Life comes as planned and unplanned; as willed (in vitro) and unwilled (rape). I see human beings in their many splendorous and not so splendorous manifestations in these life giving situations. And, if there is a God in all this, He/She is, by all accounts, a silent partner. A silence that rivals the stillness of space.
Yet, there are groups that claim to know exactly what this silent partner wants. A child in the impoverished and disease-stricken conditions of an under-developed country may be still-born. Or this child may live for a few days only to die of starvation and hunger, or AIDS, or still, only to live with any number of congenital abnormalities that severely impinge upon this child’s quality of life. His/her counterpart in a developed country, on the other hand, lives to tell a different story. So, what we see at play here is humans and human ingenuity making a difference in lives. The odds for a life born, then, are the same as in a game of Russian roulette to live or perish. Yet, in all that is chance which, by its very nature is unfair and inequitable, there are those who pose the narrative of the hand of God, described as just and fair and credited with having a plan!
The fate of the children who played in the coastal areas devoured by the Sri Lankan tsunami versus those who waddle the Disney water-theme parks in Florida and Paris; the fortunes of a child born in Dhaka versus one born in
Scandinavia; a child born in the slums of Bombay versus one fortunate enough to be adopted by a wealthy family; the exhilarating experience of love for a girl born in a progressive society versus one born in an ultraconservative honor-killing community : they all speak of what chance
is to birth. Yet there are those who revel in stories that come bound in
leather-clad hard covers glorifying the infinite wisdom of God who has a reason for all these disparities. When some live and some die - their fate solely decided by the place of birth, or for sentiments that receive drastically different moralistic interpretations, they say, God has a reason. And,then to add insult to injury, they declare: who are we, mere
mortals, to dispute such reason? I ask: is there any possibility that I can get to know the reason so that I may take ownership of this God’s plan for me? After all, I am the one living the conditions of my life: so why should I alone be kept in the dark while His self-appointed representatives – living the privileged, pampered lifestyle - claim to know it all? How come I am unworthy to be spoken to by this God? Why is there the need for me to be directed through others who are no part of the intrinsic essence of my life, and are virtual strangers to my intimate, private self?
Well, this is where Sr. Margaret McBride came in. She was the Vice-President of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona (USA), where a 27-year old mother of four got admitted with the serious medical complication of pulmonary hypertension. Being in the third month of her pregnancy, the medical complication was deemed fatal if she were to continue with the physical strain and stress of her pregnancy. The Ethical Committee of St. Joseph’s hospital consisting of physicians, ethicist and Sr. Margaret as the senior administrator, in consultation with the patient and her
family, came to the joint decision to have the pregnancy aborted. Obviously, the young mother’s death would have left her four children motherless. Not much of a complex decision, you would think; but not so for Bishop Thomas Olmstead of Phoenix. He promptly excommunicated the Sister. His rationale: “The mother’s life cannot be preferred over the child’s”!!!
So, are we to infer that Bishop Olmstead knew exactly God’s wishes, a knowledge that somehow eluded the medical experts and the frail mother herself and her loving family? That, Bishop Olmstead, in his maleness, was better privileged than his female peer, Sr. Margaret, to receive such knowledge? He certainly thought so for he did not lose any time excommunicating Sr. Margaret resulting in the loss of her job at St. Joseph’s!
The shallowness and hollowness of Olmstead’s act was not lost on the people of Arizona or the staff at St. Joseph’s. There was a huge outcry over Sr. Margaret’s dismissal. I believe that she is no more the VP, but is still at St. Joseph’s in some other capacity.
Another victory for the male-dominant orthodoxy from the wellspring
of Taliban’s own puritan desert origins!
I cite the following excerpts from an article in The New York Times by Nicholas D Kristof:
Let us just note that the Roman Catholic hierarchy suspended priests who abused children and in some cases defrocked them but did not normally excommunicate them, so they remained able to take the sacrament. True Christians, like Sister Margaret, understand that real life is full of difficult moral decisions and pray that they make the right decision in the context of Christ’s teachings. Only a group of detached, pampered men in gilded robes on a balcony high above the rest of us could deny these dilemmas. When a hierarchy of mostly aging men pounce on and excommunicate a revered nun who was merely trying to save a mother’s life, the Church seems to me almost as out of touch as it was in the cruel and debauched days of the Borgias in the Renaissance.
I ask: God, can you speak for Sr. Margaret? After all, has it not been long, a very long while, since you were miffed by her earlier avatar, Eve? At least, your voice heard – just once – may help expose the quackery of these mind-readers!
No comments:
Post a Comment