eChurch Blog

I’m always in two minds whether to blog on cases picked up by the Christian Legal Centre, for various reasons. I often opt not to as there seems to be so many cases nowadays. Sometimes I simply don’t agree with the legal premise. Other times I feel these cases are overly combative, exhibiting an unwillingness to opt for mediation before legal proceedings. Some cases are simply petty.

Having said all this, I will note a case in the news today, as the interface of Christianity and medicine is of general interest to me.

The case involves Dr Richard Scott, who works at Bethesda Medical Centre in Margate, Kent – a practice well-known for having Christian partners. He has been been threatened with an Official Warning by the General Medical Council (GMC) and is currently under investigation for sharing his faith with a patient.

The Telegraph has picked up on this here and here.

Christian Concern had this to say:

In 2010, Dr Scott saw a patient on the practice list at the request of the patient’s mother.  At the end of the consultation, the patient and doctor discussed religion, each being of different faiths.  The patient has continued to seek treatment from the practice, but his mother filed an official complaint, claiming that the GP had not offered medical advice during a consultation, but instead, talked about Jesus!

The GMC has written to Dr Scott offering a ‘compromise’ decision to the disciplinary complaint of placing an Official Warning on his file.  However, the GP is calling on his professional body to strike-out the complaint on the basis that the complaint was from a mother who was not medically qualified to comment on what treatment, if any, a medical practitioner should prescribe and, the GMC’s own guidelines state that it is acceptable to present faith to a patient as long as it is done gently and sensitively.

Dr Scott, who has an unblemished record as a medic, says it is totally unacceptable for his professional reputation and official file to contain a rebuke for acting both professionally, and within the guidelines. He claims the complaint has been made knowing that professional bodies are nervous about claims of a religious nature, and therefore it is a way of getting back at the GP.

Dr Scott said: “I only discussed my faith at the end of a lengthy medical consultation after exploring the various interventions that the patient had previously tried, and after promising to follow up the patient’s request appointment with other medical professionals.

“I only discussed mutual faith after obtaining the patient’s permission. In our conversation, I said that personally, I had found having faith in Jesus helped me and could help the patient. At no time did the patient indicate that they were offended, or that they wanted to stop the discussion. If that had been the case, I would have immediately ended the conversation.

“This complaint was brought to the GMC not by the patient, who has continued to be a patient at this practice, but by the patient’s mother.”

The medical practice at which Dr Scott works is well known in the community for having Christian partners and is named after a Biblical name.   Dr Scott says he has talked about his faith with many patients over the years, and many of them have been encouraged.  Dr Scott, who for seven years has been a worshipper at St Paul’s Church, Cliftonville (CofE), is so determined to clear his professional name that he has instructed the Christian Legal Centre to advise him in his case.  They, in turn, are using the leading human rights lawyer, Paul Diamond as lead counsel.

….read all

On the face of it, it would appear that this “Official Warning” is unwarranted, if indeed the medical consultation was concluded and the discussion of faith was with consent.

There is always the thorny issue of public servants discussing faith whilst in the employ of the government.

But this case also raises the appropriateness of spirituality within medicine. If the medical profession is to treat people in a holistic manner then surely issues of faith and spirituality are part and parcel.

Or is this a case of innappropriate evangelism?

A couple of weeks ago Dr Jim West posted some questions for Catholics, prompted in part by the beatification of John Paul II.

Here are the questions:

1- What biblical or theological justification is there to pray for the dead?

2- What biblical or theological justification is there for believing that the dead pray for us?

3- How is ‘praying to a saint’ different from idolatry?

4- Isn’t it idolatrous to place your faith in any for salvation other than Christ?

5- Isn’t the entire notion of the invocation of the saints idolatrous and blasphemous?

Today Jim notifes us that Michael Barber – The Sacred Page – has picked up the gauntlet and will be posting a series in response.

The first response clarifies the common Protestant misconception of the Catholic position relating to grace and works.

Being new to Catholicism – and coming from a Protestant tradition – I personally need these issues clarified and will link to this series for my own benefit, and hopefully for your interest also.

Joe Carter over at First Things points us towards a list of 10 mental illnesses and their myths.

This is actually the second list and the original can be found here.

Whilst on the subject of mental illness the Royal College of Psychiatrists run an annual poetry competition and the following is this year’s winner:

Fragmented – By Andy Garrett

This space I occupy – my head, my world, my universe
I comprehend as you do yours, but mine is liquid – changing, flowing
Facets presenting themselves before me, communicating differing aspects
My head feels as if it must explode – information overload
I get no rest, no peace although I am alone – I am not
I respond to them – they tease and taunt, my mind they haunt
I am in fear of what they know.

You know not who I am, who sent me, but to his will, I bend
I have no time for Wordly things – my way is set.  I follow.
Messages only for me, whispered in my ear, through the radio or TV
My life is a mission – resenting interference from you and your kind
Who are you who think you know what is best for me?
I am of the ancient world and live by the old rule
Unhand me.  Through fear I shall fight and for what is right

Degraded yet again – I know this place and those who dwell here
Unable to move, I struggle to make sense of the battle within
The haze inside my mind – blades of light and clarity
Penetrate and buzz to the very core of my brain and then
It dawns, I am unwell again – no sickness, no broken bone
No visible signature of physical trauma, but my mind –
Oh my mind, it torments me as it screams for tranquillity

The time of all oppressors is short. And empires fall. And the years of a man are – give or take – three score and ten (though the years of a woman are a few more). And the Mugabes and the Pinochets and the Mubaraks all eventually know that their day has come. And even the Western, capitalist, exploitative world will come to an end. And the Ancient of Days laughs at them all, enthroned as he is in Zion. And the caveat is always there – no-one knows the hour or the day. But the word echoes through the universe. And the word is “Soon”.

SOURCE (This is a superb, sobering, thought provoking post, so do hop over and read in its entirety)

This is the fifth installment of my posts based on the book: Spirituality and Psychiatry, which was kindly sent to me by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

The first part can be found here, the second here, the third here, and the fourth here.

This chapter revolves around the case study of a 15-year-old boy with chronic renal failure since early childhood. To cut the story short, after prolonged illness and two rejected kidneys, he took the option to refuse further treatment. Consequently, he began palliative care with everyone still trying to persuade him to continue treatment and eventually died peacefully.

As our medical technology evolves so does the spiritual and ethical dilemma surrounding withholding or withdrawing treatment:

Page 90 + 91

….The number of deaths in neonatal intensive therapy units due to withdrawal rose nearly five-fold in the 1990′s as the ability to save lives, it seems, was matched by increasing recognition of how little relief it may have to offer the severely, multiply-disabled child. When the quality of baby’s life is poor, the quality of its death might be more important.

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Such ethical decisions may shake the religious faith of anyone. They may also represent a spiritual challenge in a more broader sense, about the sanctity of life and the balance to be struck with suffering. Where the law becomes involved in a decision to treat a baby, often in the glare of media publicity, spiritual strengths may be severely stressed.

Psychiatry with children is complex. Family relationships, peers, educational and care services, must all be taken into account as they exert both positive and negative influences. Structural and systemic contexts and dynamics must all be factored:

Page 88

To that extent, systems theory is applicable not only to the way we must draw on many different streams of study to understand a Child’s spiritual development, but also to the multilayered approach necessary for help (Lerner et al, 2006).

A psychiatrist must attempt to understand the Child’s family, the relationships, roles, power, and interactions:

Page 91

Above all, the psychiatrist needs to know what body of tradition, what ‘mythology’, has been been handed down in the family from one generation to another.

This intrigues me as it would suggest the psychiatrist as needing deep insight into those ‘traditions’ or ‘mythologies’ in order to make sense of them within the familial context. These of course may be very alien to their own experiences.

Page 92 + 93

And so to the very heart of those concentric layers – the spirituality of the child and the part the child psychiatrist might have in its development. Extravagant claims have been made for the importance of that relationship and the disastrous consequences of shirking responsibility for it.

By ignoring spiritual development in times of suffering and transition, the therapist is fostering (in the child) an understanding of the world that does not embrace or validate the sacred dimensions of human experience – [the child] is left with depleted ways of coping, connecting, and ultimately evolving. From a spiritual perspective a therapist unwilling to address the highest potential within a child can divert an individual from his or her life’s work and perpetuate suffering by disavowing the client’s inherent dialogue with the universe (Miller & Kelley, 2006: p.426)

One has to ask why practitioners used to dealing with every other aspect of child development should be loathe to tackle spirituality (Plotnikoff, 1997; Pfund, 2000). Some seem wary of intruding into what is seen as the child’s and the family’s private world. Some are anxious about the enormity of the issues they might uncover there and their inability to provide answers. Some doubt their capacity to hold onto their own opinions and to avoid proselytising in their approach. Some may still not understand the significance of spiritual development or, if they do, have no idea how and what end to assess and work with it.

Even given these inherent complexities the chapter ends with acknowledging that working with young people in need remains a privilege.

Given the above it is not hard to argue for those schooled in spirituality to form part of the interdisciplinary and interprofessional team providing care.

Stacy over at Accepting Abundance has some wonderful quotes by Sir Isaac Newton which are well worth reading. I particularly enjoyed this little story:

Sir Isaac had an accomplished artisan fashion for him a small scale model of our solar system, which was to be put in a room in Newton’s home when completed. The assignment was finished and installed on a large table. The workman had done a very commendable job, simulating not only the various sizes of the planets and their relative proximities, but also constructing the model so that everything rotated and orbited when a crank was turned. It was an interesting, even fascinating work, as you can imagine, particularly to anyone schooled in the sciences.

One of Sir Isaac’s colleagues, a scientist and an atheist, came by for a visit. Seeing the model, he was naturally intrigued, and proceeded to examine it with undisguised admiration for the high quality of the workmanship. “My, what an exquisite thing this is!” he exclaimed. “Who made it?”

Paying little attention to him, Sir Isaac answered, “Nobody.” Stopping his inspection, the visitor turned and said, “Evidently you did not understand my question. I asked who made this.” Newton, enjoying himself immensely no doubt, replied in a still more serious tone, “Nobody. What you see just happened to assume the form it now has.” “You must think I am a fool!” the visitor retorted heatedly, “Of course somebody made it, and he is a genius, and I would like to know who he is!” Newton then spoke to his friend in a polite yet firm way: “This thing is but a puny imitation of a much grander system whose laws you know, and I am not able to convince you that this mere toy is without a designer or maker; yet you profess to believe that the great original from which the design is taken has come into being without either designer or maker! Now tell me by what sort of reasoning do you reach such an incongruous conclusion?”

It still surprises me that Stephen Hawking can make pronouncements on matters outside of his sphere of expertise and be picked up by virtually every media platform around the world.

Anyway, here are the two best responses to Hawking’s assertions, the first by Roger Olson:

First, how does being a physicist make Hawking an expert on metaphysical questions?  This seems another classical case (like Carl Sagan in Cosmos) of a scientist dabbling in philosophy outside the boundaries of his realm of expertise.  IN PRINCIPLE physics cannot prove or disprove life after death or heaven or hell or God or any such realities.  I am ashamed of journalists who fall for this stuff.

Second, perhaps Hawking doesn’t want to believe in life after death because he’s unsure of his eternal destiny.  Projection theory works both ways (as Hans Kueng has so well demonstrated in Does God Exist?).  Atheists project the emptiness of their own lives into the sky, believing God does not exist because, if he did, they might be in real trouble.

…..read all

And the second by Tom Wright:

It’s depressing to see Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant minds in his field, trying to speak as an expert on things he sadly seems to know rather less about than many averagely intelligent Christians. Of course there are people who think of ‘heaven’ as a kind of pie-in-the-sky dream of an afterlife to make the thought of dying less awful. No doubt that’s a problem as old as the human race. But in the Bible ‘heaven’ isn’t ‘the place where people go when they die.’ In the Bible heaven is God’s space while earth (or, if you like, ‘the cosmos’ or ‘creation’) is our space. And the Bible makes it clear that the two overlap and interlock. For the ancient Jews, the place where this happened was the temple; for the Christians, the place where this happened was Jesus himself, and then, astonishingly, the persons of Christians because they, too, were ‘temples’ of God’s own spirit.

Hawking is working with a very low-grade and sub-biblical view of ‘going to heaven.’ Of course, if faced with the fully Christian two-stage view of what happens after death — first, a time ‘with Christ’ in ‘heaven’ or ‘paradise,’and then, when God renews the whole creation, bodily resurrection — he would no doubt dismiss that as incredible. But I wonder if he has ever even stopped to look properly, with his high-octane intellect, at the evidence for Jesus and the resurrection? I doubt it — most people in England haven’t. Until he has, his opinion about all this is worth about the same as mine on nuclear physics, i.e. not much.

….continue reading

Following the Guild of Catholic Bloggers meeting in London a couple of weeks ago, one of the proposals was to develop a multi-author Catholic blog.

This has now been launched: The Guild of Blessed Titus Brandsma.

To be truthful, being new to Catholicism, I’m not entirely sure what I’ll be able to bring to the blog, as I feel out of my depth.

But it’s certainly one to watch as it develops.

A couple of interesting things I read today that are marginally related to each other and I thought I’d draw your attention to.

The first article looks at the strange phenomenon of believers in prophecies strengthening their belief system after the prophecy has failed to materialise.

This article has of course been prompted by the much touted rapture prophesy, predicted for this Saturday – 21st May – at 6pm local time.

Psychology is typically lousy at predictions. But it can predict, with the weight of some pretty strong evidence, that if the world doesn’t in fact end this weekend, most true believers of the apocalypse will not lose their religion. Indeed, the failure of the apocalypse to materialize will only strengthen believers’ convictions.

[.....]

What accounts for this “irrational” behavior? Shouldn’t the failure of a very precise prediction for which they had made extreme sacrifices have prompted disillusionment and disgust — not greater commitment?

Not according to Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance, which predicts that the more we have given and invested in a particular point of view, the less likely we will be to abandon it in the face of contrary evidence. It’s the same cognitive process that kicks in when we are made to behave in ways that are inconsistent with our beliefs; in the face of that disharmony, we often change our beliefs to be congruent with our behaviors and self-perception. Cognitive dissonance is uncomfortable and leads people to seek resolution.

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The second article is a research paper on ‘destructive cults’, their mind control techniques, and subsequent psychological impact on members. It’s quite a long piece but if you want a peep under the cultic hood, then it makes for a very informative read.

Here’s the abstract:

Cults have become a phenomenon in our world today. There are thousands of members in the United States alone. Ex-members exhibit symptoms of posttraumatic stress due to the use of mind control techniques which are used within the cults. 10 ex-members of cults were sought out through the internet to participate in a survey which was designed to assess whether ex-cult members suffer from symptoms of posttraumatic stress. The 4 page survey consisted of three parts; history, symptoms, and treatment. Age of involvement was usually early twenties and thirties. Subjects reported having a religious preference, several had close friends and most had up to 3 years of college education. The majority of subjects experienced a predominant loss prior to joining the cult. A few had traumatic experiences preceding membership. Subjects did not display posttraumatic stress disorder prior to joining a cult unless they had experienced a trauma. Ex-cult members clearly showed that dissociative symptoms are central to the cult experience. Almost all subjects sought multiple treatments for recovery. These included; psychotherapy, individual and group, medication, pastoral counseling and exit counseling.

…..continue reading

This is the fourth installment of my posts based on the book: Spirituality and Psychiatry, which was kindly sent to me by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

The first part can be found here, the second here, and the third here.

The fourth chapter tackles the vast subject of suicide and they do well to cover so many different facets in such a short space. They consider: membership of faith communities and spiritual practices, attitudes to suicide in faith traditions, spirituality and mental anguish, suicide in literature, the question of the meaning of life, spiritual issues in the clinical management of people who have suicidal thoughts, physician-assisted suicide, and the impact of suicide on survivors.

I’m not going to comment extensively on this chapter, as I’ve covered suicide on this blog in the past, most notably, here, here and here.

On an aside, I can recommend a blog written by a young lady who has recently lost her husband due to suicide, called: The Random Ramblings of a Stay at Home Mum. This is beautifully written, sometimes harrowing, brutally honest, deeply moving, and I heartily commend this blog to your attention.

I would like to also note a conversation I had a couple of days ago with a sufferer of mental illness who has extensive contact with other sufferers. He said to me that in his opinion the vast majority of suicides he had personally known of were caused as a direct result of crushing loneliness. I think we would all do well to bear this in mind.

I’m going to conclude this post with a quote from the chapter dealing with the impact of suicide on survivors:

Page 75:

Suicide always occurs in a social context and will have considerable impact on those left behind (sometimes called the survivors). In reviewing the impact of suicide on the bereaved, Clark and Goldney (2000) have estimated that 6 million people worldwide are affected annually by suicide. They review a number of studies, indicating that families bereaved by suicide are a vulnerable group. The support they receive is vital, as they are at risk of depression and death by suicide themselves. However, they may be reluctant to access support because of stigma and because they may mistrust the mental health services, whom they may see as having failed to help the deceased person. Among the difficulties are shock, anger, guilt, blame, stigma, unfinished business, rejection, questions of ‘how’ and ‘why’, and confusion about their own beliefs and values. There may be concern about God, the afterlife and the spiritual state of the deceased, regardless of religious belief (Clark & Goldney, 2000).

The funeral may be a healing opportunity, allowing for the reality of the person’s death to dawn and for the celebration of the positive attributes of their life so that these are not eclipsed by the manner of death. It can provide support for mourners and opportunity for those outside the immediate family to experience their grief. When sensitively conducted, the funeral can allow safe expression of difficult emotions, bring the family together and enable ‘letting go’. The memory of a beautiful funeral may help to balance the negative impact of the event (Wertheimer, 2001). Viewing the body also allows an encounter with the reality of death and generally aids the grieving process.

Undertakers and ministers of religion have an important role to play when in contact with survivors, and can convey acceptance, information and a non-judgemental atmosphere. Hawton (2003) suggests that specialised training for them may help the bereaved. Survivors may be concerned about the officiant’s attitude to suicide. What families are seeking is not a theological discussion but an assurance that the deceased is no longer suffering and is ‘at peace’ (Wertheimer, 1991).

One hospital chaplain (Christian, 2007, personal communication) suggests that each mourner will have particular views about the circumstances behind the act, leading to blame and self-criticism. It is never possible to know the whole story of what led the person to that point. Christian suggests that this is a reason not to persist with guilt and blame. In better moments the deceased would have wanted the bereaved to get on with their lives, and this is something the chaplain can remind them about before, during and after the funeral. This type of intervention could be helpful to mental healthcare professionals in communicating with the bereaved, as well as in dealing with their own emotional reactions to suicide.

Recovery may take years and the sense of loss enduring. Psychiatrists should not expect ‘closure’ but support adaptation to the circumstances of continuing life. Most bereaved persons eventually find an adjustment, although some may continue to experience depression and relationship difficulties. Others are relieved the deceased person is no longer suffering. Many find a new inner relationship with the deceased person and a new purpose or direction (Clark & Goldney, 2000).