Why a prohibition on sex discrimination could actually promote abortion

Jeanne Mancini, president of the March for Life, attends the 50th annual March for Life in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20, 2023. / Katie Yoder/CNA

Washington D.C., Jun 22, 2024 / 09:00 am (CNA).
March for Life President Jeanne Mancini opened the … […]

Law enforcement officials continue their investigation into Saturday’s shooting at the Club Q nightclub on Nov. 21, 2022, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. On Saturday evening, a 22-year-old gunman allegedly entered the LGBTQ nightclub and opened fire, killing at least five people and injuring 25 others before being stopped by club patrons. / Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images

Denver, Colo., Nov 21, 2022 / 15:00 pm (CNA).

Catholic bishops in Colorado have voiced their sympathies and prayers in the wake of a shooting over the weekend that killed five and injured 25 at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub.

“The recent shooting and killing is especially troubling as it appeared to target a specific part of our community,” Bishop James Golka of Colorado Springs said Monday afternoon. “The shooter appeared to target members of the LGBTQ community. Anytime specific members of the population are targeted for violence, we should all be concerned. As Christians and Catholics, we believe in the intrinsic dignity and value of all human life. We commit ourselves to protecting and defending that human life.”

“We extend our deepest sympathies and prayers for the victims, their families, and friends,” he said.

The alleged gunman entered Club Q just before midnight on Saturday and began shooting.

Several people at the club overpowered the gunman and subdued him. He was hospitalized for injuries sustained during the fight.

Two of the dead were bartenders, one of whom was a co-owner of the nightclub.

Police officials named the alleged gunman as 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich. A man of the same name and age was detained by the El Paso County Sherriff’s Office last year after he threatened his mother with homemade bombs, weapons, and ammunition, Colorado Public Radio reported. In that incident, he had a lengthy standoff with sheriff’s deputies, who did not find any explosive devices when the standoff ended.

Authorities have not confirmed they are the same person.

The alleged nightclub shooter was being held on five counts of first-degree murder and five counts of bias-motivated crimes causing bodily injury, the Denver Post reported on Monday. Prosecutors have not officially filed charges, which means the charges could change.

Golka’s Nov. 21 statement noted that Colorado Springs police have investigated at least 34 homicides since the beginning of the year, a 100% increase over last year. He also cited the “disturbing” suicide rate in Colorado, the seventh-highest in the U.S., with El Paso County having the worst suicide rate in the state.

He cited the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ support for stronger gun control restrictions, including universal background checks and limits on the sales of high-capacity magazines. He also emphasized support for those suffering mental health issues and for addressing “the cultural roots of this increased violence, such as a lack of civility and increased polarization.”

He encouraged those in need of support to talk to their priest or church minister or to contact Catholic Charities of Central Colorado.

“Let us pray that all our beloved deceased will know the fullness of life in heaven. Let us pray and work so that through our actions and attitudes, God may bring peace and healing to our world and to our local community,” Golka said. He cited Jesus Christ’s words to the faithful, that they will have trouble in this world, adding “But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Colorado Springs is about 70 miles south of Denver. Denver’s Archbishop Samuel Aquila joined the reaction, praying for “the peace of Christ” in the wake of the shooting.

In a Sunday afternoon statement, Aquila said: “I am saddened by this tragic and senseless act in Colorado Springs and pray that those impacted are able to find peace in Christ.”

He cited St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, which urged “not to be overcome by evil, but to overcome evil with good.”

“As we seek to overcome evil with good, we must promote the dignity of every human being created in the image and likeness of God,” he said.

“While the motives remain unclear, what is clear is that evil incidents like this have become far too common in our society,” Aquila said. “The random acts of killing innocent human beings must be condemned by a civil society.”

Criticism of ‘anti-LGBTQ rhetoric,’ Catholic teaching

Club Q was set to host an “all-ages musical drag brunch” on Sunday, according to its Facebook page. Some drag events for children have come under criticism for sexualized displays in front of children or for encouraging them to adopt false or misleading views of sex and gender. They have also become targets of in-person protests and sometimes threats from those who contend the shows are equivalent to sexual grooming.

Even before initial charges were filed against the alleged shooter, some news reports and commentators sought to connect the attack to political opposition to transgenderism and other LGBT causes.

A Denver Post report on Monday appeared to suggest that the Denver Archdiocese’s policy on sexual orientation and gender identity in Catholic schools was part of a trend of “anti-LGBTQ rhetoric” ahead of the nightclub attack. Last week the Denver Post’s editorial board called for Catholic and other schools to be excluded from high school sports associations because of their policies on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Denver Archdiocese policy has been in place since 2019 but drew critical coverage from the Denver Post in a Nov. 7 story. The story highlighted a section advising against the enrollment of students who reject their biological sex, especially if their parents are supportive of the student’s transition. It also considered how to handle students whose parent or parents are in a same-sex relationship.

“Ministry to students who experience same-sex attraction or gender confusion or are diagnosed with gender dysphoria, or to their families, should be carried out with charity and prudence, affirm God’s unconditional love for the person, be faithful to Church teachings, show compassion, and help students integrate their self-understanding with the truth,” the 2019 document said.

State Rep. Leslie Herod, who is running to become mayor of Denver in the 2023 elections, appeared to blame the Catholic school policy in Sunday comments posted to Twitter in response to the Club Q shooting.

“It’s not an accident that such an attack took place at the end of a week when we saw members of the LGBTQ+ community targeted for who they are and who they love,” she said. “From students denied entrance in schools to employees told they could not act on same-sex attraction and must conform to their biological sex, this community — my community, our community — has continued to suffer the ravages of discrimination.”

In response to the Denver Post story earlier this month, the archdiocese said: “We don’t expect everyone to ascribe to a Catholic worldview, but we strongly reject attempts to paint our position as bigoted or unloving.”

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Denver Newsroom, May 25, 2020 / 10:01 am (CNA).- Four medical school educators have said that fully to address a patient’s needs, physicians should begin asking questions about the patient’s spirituality and religion.

A May 19 opinion piece in the Annals of Internal Medicine was written by a group of medical educators: Doctors Kristin Collier, Cornelius James, Sanjay Saint, and Joel Howell.

“Is It Time to More Fully Address Teaching Religion and Spirituality in Medicine?” said assessing a patient’s religious beliefs is important to understanding fully the person. They also highlighted the significance of spirituality in America.

“Today, approximately 90% of Americans believe in God or a higher power. Furthermore, 53% of Americans consider religion to be ‘very important’ in their lives,” they wrote.

“Because religious commitment is intrinsically connected to cultural, mental, spiritual, and societal aspects of wellness, many patients believe that any authentic approach to health care ought to engage their religious commitments.”

However, physicians often do not discuss spirituality with their patients. Physicians promote a medical education based on quantitative science, which ignores immaterial, spiritual realities, they said.
 
“Science became an almost unquestioned source of authority. Physicians started seeing patients less as social beings with families and faith being essential parts of their lives, and more as collections of malfunctioning organs defined by microscopic pathology and bacteriologic culture,” they said.

Kristin Collier, an assistant professor and the director of the University of Michigan Medical School Program on Health Spirituality & Religion, said patients want a deeper relationship with their physician.

“I’m a primary care doctor so I have relationships with people over time … As physicians, we are not technicians taking care of complex machines. We are taking care of human beings and we know from research that patients desire to be seen as whole persons,” she told CNA.

She pointed to the example of Cicely Saunders, an English nurse and a founder of palliative medicine. Saunders emphasized four dynamics: physical, social, physiological, and spiritual. Addressing only half of these needs will only acknowledge half of the person, Collier added.

“Patients have social needs, they have spiritual needs. Those needs actually can intersect for the physical. For example, patients who have under-recognized, undertreated spiritual needs at the end of life … can [contribute to] unremitting physical pain,” she said.

According to the opinion piece, there is a lack of training and mentorship fully to equip upcoming doctors to discuss spirituality. They said 78% of medical students reported that they have rarely or never seen their instructors discuss religion with their patients.

The Association of American Medical Colleges has required a core set of “spiritual competencies” for students to undertake in their medical education. The AAMC defines spirituality as an individual’s search for meaning through a participation in “religion and/or belief in God, family, naturalism, rationalism, humanism and the arts.”

Collier said a lot of medical schools have a curriculum for spirituality and described the curriculum at the University of Michigan Medical School. She said one of the examples is the FICA assessment, a questionnaire that assesses a patient’s beliefs, purpose, and community. Under the program, she said, the school will provide paid actors to play the role as patients and the students will then ask spiritual questions.

However, she said doctors and instructors need to be living out this example with real patients, which is a topic that is rarely discussed. She said that in the past it was taboo for doctors to discuss a patient’s sexual history, which is an essential aspect of understanding a patient’s physical health. She said that similarly, doctors will not approach the subject of spirituality because it is too private or considered to be unrelated to health care.

“In some ways, the spiritual history parallels that of the sexual history. For years, the sexual history was considered ‘off limits’ in the clinical encounter, perhaps because it was too private a subject or not relevant for most medical providers, or perhaps because providers were uncomfortable talking about a diverse range of sexual behaviors,” the opinion piece said.

To introduce the topic, she said, doctors could begin with a questionnaire, like the FICA spiritual assessment. But, this important topic should eventually transcend a questionnaire, she said, noting that a deep human interaction extends beyond the paper. She said understanding the whole person will help doctors best understand how to treat their patients.

“I think this best happens in a relationship and I have relationships with my patients… What gives your life meaning? That question can oftentimes open up a lot of really interesting insights into your patients,” she said.

“[These questions] can help inform your decisions when it comes down to end of life or goals of care conversation.”

She emphasized the importance of faith in her own life and how that has given her a valuable perspective on the treatment of patients. She said it is the responsibility of physicians to set an example of a medical practice that honors human dignity.

“I see patients made in the image of God and I want to be able to attend to everything that is causing them distress and to be able to use my team to be able to attend to that,” she said.

“We have a responsibility as medical educators to teach our medical students and residents and fellows how to deliver whole-person care because that honors the dignity of the person. And, we know that patients want to be seen as more than just their disease or their biology.”

[…]