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The credentialed and religious hospitals
In Texas, a Catholic bishop made two hospitals cease doing tube-tying operations for women who are not going to have more babies. In Arizona, a nun was excommunicated and the hospital where she works was expelled from the church after 116 years for allowing doctors to terminate a pregnancy to save a woman's life. At the same time, some doctors and other health professionals have faced disciplinary action for refusing to perform procedures or provide medications that go against their religious beliefs.
Should Catholic hospitals be able to restrict doctors from performing common and legal medical practices? Do such restrictions unfairly impinge on the rights of non-Catholic patients and doctors, particularly those in rural or underserved areas where alternative hospitals are not readily available?
America has a serious problem. Those that feel qualified to be our rulers, those credentialed in the right places, have decided that traditional morality must go, but many continue to cling to these worn out notions. Those who worked, if not hard at least successfully, to gain degrees, diplomas, and placement often find their decisions ignored by those without the proper degrees, diplomas and placement.
The Credentialed don't know much about history and cannot think critically, but they have learned the catechism of the Credentialed Class. Their credentialing programs may have been weak on the history of ideas, but it was strong on self-esteem and so the Credentialed are confident in their righteousness in ways that religious fundamentalists can only envy.
Sadly, there still exist institutions, especially the Catholic Church and other religious groups that insist on denying the dogmas of the Credentialed. This dangerous situation can only be ended if these institutions are brought into line. Christians may have started the Western idea of hospitals and have founded many of them, but they must not be allowed to run them based on their own ideas.
Here are five dogmas imbedded in the credentialing process that some Americans, like Catholic bishops with their philosophy training and global vision, missed or stubbornly refuse to obey. I present it to them in the hopes that they avoid social conflict by learning the catechism they have so far avoided. Bishops must be encouraged not to think about these ideas, but to attempt to catch them the way undergraduates at our credentialing institutions caught them: as the residue of notions drifting through the "right" films, You-Tube videos, and general education lectures.
Four dogmas of Credentialism
I. Dogma on the American Founding: The only fact relevant to today about the founding of America was that it had nothing to do with Christianity.
The Founders present a problem: the Credentialed use what they produced, the United States, but the Credentialed don't like the Founders. Because the Founders were wrong about some things, slavery mostly, the Credentialed feel they were obviously wrong about everything . . . with the exception of Christianity.
One thing the Founders got right was that they were either not Christian or did not work inside Christian assumptions in the Founding, even though almost the entire population at the time was in fact Christian. The Founders can, therefore, be safely ignored except when they are quoted by Christians.
II. Dogma on religious institutions: Religious institutions are only good when they agree with the ideas of the Credentialed and so avoid hate and divisiveness.
Some religious institutions do things the Credentialed applaud. Two-thirds of America lacks proper credentials and in these rural and urban areas only government workers and the Church dares go.
The government workers are paid to do so and the Church does so out of love. The government workers, despite their credentials, have proven shockingly ineffective for now and so the vague sense of guilt about the plight of the un-Credentialed continues.
Sadly, unlike the government workers, the pastors, priests and nuns are not credentialed and so sometimes have the wrong ideas. This is hateful and causes division in the help given to the un-Credentialed.
It is less important that the religious are actually educating and healing, than that they attempt to educate and heal in the Credentialed manner. For example, Catholic schools are better for poor children in the sense of "education," but only at the cost of denying the assumptions of our time. If Catholic hospitals will not kill the unborn, they certainly should not be allowed to go about healing them.
The Credentialed see looming theocracy if tax money is taken from religious people and then given to religious people who use it as they see fit. Tax money must be taken from religious people and used as the Credentialed see fit. This will protect liberty.
III. Dogma on morality: The old immorality is really moral and will work out this time because of "science."
Morality is fundamentally about the good life and the good life is about entertainment. If an action is entertaining, then it is good unless it "hurts" (does not entertain) someone else. "Hurt" only counts if the immediate and the long term health of the culture does not count. The Credentialed know that if a thing is the case then it should be the case. They wish to do a thing and so it must be good to do it.
In the past, people wanted to do what we wish to do, but they did not have our technology. Technology will protect our souls against all harm.
IV. Dogma on the proper place for power: Power should be moved into institutions run by the Credentialed.
There are two dangers to the Credentialed society. Voting is dangerous, since often the people with the proper credentials do not win. Real decisions must be shifted then to government agencies and courts where credentials count more than votes.
Families, churches, and social clubs are also dangerous because affection and love often count more than credentials. Natural aristocracies form that can act as a check to the power of the Credentialed. People listen to their parents, because they love their parents even if their parents lack proper credentials. Moral feelings such as piety, reverence, and patriotism are rarely entertaining and difficult to turn into revenue generating programs. They must be ignored.
Aristocracy should be based on credentialing and not marriage, love, or tradition.
Application of the dogma to Catholic institutions
I for one welcome the coming of our new Credentialed Overlords and hope they remember my cooperation with their agenda when it comes to deciding my end of life care in their Credentialed Hospitals.
The Credentialed began in the mid-20th century by asking the rest of America to respect diversity of opinion. This was essentially because most Americans would have rejected the ideas of the Credentialed. Now enough of us have been cowed or persuaded to adopt the dogma of the Credentialed that "diversity of opinion" may have outlived its usefulness.
As a result, the time has come in some areas, such as sexual morality, for the discussion to cease. Catholic hospitals must adopt the ideas of the Credentialed or risk their credentials. If they lack the proper credentials, the healing must stop. Catholic schools must change, because then, even if they become as ineffective as government schools, they will at least be credentialed.
Of course, some reactionaries might attempt to resist these changes. They might talk of "healing" and "education," but those fixated on "results" over "process" will fail. Those with the credentials to predict the future say they will fail and their track record in areas such as the economy makes me confident in their credentialed guesses.
By
John Mark Reynolds
|
January 27, 2011; 3:45 PM ET
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Posted by: cecilg | January 31, 2011 8:40 AM
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Good grief, JMR. What is this tripe about Credentialist Overloads. The Credentialist Overlords we have to be most afraid of are the ones who carry their Christian zealotry around like a cross and limit the freedoms of the rest of us.
Tell you what. You stop trying to deny civil benefits of marriage and adoption to gays so that they may be free to live the life they believe God gave them and we can see how to keep Christians from delivering or receiving medical services they find repugnant. The one thing the Christian Credentialist Overlords should not be able to do is to limit my medical care to the non-science limits of their beliefs.
There have to be standards that we can expect from a hospital or any other medical provider. Without some standards we cannot be sure what we will get. Neither acupuncturists or voo-doo doctors are part of my heritage or belief system, but without standards that is what I could end up with. If I need a doctor, I want one trained in the science of western medicine and willing to deliver it.
I expect a hospital to offer all that science says is available and scientifically pertinent to my case, within the limits of the hardware and specialists they do have. I don't want to be limited by what the Jehovah Witnesses are willing to do, or the Christian Scientists, or the LDS, or the Catholic church, or the training of the acupuncturist. I want my treatment to be based on medical science.
So, let religious hospitals offer it all but be sure they have on staff doctors and nurses who will cover for those who will not perform certain procedures or dispense certain medications. I think that is as far as the public should have to go. We need to be able to trust that we will get science based medical care that will keep us healthy and alive. If that includes an abortion that doctors recommend as needed to save the life of a mother, and the woman and her husband, parent or whoever else the law and/or the woman wishes to include in the decision so shooses, then amen and let it be so.
Otherwise, I don't think the hospital should be eligible for reimbursements from medicare or medicaid.
Posted by: amelia45 | January 28, 2011 7:14 PM
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THE QUESTIONS:
"Should Catholic hospitals be able to restrict doctors from performing common and legal medical practices? Do such restrictions unfairly impinge on the rights of non-Catholic patients and doctors...?"
Typically, JMR has turned reason on its head.
An accredited hospital (and, yes, I do want my hospital to have that "credential") is obliged to offer a range of services normally understood to be part of a hospital's mandate.
If a hospital does not wish to comply with this obligation, then it should advertise itself publicly as a religious hospital (in this case Catholic). This means more than just merely calling itself a "Catholic hospital."
Because it departs from the socially understood norm of "hospital," a Catholic hospital needs to make clear right up front -- in everything from its brochures to its reception desk and admissions counter -- what services it restricts or does not offer.
These restrictions must also be made clear to anyone accepting a job with such a hospital, so that there are no inconvenient expectations by new hires that they can offer the full range of medical procedures, treatments, and drugs. They need to understand, before they accept any job offers, that religious authority is the final word on medical care and that decisions made on medical matters would be made by non-medical staff.
Of course the Catholic church can have its own hospitals. What it can't do is to advertise them as being normal, mainstream hospitals. And this is where the trouble starts, because, if Catholic hospitals have to acknowledge up front that they restrict or deny a variety of medical care for religious reasons, they will lose patients and a whole lot of money.
While not particularly adept at doing so, JMR is once again playing with the focus dial on his binoculars. He claims that rights are being taken from the religious, when in fact it's the other way around.
No one is going to enjoin the Catholic church from running its institutions as it sees fit. What it must be stopped from doing, however, is presenting its hospitals as full-featured, complete medical care centers. They are not.
And it is in these "restricted" hospitals that the real devastation of "liberty" is being enacted. Citizens who have every reason to expect a particular range of services from public hospitals have a right to know, before they're admitted, what the consequences to their health (and life) may be of checking into a non-public, religious hospital.
Similarly, if a Catholic doctor, nurse, pharmacist, technician, or clerk does not want to perform any of the range of services offered in a non-religious hospital or pharmacy, then they should not take a job with that institution.
JMR's cutesy, sophomoric attempt at satire aside, the points he makes are the puny products of a seriously disordered mind. Whatever his meager credentials, WaPo needs to put him on indefinite leave of conscience.
Posted by: haveaheart | January 28, 2011 1:08 PM
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Tulsa, Oklahoma has 2 Roman Catholic Church Hospitals which are megaplexes. If a person with no insurance goes to the ER of either one, the hospital asks the State of Oklahoma to pay them money from the State Medicaid fund to cover part of the cost.
The law requires them to treat anyone who shows up in their ERs. But, they don't like to treat them for free.
One of the hospitals owns a large retirement community complex. But, people who are poor and drawing poverty level pensions can NOT afford to live there.
Posted by: joe_allen_doty | January 28, 2011 12:14 PM
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This is one of the poorest essays I have run accross on ON FAITH. I thought the panelists were at least supposed to try addressing the posted questions. JMR doesn't even come close.
Instead, in this rambling vitriolic piece JMR conjures up two hypothetical antithetical groups: the Credentialist Overlords (the bad guys) and the non-Credentialists (the good guys who think like JMR).
Amelia45 said it well in the response below: Good grief, JMR. What is this tripe about Credentialist Overloads. The Credentialist Overlords we have to be most afraid of are the ones who carry their Christian zealotry around like a cross and limit the freedoms of the rest of us.