In the interest of full disclosure, I would like to remind you that I am not either a doctor or a lawyer, though this has not ever stopped me from recommending home remedies (banana peels for bruises; gargling with tea for sore throats) or from muttering, "There oughta be a law!" It is entirely possible that I have completely misconstrued the issue I am about to discuss, but if I have, that may only make my point all the more forcefully.
A funny thing happened recently at our Public Policy Committee meeting. Between meetings of the committee I was asked to endorse, on behalf of the LICC, a proposed law requiring all hospital emergency rooms to provide emergency contraception to rape victims. The purpose was clearly laudable, but I feared that the wording of the proposed legislation might create problems needlessly by making dubious assertions about what diverse faith communities teach. I also was troubled by the rationale implied by some supporters: "We have to force those Catholic hospitals to do the right thing."
I have to confess that I suspected myself that this might be an area where a church was balking at doing the right thing for abused women, more insistent on preserving its purity than showing compassion. I learned I was wrong. After checking with our Committee chairperson, with a friend at Planned Parenthood who happens to be Catholic, with someone in the diocesan Respect Life Office and with the in-house ethicist for Catholic Health Services and reported to the committee what I had learned.
Feelings run high on any issue involving sex, and it proved difficult to get to the end of my report. We kept going off on tangents: the pros and cons of the differing approaches taken by Protestants and Catholics in moral reasoning, why Protestants see pregnancy as beginning at implantation rather than conception, why Catholics weigh heavily the intent of one's actions, etc. etc., with everyone jumping in to either criticize or defend what they assumed Catholic hospitals to be doing or not doing.
Now here's the kicker. Family Planning Advocates of New York State, an organization which often does battle with Catholic bishops, posted a survey on their Website (www.fpaofny.org) showing which hospitals already mandate that emergency contraception (hormone treatment) be offered to every woman who comes to their emergency room and says she has just been raped. Guess what? While there may be a few Catholic Hospitals upstate that do not yet have such policies in place, or may refer to what they do as hormone treatment rather than contraception, Catholic hospitals across Long Island already provide this service. Some rape crisis advocates may think they have a problem with the Catholic Church, but the real obstacles to compassionate care of rape victims, at least in our region, are to found among some of our secular institutions.
Perhaps, as is the case with sausage, it is best not knowing how laws are made. Yours truly told the folks pushing this bill that I had reservations about its current wording but would be glad to get them together with folks from Planned Parenthood and CHS who wanted to help improve it. I haven't heard from them.
The moral of the story is this: when we do not discuss our differences, we often leap to the wrong conclusions about those we have branded our adversaries, and we sometimes create problems where they do not exist.
Shalom/Salaam/Shanti/Pax,
Tom
Special thanks go to Washington Mutual Bank for a $3,500 gift to pay for training for the East End Faith-Based Organizing group spearheaded by Pastor Rose Ann Vita; to a board member who contributed $3,050 in stock; and to Riverhead Building Supply for co-sponsoring our Annual Meeting 2003, along with those thanked last month.
We also thank the following for their gifts of $500 or more:
And we are grateful for the contributions other agencies, businesses and faith-based institutions who gave less but whose gifts are just as important, and we thank the many individuals who also gave but who asked that we do not publish their names.
Marcal Paper Mills Inc. is supporting food banks around the country with Marcal Helping the Hungry, a special promotion that simply involves redeeming coupons and collecting UPC codes for Marcal Products. Long Island Cares Inc., The Harry Chapin Food Bank supplies food to our food pantries in Riverhead and Hempstead, and is coordinating this project. Throughout the year, Sunday newspapers will be offering a $1.00 off coupon towards the purchase of Marcal products. For every coupon redeemed at the supermarket, Marcal will donate 10 cents to Long Island Cares.
In addition, please save the UPC Bar Codes. Marcal will donate three cents for every UPC Bar Code redeemed. You can save these individually, or get your church, synagogue, school, community group, scout troop, etc. to collect them. Then you can either send or bring them to either Long Island Council of Churches office or mail your UPCs bundled in groups of 50 directly to: Long Island Cares, Inc. 10 Davids Drive, Hauppauge, NY 11788. Thanks for helping the hungry!
The National Community Sentencing Association (NCSA) will hold its 18th annual training conference on June 22nd-25th, 2003. For the first time the conference will be held on Long Island, New York. The conference theme is "Responsible Justice: We Turn to Community." Workshops will be divided into three tracks, Prevention/Education, Intervention and Return to Community. The conference promises to provide topics of interest to anyone who is concerned about the effectiveness of incarceration alone as a solution to crime. Visit the NCSA Conference website at NCSAweb.org for complete information on workshops, keynote speakers, special events, registration procedure and much more.
There are some important days in the liturgical year when your congregation may not be able to gather much of a crowd for worship-but where you might join with another church for a glorious interdenominational or multi-cultural experience. In Hempstead, for example, Ralph Mueckenheim, pastor of Hempstead United Methodist Church, instituted a joint "Tenebrae" service on Good Friday with Epiphany Lutheran Church. In a recent newsletter he describes how he learned from the Lutherans a powerful way to enact the "Strepitus" symbolizing the execution of Jesus, a loud noise in utter darkness at the end of the service: Pastor Pranschke brought a sledge hammer down on the floor with full force.
"Creating Interfaith Community" by R. Marton Speight,
with a Study Guide by Glory & Jacob Dharmaraj
General Board of Global Ministries, United Methodist Church
136 pages, paperback, $7.50
Many churches take part in some sort of community Thanksgiving service that includes a rabbi or some other representative of non-Christians. And many folks find this nice, well-meaning, and a little boring. How can we move beyond feel-good events to actually learn something about those of other faiths? Could we even learn something from each other without compromising our own beliefs?
This book is a helpful resource that comes at a time when many Christians are looking for something more in the way of interfaith work. There is, alas, nothing in here about some of the faith communities on Long Island, such as the Unitarian Universalists and the Brahma Kumaris. And there is nothing about the most exciting aspects of contemporary multi-faith work, such as the expansion of comparative religion studies in colleges and public schools, the courses of spirituality offered by Auburn Theological Seminary and the Temple of Understanding, and the work of our own Long Island Multi-Faith Forum, but you find a good overview of interfaith issues, an excellent study guide to help prepare congregations for multi-faith work, and some excellent suggestions of topics you might discuss in interfaith dialogues in your community.
Saturday, September, 27, Fall Convocation at 1st Baptist Church in Riverhead.