wheat, you have given me time to let the good grain grow. You know that all is not lost. There is still hope, and there is still time. Even though I have offended you because of my sins, and even though I have not conquered myself and my tendency to sin, I still experience your love and your mercy. You have not given up on me, although it seems to me that I have often given up on myself. You have given me the gift of time for me to weed my field and to increase the good wheat that is within it, so that the harvest I bear may be fruitful and rich.
Conversation with Christ: Lord, thank you for the gift of your mercy. Thank you for being patient with me, for loving me for who I am, and for encouraging me to continue to grow as I should.
Resolution: I shall take some time to prepare to make a good confession.
http://www.regnumchristi.org/english/articulos/articulo.phtml?se=363&ca=975&te=735&id=20302
TODAY’S SAINT: ST. CHARBEL MAKHLOUF
Published July 24, 2010 | CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY, JULY 24, 2010
Yussef Antoun Makhloof –later and forever after known as Sharbel– was of humble birth.
Yet Sharbel belongs to more than his village, monastery, church or country. He belongs to the Universal Church and all Christians. When he was beatified on December 5, 1965, His Holiness Pope Paul VI announced that Saint Sharbel is “a new, eminent member of monastic sanctity [who] through his example and his intercession is enriching the entire Christian people.” (Saint Sharbel: The Hermit of Lebanon 1977: 27)
Yussef, who later took the name Sharbel, was the youngest of five children born to Antoun Zaarour Makhlouf and Brigitta Elias al-Shediyaq. His father died when he was three years old. Like many of the Christians from the Lebanese Mountain, his father had been taken away from his family [by the Turks] and forced into hard labor.
Yussef studied at the parish school and tended the family cow. He spent a great deal of time outdoors in the fields and pastures near his village and he meditated amid the inspiring views of boundless valleys and proud mountains.
From early childhood, Yussef showed that he loved prayer and solitude. In 1851, without informing anyone, he left home. Tanious, his uncle and guardian, wanted Yussef to continue working with him. His mother wanted him to marry the young woman who loved him. (Daher 1952: 18-19; Sfeir 1995: 72-75) Continue reading
The St. Gianna Physician’s Guild Catholic Hippocratic Oath
The Guild
The Saint Gianna Physician Guild is an association of faithful Roman Catholics that aims to uphold and promote the values of the Roman Catholic Church in the lives and professional practices of those in the medical field and to bring them together to defend these values in a public way. The guild has as its patroness St. Gianna Beretta Molla, a saint canonized by John Paul II in 2004. She died in 1962 at the age of 39. She was a devoted wife, mother and physician.
To hold Him who has brought me this art as my constant model and to live my life in partnership with Him, and to give through Him a share of my time and money, and to regard all my patients as my brothers in Christ and in such manner apply this art. And to whomever desires to learn this I will share the precepts and give oral instruction and all the other learning appropriate to the art according to my station in life, provided that these pupils have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law and the laws of the Holy Catholic Church.
I will apply all medical measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.
I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asks for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy nor advise any agent to prevent pregnancy. I will not refer to any practitioner for the purpose of procuring such services. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.
I will not use the knife nor any remedy at which I am not skilled, but will withdraw in favor of such practitioners as are engaged in this work.
Whatever rooms or hospitals or houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they rich or poor, strong or weak.
What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of my patients, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about.
If I fulfill this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored among all men for all time to come, and in the end blessed with eternal salvation by our beneficent and loving Almighty Father; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.
Name ____________________________________________ Date ___________________
Witness __________________________________________
http://www.stgiannaphysicians.org/enshrinements/the-st-gianna-physicians-guild-catholic-hippocratic-oath.html