PATIENT ADVOCATES NURTURE HOPE I have served as a volunteer patient advocate for 35 years. The deepest kinds of suffering I encounter are profound unhappiness and loneliness, resulting in loss of hope. It is difficult for people who are intensely unhappy to believe that they will ever be happy again. That is when they desperately […]
PATIENT ADVOCATES ARE DESPERATELY NEEDED: PART I Read More »
HAVE THE CONVERSATION Use your Voice to Keep the Church Doors Open! Hindsight is a beautiful thing. In March of 2020, religious leaders around the world started closing churches and stopping public worship due to the fear of spreading Covid-19. As a result, multitudes of people were unable to practice their faith – even the
COVID-19, SACRAMENTS, AND CLOSING CHURCHES Read More »
One of the most important tasks in bioethics is distinguishing between ordinary and extraordinary means when it comes to medical care. The reason this distinction is so vital is that Catholics have a moral obligation to receive ordinary care for themselves and give it to others. What is deemed to be extraordinary is morally optional;
DISCERNING ORDINARY VS. EXTRAORDINARY MEANS IN CATHOLIC BIOETHICS Read More »
Healthcare advance directives are legal documents by which individuals express their wishes regarding medical treatment and/or appoint a trusted person to speak for them any time they are unable to make treatment decisions for themselves. Not all advance directives are equal. Many have been drafted by people who fail to comprehend the reverence, awe, and deep respect
HEALTHCARE ADVANCE DIRECTIVES Read More »
In assessing when there is a duty to preserve life, the Church distinguishes between ordinary and extraordinary means.[1] Ordinary means must be taken to preserve life, and extraordinary means can be morally refused.[2] It is, therefore, critical to properly characterize particular means of preserving human life as ordinary or extraordinary, that is, as morally obligatory
ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY MEANS Read More »
When a healthcare provider recommends palliative care or hospice, patients and their families need guidance so they can make the most life-affirming decisions possible in their circumstances. The Task Force on Civil Rights in Health Care advises people to become informed and ask questions before electing a palliative care or hospice program. The goal of palliative
PALLIATIVE CARE AND HOSPICE Read More »
Louis Brown’s recorded talk from the 2020 Legatus Business Leadership Institute Virtual Conference. This Digital Health Care Conference was originally live-streamed in October 2020. Louis is the Executive Director of Christ Medicus.
DIGITAL HEALTH CARE CONFERENCE: ATTORNEY LOUIS BROWN (Video) Read More »
Attacks on autonomy and human dignity appear to be intensifying. Autonomy, of course, refers to our ability to act as independent human beings, with an innate and inviolable human dignity inherent to each of us, regardless of our physical, medical, emotional, psychological, or financial circumstances. It seems as if so many, however, are intent on
EUTHANASIA SUPPORTERS TOUT AUTONOMY OF VIOLENCE Read More »
In 2006, I was invited to speak in Alkoven, Austria at a conference on human rights located adjacent to Hartheim Castle. Hartheim Castle was built in the ninth century and, in the 19th century, it came to serve as a home for children with physical and mental disabilities. However, in the early 1940s, Hartheim’s humanitarian
PROTECT THE INSTITUTIONALIZED AND DEFEAT THE INHUMANITY OF EUGENICS Read More »
The Catholic teaching is clear: “The ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted.” (CCC 2279) Two Jesuit priests, Father John J. Paris, a professor emeritus at Boston College, and Father Kevin Wildes, a professor at St. Joseph’s University, recently published an article, “Making an idol of brain-injured patients.” The priests were
TERRI SCHIAVO, THE BRAIN INJURED AND CHURCH TEACHING Read More »