‘We must not hide from suffering,’ Iraqi archbishop says on Red Wednesday

Washington D.C., Apr 24, 2019 / 03:00 pm (CNA).- The founder of a Catholic health-share group has said that battling loneliness is crucial to opposing the growing acceptance of assisted suicide in popular culture.

Chris Faddis, co-founder of Solidarity HealthShare, spoke to CNA about the importance of respecting the dignity of all patients at the end of life.

Speaking to CNA during the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast April 23, Faddis said that a rising social and legal acceptance of assisted suicide is exacerbated by a lack of healthcare options that are both ethical and affordable, but is ultimately driven by loneliness and despair in the face of suffering.

“When you see no way out, something like a pill seems tempting,” he said.

Solidarity helps patients and their families find other options to assisted suicide to ease suffering and, Faddis said, expressed a kind of communion in its structure. In a health-share system, members of the organization help to pay each other’s healthcare costs. Members are self-pay patients who can see the provider of their choice while Solidarity helps to negotiate a lower rate, which would then be paid by the group of members.

“We’re just there to facilitate and to kind of direct them,” said Faddis. “The affordability is there because there’s no profit in it. We’re a non-profit, we’re just kind of facilitating that sharing.”

“In all ways, we lead our members to the options that are going to respect life, that are going to promote their dignity. We provide care management, we provide services. And we encourage them.”

Faddis, who serves as the Catholic health-sharing company’s chief operating officer, told CNA that the experience of suffering and death in his own family had formed his commitment to protecting human dignity at the end of life and led to his founding Solidarity. He served as a caregiver for his wife as she was dying of cancer, and experienced first-hand the importance of dignified and respectful hospice and palliative care.  

The experiences like his, Faddis said, needed to be shared in the wider battle to resist a culture of death in which suffering has no meaning.

“If we don’t tell [an alternative view of suffering], the other side’s telling the horror stories of suffering all day long.”

Approaching death with dignity, Faddis said, is important for patients and families alike. “It’s worth taking time over,” he said, noting that his family benefited “in ways too many to count” from the care and support his wife received from their own community.

Solidarity does not pay for health services that are contrary to Catholic teaching, such as abortion, contraception, or euthanasia. When members are diagnosed with terminal illnesses, Faddis said that his organization works to ensure that members are directed to specific palliative care physicians who will not encourage assisted suicide.

Faddis said that an approach that underscores the value of life is especially important for terminal patients who are often feel as though they are a burden on their family and community. Terminal illness was, he said, a painful experience, but one that can be lived with dignity and meaning.

“When people are cared for well, then they can suffer well. So as they’re going through those difficult times, or just those difficult decisions, people can help them just by caring well for them,” he said.

Assisted suicide is now legal in eight states, and is being considered by an additional four. New Jersey’s Catholic governor recently signed it into law in his state, after “careful prayer.”

Faddis said that in the United States, there is a general fear of suffering, which has resulted in an embrace of a quick death.

“I think we have a responsibility to console and give solace to the dying,” he said, stressing that preventing isolation was a vital part of respecting the dignity of human life.

“And I think if we do that well, we’ve solved the problem. I mean, if you’re dying alone, you want the pill.”

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Hartford, Conn., Jan 19, 2021 / 02:01 pm (CNA).- Disability advocates criticized a Connecticut assisted suicide bill for failing to safeguard against coercion and for promoting the idea that the terminally ill are a burden on their caregivers.

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CNA Staff, Jul 4, 2020 / 03:58 pm (CNA).-  

The Bishop of Brownsville, Texas has criticized Planned Parenthood and pro-choice political organizations in the state for use of anti-Mexican ethnic slur in its campaign against the reelection of pro-life state Senator Eddie Lucio, Jr.

“While not surprised that Planned Parenthood would attack State Senator Eddie Lucio’s pro-life record, I am deeply discouraged that Texas Freedom Network and others would join in this malicious kind of attack, using such derogatory language to disparage him and his family,” Bishop Daniel Flores said in a July 3 statement.

The statement came after the Planned Parenthood Texas Votes PAC and the Texas Freedom Network reportedly used the term “Sucio Lucio” to describe the state senator in a direct mailing campaign.

“‘Sucio’ is an unacceptable word when associated with a Mexican American family name. Maybe they know not what such words mean in South Texas. Now more than ever it is imperative that words be used with care, with an awareness of their impact,” Flores added.

Lucio’s campaign issued a press release July 2, in response “to a recent direct-mail piece issued by Planned Parenthood & Texas Freedom Network attacking Sen. Eddie Lucio, Jr. using the term ‘Sucio Lucio,’ to describe the Hispanic senator and his traditional Catholic values of support for life.”

The release included a statement from state Sen. Lucio’s son, Texas state Representative Eddie Lucio III.

“I’m truly disheartened, given all that’s happening in the world today, that Planned Parenthood, Texas Freedom Network, Texas Rising, and others continue to disparage our family name with derogatory and racial slurs. These big special-interests groups from outside our border community should comprehend the deeper connotations behind the word ‘sucio’ (‘dirty Mexican’) and the association with a person of Hispanic descent,” the younger Lucio said.

“Mexican-Americans are hard-working, family-oriented individuals, never should the word dirty or its Spanish-language equivalent be used to describe one of us. Given current events and the social awareness on being accepting of all races and cultures, the continued use of this term is insensitive and in poor taste. We can respectfully disagree on issues without being offensive to an entire culture,” Lucio III added.

In his statement, Bishop Flores said that “Representative Eddie Lucio III’s statement accurately reflects my sentiments.”

The senior Lucio, a pro-life Democrat, has been a member of the Texas Senate since 1991. The senator faces attorney Sara Stapleton Barrera in a July 14 runoff election. Stapleton Barrera has campaigned to the left of Lucio, calling herself a “true Democrat,” and has been endorsed by gay rights and pro-choice groups in the state.

“Dirty Mexican” has been an anti-Mexican slur in use in the United States since at least the 1950s, as have derivatives which target particular Hispanic names. By some accounts, the word “sucio” is sometimes, but not always, used as slang to refer to a person who is either sexually immoral or homosexual.

Planned Parenthood has used the slur in the past against Lucio. In January, it tweeted the hashtag #SucioLucio while advertising a candidate’s forum.

Some defenders of the the hashtag, said on Friday it was meant only to denote the senator’s apparently “dirty political tactics.”

But the younger Lucio, who identifies his politics as “progressive” and has disagreed with his father on issues related to sexuality and gender identity, has insisted in recent days that the term is “derogatory.” Several Latino state legislators have agreed with him, and denounced Planned Parenthood’s use of the phrase.

On Friday, the Mexican American Legislative Council said that political campaigns should “steer clear of political name calling that plays on racial, sexist, homophobic, ableist, and every form of discrimination when our country is working for social justice.”

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