“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about turn and walking back to the right road; […]
“… At the time of our founding, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “Almighty God hath created the mind free. … All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens … are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion.” He also wrote that the “moral duties which exist between individual and individual
conscience protection & the American experience … Read More »
“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
“Conscience—there are two ways of regarding conscience; one as a mere sort of sense of propriety, a taste teaching us to do this or that, the other as the echo of God’s voice. Now all depends on this distinction—the first way is not of faith, and the second is of faith”. Geissler Conscience and Truth in the writings
Newman on Conscience … Read More »
A subitanea morte, libera nos, Domine … “from a death that is sudden and unprepared for, deliver us, o Lord.” To be taken away suddenly, without being able to make oneself ready, without having had time to prepare – this is the supreme danger from which man wants to be saved. He wants to be
Imperative 6 To be joyful. Laughter and joy can be a more effective medicine than anything we hope to produce in a laboratory. The joy of medicine was given to me by my patients. I will always remember the day I sat in the bedroom of a hospice patient who was surrounded by his immediate
by Jane Kenyon In the Nursing Home She is like a horse grazing a hill pasture that someone makes smaller by coming every night to pull the fences in and in. She has stopped running wide loops, stopped even the tight circles. She drops her head to feed; grass is dust, and the creekbed’s dry.
in the nursing home … Read More »
John Garvey’s open letter on the Institute of Medicine’s health care proposals. Steve Schneck and Michael Sean Winters on the inadequacy of HHS’s conscience protections. Robert George’s comments to ACOG would also be pertinent to the recent IOM report resulting in HHS’s new rule re mandated coverage. “The key thing to see is that the issues in dispute
Religious Liberty and Conscience Protection … Read More »
Imperative 7 To be knowledgeable. There is so much I don’t know that if I had a lick of sense, I would use my medical diploma to line my kitchen cabinets. The single greatest sin I can commit as a physician is to know not and know not that I know not. To be knowledgeable,
to be knowledgeable … Read More »
… “On television, death is presented as a thrilling spectacle tailor-made for alleviating the general boredom of life. In the last analysis, of course, the covert aim of this reduction of death to the status of an object is just the same as with the bourgeois taboo on the subject. Death is to be deprived
death trivialized … Read More »
