I know of couple of young doctors who have decided psychiatry was most probably the best career for a faithful Catholic. Catholic Commentary poses a few questions that have been going through my mind.
1. Can a Catholic, faithful to the teaching of the Church, get a job as a year head in a state school, where they will be expected to manage a sex education programme that promotes contraception and, at best, remains indifferent to abortion, where they will be complicit in the referral of girls from the school for abortion?
2. Can Catholics, faithful to the teaching of the Church, progress in the fields of obstetrics and gynaecology in the NHS?
3. How do Catholic GPs, nurses and midwives fare when, after child birth, it is expected that they will offer advice to their patients on methods of contraception?
4. How do Catholic nurses and doctors fare with regard to the care of patients living out the last days of their lives under regimes such as the Liverpool Care Pathway, which do not make adequate provision for nutrition and hydration?
These are real discriminations that affect ordinary Catholics in their every day lives. I wonder what Dr Evan Harris wants to do about these?
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And what about Catholic anaesthetists?
AMEN, IT MAKES ME WONDER, IS THERE TRUE CATHOLIC FAITHFUL OUT THERE ANYMORE IN THE WORK FORCE.
Dear Father
It's so true.
For several years I felt that teaching the Faith to young people in schools was my calling.
This sense of 'call' was increased after giving over 100 talks to students (in both Catholic and non-Catholic schools) on the dignity of life in the womb and on the beauty of marriage and chastity. The overwhelming response from the students? Why has no-one ever told us any of this before?
I also discovered just how much moral relativism had become the norm in the majority of the so-called Catholic schools I visited. Worse than that I was shocked to find Catholic schools promoting contraception and even bringing in local authority youth workers to do this.
I once had an argument in a Catholic school with the school nurse. She was a Catholic herself - but admitted to promoting condoms and Morning After Pills to the kids... She said that her job came before her faith. I responded that she should use her vocation to serve God and His people. She said that I was naive. I reminded her that we will all face God's judgement for the way we live down here...
At times I was also laughed at by the teachers - but not, it must be said, by the majority of the students. (Unfortunately it was the teachers in Catholic schools who did their share of the laughing...)
In time I looked at a PGCE/Teacher Training course on Merseyside - and changed my mind when the college's web-site stated that people with 'preconceived ideas of truth or belief in one religion' need not apply... I could not imagine the same being asked of Maths or Chemistry teachers(although having read Prof. Alan Bloom's book The Closing of the American Mind and Melanie Phillips' All Must Have Prizes I'm not so sure...).
Through the years I began to sense that it would not be possible to teach the Faith and to maintain a good conscience with the all-pervading sex ed' and indifferentism prevalent in education. I did not want to spend my life peddling the anti-Christian agenda of the present British Government.
Even so... many well-meaning Catholic teachers have bought into the relativist, values-clarification style approach that it was hard to find allies...
I looked at History - but realised they were dumbing this down too - and worse using it as a means of social engineering the kids to abandon their own heritage... This problem is present in the courses for Citizenship/History/PSHE/RE.
In the end I decided to go it alone by starting our own thing and trying to reach as many souls as possible. Thankfully this has opened doors and also led on to other things. Yet it remains sad that orthodox Catholics find it so problematic to teach within the 'Catholic' education system...
At least in America there are many good schools who teach the truth in season and out of season. The success of their students and the growth of the Faith in their communities bears testimony to all they do.
God Bless
Alan (and Angeline)
Father Ray,
Your focus on the impact on the employment prospects of faithful Catholics is understandable. But when this issue is discussed it might be helpful also to consider the impact of this on service users, such as pupils and patients.
Picking up, for example, on your second question, Tony Calland, Chair of the BMA Medical Ethics Committee apparently observed in a recent edition of the British Medical Journal that "It would be a bit stupid of someone who is a devout Catholic to become a gynaecologist, because they would be expected to carry out abortions." So, despite apparent safeguards written into the ’67 Act Catholics can just forget O & G – at any level.
But what about the impact of this on a pregnant woman who is also a faithful Catholic, or simply prolife? She must now submit herself and her unborn child to the 'care' of an obstetrician who may well also be an abortionist. How is she to trust such a person to care for her child as she would wish?
Luke Gormally has a brilliant piece on how the Catholic community is being failed in this regard. You will find it here: http://www.linacre.org/Obstetrics.pdf
In an age in which rights talk is the name of the game perhaps we should play this game and demand to be treated by medics we can trust – and also insist that our children are taught by teachers we can trust. I suggest the Catholic/prolife community is not insignificant and should make itself heard.
Father everytime I hear the word diversity I know that it is removing what I believe in and allowing something contrary to the faith - real diversity! As a teacher who needs to work, in a state school, I need to keep increasingly quiet about my beliefs but if I was a practising homosexual I could discuss waking up with my boyfriend freely in the staff room without censure
Not to mention Catholics who work in Local Government and the Civil Service ...
Fr. Ray,
This is becoming as much a problem for people like me who work in the private sector as it is for public sector/ NHS employees. "Diversity" is a just euphemism for persecuting Christianity in the name of equality, and it is being applied everywhere.
My multinational organization has compulsory diversity programmes for all personnel, including the active promotion of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered lifestyles. There is both on-line training and seminars. The person in charge of the programme is a former gay rights activist. The company's internal website has a "Diversity" section which describes our corporate participation in various gay pride events and similar gatherings. Everyone is encouraged to hang a company "diversity calendar" in their offices, which is illustrated with pictures drawn by young children.
The same diversity chief has recently splashed non-Christian festivals across our Outlook calendars (but conspicuously left out feasts like Ash Wednesday). And there is literally everything, not just Jewish, Hindu and Islamic. Even Zoroastrian feasts are now in the company calendar. You can remove these if you wish, but they can monitor who is tampering with them.
I am fighting back in my own subtle way: prayer, fasting, using holy water and putting blessed objects in the office. Any unsubtle fighting back and I would lose my job.
The irony is not lost on me that the Church, for the past 40 years, has had an official policy of getting out of the ghetto and engaging with the modern world -- a world which is now pushing us back into the ghetto from which we thought we were emerging.
The Hospital of St John & St Elizabeth is, by law, a Catholic Hospital. However it has been hijacked to a totally secular agenda allowing referrals and procedures contrary to Catholic teaching. This was done by deceiving the Charity Commission into believing that its actions were in accordance with that Catholic teaching and Cardinal Cormac failing to inform the Charity Commission of the correct position. "Feed my sheep?" Forget it - our pastors cannot be bothered.
The Hospital could have been a beacon of Catholic medical excellence as Cardinal Basil Hume so desired; the omissions of Cormac have ensureed that it will not be.
And in the field of psychology / psychiatry a person has to study and be licensed in the godless teachings of Sigmund Freud and others like him. Yes, some mental problems are caused by a chemical or nutritional imbalance in the body/brain. But the majority are spiritual issues, and no pill can cure these problems.
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