c. 1998 Religion News Service
Guide to Oregon’s assisted-suicide law published
(RNS) A panel of ethical and medical experts have put together a guidebook aimed at steering doctors and other health care providers through the ethical and bureaucratic maze surrounding Oregon’s first-in-the-nation assisted-suicide law.
The 91-page booklet,”Oregon Death With Dignity Act: A Guidebook for Health Care Providers,”was released Tuesday (March 3), the AP reported.
Oregon’s assisted-suicide law took effect in November after voters reaffirmed the measure.
The guidebook”tries to tease through some of the very challenging issues and explain the tensions that exist for a provider trying to work through these issues with patients and families,”said Dr. Patrick Dunn, chairman of the panel that produced the guide.
The guidebook emphasizes the need for open, thorough and non-judgmental communication among doctors, patients, families and other care givers at the end of a patient’s life. For example, it advises physicians to fully explore why a patient is requesting suicide and to”seek to understand what constitutes unacceptable suffering in the patient’s view.” The guidebook was drafted by a panel formed by the Center for Ethics in Health Care at Oregon Health Sciences University.”These are eagerly awaited,”said Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the nation’s leading bioethicists.”They’ll be the first … to look at the practical applications.”
Censors ban Italian film mixing religion, sex and the Mafia
(RNS) Italian censors have banned the movie”Toto Who Lived Twice,”a film which mixes religion, sex and the Mafia but which censors said is an”offense to common decency.” Leonardo Ancono, a member of the film board, said the movie was not banned because of”an absence of any values.””No, on the contrary,”he added,”there were negative values.”He called the film”squalid.” But Culture Minister Walter Veltroni, who said he could understand that some”sensibilities have been disturbed”and that minors should be forbidden to see some films, nevertheless said it was time to end film censorship in Italy, the AP reported Tuesday (March 3).
The black-and-white film takes the form of three parables about the Mafia in the Sicilian city of Palermo.
The film contains scenes in which a man fondles himself before a statue of the Virgin Mary and another in which an angel is sodomized. One of the three parables takes its cue from the New Testament story of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. In the film, a Mafioso named Lazarus is raised from the dead after being killed by rivals and thrown into a vat of acid.
The film is directed by Daniele Cipri and Franco Maresco, two Palermo natives known in Italy for a satirical TV series that features crude language.
Church of England clergy give personal safety pointers
(RNS) A Church of England panel has made public a study designed to help parish clergy protect themselves from violence as they carry out their ministries.
The study, requested by the church’s House of Bishops, was done in response to a spate of violent incidents, including the murder of an Anglican priest in Liverpool in 1996, in which clergy have been attacked in their churches or rectories by burglars, thieves or violent beggars.
Even as the report was being readied for publication, the church was given a vivid reminder of the issue. On Saturday (Feb. 28), a vicar in Lincoln opened his door and was hit in the face by two masked men. When the priest, the Rev. John Hayes, slammed the door, one of the men fired a gun through the mailbox.
The paper cited the experience of 21 clergy serving in the East End of London: 80 percent said they had their homes broken into and 72 percent had been assaulted or threatened in the course of their ministry.”Ordained ministry often takes dedicated clergy into areas of vulnerability and on occasion conflict,”said the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the Revs. George Carey and David Hope, in a joint foreword to the paper.”This sometimes means that their families are indirectly involved in pastoral situations that may have distressing consequences.” The paper suggested the clergy draw distinct boundaries of space and time between their ministry and their domestic and private lives, with vicarages designed to physically divide the”public”and”private”areas.
The idea of the parish priest being available pastorally to all the people all the time”might have been a meaningful vision in an 18th-century small village, but in a town or city and in the late 20th century it can be seriously dangerous,”the study said.
Gordon Kuhrt, chief secretary of the Church of England’s Advisory Board of Ministry and principal drafter of the study, said the study is essentially aimed to encourage clergy”not to take unnecessary risks.” Speaking at a news conference Tuesday (March 3), Kuhrt said there was no question of the Church of England opting out of any area of ministry.”We are committed to the whole nation,”he went on. Nor did the church want to turn vicarages _ the clergy homes adjacent to churches _ into fortresses.”The clergy themselves would profoundly resist that,”Kuhrt said.
Spanish Protestants urge country’s Catholics to acknowledge persecution
(RNS) Spain’s minority Protestant churches have called on the Roman Catholic Church to acknowledge the persecution _ including murders _ of Protestants during the so-called”nationalist Catholicism”era when the country was ruled by Gen. Francisco Franco.
In a statement, the Federation of Evangelical Religious Entities in Spain said that simply forgetting about the past would allow prejudice, false information and discrimination against Protestants to continue.
The statement was sparked because of the on-going debate about the links between the Catholic Church and the Franco dictatorship from the end of the Spanish civil war in 1939 until his death in 1975, said Ecumenical News International, the Geneva-based religious news agency.
According to ENI, Roman Catholic Auxiliary Bishop Joan Carrera of Barcelona said the church should request forgiveness for its collaboration with the Franco regime.
And on Feb. 13, 30 Roman Catholic theologians in Spain said the church should confess its”errors, deviations and sins”during the civil war in which Franco overthrew the democratic government and imposed a Fascist dictatorship.
In its statement, the Protestant agency, which was founded in 1986 and includes all of the country’s Protestant churches, said the churches were not demanding the Catholic Church request forgiveness. That, it said, was a”question of conscience”for the church.
But it said the Catholic Church should play a role in fostering a more tolerant attitude toward Protestants within Spanish society.
Quote of the Day: President Clinton
(RNS)”He was a master politician, and a magnificent commander-in-chief. His life had its fair share of disappointment and failures, but they never broke his spirit, or his faith in God or his fellow citizens. Because he always rose to the occasion, so did we.” President Clinton, paying tribute to President Franklin D. Roosevelt at a dinner Tuesday (March 3) marking Time magazine’s 75th anniversary.
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