7/5/2007 Vol. 4, No. 11

Professional Practice

Advocacy

Chaplain Cliff Bond on what patients expect from us

"Whatever it is that you do…”

Our inpatient medical oncology patient care meeting was concluding as we gathered at the nurse’s station to plan our day. Physicians were charting at the same desk. One physician greeted me and then gave me a synopsis of a patient’s condition with both a diagnosis and prognosis which were doubly difficult; she was not only young but was also one of our colleagues. The patient, “Vickie”(not her real name), was a nurse in her 50’s who had just been diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The physician then said, “Cliff, whatever it is that you do, go do it now with Vickie.”His comment acknowledged the value of pastoral care and he wanted this for his patient. He also was admitting that he was not suited to deliver this facet of care that was very much needed.

Sometimes we apologize for what we have to offer in the acute care setting. We do not prescribe medications nor administer treatments. In a medical setting where these comprise the vast bulk of care rendered, we can feel overlooked or under-utilized. In our facility, our chaplaincy staff have written entries into the physician progress notes for many years, so we were always visible as part of the care team as long as we actually charted. Notes entered in the past had shared information that was useful to the physicians in their care plan, so it was a natural transition for this physician to ask for assistance when it was needed; it was needed now.

Vickie’s husband was sitting in a chair beside her bed. Both were tense because of the seriousness of her situation. They had a deep faith. As we talked and prayed the tension did not lessen—it changed. The energy of worry became the energy of courage and hope. Vickie grabbed my jacket lapels, pulling me close to her face: “Promise me I will be strong enough to go through these tests.”She did not demand healing. She wanted something more. She wanted what I call “realistic hope.”Vickie gripped my hand and would not let me go until I answered. I said, “As God is my witness, you will be strong enough.”She said, “I will hold you to that!”

I was shaking inwardly at the audacity of my proclamation to her. I went to my fellow chaplains, wanting some kind of feedback. They agreed that in this situation, with this particular patient, it seemed to be a good pastoral care approach.

Vickie went through the treatments which were recommended, fought valiantly and maintained her high level of courage and realistic hope. She died far too soon.

Vickie taught me a most valuable lesson: patients expect more from us than we can deliver, and that is okay. Faith is not knowing what to do; faith involves a certain element of risk, taking a chance, staking a claim, claiming a position, creating hope and trust, all done within the context of a covenant relationship. If we truly believe we are called by God to care for those needing spiritual support, we can trust God to give us the words to say at that time and for that situation. Trusting the moment, trusting the relationship, trusting the Spirit makes pastoral care spiritual—or spiritual care pastoral. Chaplains are in a unique role with unique training and when we can trust that things truly do work together for good when we are called by God, some amazing and even startling things will happen.

This kind of interaction could not have occurred early in my work as chaplain. I had not yet learned to work outside of the “footnotes”of my training and had not yet established the high level of trust needed in relationships with physicians. “Whatever it is you do, go do it with that patient”is both humorous and priceless.

Do you have thoughts about advocacy you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail to info@PlainViews.org.

Education & Research

Rev. Susan Wintz on the language we use

Being Mindful of Our Words

In a recent review of a book on grief published in PlainViews, the reviewer referred to grievers’experiences as having ‘lost’their loved one. In the context of that particular review, the author also states: “Those who have endured the death of a spouse or child can nurture the raw wound for quite some time before allowing it to begin to heal. We possess that pain and hold it close and, sometimes it seems, only give it up reluctantly. Then we begin our own journeys toward renewed wholeness, albeit changed forever.”[1]

What is essential for us to realize is that those who grieve seldom attain 'renewed wholeness' in the sense of returning to be the exact same persons they were before the death occurred. Just as important in our professional work is acknowledging that they should not be expected to.

We are all familiar with the concept of loss. It is true that when a death occurs there is a loss of a relationship that is precious. Life is never again the same, and those who remain are faced with the task of relearning their world without their loved one in it as well as all of the changes that means on a daily and moment-by-moment basis.

When a person grieves, they mourn not only the physical presence of the one who died, they mourn for the future and what might have been. The house is emptier; the bed bigger, the voices surrounding one are diminished, and future milestones that were looked toward with anticipation are changed. Wholeness cannot be ‘renewed’as one previously knew it before the death, for there is always a place in their heart that is broken. While over time a heart may heal, a scar always remains, and while life continues, it does so in a completely different context for those who have experienced the death of a loved one. What lies ahead are countless moments and situations where the wound of grief can be opened again and again. As pastoral care providers, we can never assume that one’s grief has been completely healed and that the griever is ‘whole’again.

A larger issue is the language we use when we speak with or about those who grieve someone who has died. A large portion of my professional work has been within the context of providing spiritual and pastoral care to bereaved parents and educating other disciplines about parental and sibling grief. Over and over again I have heard from parents how the use of the words “lost your child”causes them additional emotional and spiritual pain. Hearing this, many years ago I mindfully changed my language to use the more appropriate “your child died." Those are more suitable words because they speak the reality and acknowledge the enormous sense of sadness and change that continually confronts parents who contend with the challenges of life without their child.

I am now three and a half years into my own journey as a bereaved parent (can that be true? It seems like only yesterday!) My husband, son, and I all cringe when someone refers to our daughter and sister as being ‘lost.’We didn’t lose her. Sarah died as the result of an accident caused by a reckless adult driver. We know exactly where the accident happened and the place where she died. She wasn’t and isn’t lost. Our grief has nothing in common with misplacing a set of keys or a dog escaping from the back yard. While we are grateful for the reminders of our daughter and sister that continue to surround us as well as the knowledge that we will one day see her and hold her again in our arms, they do not diminish the grief we continue to feel or transform the missing place in our family that will never be filled in this lifetime.

As professionals, let us be mindful of the words that we use and the impact they have upon those we care for. While we may think we are being sensitive in the use of words like ‘lost’or ‘wholeness’with the hope of softening the pain or reframing the reality of death, the truth is that we are not; in fact, we may be adding to it. Let us use words that honor those in grief that we are privileged to walk with and demonstrates respect to those they continue to love.

Footnotes

[1] Rev. Suzanne Hope Graham, Walking With Grief –A Healing Journey, PlainViews, Vol. 4, No. 10.

Do you have thoughts about education & research you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail to info@PlainViews.org.

Spiritual Development

Rev. Mark LaRocca-Pitts, Ph.D., on an answer to all our “whys”

God’s Mysterious Mercy

In my work as a hospital chaplain, it is a rare day when I do not hear from someone the following: “one day we will understand,”or “when we get to heaven, then we will know.”There have even been times when I have said, “God will have a lot to answer for one day.”We are daily confronted with a level of suffering that confounds all our ability to rationalize: a loved one, too young to die, is killed tragically in an accident; in the prime of life, you are diagnosed with a terrible and terminal cancer; in the years that should be “golden,”an implacable gray depression descends; in a schoolroom deemed safe, a crazed gunman enters. Yes, we like to think, God will have MUCH to answer for!

And with that thought, I often envision a scene that will occur on that day when I first arrive in heaven: I march up to God with the confidence of the redeemed and I pull out my list of all the wrongs and all the suffering that I witnessed and experienced and I ask God to reveal to me that “bigger”picture in which all these horrible things will somehow make sense. And then God will show me that “bigger”picture—the grand scheme of God that sweeps across all time and space in which even the tiniest details of our lives are shown to be part of God’s grand overarching purpose and plan—and everything will make sense, and I will be satisfied. This image used to bring me great comfort and often helped me to move forward in light of terrible suffering. But recently a new image has come to me that somehow helps, though I am not yet sure how or why.

The scene opens in the same way: I march up to God in heaven and present to God my list of terrible sufferings demanding an explanation. And God, instead of revealing to me that “bigger”picture in which all suffering and death will somehow make sense, instead opens wide his heart and like a moth drawn to light, into God’s heart I plunge experiencing as I fall the fathomless and incomprehensible pain and suffering that God also experiences whenever a single one of God’s children suffers, feels pain, and dies. I see and feel every tear that God shed for you and me. And in those very tears of God shed for me and for all of God’s wonderful creation, all my pain, all my suffering, all my tears, and especially all my questions are washed away. I understand: the answer to all our whys are the very tears of God. It is God’s mysterious and vast mercy and not God’s purposeful and rational plan that in the end brings home the quiet assurance that God is indeed with us whenever and wherever we hurt.

Do you have thoughts about spiritual development you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail of any length to info@PlainViews.org.

EthicsWalk

BioethicsWalk addresses bioethical issues that chaplains face in their day-to-day work. PlainViews invites our readers to share their responses to each BioethicsWalk column, which will be published in the following issue. We also invite our readers to submit areas of concern/interest about which they would like Nancy to write.

If you’d like to respond to BioehicsWalk, please send a comment of no more than 100 words. You can use the e-form below (click on "hearing from you," link) or submit your commentary to the editors in the body of an e-mail (or as a Microsoft Word attachment) sent to Info@PlainViews.org. Please put the phrase “BioethicsWalk” in your subject line. Comments that are too late for the previous issue can be viewed in TalkBack.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Can anyone hear your prophetic voice?: the ethics of speaking up

You can learn a lot about what’s going on in health care in a state by talking with chaplains at their state meetings. In states with ageing populations, we talk about chaplaincy in long-term care, nursing homes, assisted living. In states with younger populations, we talk about chaplaincy in ob-gyn and pediatrics. In states with changing demographics, we talk about the challenges of providing chaplaincy services to newer community residents, who may bring different religious, cultural, and economic factors into the mix, and of balancing their needs with the needs of longtime residents.

During one such discussion, a chaplain, sitting in the back of the room, mentioned the “prophetic voice”he and his colleagues brought to their work. I was curious: How was this chaplain using his prophetic voice as a health care professional? I needed examples. “Well . . . . I’m on the ethics committee.”With that, everyone in the room turned around in their seats. “We’re all on the ethics committee –that’s just filling a seat at a table!”They had a point.

The “prophetic voice,”in seminary shorthand, is that voice that calls attention to social injustice and holds society accountable for its care or neglect of its most vulnerable members: the widow, the orphan, the stranger at the gate. Acute-care hospitals are perhaps the one institution in American society recognizably organized in these terms: in principle at least, the stranger at the gate (or in the ambulance) will be taken in and cared for. We know that this is not always how it works. We know about the 46 million uninsured. We know that our health care system is not organized in ways Isaiah would approve of. And we know what we are called to do when we call ourselves health care professionals: to align ourselves with the best interests of those who suffer, and to work to improve the quality of their health care.

Simply being a health care professional, or a member of a particular profession, is not a guarantee that we will do this every day. It is easy to substitute “I’m on the ethics committee”for “In practice, I speak up for patients’best interests, and whenever I learn that care is organized in ways that do not serve patients’interests.”And there are chaplains who will say, isn’t justice-seeking the patient rep’s job? Isn’t my job to “be with”the patient and family, to help relieve their suffering through my presence and my skills?

Shirley Otis-Green is social worker and palliative care specialist at City of Hope National Medical Center near Los Angeles. Her mission is to encourage the “being with”professions in health care –chaplains, social workers, psychologists –to find their prophetic voices, to speak up for patients. Otis-Green runs a training project called Advancing Clinical Excellence (ACE), which is funded by the National Cancer Institute. According to the project’s website, participants will be trained “to become more effective role models and advocates for enhanced palliative, end-of-life and bereavement care within their institutions and disciplines.”These advocates are not meant to be lone voices crying in the managed-care wilderness. ACE is committed to transprofessional education, to teaching participants how to work as interdisciplinary palliative care teams and to collaborate as advocates for better care.

In this vision of advocacy, “being with”entails the ethical obligation, “being for.”Speaking up is part of the job, and will be until all patients have access to high quality palliative care when they need it. The ACE Project’s vision challenges chaplains working in all areas of health care to think about the ethics of speaking up –and of keeping silent.

For more information about the ACE Project, visit: www.cityofhope.org/ACEproject

She is a graduate of Smith College and holds the Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Glasgow and the M.Div. in Christian Ethics from Union Theological Seminary.

LongView

Jane E. Babin, J.D., on being changed by disease

Living and Dying With Hope

I am the face of disease. I am the voice of disease. I am one of millions of faces and voices that need to be heard, that wants to be known. I am one of many, and yet, like others, I am unique. My story is different from theirs and yet the same. Listen to my story and see the faces, hear the voices of the many, and remember……….

My journey began in August of 2003. It had been a wonderful summer. I was off on summer break from my job as a university professor. I was enjoying time with my then 6-year-old son at our neighborhood beach on a lake in central New Hampshire. Oftentimes, my friend Dan and I would go down to the beach and sit on a large rock that protrudes out into the lake. Dan was blessed with a fantastic rhythm and blues voice and writes his own songs, to which I would add harmony. We would perform his new material to kayakers and canoeists who would stop and listen, applaud and give feedback. After 4 years of divorce, although still unattached, I was finally starting to have fun again, to enjoy life once more. Then, a simple fall when dismounting my bicycle –a very simple fall –changed the course of my life. At first just one fall, but then I experienced a second and third one. Dan, would laugh and remark on what a “klutz”I was becoming. I would laugh, too, acknowledging my lack of coordination.

It wasn’t until I was walking the short distance home from the beach a few weeks later that I realized something was wrong. I had to keep stopping. My left foot was not able to flex properly. It was now September; I was on sabbatical leave from the university and teaching an on-line graduate course from home. I called my sister, a nurse practitioner, who advised me to call my physician immediately. My sister was soon to become my greatest ally in my quest to get answers.

Although I did not know it at the time, those simple falls, the difficult walk home were to be the beginning of the end of my life. Over the course of the next few months, I went from one doctor to another, attempting to find a name for what was happening to me. In January of 2004, I was referred to a well-know clinic outside of Boston, to a neurologist who ordered a painful test consisting of sticking long needles deep into my muscles and sending an electrical pulse to measure the ability of my nerves to communicate with those muscles. Unfortunately, they were not speaking to each other.

I remember two important things about that visit to this clinic:

1. The neurologist recently had knee surgery, was in discomfort, and left to go home before my appointment was finished. He left the testing to technicians and to a physician who came in near the completion of the tests. I remember lying on the examination table, frightened, in pain, tears running down my face. The substitute doctor compassionately rubbed my arm, trying to comfort me. After the tests, she very calmly told me that she could not say definitively, but that it might be amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease. I drove home to New Hampshire with my sister, in shock, in silence.

2. The physician who went home with the aching knee called me the next morning to tell me, over the phone, that I, in fact, had ALS, and he gave me 3-5 years to live. I was alone to take this call. I remember thinking then that no one should ever have to hear the news that they are dying over the telephone.

Needless to say, I did not return to that clinic, but chose Massachusetts General Hospital’s neurology department for a second opinion. As luck, or fate, would have it, my niece, after graduating from Dartmouth College and before she left for Africa with the Peace Corps, worked as a research assistant at Mass General for a Dr. Cudkowicz, an ALS researcher and clinician. When my niece learned of my diagnosis, she spoke with Dr. Cudkowicz, who agreed to see me.

I steeled myself emotionally for another physician without personality, without feelings, without compassion. I was wrong. Although Dr. Cudkowicz confirmed the diagnosis of ALS, she prefaced it by saying three simple words, “I am sorry,”and I believe she was. I believe she is sorry every time she has to tell a patient that he or she has a terminal illness. I could see the compassion in her eyes; I could hear the concern in her voice. And it was comforting. I was soon to discover that this, unlike my other experience, was the norm.

Before I became a victim of this dreadful disease, I knew nothing about it. I was vaguely familiar with the Lou Gehrig story, but I knew no one with the disease. I did not know that it slowly paralyzes its victims. I did not know that it is a rare disease or that it strikes men more frequently than women. I did not know that it is a motor neuron disease, that it is fatal. Once diagnosed my ignorance put me on an accelerated learning curve, a roller coaster ride from which there was no escape. I would learn about ALS because I had no choice –it was about to redefine me, the person I was; the person I was about to become.

All traumatic events change people. I was now different. I had changed. I was now a person who could not look forward to a future. I was now a single mom who would not live to see her son graduate from college, advance in his career or get married. I was now a mother who would never hold her grandchildren, tuck them in or read them a bedtime story. I would never dance again, or run, or swim. I have forgotten now how it feels to walk normally. I have forgotten what it is like to be able to snap my fingers. I am changed, but not all for the worse.

I have often heard from, and read about, people suffering from serious illness who have made statements such as, “God blessed me with cancer,”or, “I am a better person, a happier more fulfilled person because of this disease.”It was shocking to me how someone could feel “blessed”by a disease, or conclude somehow that a disease had made them a better, happier person. That was before I became ill. I now understand. I feel that I have not known true compassion, have not experienced pure emotion prior to having been stricken with ALS. To say that I have met the most incredible people since my diagnosis would be an understatement. To say that I have witnessed the most profound changes in my friends, my family would be to underestimate them. Disease changes us all.

British physicist Stephen Hawking once said that he was “happier now”than before he became ill. Diagnosed with ALS in the mid-1960s, Hawking once told an interviewer, “Before, I was very bored with life. I drank a fair bit, I guess; I didn't do any work.... When one's expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything that one does have." A long-time victim of ALS, he miraculously lives, but he is changed. He is unable to move most of his body, yet he is happier. He expects nothing, yet appreciates everything.

We are changed by disease, we are all changed, not just the victims but those around them as well. People with terminal illness often fear abandonment. Will my friends and family still be there for me as the disease takes its course, as I become more debilitated? I can tell you from my experience that yes, family and friends have changed. My oldest sister and I have grown closer because of my illness. She often comes over to do laundry or to buy groceries for me. My brother in California, whom I have seen maybe ten times since I was sixteen years old, came back east with his family this summer to spend a week on the lake with my son and me. I travel to Santa Barbara next month to spend one last time with him, to say goodbye.

My relationships with my friends have grown deeper and truer. My friends have witnessed the physical changes in me. Yet, they know I’m still the same quirky person with the weird sense of humor. They don’t leave me behind or take no for an answer. I remember one evening standing outside of a local jazz spot in our town, not wanting to go in for fear I could not negotiate my way around the crowd in the restaurant. With this disease, I have no sense of balance and can fall easily. My friend, Jaylene came outside, took my arm and said, “You’re coming with me,”then proceeded to help me through the crowd to our table. My dear friend, Phil, will often pick me up, bring me to his house for dinner, and then drive me home. And we live on the same block! My friends allow me to express my fears and also my humor regarding this disease. And ALS can provide some very humorous moments! My friends are real in spite of this disease. They accept me with all my challenges. And, they will be there for me as this disease progresses. My friends are all into the arts –Bob plays pipe organ, his wife, Jaylene is a beautiful soprano. Steve is a poet and is in theatre, his friend Ginny plays flute and sings. Phil plays piano, keyboard and oboe. I often joke with them that my funeral will be more like a Broadway revue than a funeral. And I’ve no doubt that it will be.

My relationship with my healthcare providers has also evolved. Besides Dr. Cukowicz at Mass General, I also have a primary care provider, a local neurologist, a counselor, a spiritual director and others who monitor me on a regular basis. I never knew there were so many people involved in the process of a person dying! I am fortunate. They have all acted with kindness and compassion over and above my expectations.

My counselor has been my biggest supporter in my times of crisis and despair. He has helped me to realize that the stages of dying –denial, sorrow, anger, and acceptance are not mutually exclusive. I don’t go through these stages; they go through me, time and time again. He has unfailingly been there for me. He has suffered with me through the moments of anger, cried with me through the moments of pain and despair, and laughed with me through moments of absurdity. He has taught me, through example, that I am not alone with this disease. There are those who care.

They have all given me reason to hope, not for a cure, but for an opportunity to contribute, for quality of life. And hope is central to my ability to deal with dying. To quote Martin Luther King, Jr.:

If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps life moving, you lose that courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all.

And so today I still have a dream.

As my night grows darker, my hope grows brighter –I still have dreams, I still have hopes. I hope for the opportunity to love and feel love from those closest to me; I hope for moments of brilliance and creativity, to be able to meaningfully contribute to this world; I hope that I will have quiet moments with my son, to help him through the changes that mommy will experience and to help him realize that I am still the same mommy inside, even though the outside is changing. And, finally, I have hope that when my mission here on Earth is completed, that I make a peaceful transition to a place of comfort and love.

Yes, I am the face, the voice of disease. I am an advocate for those without voice. I cannot explain why I got ill, why I am dying, for it defies explanation. But I can find purpose in what remains of my life. I can make contributions that I hope will bring fulfillment and joy to me and to others. And, I can make sense of how I leave this earth, how I relate to others and how they relate to me in this important process of dying.

Lastly, I can remind the medical community that those with disease have faces, voices, families, hopes, joys, fears and a need to be treated with compassion and respect. I am not just a body with disease. I am a spirit about to fly.

This article is taken from a lecture given at Williams College in January of 2005.

Do you have thoughts about long view you’d like to share with your colleagues? Send an e-mail of any length to info@PlainViews.org.

CaseConference

We post an ethical or situational concern that has arisen in a facility where one of our readers works. It has no identifiers included. It gives you only the facts of the case. Then, you can respond to that concern. This is an ongoing dialogue, with comments added as they come in. In the following issue, assuming it has been resolved, we give you the outcome from the facility where the incident took place.

We are always looking for cases. Please send any cases that you would like considered for inclusion to: info@plainviews.org We will ensure that it is stripped of any identifiers. For further guidance about how to write up a CaseConference, please refer to the CaseConference Archives, Vol. 4, No. 3 "How to Submit a Case for CaseConference." (Click HERE)

We hope that this will help to inform not only those who are dealing with the issue, but will enable all of our readers to learn from the experiences and perhaps mistakes of others.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to unanticipated continuing responses to both the case and the resolution of the case, added responses can be viewed in the archives. Click HERE.

Case #20 (See responses below)

Isaac was 14, the only child of older parents. At 12, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer that was wrapped around his spine at the base of his brain. After a year of chemotherapy and radiation treatments, which left Isaac weak and sick, the cancer was not diminished in any way.

At 13, surgery was performed to remove as much of the tumor as possible, which now was wrapped so tightly around his spine that it was affecting his limbs and causing great pain. The surgeons were unable to remove all of the tumor.

Within a few months, the tumor grew so much that Isaac lost the use of his left arm and could no longer walk unassisted. Oncologists at his hospital told Isaac’s parents that, medically, there was nothing more to do; they said Isaac had, at best, a few months to live. The parents refused to share this information with Isaac. A palliative care team was brought in to assist the family.

Isaac asked the palliative care physician if he could see the most recent CT scans of his tumor. His mother adamantly insisted he shouldn’t see them. Nonetheless, the palliative care physician arranged for him to see the scans and the palliative care team arranged for his beloved friend and neighbor and her also beloved dog to be with Isaac as he viewed the scans.

With the dog on his lap, the neighbor at his side, and his parents and the palliative care team present, in a private conference room at his hospital, Isaac listened intently as the palliative care physician carefully showed and explained the CT scans to Isaac. Isaac asked if more chemotherapy or radiation would help. The doctor explained that these treatments had been unable to stop the tumor’s growth. Isaac asked if more surgery could be done to remove it. The physician explained that the tumor was too deeply connected to the spine to be removed. For a few minutes, Isaac sat quietly with an inward gaze. Then he asked, “So what do we do now?”

The physician answered that now Isaac should spend time deciding what he most wanted to do in his life and find ways to do them. Within the next few days, Isaac decided he wanted to go home, to spend time with his neighbor and her dog, to eat a favorite meal, to finish a poem he’d been writing before this hospitalization, and to tell a girl in his class that he loved her. He wondered if she would kiss him just once. He wondered what beer tasted like and asked his Dad if he could try one when he got home.

Within two days of going home, Isaac was convinced by his parents to go to another children’s hospital where they begged for treatment for him. He was enrolled in a toxicity study, a drug trial designed to test dosage limits for an experimental treatment. He died in hospital two weeks later.

What would the chaplain's role be with Isaac? With his family? With the hospital staff at the first hospital? What about the staff at the second hospital?

What ethical issues are present here?

What can be learned about the needs of children in hospitals from Isaac’s story?

Responses

I recognize the difficulties of privacy here, the responsibility of a parent for a minor, and yet the emotional maturity of this 13 year old. While I don't think the parents could ever have fully acceded to Isaac's wishes, a family meeting with the chaplain present as moderator might have been helpful. Were Isaac's wishes truly heard by his family? Did he go to the final treatment to please them? Where was the chaplain in this story?

Judy Novak, M.Div., NACC Cert
Cudahy, WI

Please check the archives for comments made about previous CaseConferences.

Send your comments about CaseConference to info@PlainViews.org.

Reviews

Sarah Masters reviews the film

The Mormons

Just two months ago, PBS programs "Frontline" and "American Experience”joined forces for the first time to present a two-part documentary entitled The Mormons.

The compelling film aired on consecutive nights, the first evening devoted to the history of the church that now counts close to 12 million adherents. The second evening focused on the controversies that have always surrounded the Mormon Church.

The film delves deeply into the tumultuous history of Mormonism, from the persecution of a few believers in the 1800's to the growth of a wealthy mainstream church that includes as members politicians such as Mitt Romney, and prominent business leaders and academicians.

The Mormons takes a balanced and well researched approach to Mormon beliefs and the viewer hears in detail from both church elders and skeptics who question the motives of Joseph Smith, the religion’s founder, and the authenticity of the “Book of Mormon.”

Emmy and Peabody award-winning producer and director Helen Whitney spent three years bringing to life the four-hour documentary. In an article in The Deseret Morning News, Whitney described her current work. “It is not exhaustive. It is not comprehensive. It is thematic. I have chosen what I felt to be the defining ideas and themes and events in Mormon history that would help outsiders go inside the church. It's not altogether chronological, but roughly so. I hope that most of the stereotypes, ideally, all of them, will be blown away. Because so many of them are just based on ignorance. Ignorance about Mormon history, ignorance about Mormon theology. Ignorance."

Whitney notes that there are more Mormons outside of the U.S. than in this country and hopes that viewing this religion through so many different angles will encourage viewers from throughout the world to contrast and compare belief systems and to re-examine their own.

Completed: 2007
Running Time: 240 Minutes
Director/Producer: Helen Whitney

If you are interested in purchasing this film, you can do so at www.hartleyfoundation.org. Just click on “Masterworks”on the homepage for more information. The cost of the film series is $24.99 for a DVD.

Sarah Masters is the Managing Director of the Hartley Film Foundation, a non-profit foundation dedicated to cultivation, support, production and distribution of the best documentaries and audio meditations on world religions, spirituality, ethics and well-being.

Book Review

Chaplain Timothy E. Madison, Ph.D., reviews

Let Them Go Free: A Guide to Withdrawing Life Support,
With a Family Prayer Service

In this brief work, Professor Shannon and Father Faso set out to provide some practical guidance and spiritual insight to families facing life support termination decisions. Their words are calm and encouraging. The reader easily can visualize their supportive presence at the hospital bedside, patiently offering these words of wisdom amid the helplessness and upheaval which attend a family’s experience of anticipatory grief. The chapters are organized as answers to questions commonly posed by such families. The responses read like those of an experienced, faithful friend who speaks quietly of hope that transcends all that the monitors, machines, and medicines represent.

As a work intended for distribution to families of patients, however, the Hospital Chaplain will have to be selective. There is nothing in the title that identifies it as a Roman Catholic document, but that is what it is. Persistent Christological references will hinder its usage among other faith groups. The “Family Prayer Service”relies on a series of recitations and responsive readings which will be awkward for even other Christian groups from non-liturgical traditions.

As ethical guidance, the authors make several good practical suggestions to families. Curiously, however, no reference is made to seeking out a hospital ethics consultant or committee for assistance. Also, the family’s comfort level with a course of action is too often presented as ethical justification of that action. My experience in the clinical setting has revealed that frequently these situations compel families to choose courage rather than pursue the course that feels comfortable.

Shannon, Thomas A., and Charles N. Faso, O.F.M. Let Them Go Free: A Guide to Withdrawing Life Support, With a Family Prayer Service, Georgetown University Press: Washington, DC (2007) pp 61.

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