eChurch Blog

The Archbishops of Canterbury and York have written to bishops in the Church of England advising them to halt the sharing of the chalice during communion to help prevent the spread of swine flu.

During communion, members of the congregation typically drink wine from a chalice before it is wiped clean by the presiding minister and administered to the next communicant.

The Archbishops have issued the latest guidelines following new advice from the Department of Health against the sharing of “common vessels” for food or drink.

Some churches have halted the use of wine during communion altogether and are now offering only bread, while other churches have taken to administering communion wine in separate glasses for each member of the congregation.

Church members showing symptoms of swine flu are being asked to refrain from attending services or church meetings.

For churches still wishing to offer bread and wine, the Archbishops recommend the use of “personal intinction by the presiding minister”, in which the priest may dip communion wafers in the chalice before handing them out to communicants.

The Archbishops said it was important that clergy were aware of the latest advice on swine flu contained in their letter and being handed out by diocesan bishops.

Clergy, they added, should offer guidance to the congregation about appropriate precautions in receiving communion and exchanging the peace.

“We shall keep this advice under review and will ensure that the detailed guidance provided on the Church of England website is kept up-to-date,” they wrote.

“In the meantime, we wish to express our gratitude to you and those who share your ministry for the pastoral care and service offered at this time of national concern.”

The Christian Institute

Faith charity funding ban may be scrapped

Against the background of recent events in the Anglican communion, internationally renowned theologian Professor Jim Packer presents his views on “The Church and Schism”, in a lecture delivered at the Oak Hill School of Theology, 2009.

For the transcript of Professor Packer’s lecture, click here:

Jim Packer Lecture

Thank goodness someone has commented on this ‘Bizarre’ (and in my opinion highly dangerous and naive) move from the Royal College of Nurses:-

The Christian Institute

Nurses’ college criticised for suicide policy change

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has been criticised for changing its position on assisted suicide from opposed to neutral after hearing the views of a tiny proportion of its members.

Just 1,200 of the RCN’s 390,000 members responded to its consultation on the issue. Of those, 49 per cent said they would support assisted suicide.

Dr Peter Saunders, General Secretary of the Christian Medical Fellowship, called the move “bizarre”.

He said: “The number of respondents represents less than one third of one percent of the RCN’s 390,000 members and we are told that less than half were even reached by the consultation.

“This is surely no basis for a shift in the stance of the RCN in this highly controversial issue especially given that this minute sample, in which lobby groups are no doubt disproportionately represented, predictably voiced a very broad range of opinion.”

The Times reported on Saturday that RCN members are now to “receive new guidance on how to help terminally ill patients to end their own lives”, although its online report now says the guidance will focus on “how patients can deal with terminal illness”.

According to RCN Chief Executive Dr Peter Carter, members are to receive “guidance around the legal, ethical, regulatory and clinical issues of assisted suicide”.

To aid or abet anyone to commit suicide is illegal. An attempt to water down the law by allowing an exception where an individual is helped to travel to an overseas suicide clinic was recently defeated in the House of Lords amid concerns about vulnerable people.

The Times claims that the RCN’s move is “the first sign of change in the medical establishment” in its view of assisted suicide.

But the British Medical Association recently voted against legalising the practice, and their opposition is shared by the Royal College of Physicians, the Royal College of General Practitioners, the Royal College of Psychiatrists, the Royal College of Anaesthetists, the Association for Palliative Medicine of Great Britain and Ireland and the British Geriatric Society.

The Times, which supports changing the law on assisted suicide, also reports a new poll showing public support for allowing doctors to help patients end their lives prematurely.

The Care Not Killing alliance warned that the results reflected “Knee-jerk approval of assisted suicide from the worried well”.

The alliance said the poll had been “carefully timed immediately to follow the media storm around recent high-profile celebrity suicides”.

It said the findings should be seen within the context of opposition from groups representing doctors and disabled people who “have a good understanding of the dangers to public safety that would accompany any change”.

Don’t change the law in fear of death

(Seeing the end of life with peace of mind The reality of most people’s experience at the end of their lives Dr Kathryn Mannix)

Kathryn Mannix has been a palliative care doctor for 23 years. In her contribution to a series of letters on assisted suicide published in The Times, she explains why she believes a premature death is not the answer to suffering.

Sir, The debate in these pages reads as though there is only ‘a good death’ or unbearable suffering at the end of life (“Be honest about the dying process”, letter, July 21). This may reflect the strong feelings of the contributors, but it does not reflect the reality of most people’s experience at the end of their lives.

As a palliative care doctor for the past 23 years, I have seen the journey towards the end of life at close quarters for in excess of 5,000 people. Work in palliative care involves meeting each of these people as individuals. There is no “one size fits all”. Some people wish above all for relief from physical symptoms, and the attention to detail that the science of palliative medicine has brought to the practice of palliative care has enabled us to improve management of breathlessness, nausea, diarrhoea, itch and many other symptoms, as well as a continuing improvement in our ability to diagnose and manage causes of pain. Physical symptoms, though, are only one aspect of palliation.

The emotional journey that people follow once it is known that they have a life-threatening illness is complex and personal. For some there is initial horror and dread, for others there is sadness and regret, and for others there is anxiety and fear. These are normal and natural reactions to such bad news, and most people move through this period of profound emotional disturbance to a calmer frame of mind where pleasure and joy are still part of their daily experience, even if punctuated by some sadness at the transience of life or anxiety about the uncertain future. A few get stuck in their emotional distress, and palliative care practitioners would see this as an emotional symptom just as important to address as any physical symptom.

In parallel with these issues, each person is on a spiritual journey through which they interpret the meaning of their lives. For some this is a religiously based belief, while for others it is about personal worth and contribution to ideals they hold dear, such as family life, care for the environment or world justice. In palliative care we seek to support them in reaching their own inner peace as they measure their triumphs and failings against their own set of ideals.

For some, physical symptoms are few, emotional adjustment proceeds smoothly and their spiritual framework consoles them and contributes to their resilience. For others, difficulties may arise transiently in any one of these domains, and may be met by personal resources or may require additional support from a variety of health, psychological or spiritual advisers. For a few, difficulties in one or more of these domains are severe, and specialist support from palliative care teams may be required.

In other words, this is just real life. Some people appear to get by easily and meet few difficulties; others encounter difficulties and meet them with success; others need help to manage their difficulties and a few get stuck. As a society, we have developed resources to assist people in difficulty. We have not previously proposed that a useful response to being stuck in a difficult position is to offer premature death as an alternative.

I am saddened by the number of contributors who feel anxious about dying. Perhaps they have been witness to one of the unusual difficult deaths that do still occur, or perhaps the way in which our society has increasingly hidden death away over the past five decades has deprived them of the comfort that comes from repeatedly seeing the end of life well-lived with courage, pleasure in each day and peace of mind despite the imminence of the unknown.

Witnesses of good deaths do not appear to feel a need to enter into this type of correspondence. This unfortunately means that the difficult and tragic is overrepresented in the discussion. How can we redress this balance, so that we do not misunderstand and fear death as a society, and thus legislate in ignorance based on fear?

Kathryn Mannix,
Consultant in Palliative Medicine,
Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals and Marie Curie Hospice, Newcastle

Monday 27 July 2009

1. No-one could be in any doubt about the eagerness of the Bishops and Deputies of the Episcopal Church at the General Convention to affirm their concern about the wider Anglican Communion. Their generous welcome to guests from elsewhere, including myself, the manifest engagement with the crushing problems of the developing world and even the wording of one of the more controversial resolutions all make plain the fact that the Episcopal Church does not wish to cut its moorings from other parts of the Anglican family. There has been an insistence at the highest level that the two most strongly debated resolutions (DO25 and CO56) do not have the automatic effect of overturning the requested moratoria, if the wording is studied carefully. There is a clear commitment to seek counsel from elsewhere in the Communion about certain issues and an eloquent resolution in support of the ‘Covenant for a Communion in Mission’ as commended by ACC13. All of this merits grateful acknowledgement. The relationship between the Episcopal Church and the wider Communion is a reality which needs continued engagement and encouragement.

2. However, a realistic assessment of what Convention has resolved does not suggest that it will repair the broken bridges into the life of other Anglican provinces; very serious anxieties have already been expressed. The repeated request for moratoria on the election of partnered gay clergy as bishops and on liturgical recognition of same-sex partnerships has clearly not found universal favour, although a significant minority of bishops has just as clearly expressed its intention to remain with the consensus of the Communion. The statement that the Resolutions are essentially ‘descriptive’ is helpful, but unlikely to allay anxieties.

3. There are two points which I believe need to be reiterated and thought through further, and it seems to fall to the Archbishop of Canterbury to try and articulate them. To some extent they echo part of what I wrote after the last General Convention, as well as things said at the Lambeth Conference and the ACC, but they still have some pertinence.

4. The first is to do with the arguments most often used against the moratoria relating to same-sex unions. Appeal is made to the fundamental human rights dimension of attitudes to LGBT people, and to the impossibility of betraying their proper expectations of a Christian body which has courageously supported them.

5. In response, it needs to be made absolutely clear that, on the basis of repeated statements at the highest levels of the Communion’s life, no Anglican has any business reinforcing prejudice against LGBT people, questioning their human dignity and civil liberties or their place within the Body of Christ. Our overall record as a Communion has not been consistent in this respect and this needs to be acknowledged with penitence.

6. However, the issue is not simply about civil liberties or human dignity or even about pastoral sensitivity to the freedom of individual Christians to form their consciences on this matter. It is about whether the Church is free to recognise same-sex unions by means of public blessings that are seen as being, at the very least, analogous to Christian marriage.

7. In the light of the way in which the Church has consistently read the Bible for the last two thousand years, it is clear that a positive answer to this question would have to be based on the most painstaking biblical exegesis and on a wide acceptance of the results within the Communion, with due account taken of the teachings of ecumenical partners also. A major change naturally needs a strong level of consensus and solid theological grounding.

8. This is not our situation in the Communion. Thus a blessing for a same-sex union cannot have the authority of the Church Catholic, or even of the Communion as a whole. And if this is the case, a person living in such a union is in the same case as a heterosexual person living in a sexual relationship outside the marriage bond; whatever the human respect and pastoral sensitivity such persons must be given, their chosen lifestyle is not one that the Church’s teaching sanctions, and thus it is hard to see how they can act in the necessarily representative role that the ordained ministry, especially the episcopate, requires.

9. In other words, the question is not a simple one of human rights or human dignity. It is that a certain choice of lifestyle has certain consequences. So long as the Church Catholic, or even the Communion as a whole does not bless same-sex unions, a person living in such a union cannot without serious incongruity have a representative function in a Church whose public teaching is at odds with their lifestyle. (There is also an unavoidable difficulty over whether someone belonging to a local church in which practice has been changed in respect of same-sex unions is able to represent the Communion’s voice and perspective in, for example, international ecumenical encounters.)

10. This is not a matter that can be wholly determined by what society at large considers usual or acceptable or determines to be legal. Prejudice and violence against LGBT people are sinful and disgraceful when society at large is intolerant of such people; if the Church has echoed the harshness of the law and of popular bigotry – as it so often has done – and justified itself by pointing to what society took for granted, it has been wrong to do so. But on the same basis, if society changes its attitudes, that change does not of itself count as a reason for the Church to change its discipline.

11. The second issue is the broader one of how a local church makes up its mind on a sensitive and controversial matter. It is of the greatest importance to remember this aspect of the matter, so as not to be completely trapped in the particularly bitter and unpleasant atmosphere of the debate over sexuality, in which unexamined prejudice is still so much in evidence and accusations of bad faith and bigotry are so readily thrown around.

12. When a local church seeks to respond to a new question, to the challenge of possible change in its practice or discipline in the light of new facts, new pressures, or new contexts, as local churches have repeatedly sought to do, it needs some way of including in its discernment the judgement of the wider Church. Without this, it risks becoming unrecognisable to other local churches, pressing ahead with changes that render it strange to Christian sisters and brothers across the globe.

13. This is not some piece of modern bureaucratic absolutism, but the conviction of the Church from its very early days. The doctrine that ‘what affects the communion of all should be decided by all’ is a venerable principle. On some issues, there emerges a recognition that a particular new development is not of such significance that a high level of global agreement is desirable; in the language used by the Doctrinal Commission of the Communion, there is a recognition that in ‘intensity, substance and extent’ it is not of fundamental importance. But such a recognition cannot be wished into being by one local church alone. It takes time and a willingness to believe that what we determine together is more likely, in a New Testament framework, to be in tune with the Holy Spirit than what any one community decides locally.

14. Sometimes in Christian history, of course, that wider discernment has been very fallible, as with the history of the Chinese missions in the seventeenth century. But this should not lead us to ignore or minimise the opposite danger of so responding to local pressure or change that a local church simply becomes isolated and imprisoned in its own cultural environment.

15. There have never been universal and straightforward rules about this, and no-one is seeking a risk-free, simple organ of doctrinal decision for our Communion. In an age of vastly improved communication, we must make the best use we can of the means available for consultation and try to build into our decision-making processes ways of checking whether a new local development would have the effect of isolating a local church or making it less recognisable to others. This again has an ecumenical dimension when a global Christian body is involved in partnerships and discussions with other churches who will quite reasonably want to know who now speaks for the body they are relating to when a controversial local change occurs. The results of our ecumenical discussions are themselves important elements in shaping the theological vision within which we seek to resolve our own difficulties.

16. In recent years, local pastoral needs have been cited as the grounds for changes in the sacramental practice of particular local churches within the Communion, and theological rationales have been locally developed to defend and promote such changes. Lay presidency at the Holy Communion is one well-known instance. Another is the regular admission of the unbaptised to Holy Communion as a matter of public policy. Neither of these practices has been given straightforward official sanction as yet by any Anglican authorities at diocesan or provincial level, but the innovative practices concerned have a high degree of public support in some localities.

17. Clearly there are significant arguments to be had about such matters on the shared and agreed basis of Scripture, Tradition and reason. But it should be clear that an acceptance of these sorts of innovation in sacramental practice would represent a manifest change in both the teaching and the discipline of the Anglican tradition, such that it would be a fair question as to whether the new practice was in any way continuous with the old. Hence the question of ‘recognisability’ once again arises.

18. To accept without challenge the priority of local and pastoral factors in the case either of sexuality or of sacramental practice would be to abandon the possibility of a global consensus among the Anglican churches such as would continue to make sense of the shape and content of most of our ecumenical activity. It would be to re-conceive the Anglican Communion as essentially a loose federation of local bodies with a cultural history in common, rather than a theologically coherent ‘community of Christian communities’.

19. As Anglicans, our membership of the Communion is an important part of our identity. However, some see this as best expressed in a more federalist and pluralist way. They would see this as the only appropriate language for a modern or indeed postmodern global fellowship of believers in which levels of diversity are bound to be high and the risks of centralisation and authoritarianism are the most worrying. There is nothing foolish or incoherent about this approach. But it is not the approach that has generally shaped the self-understanding of our Communion – less than ever in the last half-century, with new organs and instruments for the Communion’s communication and governance and new enterprises in ecumenical co-operation.

20. The Covenant proposals of recent years have been a serious attempt to do justice to that aspect of Anglican history that has resisted mere federation. They seek structures that will express the need for mutual recognisability, mutual consultation and some shared processes of decision-making. They are emphatically not about centralisation but about mutual responsibility. They look to the possibility of a freely chosen commitment to sharing discernment (and also to a mutual respect for the integrity of each province, which is the point of the current appeal for a moratorium on cross-provincial pastoral interventions). They remain the only proposals we are likely to see that address some of the risks and confusions already detailed, encouraging us to act and decide in ways that are not simply local.

21. They have been criticised as ‘exclusive’ in intent. But their aim is not to shut anyone out – rather, in words used last year at the Lambeth Conference, to intensify existing relationships.

22. It is possible that some will not choose this way of intensifying relationships, though I pray that it will be persuasive. It would be a mistake to act or speak now as if those decisions had already been made – and of course approval of the final Covenant text is still awaited. For those whose vision is not shaped by the desire to intensify relationships in this particular way, or whose vision of the Communion is different, there is no threat of being cast into outer darkness – existing relationships will not be destroyed that easily. But it means that there is at least the possibility of a twofold ecclesial reality in view in the middle distance: that is, a ‘covenanted’ Anglican global body, fully sharing certain aspects of a vision of how the Church should be and behave, able to take part as a body in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue; and, related to this body, but in less formal ways with fewer formal expectations, there may be associated local churches in various kinds of mutual partnership and solidarity with one another and with ‘covenanted’ provinces.

23. This has been called a ‘two-tier’ model, or, more disparagingly, a first- and second-class structure. But perhaps we are faced with the possibility rather of a ‘two-track’ model, two ways of witnessing to the Anglican heritage, one of which had decided that local autonomy had to be the prevailing value and so had in good faith declined a covenantal structure. If those who elect this model do not take official roles in the ecumenical interchanges and processes in which the ‘covenanted’ body participates, this is simply because within these processes there has to be clarity about who has the authority to speak for whom.

24. It helps to be clear about these possible futures, however much we think them less than ideal, and to speak about them not in apocalyptic terms of schism and excommunication but plainly as what they are – two styles of being Anglican, whose mutual relation will certainly need working out but which would not exclude co-operation in mission and service of the kind now shared in the Communion. It should not need to be said that a competitive hostility between the two would be one of the worst possible outcomes, and needs to be clearly repudiated. The ideal is that both ‘tracks’ should be able to pursue what they believe God is calling them to be as Church, with greater integrity and consistency. It is right to hope for and work for the best kinds of shared networks and institutions of common interest that could be maintained as between different visions of the Anglican heritage. And if the prospect of greater structural distance is unwelcome, we must look seriously at what might yet make it less likely.

25. It is my strong hope that all the provinces will respond favourably to the invitation to Covenant. But in the current context, the question is becoming more sharply defined of whether, if a province declines such an invitation, any elements within it will be free (granted the explicit provision that the Covenant does not purport to alter the Constitution or internal polity of any province) to adopt the Covenant as a sign of their wish to act in a certain level of mutuality with other parts of the Communion. It is important that there should be a clear answer to this question.

26. All of this is to do with becoming the Church God wants us to be, for the better proclamation of the liberating gospel of Jesus Christ. It would be a great mistake to see the present situation as no more than an unhappy set of tensions within a global family struggling to find a coherence that not all its members actually want. Rather, it is an opportunity for clarity, renewal and deeper relation with one another – and so also with Our Lord and his Father, in the power of the Spirit. To recognise different futures for different groups must involve mutual respect for deeply held theological convictions. Thus far in Anglican history we have (remarkably) contained diverse convictions more or less within a unified structure. If the present structures that have safeguarded our unity turn out to need serious rethinking in the near future, this is not the end of the Anglican way and it may bring its own opportunities. Of course it is problematic; and no-one would say that new kinds of structural differentiation are desirable in their own right. But the different needs and priorities identified by different parts of our family, and in the long run the different emphases in what we want to say theologically about the Church itself, are bound to have consequences. We must hope that, in spite of the difficulties, this may yet be the beginning of a new era of mission and spiritual growth for all who value the Anglican name and heritage.

CHURCH communion services across west London could be suspended in a bid to stop the spread of swine flu.

The Diocese of Westminster, which covers the boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, Hammersmith and Fulham and Westminster, has issued advice to priests to help keep the virus contained.

This includes suspending the sacred act of receiving communion and the chalice, which represent the body and blood of Jesus Christ, to reduce the risk of germs being transmitted.

The traditional sign of peace, or shaking hands with fellow worshippers, could also be banned or changed to a bow or other gesture, during a large-scale swine flu outbreak.

However, the advice to priests says this should only be done if there is a large number of swine flu cases locally and if some schools have been closed or a high level of absence has been reported at schools.

Other advice includes washing hands regularly, sneezing into a tissue and then disposing of it, and frequently cleaning objects such as telephones and light fittings which are touched by several people daily.

Mail:-

By Melanie Phillips

During the past few months, the campaign to permit assisted suicide has been steadily ratcheted up. There has been a stream of stories about people travelling to the grisly Dignitas euthanasia ‘clinic’ in Switzerland to be killed, the most recent of whom were the conductor Sir Edward Downes and his wife.

An attempt by Lord Falconer to change the law so that anyone helping someone travel to such a place to end their life would no longer face prosecution was beaten back in the House of Lords – but it was a close-run thing.

Now the Royal College of Nursing has announced that it is taking a ‘neutral’ position on assisted suicide, becoming the second major medical institution to withdraw its opposition. The British Medical Association did so in 2005, although it switched back to opposition after a backlash from appalled members.

A Populus opinion poll last week found that 74 per cent of people wanted doctors to be allowed to help terminally ill patients end their lives, and six out of ten also wanted to be able to help the dying commit suicide without fear of prosecution.

This is all most disturbing. People’s deepest fears are being manipulated to make a change in the law to permit assisted suicide appear virtually inevitable. Although all poll results must be taken with a pinch of salt, it isn’t surprising that the numbers supporting such a change have risen.
For this relentless campaign has played ruthlessly upon the nightmarish possibility of having to face dreadful suffering without being able to end it. Few of us are entirely free of such fears; those who have distressing medical conditions may understandably be terrified of such a prospect.

However, it is not necessarily founded in medical fact. This week, the Law Lords are due to rule on the case of multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy, who wants to make sure her husband would not be prosecuted if he accompanied her to a euthanasia clinic should she want to end her life.

Ms Purdy is terrified of unbearable pain or choking to death. But as palliative care experts have tried to assure her, multiple sclerosis sufferers don’t usually have difficulty in swallowing, and with the right care there is no reason why they should die in pain.

And despite the illegality of assisted suicide, no relatives have ever been prosecuted and it is exceedingly unlikely that they ever would be. So it’s hard to avoid concluding that Ms Purdy, whose case is backed by Dignity In Dying (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society), is being most wickedly used.

We should have great sympathy for anyone in such a position. But the law is there to protect the vulnerable. And the awful possibility now looming is that we may make those who desperately need such protection more likely instead to be exploited or manipulated. They may come under pressure to end their lives by relatives who are either unscrupulous or simply unable themselves to cope with the pain and distress of seeing their loved ones suffer.

In such a situation, very sick people may well want to end their lives; but crucially, with better care and support they may discover a purpose in continuing to live.

That is what happened to motor neurone disease sufferer Sarah Ezekiel, the central figure in a charity appeal that is controversially deemed too harrowing to be transmitted on TV.

Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of showing the advertisement, the point is that Ms Ezekiel changed her mind about wanting to die.

Even though her disease is so far advanced that she has no capacity for movement and can now communicate only through a computer, she has movingly observed that whereas once she wanted to be ‘put down’ like an animal, better care helped her out of this depression and to realise that she could have a productive life that would give her enjoyment and satisfaction.

This is not to minimise the impact of this awful disease. But people’s feelings about their predicament do change. That’s what has also happened to Hannah Jones, the critically ill 14-year-old who first refused to have a heart transplant but now wants to have the operation.

This gets to the crux of what is so awful about assisted suicide. It is that it assumes that the feelings of a sufferer cannot be changed. It accepts as incontestable the perspective of that person – who may be suffering from a depression that makes them view life as hopeless – that their life really is hopeless.

But such an attitude is as inhuman as it is counter-intuitive. After all, if any of us had been in the vicinity of the parents who not long ago heartbreakingly threw themselves off Beachy Head with the body of their five year-old paralysed son, we would surely have tried to stop them. Helping people travel to the Dignitas death factory is surely the equivalent of pushing those parents off the edge of the cliff.

It is the assumption that such people cannot be helped that is so shocking about the attitude taken by the Royal College of Nursing, where 49 per cent of those who voted were in favour of assisted suicide compared with 40 per cent who were opposed.

This suggests that something has gone very badly awry with the ethical foundations of nursing, with the majority of nurses apparently now putting individual ‘rights’ above the overriding duty to care for the vulnerable and help them cope with their lives.

That’s why Lord Falconer was also terribly wrong. While compassion dictates that any prosecutions should be rare, the law prohibiting assisted suicide is an important signal that it is wrong. It is a line in the sand that prevents us crossing into a culture of death-dealing.

We should also stop talking about ‘helping someone to die’. People don’t go to Dignitas to die but to be killed. And killing can never be a therapeutic act.

This distinction has been muddled ever since the Tony Bland case in 1993 legitimised the withdrawal of feeding and hydration tubes from patients in a persistent vegetative state.

The slippery language has itself helped erode protection for the very ill. Baroness Campbell, a Commissioner of the Equality And Human Rights Commission, suffers from spinal muscular atrophy, a degenerative disease that means she is immobile without help.

When she fell victim to a serious chest infection and lost consciousness, her doctors decided it would be kinder not to resuscitate her and ‘allow her to die’. It was only because her husband told them very firmly that she didn’t want to die that her life was saved.

Speaking powerfully against Lord Falconer’s amendment, Lady Campbell warned: ‘Those of us who know what it’s like to live with a terminal condition are fearful the tide has already turned against us.’

Assisted dying, she said, was ‘to abandon hope and ignore the majority of disabled and terminally ill people’.

It would also send us down a slippery slope, which could lead all the way from assisted suicide to euthanasia by lethal injection, from helping the terminally ill to end their lives to killing people suffering from Alzheimer’s or depression.

The law is there for a purpose. It marks a boundary against intentional killing that we cannot cross without the most fateful consequences. To do so would brutalise our entire approach to the vulnerable and the physically imperfect, and to life itself.

Arguably we have already crossed that boundary – and, as public pressure mounts, are sleepwalking relentlessly into barbarism.

www.chiesa.espressonline.it

Muslims in Democracy School. With Television as Teacher

While at the Vatican they are discussing whether or not democracy is compatible with Islam, the Arab television channels are dominated by reality shows and soap operas. A major survey analyzes their messages. And ambiguities

by Sandro Magister

ROME, July 27, 2009 – Just as Great Britain is giving the go-ahead in its territory, in the name of multiculturalism, to about eighty Islamic alternative tribunals that are adopting not British common law but sharia – with everything that entails in matters of polygamy, divorce, the subordination of women, and lack of religious freedom – at the Vatican they are discussing whether or not democracy is compatible with Islam.

The news coming from Great Britain would seem to prove the pessimists right. But at the Vatican, there is a predominantly positive view about the possibility that Muslim states could evolve into fully formed liberal democracies, with the recognition of fundamental liberties and of equal rights for men and women.

This is what can be gathered from the lead article of the latest issue of “La Civiltà Cattolica,” the journal of the Rome Jesuits that is printed after review by the Vatican secretariat of state.

The article was written by Jesuit historian Giovanni Sale, and is entitled “Islam and democracy.”

After positing that as of today there are only two Islamic countries, Lebanon and Turkey, in which elements of democracy can be seen, Fr. Sale systematically surveys the competing viewpoints in the West:

“On this delicate matter, Western analysts are divided into three categories: the so-called optimists, who are further divided into ‘gradualists’ and ‘realists’, (the proponents of the demands of Realpolitik on the international level), the pessimists, and the skeptical-possibilists.”

In Fr. Sale’s view, the gradualist optimists have their leading representative in Bernard Lewis, a historian at Princeton.

The realist optimists are the neoconservatives who came into prominence with the Bush presidency, determined to transplant democracy to Muslim countries but also ready to ally themselves with friendly despotic regimes.

The pessimists have their prophet in Samuel Huntington, according to whom there is an irreparable discord between the Muslim world and democracy, which produces a clash of civilizations.

The skeptical-possibilists, finally, maintain that democracy must not be transplanted into Arab countries from without, but can only emerge and grow from within them. But there are many obstacles to this development, one of which is precisely the religious element.

In drawing its conclusions, the article in “La Civiltà Cattolica” rejects both the viewpoint of the clash of civilizations and the neoconservative stance of exporting democracy even by means of armed force.

It instead expresses agreement with the gradualist optimist outlook of Bernard Lewis, and also with the concerns of the skeptical-possibilists about the obstacles that must be overcome, that of religion first among them:

“Islam and democracy can become compatible on the condition that the religious element, with all of its richness of content and experience, act as a simple point of ethical and moral reference for the normative role of social science, without presuming to dictate the rules for the state and for politics.”

In the article, Fr. Sale highlights the analysis that Daniel Pipes, a White House adviser during the Bush years, makes of the Islamic world. In this Pipes sees, together with a large pool of radical fundamentalists, an even larger segment of Muslims who are against America and the West more as a result of the social environment in which they live than out of deeply rooted conviction, and another segment of “moderate” Muslims who are not hostile to Western values. Although he is considered a “hawk,” Pipes emphasizes the importance of “a cultural and civil effort that would encourage moderate Muslims to work for profound democratic and civil change in Islamic societies.”

***

But while those in the West and among the leadership of the Catholic Church ponder the possible democratic evolution of Islam, what is happening within the Muslim world itself? What image do Muslims have of the West? How do they see it?

A highly interesting answer to this question is given by a study conducted recently on the programs broadcast by television networks in Arab countries.

The study, which was very thorough, was coordinated by Donatella Della Ratta with the collaboration of Roberta Nunnari and Naman Tarcha. The results are in a volume published in Italy by Gangemi Editore, entitled: “Media arabi e cultura nel Mediterraneo.”

There are a number of surprises, which a 2002 Gallup poll had already foreshadowed: while the viewers of Al Jazeera – despite the anti-American slant of this famous broadcaster – show themselves to be the most favorable to Western lifestyles, those most against these turn out to be the viewers of entertainment television channels, the ones with Western-style programs and reality shows.

Of the roughly five hundred Arab television channels studied by Donatella Della Ratta and her team, the ones most free from state control are the Lebanese stations, which are received in many other countries. There’s a little bit of everything on them: from the fiercely anti-American and anti-Israeli programs of Al Manar, Hezbollah’s station, to the reality shows of LBC, the first Arab network to broadcast programs like “Star Academy,” “Survivor,” and “The Farm.”

The prototype for reality shows around the world, “Big Brother,” was broadcast a few years ago on a channel in Bahrain but was canceled after the first episode, following a storm of protest. But the other reality shows have met with growing success. With unexpected political repercussions.

For example, when the Lebanese semifinalist of “Star Academy” was eliminated instead of his Syrian competitor, Beirut was flooded with protest demonstrations against Syria.

And when the finale of “Superstar” saw contestants from Syria and Jordan go head to head, the state-run telephone companies of these two countries raced to hand out discounts and bonuses to their subscribers, so they would telephone in support of their own “national hero.”

According to some Arab analysts, the cell phone voting for reality shows “represents the first real form of participatory democracy in the Arab world, a trial of free elections.”

But there’s more. The reality show “Star Academy” has generated a satirical spinoff entitled “Irhab Academy,” terrorism academy. Here the contestants are actors representing various kinds of terrorists in grotesque form, each with his diabolical specialty. The creator of the program is Abdallah Bijiad Al Otibi, a former extremist who has dedicated himself to fighting terrorism through television.

Other television programs that are extremely successful in Arab countries are the musalsalat, drama series. Discussion of the hottest questions, which is totally banned on the official television news programs, finds room in the drama series: from polygamy to divorce, from violence against women to homosexuality, from terrorism to relations with the West.

Syria ranks first in their production. One of the most important directors is Najdat Ismail Anzour, the son of Syria’s first silent film director. One of his drama episodes broadcast during the month of Ramadan in 2007 – the month with the largest number of viewers – touched on the question of the caricatures of Mohammed. At one point, one of the characters says to another who is highly scandalized by the caricatures:

“Please, tell me what offends our religion more: a foreigner who draws silly caricatures like these? Or a Muslim who blows himself up with an explosive belt in the midst of innocent people?”

Naturally, it should not be overlooked that there are dramas that are fiercely hostile to the West and Israel.

Just as it should not be forgotten that the advertisements also do their part to transmit Western models. One that has made a big impact is a very sexy, flirtatious Coca-Cola commercial with Nancy Ajram, the hottest and highest paid female Arab pop star of the moment.

In the view of some analysts, all of this is evidence that a process of secularization is spreading through the Muslim world. Taboos are falling, ideas are circulating, lifestyles are changing, Western models are being imitated.

However, there has been no real corresponding renewal of civil society, no move toward pluralism, no democratization.

An “Islamic road to democracy” is possible: this is the conclusion of the article in “La Civiltà Cattolica.” But it is “a road that has yet to be studied and taken.”

BBC

Catholic diocese bans holy wine

The Catholic Diocese of Plymouth has banned the use of shared communion wine in a bid to help limit the spread of swine flu among congregations.

The Diocese will still offer consecrated bread to worshippers.

Its decision comes a month after it advised its priests to only offer the consecrated bread – and for it to only be put directly into people’s hands.

The Diocese has 93 parishes stretching from Penzance and the Isles of Scilly to parts of Bournemouth in Dorset.

Michael Fay, spokesman for the Diocese, said that worshippers would not be deprived by only receiving consecrated bread during communion.

“One or two people have questioned the issue of only receiving communion under one form but the Bishop has explained that they are not being deprived of anything at all,” he said.

“That was the way the congregation used to receive communion – just in the form of bread – so we are just going back a little bit to what was happening in previous years.”

On Friday the World Health Organization said that swine flu had reached 160 countries and could infect two billion people within the next two years.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I just need a good laugh:-