Denver, Colo., Sep 6, 2019 / 05:09 pm (CNA).- A Colorado man with cancer and his doctor filed a suit last month against a health system run by the Catholic Church that alleges its policy barring its doctors from participating in assisted suicide violates state law.
Cornelius “Neil” Mahoney, 64, was told July 16 that his cancer was incurable and he would be expected to die within 4-14 months, depending on his treatment, according to a suit filed Aug. 21 in the Arapahoe County District Court by Mahoney and his doctor.
Mahoney quickly inquired about assisted suicide, having anxiety about facing death from cancer and wanting to control the place and time of his death.
According to the AP Mahoney is childless, “and does not want his siblings to have to take care of him.”
He first asked about assisted suicide at Rocky Mountain Cancer Centers the day he was told his cancer was uncurable; his physician there said neither he nor anyone else at RMCC would provide assisted suicide.
Mahoney spoke the same day to a nurse practitioner at Centura Health Physician Group about his desire for assisted suicide, who referred his request to his primary physician, Dr. Barbara Morris.
He asked a social worker assigned to his case at RMCC about assisted suicide July 24, who also told him he would be unable to access it through RMCC.
Morris, Mahoney’s primary physician, was employed at CHPG, which is jointly run by the Catholic Church and the Seventh-day Adventists through Centura Health Corporation.
Abiding by the U.S. bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives, Centura Health does not permit its employees to participate in assisted suicide.
Morris “would provide [aid-in-dying] to qualified patients but for Centura’s Policy,” the suit says. She told him July 22 that Centura bars its physicians from providing assiste suicide, and she suggested that Mahoney transfer his care to a provider who would be permitted to provide assisted suicide.
Mahoney then inquired with another provider, the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, who said that to obtain assisted suicide he would have to tranfer his care and have his condition re-evaluated.
“Neil does not want to transfer his care to a different facility and endure additional testing,” and likes the convenience of CHPG, which is close to his home.
Mahoney began chemotherapy treatment in July “in the hopes that he responds favorably and can handle the side effects,” and is uncertain whether he wants to receive additional chemotherapy.
Colorado voters legalized assisted suicide in a 2016 ballot measure. The law allows an adult with a terminal illness to request a lethal prescription from their physician. The person must be deemed mentally competent, and two physicians must diagnosis the person as having six months or fewer to live. The measure requires self-administration of secobarbital.
The AP reported Sept. 4 that Jason Spitalnick, who is among the attorneys for Mahoney and Morris, “pointed out that that the law says helping a patient get life-ending drugs does not constitute euthanasia or assisted suicide under the state’s criminal code.”
The law requires the official cause of death to be listed as a patient’s underlying condition, not as an assisted suicide.
A facility may not subject its physicians, nurses, and pharmacists to disciplinary action, suspension, or recovation of privileges or licenses related to conduct taken in good faith reliance on the assisted suicide law.
The law allows health care facilities to prohibit its physicians from prescribing assisted suicide when the patient intends to use the medication on the facility’s premises; the facilities must notify its physicians and patients in advance of its policy.
Centura issued a policy in February 2017 noting that it prohibits its employees from prescribing or dispensing medication for assisted suicides, or engaging in qualifying a patient for assisted suicide.
The policy does allow Centura physicians or providers to assist patients who request assisted suicide in transferring their care to a non-Centura facility.
The suit seeks a declaration that Centura may not prohibit Morris from providing assisted suicide, nor penalize her should she do so.
Morris’ employment was terminated by Centura Aug. 26.
Kaiser Health News reported Aug. 30 that Morris “had planned to help her patient … end his life at his home.”
Centura Health filed a request Aug. 30 that the suit be removed from the Arapahoe district court to the US District Court for the District of Colorado.
Centura requested the transfer to federal court because the suit raises federal questions involving the First Amendment and federal statutes.
It noted that it is a religious organization, and that the doctrines of is sponsors, the Catholic and Seventh-day Adventist healthcare ministries, “govern, direct and inform” its activities.
The group added that when Morris signed an employment agreement with Centura Health-St. Anthony Hospital in 2017, “she expressly agreed that she would not provide any services ‘that are in violation of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services.’”
Morris told Kaiser Health News she was “shellshocked” at being fired, saying, “it seemed so obvious that they can’t do it.”
JoNel Aleccia wrote at KHN that “Morris said she understood that Centura was religiously affiliated when she was hired but didn’t anticipate a problem.”
Morris said that “I didn’t think it was going to affect my general family practice. Until these conversations about medical aid-in-dying, I hadn’t felt any interference.”
Centura Health’s request for removal stated that “rather than encouraging patient Cornelius Mahoney to receive care consistent with … Catholic doctrine or transferring care to other providers, Dr. Morris has, within her employment, encouraged an option that she knew was morally unacceptable to her employer. It was her employer’s religious judgment that her conduct in relation to Mr. Mahoney violated the religious principles upon which the Hospital operates and warranted the termination of her employment.”
Centura said Aug. 29 that it “expects all our caregivers to act in a manner consistent with our Mission and Core Values,” Kaiser Health News reported.
Wendy Forbes, a Centura spokeswoman, told Kaiser Health News: “We believe the freedom of religion doctrine at the heart of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution supports our policies as a Christian health-care ministry. We will vigorously defend our Constitutional rights.”
Archdiocese of Denver spokesman Mark Haas said that “asking a Christian hospital to play any role in violating the dignity of human life is asking the Christian hospital to compromise its values and core mission. This is not the hospital forcing its beliefs upon others, but rather having outside views forced upon it.”
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Perhaps the legion powers that be should be barred from spreading and imposing their ideological bromides until they’ve been vaccinated with sodium pentothal. But, who knows, they might be allergic.
I suppose if she also refuses to use Tylenol, Advil, Motrin, Aleve, Sudafed, Benadryl, Claritin, Robitussin, Mucinex, Tums, Maalox, Colace, Ex-Lax, Pepto-Bismol, Albuterol, Azithromycin, Lidocaine, and Hydroxychloroquine, she has a case. But that case would be personal religious observance, not Roman Catholic
Remedies you mention are to treat discomfort or disease. Covid vaccines are aimed at preventing disease.
Roman Catholics value life, her position in relation to not injecting aborted fetuses is God honouring and church affirmed.
With respect
Those remedies have the same testing history as the vaccines.
A myth perpetuated by the ignorant particularly those who rely on the discredited, dishonest, autistic Father Matthew Schneider, LC as a source.
The “Everything Was Tested on HEK” Lie
There is a bit more to the story than that:
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https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/lets-get-a-few-things-cleared-up-testing-cell-lines-and-fetal-tissue/
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I will agree that she really does not have much of a case from the standpoint of being a Roman Catholic. The vaccines are a requirement to attend Mass in some dioscese, unless things have recently changed. And the Pope of course requires it for folks at the Vatican
Seriously? The pope didn’t speak ex cathedra on the “vaccines,” so there is no dogma involved, and he could be wrong.. It remains his opinion rather than a teaching of the Church. Study the Catechism, please.
And the Vatican has also made a clear case on the basis of nonproximity using Thomist logic.
Yeah, seriously.
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I really do not care of the Pope spoke ex cathedra or not concerning the vaccines. The fact remains–the Vatican has imposed them on employees and visitors alike. That may have changed recently with the wanning on Omicron, but there are a number of articles on that fact. There are also articles on a couple of diocese requiring the vaccine of priests or employees, or for in-peron Mass attendance, etc.
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Her case will be tried in a secular court, and were I a secular judge, I suppose I would have to look at this and say “Your own relious authorities/superiors mandate this vaccine for this or that; but you say your religion forbids it? Appeal denied.”
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And that is reality, and a mighty sick one at that. I feel for this nun. What has been done, and is being done, is wrong. It is a loss for everyone involved.
The vaccines(sic)
The experimental, mRNA gene therapy injections aren’t vaccines. People need to stop referring to them as such.
You frequently appear here to demonstrate a willful ignorance of the Catholic religion, not to mention a hostility towards its values. You might be more comfortable at the NCR, the silly one.
No one is obligated to cooperate with an intrinsic evil, including the evil of genetic altering serums fraudulently promoted as “vaccines” and immorally derived from the intentional destruction of innocent life.
This would be fake news. As of late, I’ve been commenting on political matters. When I look around, being anti-violence and pro-truth is more of a religious value than Russia apologism, and the promotion of falsehoods. I am sure that being in disagreement is unsettling.
On this thread I merely pointed to a list of commonly used medications with the same remote cooperation. I think a person can state firmly, “I don’t want to do what they’re telling me to do.” Such persons often violate speed limits on roads, safety protocols at work, or receive Communion when they are told they shouldn’t or can’t.
Now, if Sister Byrne opts for non-pharma remedies for headaches, inflammation, and other routine hiccups, her personal stance is consistent. Any Catholic anti-vaxxer who uses ExLax but clings to the remote cooperation principle, that person is treading close to hypocrisy.
To complete the distancing from cooperation, I recommend declining to buy anything made in China. Moral principles are good things, even when they run against the grain of one’s friends and associates. What else is there to be said? Buy North American herbs for aches, pains, and constipation.
If this special lady is prevented from her healing ministry, her patients are the poorer. If she states she is unvaccinated and patients have no qualms, then let her practice! Ultimately God is our protector. Though vaccinated, I would not have taken the vaccine had I known stem cells were used from an aborted fetus.
Her principled stand exalts God and informs her patients. May the Lord bless her.
Proverbs 6:16-19 There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and one who sows discord among brothers.
Acts 21:31-32 And as they were seeking to kill him, word came to the tribune of the cohort that all Jerusalem was in confusion. He at once took soldiers and centurions and ran down to them. And when they saw the tribune and the soldiers, they stopped beating Paul.
Psalm 82:4 Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”
A person of character is a great blessing to the church, through fidelity and their godly activity.
And, the “vaccinated” can contract and transmit the virus.
Just a small correction: Sister Deirdre is not a “nun (cloistered)”. She is a “Sister”. https://canonlawmadeeasy.com/2009/03/19/whats-the-difference-between-sisters-and-nuns/
Press on, Sister Dede!
Hey Sister, (nun) try some Circumspect Analysis on your situation. Is it smarter to have medical people vaccinated, so they may not infect their patients? I’ll help you: The answer is yes. ALWAYS look at the other side of an argument before opposing it. This is a policy issue. Don’t take it personal.
The vaccine does not prevent infection or transmission of the SC2 virus. It might help reduce symptoms.
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There is no justification for any mandate for anyone, by anyone, for this vaccine. Including for our medical professionals.
This mandate can’t see the forest for the trees.
The Epoch times recently had an article by a scientist that Omnicron actually did more to eventually ebb the pandemic than the vaccine.
Jews?
I encountered a “Catholic” friend in the grocery store this past week, and in our conversation, I mentioned that I have not been vaccinated because of the connection all the “vaccines” have to abortion. She became adamant and actually strident in her statement that the “vaccines,” according to her immunologist daughter-in-law, had no connection to abortion. Really? Even the USCCB said that the abortion connection of all the “vaccines” was “remote,” clearly acknowledging the connection and recommending that Catholics choose some over others because the abortion connection was “greater” in some than in others. (My response is that there is no statute of limitations on murder). The only persons who can judge anyone’s conscience in any regard are that person and God. The United States government was established by colonists seeking religious freedom. I applaud Sister Dede and pray that her lawsuit is successful.
It basically revolves around governance not acknowledging the science about natural immunity. Why the heavy push for vaccines and total disregard for the effectiveness of natural immunity? big $$$ maybe?
This is definitely a control issue with $$$ directing the power over the peasants. The mandates are enacted irrespective of the facts at hand. A moral rejection is not even necessary, as an intellectually honest assessment of the ‘science’ easily dismisses any argument promoting these mandates. It’s unnatural for tyrants to relinquish power once gained. Thank God for regular election opportunities; pray that they are truly ‘regular’ in the true sense of the word.
Hopefully the following is true:
BREAKING: Sr Dede Byrne’s medical license reinstated and vaccine exemption granted
Good.
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I hope a few bishops take note that rescind their own unjust mandates over their priests and flocks.
If there is one life that cannot be saved (eg. a brain dead patient on life support or a recently aborted foetus), I would have thought our creator would smile favourably upon us if we were to save one little piece of those lives (eg. a whole kidney or a single kidney cell) to save the life of another by kidney transplantation or the lives of millions by the establishment of a kidney cell line to be used in medical research[eg. HEK-293 from which Astra Seneca Covid -19 vaccine comes]. After all, Christ himself taught, ‘There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for another’.(John:15.13) He really meant it as evidenced in the sacrifice of his own earthly life for all others. Perhaps the good nun-doctor is in need of a refresher course at Medical School and of the exhortation to look for the good that comes as a gift from her God in the depths of the bad. Great good came from Christ’s terrible, unethical, human death. Why not from the deaths of we mere mortals?? Being anti-abortion should not be a bar to seeing evil defeated by the ascendance of some good.