c. 1996 Religion News Service
Federal court bars Medicare, Medicaid payments to Christian Scientists
(RNS) A federal judge in St. Paul, Minn., has struck down Medicare and Medicaid payments to Christian Science health practitioners as a violation of the constitutionally required separation of church and state.”Legislative accommodation of religious beliefs is a valuable and worthy enterprise, but here … the accommodation has gone too far, and too strongly favors the convictions of one particular sect,”said U.S. District Judge Richard Kyle in his ruling Wednesday (Aug. 7).
The First Church of Christ, Scientist (Mother Church), as the Boston-based denomination is formally known, teaches that prayer is the most effective treatment for illness and that conventional medicine interferes with spiritual healing.
The church was founded in 1879 by Mary Baker Eddy, who taught that illness results from false thinking and should be treated spiritually through prayer.
Church practitioners do not use drugs or other conventional medical practices in their treatment of illnesses. There are 23 nonprofit nursing centers, independent of the Mother Church in Boston, across the nation.
The suit was filed in January by Children’s Healthcare is a Legal Duty (CHILD, Inc.) and named as defendants Bruce Vladeck, administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, who oversee Medicare and Medicaid federal payments.
Kyle allowed the denomination to join the suit as a defendant in April.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services said the department would have no comment until it has studied the ruling. But church spokesman Victor Westberg said the denomination”intends to vigorously defend”the laws that permit the reimbursements to the church centers.
Church officials estimated that the 23 centers receive about $7.5 million a year in Medicare reimbursements which have covered patients’ room and board, supplies and basic nursing services. The amount of Medicaid payments, which is a state-federal program for the poor, is unknown.
Church officials said the payments do not cover the services of Christian Science practitioners, who are trained to pray for patients’ healing.
CHILD, however, charged that Christian Science nursing homes are religious institutions”which exist to promote and support the religious ritual of Christian Science spiritual treatment.”Christian Science nurses cannot take a pulse, use a fever thermometer, give an enema or even a backrub,”the group said in a statement issued Friday (Aug. 9).”They have been retained to attend sick children and have sat taking notes as children suffered and died but have not called for medical care nor recommended that the parents obtain it.” CHILD’s president is Rita Swan, a former church member whose 16-month-old son died in 1977 of meningitis and was treated with prayer only.”Congress should not be giving public money to unlicensed, untrained providers whose services are designed to promote a particular church theology,”Swan said.
But Westberg said it would be”the height of unfairness if now _ after Christians Scientists have for many years paid part of their wages into these governmental programs _ they should suddenly find themselves deprived of the benefits of these programs.”
Olympic medals seen as sign of world’s economic inequality
(RNS) The number of Olympic medals awarded to athletes from affluent nations compared to medals won by athlete’s from developing nations raises troubling questions about the world’s commitment to ending poverty and symbolizes ongoing economic injustice, according to an official of the Australian branch of World Vision, the evangelical humanitarian agency.
Greg Foot, World Vision manager of the Australian state of Tasmania, noted that during the two weeks of the Atlanta games an estimated 490,000 children around the world died from hunger and preventable diseases.”That’s more than the entire population of Tasmania,”he said.
Australian federal and state governments spend about $1.5 billion on sports facilities and services each year, he said, compared with about $1.2 billion in overseas development aid aimed at eliminating global poverty.
He said the discrepancy in the number of medals won by rich countries and poor countries was telling.”Australia achieved a remarkable 41 medals at Atlanta and finished fifth on the table of overall winners,”he told Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news service.”And I was cheering our champions, along with virtually every other Australian.”But India, a nation with over 50 times our population, won just one solitary bronze (medal),”he said.
He said the”starkest contrast”is that two countries among the world’s most populous nations _ the United States and Russia _ gained 164 medals between them.”Four other countries in the top 10 _ India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia _ with over three times the population of the U.S. and Russia, gained just five medals between them,”he said.”This is not to say we shouldn’t celebrate excellence or applaud extraordinary feats of human skill and endurance,”he said.”But we do ask whether we are quite getting the balance right when we spend so much on perfecting the diet of our elite athletes when millions of our neighbors have barely enough food to be able to walk.”
Update: Germans urged to boycott film starring Scientologist Tom Cruise
(RNS) A German youth group affiliated with Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democratic Party has called for a boycott of the movie”Mission Impossible”because Tom Cruise, the film’s star, is a Scientologist.
The boycott call is the latest in a string of attacks on Scientology in Germany, where the head of the Christian Democratic Party in Kohl’s home state of Rhineland-Palatinate said Wednesday (Aug. 7) that Scientologists should be banned from holding government jobs and that the Church of Scientology’s non-profit status should be reconsidered.
Johannes Gerster urged the actions because, he said, Scientology seeks to undermine the German government by luring the nation’s youth into its fold. Gerster said that Scientology’s aim is to dominate the world.
A spokesman for Scientology in Germany, Franz Riedl, dismissed the attacks as attempt by politicians”to exploit Scientology’s fame for their own careers,”the Associated Press reported.
In urging Germans to boycott”Mission Impossible,”Burkhard Remmers, head of the Christian Democratic Union Youth Organization in the state of Lower Saxony, said”the tactic of Scientology is to connect it with the notion of success. That is aided by the many U.S. stars who go on publicity tours in Europe. But Scientology does not mean success.” During a recent visit to Germany to promote”Mission Impossible,”Cruise said being a Scientologist is”an entirely personal matter”and he refused to discuss the issue.
American jazz musician Chick Corea, also a Scientologist, has also been the target of criticism and boycotts in Germany. Corea told Religion News Service that some German music promoters have refused to work with him.
Cardinal O’Connor calls for meatless Friday to combat abortion
(RNS) Roman Catholic Cardinal John J. O’Connor of New York called Friday (Aug. 9) for Catholics in the archdiocese to return to meatless Fridays as a means of spiritually combatting a controversial late-term abortion procedure.
A ban on the procedure, known by its opponents as”partial-birth abortion”has been approved by Congress but President Clinton has vetoed the bill. An attempt to override the veto is likely to come up in September when Congress returns from its political conventions recess.
O’Connor, in his weekly column for the archdiocesan newspaper Catholic New York, called the procedure”infanticide.””Let us commit ourselves to abstinence every Friday, that is to refrain from eating meat on Fridays for one year,”O’Connor wrote.”Why a year, if the partial-birth abortion vote is taken in September? One, if the presidential veto is not overriden, we will continue to abstain while continuing our efforts to change minds and hearts. Even more, we will abstain as compensation for the sins of a nation that has permitted this horror.”If the veto is overriden, we will abstain in gratitude to God,”he added.
In a separate abortion-related development, the Alan Guttmacher Institute, a non-profit research group that studies abortion and related issues, reported that a survey of women who had abortions in 1994 and 1995 showed that 31 percent of those obtaining abortions were Catholic, the same percentage they represent in the general population of women of child-bearing age.
About 37 percent of those in the survey were Protestant, 1 percent were Jewish, 6 percent were”other”and 24 percent did not give a religious affiliation.
The report said that abortion rates among those identifying themselves as”born again”or evangelical were relatively low _ 18 percent of all abortion patients, though they make up 46 percent women of child-bearing age.
Quote of the day: The Rev. John Danforth, former Republican senator from Missouri, on politics, religion, and tolerance.
(RNS) Before retiring in 1994, the Rev. John Danforth, an ordained Episcopal priest, served as a Republican senator from Missouri. In a recent interview in the Christian Century, Danforth addressed a range of issues effecting contemporary politics, including the role of people of faith in the political process. A key feature of that involvement, he said, is tolerance:”In the end we have a theological reason for insisting on the protection of diversity within unity. … One of the messages of our religious tradition is that God’s ways are not our ways, and our thoughts are not God’s thoughts. We may be, and probably are, wrong in a lot of what we think and do. Therefore … religious people have the responsibility not only to participate in the political process but to wear their tolerance on their sleeves. Religious people especially have the responsibility to recognize that theirs is one of many points of view, all of which are encompassed within America.”
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