Church risks moral irrevelancy in rejecting homosexuality

Neil McKenty

May 2012

No issues have so bedeviled the Catholic Church as those of gender and human sexuality. Yet the church shows no signs of changing its teachings in these areas.

It is reported that since the time of Pope John Paul II, all candidates being considered for bishops must be sound on these issues: they must be opposed to female priests, artificial contraception and same-sex marriage.

It is not surprising, then, that very few bishops ever step out of line on these matters. Those who do risk their ecclesiastical careers. Retired Australian bishop Geoffrey Robinson is an exception.

Robinson recently spoke in Baltimore at a symposium on Catholicism and homosexuality.

He called for “a new study for everything to do with sexuality,” a kind of study that he predicted “would have a profound influence on church teaching concerning all sexual relationships, both heterosexual and homosexual.”

“If church teaching on homosexual acts is ever to change, the basic teaching governing all sexual acts must change,” he said. Robinson argued that the church’s moral appraisal of same-sex unions would change dramatically if it were to re-evaluate its traditional approach to all human sexuality.

While the church’s emphasis on the profound significance of sex is correct, its natural-law approach to sexual morality and its interpretation of ancient scriptural passages on homosexual and other sexual activity are in need of correction, the bishop argued.

Robinson began his talk with three basic premises: there is no possibility of a change in the teaching of the Catholic Church on the subject of homosexual acts unless and until there is a change in its teaching on heterosexual acts; there is a serious need for change in the church’s teaching on heterosexual acts; if and when this change occurs, it will inevitably have its effect on the teaching on homosexual acts.

“If the starting point is that every single sexual act must be both unitive [loving] and procreative, there is no possibility of approval of homosexual acts.”

Robinson then went on to suggest that a more nuanced reading of divine commandments in scripture and of Jesus’s teachings would lead to a different set of moral norms, starting with a change in teaching that every sexual act or thought that falls outside a loving conjugal act open to procreation is a mortal sin because it is a direct offense against God himself in his divine plan.

“For centuries the church has taught that every sexual sin is a mortal sin. The teaching may not be proclaimed as loudly today as much as before, but it was proclaimed by many popes, it has never been retracted and it has affected countless people.”

“The teaching fostered a belief in an incredibly angry God, for this God would condemn a person to an eternity in hell for a single unrepented moment of deliberate pleasure arising from sexual desire. I simply do not believe in such a God. Indeed I positively reject such a God.”

I expect that many Catholic priests and bishops would agree with Robinson, but they will not say so publicly for fear of retaliation from Rome.

An influential American journal, the National Catholic Reporter, is solidly behind Robinson’s call for a new sexual ethic: “We wholeheartedly second the invitation by Bishop Robinson for a thorough and honest re-examination of the church’s teaching on sexuality.

Robinson’s invitation is a gentle but elegant plea that offers hope for Catholics who want to stop the church’s headlong plunge into irrelevancy as a moral voice in our culture. ... Robinson’s take on sexuality—that it deserved deeper consideration than the narrow rule-bound approach that has evolved in Christian circles—takes us to the very heart of the radical approach Jesus took toward human relationships.”

Indeed, it is likely that a large number of lay Catholics in Canada and the United States agree with Robinson on the church’s need for sexual reform. But many more voices—both lay and clergy—will need to say so before such reform becomes a reality.

mckenty@videotron.ca

French heats up political scene – down South

Neil McKenty

February 2012

Just when you thought the GOP presidential race could not get any crazier, it suddenly did.

This time the nuttiness came from Newt Gingrich, who launched an advertisement against his Republican rival Mitt Romney, accusing him of speaking French.

The advertisement tries to draw an unflattering parallel with another Massachusetts politician, John Kerry, the Democrat who lost to George W. Bush in 2004.

“The French Connection” paints Romney as another tax-raising, moderate elitist who will “say anything” to get elected—anything. Over Parisian accordion music, it continues: “And just like John Kerry, he speaks French, too.” The ad then delivers its coup de grace: a clip of a promotional video Romney recorded for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah, for which he served as chief executive.

“Bonjour, je m’appelle Mitt Romney.”

This was not the only time in the debates that one candidate accused another of speaking a foreign language. Somebody charged Jon Huntsman with speaking a few words of Mandarin.

The implications of these language attacks are staggering. Is it somehow un-American to speak a foreign language? Is command of another language a sign of dilettantism? I am always proud of Prime Minister Stephen Harper when he goes to the White House and speaks fluent French.

It is true this language issue is just a side show to the main event. It’s hard to believe the main event is even crazier. For months, a handful of GOP hopefuls have been plodding around a handful of states trying to drum up support.

The voting rules in some states are so arcane it is difficult to ascertain the winner even after the votes have been supposedly counted.

The pundits say Iowa is important because it is the first in the nation to vote and often the harbinger of things to come. After a close race, electoral officials in Iowa announced that Governor Romney had defeated Rick Santorum by eight votes. This meant that Romney’s momentum would be slowed and Santorum would get a bump of new support, especially financial, going into the New Hampshire primary a few days later.

That may have happened to some extent. What throws the whole system into disrepute is that GOP officials subsequently changed the name of the winner in Iowa. Now Santorum had defeated Romney by 34 votes.

Can Iowa recover from this debacle? Four years from now, will Iowa still play a pivotal role in the nomination process? Probably not. Too much credibility has already been lost.

I would argue there are more fundamental weaknesses in the primary process. Seven men and one woman lined up at the starting gate. One was a pizza magnate, another the foster mother of 23 children, a third lost his last run for Senate by 20 points.

Then there was Rick Perry and Gingrich. Gingrich has brains but little money and no real organization. Perry has money and organization but no brains (all academic now because Perry has bailed out of the race). There is also Rick Santorum. He does not have the resources to go the distance and will probably drop out.

That leaves Romney, who has some obvious advantages. He is a multimillionaire with a solid organization and besides, he looks like a president.

Why, then, is he not doing better? Three reasons: Romney is a flip-flopper who appears to have no core principles; he is not comfortable in his own skin; and he is not an honest-to-God conservative.

That he is not a real conservative is the most deadly indictment among the GOP base. His health bill in Massachusetts was an Obamacare forerunner; he appointed liberal judges; he supported abortion before he opposed it. The list goes on.

The result is that a significant part of the Republican base will not support Romney. They would sooner lose with a true-blue conservative (like Gingrich) than win with a moderate.

The race has a long way to go. Suffice it to say the contest will probably get even crazier and the White House is laughing all the way to the ballot box.

mckenty@videotron.ca

What’s good for Harper probably isn’t good for Canada

Neil McKenty

December 2011

It is difficult to understand why Prime Minister Stephen Harper is so gung ho on ramming through an omnibus crime bill that cements in place a number of policies that have failed miserably south of the border.

And at a time when a survey shows that 93 per cent of Canadians feel safe in their own home, and statistics show that crime rates (including violent crime) are dropping across the country.

Still, Harper wants to build more prisons, impose longer sentences and reduce the chances for parole. These draconian measures make punishment more important than rehabilitation even though we know that undue repression, far from halting crime, transforms minor offenders into hardened criminals.

As Lysiane Gagnon recently wrote in the Globe and Mail, Bill C10, with its provisions for mandatory sentencing, means the government is engaging in micro-management, as if judges were incapable of evaluating what kind of punishment fits the crime.

So far we have not said a word about the huge expense this “law and order” policy will entail.

Quebec Justice Minister Jean-Marc Fournier, like Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, has objected to the fact that the Harper crime bill will raise the province’s fiscal burden by millions in prison costs—not to mention the social and human costs.

More and longer prison terms mean more school dropouts, more unemployment, more divorces, more family dislocation and more addiction.

The whole country will suffer from this retrograde policy.

While we are on Harper, did you see his latest move to “Harperize” Canada?

New documents obtained by the Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act directly contradict Harper’s chief spokesperson that bureaucrats have not been directed to replace the words “Government of Canada” with “Harper Government” in departmental news releases.

Top former civil servants say the change marks a disturbing trend in the politicization of the bureaucracy—and breaches both communications policy and civil service ethics policy.

All this at a time when the House of Commons—normally a brake on the executive—has no permanent opposition leader and many of their front-bench people are spending time on the leadership race.

The decline of the House of Commons is a serious development. In a recent article in Maclean’s, Andrew Coyne wrote of the scenario for the reality that Parliament is dying: “Largely irrelevant, increasingly impotent, it is treated with contempt by those in power, matched only
by the indifference of the general public.

“The votes of MPs are essentially irrelevant, as indeed are MPs themselves.”

Let’s face it: Members are not accountable to their constituency organizations. They are not responsible to the Commons.

The fact is their very existence depends on the favour of the prime minister.

After all, they could never have run in the first place without the PM’s agreement.

If they step out of line, Harper will have no compunction in booting them out of his caucus.

This is not a healthy situation for our body politic.

We don’t want the political gridlock now on display in Washington, but nothing much will change in Ottawa until party members and riding associations demand it—until they insist their MPs be accountable to them, rather than to the leadership.

I am not holding my breath. Harper has an iron grip on power so nothing much will change for the next four or five years.

That’s good for Harper. Not so much for the country.

mckenty@videotron.ca

Benign dictators and other wolves in sheep’s clothing

Neil McKenty

November 2011

Here are some names in the news that caught my attention recently:

Stephen Harper: Whether you like Prime Minister Harper or not, we must acknowledge that he is standing at the very top of the political dunghill. If you look at leaders around the world (elected and unelected), you would be hard-pressed to find one with as much power as Harper commands.

He is leading a solid majority, which means he is set for the next four or five years. He has no really effective opposition in Parliament. The Liberals have an interim leader and won’t elect a permanent one before 2013. The NDP won’t have one before March.

It’s also interesting that their reputed frontrunner, Brian Topp, has no seat in the House of Commons and has not made the slightest effort to get one. Remember Jack Layton’s seat in Toronto has been vacant for more than two months. The seat would seem a good fit for Topp, who is from Toronto. It seems to me this might be a consideration for some NDP delegates to tip their vote to Thomas Mulcair, who does have a seat and is familiar with parliamentary debate in a way that Topp, who has never run for office, is not.

A Conservative majority in the Senate rounds out Harper’s power base in Ottawa. The raw fact is that Harper’s position is so unassailable that he can pretty much do what he wants—dump the long-gun registry, build more prisons, buy more expensive fighter jets—and nobody can stop him. His only opposition might come from some provincial premiers and his own caucus. On the last point, some redneck caucus members were opposed to Quebec’s getting more seats in the redistribution. Harper called a meeting and whipped them into line.

I would argue that there is danger in a parliamentary democracy where the leader has such a strong majority that he can act like a benign dictator. Of course we wouldn’t want the system in Washington, which is in deadlock much of the time. But there are no real countervailing forces to Harper’s power in Ottawa. Not an altogether healthy situation.

Pauline Marois: I had lunch with a friend the other day who remarked that he hoped Marois would last until the next election because that would ensure a monumental defeat for the separatists. But it’s looking more and more that my friend won’t get his wish. Let’s face it, Marois is standing on political sand and a little more of it washes away every day.

There are signs that the PQ is on the verge of splitting, losing support to the sovereignist left-wing Québec Solidaire as well as the party about to be launched by former PQ minister François Legault.

La Presse reported that Marois has lost the support of almost all her caucus. And there is no shortage of people waiting in the wings to replace her, beginning with Gilles Duceppe, who lead the Bloc to such a devastating defeat in this spring’s federal election. Frankly, I think Duceppe is yesterday’s news. I am not at all sure he would be much better than Marois.

Two fresher faces to replace Marois are Bernard Drainville and the actor Pierre Curzi. He left the PQ caucus in June to sit as an independent. Interestingly, Christian Bourque of Léger Marketing has suggested that Marois may not be the real problem, saying the Bloc’s loss in May might indicate the sovereignty option is the obstacle. Whatever is true, I think Marois will be lucky to last much beyond Christmas.

Governor Rick Perry: As we approach the first primary in Iowa in early January, the Republican race gets curiouser and curiouser. And none more so than Governor Rick Perry of Texas. On the very day that Perry announced his long-delayed plan for tax reform (a 20-per-cent flat tax), what do you think Perry was doing? He was answering questions about his oft-repeated insinuation that President Barack Obama might have been born in Africa, a view he shares with the political jokester of the year, Donald Trump.

Most political observers thought that by buying into the “birther” myth, Perry was stepping on his own message.

But I have a different theory. I think it is just as reasonable that Perry knew exactly what he was doing when he resurrected the “birther” issue. Perry knows full well that the Tea Party, which provides Perry with most of his support, is dying for a candidate who will mix it up by going to the mat with Obama. The Tea Party, and even more moderate Republicans, fear that the governor is too much of a flip-flopping pretty boy to get down and dirty with the president.

So Perry sent them a message that he was their man, that he would take the fight to Obama, dirty as that may be. However, there is a political problem here. Perry may have made some yards with the Tea Partiers, but this “birther” issue won’t play well with the general electorate next fall. This illustrates in dramatic fashion the danger of pushing an issue in the primaries that won’t cut it in the general. Actually, this is all somewhat academic. When the rubber hits the road, I expect the Republicans will hold their noses and nominate Romney.

Bishop Robert Finn: For the first time in American history, a Roman Catholic bishop has been charged with covering up child sexual abuse. Finn received a file of pornographic photographs of female children taken by one of his priests. The bishop did not turn over these photographs to the police for six months. If found guilty, the bishop faces jail time and a fine. He says he is innocent and will fight the charges vigorously.

Why have so many priests been fined and jailed, yet so few bishops who aided and abetted them charged?

The bishops seem to think that if they apologize profusely, that should be the end of the matter. It should be just the beginning of the judicial process. Until more bishops admit real responsibility, the sex abuse scandal will not go away.

mckenty@videotron.ca

Obama’s strength heading into 2012 vote based on the vulnerable

Neil McKenty

October 2011

Beneath all the posturing and verbal pyrotechnics that mark today’s politics (particularly in the United States), there runs a central question. What is the role of a national government? The question applies in certain instances in Canada (the authorization of a monstrous pipe line to carry oil to the Gulf Coast) but this controversy plays out full bore in the United States where both major parties are consumed with it.

What is the role of a national government in a modern democracy? There are two broad answers depending on where you stand on the conservative-liberal spectrum. Right wing conservatives, now concentrated in the Tea Party, argue that the role of government should be minimal. It should look after national security and the federal police and not a great deal more. In fact, Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry says if elected he will make the Washington government as “inconsequential” as possible.

Others in the Tea Party are more specific. They want to abolish a whole raft of government departments starting with education. The Environmental Protection Agency would be next on the list to go. What would replace the national government in its oversight over these matters? The answer is the forces of the marketplace—that invisible hand that according to the right wingers can always be counted on to right the system. (Never mind the unregulated marketplace got us into the mess we are in now).

The marketplace can be counted on to wring bad teachers out of the system and to make sure that good teachers will get their just desserts. This would be more easily accomplished if unions could be gotten rid of. The right wingers don’t much like unions. Not only do most of their members support the Democrats, but union activities, especially strikes and walkouts, interfere with the even treatment of the marketplace.

What about programs that help care for the sick and the old? Of course the extreme Republicans would not scrap them altogether. But the philosophy behind them would be different. Everyone would have the right to pursue the American dream of life, liberty and happiness. Some would make it, some wouldn’t. A lot would depend on market forces and some would depend on luck. But what would happen to those who didn’t make it? Tough luck. It’s inevitable that the market will throw up some flotsam and jetsam. That’s the way the market works.

Besides, say the Tea Party, you were only guaranteed a crack at the American Dream. There was no guarantee that you’d achieve it.

Those on the progressive left see the role of the national government in quite a different way. They see its role as providing a context that gives individuals a hand and if they fall on hard times the government is there to support them. They support a whole network of social and medical services that are meant to soften the cruel hand of the impersonal market forces.

In this regard, it is not surprising that many of the Tea Partiers want to gut the social safety net. Medicare, social security and employment insurance and help for people ravaged by natural disasters—all are under attack.

Of course this attack is camouflaged. The Republicans argue that in order to help disaster victims, you must cut an equivalent amount of money out of other programs. All under the rubric of balancing the budget. It’s a cruel hoax while disaster victims wait in vain for help. What is the role of government. This question will now dominate American politics right up through the election of 2012. Consider for a minute how this question affects the debate on taxation. The Republicans flatly refuse to raise taxes by a thin dime on millionaires or anybody else. Such taxes distort market forces. Never mind that there is less money for programs like employment insurance. Tough. The role of the national government is not to prop up losers but to encourage winners. (No wonder the gap between the rich and the poor in the States is widening).

Democrats have quite a different view of the role of government. It is not just to hold up the American dream and yell, “Go for it” whether you are from a slum or an Ivy League College. The aim of the Democrats is to ensure a level playing field so that all have an equal chance at the prize. Democrats support social and educational programs and medical programs that help those who are old and sick. There is every reason to believe that in the coming election campaign the Democrats and Obama will be on the right side of the government issue. After all there are a lot more poor Americans than there are rich ones. For example, polls show that fully 75 per cent of Americans support Obama on the tax issue. Why in the world should business magnate Warren Buffet pay taxes at a lower rate than his secretary does? Who has the winning hand in the election? The Republicans who are ready to cut services to the poor? Or the Democrats who want to raise taxes on the multi-rich? It’s a no-brainer.

mckenty@videotron.ca

Future of the PQ and beleaguered Marois threatened from left and right

Neil McKenty

September 2011

This is the summer of discontent for Quebec sovereignists. Every time you turn around, another splinter group is meeting to proclaim how to best achieve independence.

So far as I can tell, these groups have one thing in common: They want to get rid of Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois. The beleaguered Marois is hoisted on the petard of the sovereignist movement’s fatal split. Going back as far as the days of its founder, René Lévesque, the PQ has never clearly decided whether its primary objective is to separate or to govern.

The first group, whose real leader is Jacques Parizeau, want to promote sovereignty and prepare for a referendum.

The second group, represented by Lucien Bouchard and Lévesque himself, want to govern the province well, get re-elected and call a referendum only when there are “winning conditions.” Opposition leader Pauline Marois clearly falls into the second camp. That’s not good enough for her more militant members like Parizeau’s wife, Lisette Lapointe, Louise Beaudoin and Pierre Curzi, all three of whom have bailed from the party.

Last month, some of them attended a founding meeting of another splinter group, the Nouveau movement pour le Québec. Some in this group want separation ipso facto when the PQ wins an election.

This crisis resembles another one, in 1984 when Parizeau and a few of his associates resigned after Premier Lévesque announced he was accepting an offer from Prime Minister Brian Mulroney to reopen constitutional talks to welcome Quebec back into the Canadian federation.

PQ leader Pauline Marois in 2007. Photo: Boucheci, Wikimedia Commons

One of my favourite columnists referred to these crises in a recent column in the Gazette. But Josée Legault judges the current crisis is far more dangerous: “The Parti Québécois has suffered many a crisis since it was created in 1968. Its latest one may well be its last. Its very existence is now on the line.”

The PQ’s existence is threatened from both the left and the right. On its left, Québec solidaire commands islands of strength in the Montreal area. On its right, two business heavyweights, former PQ minister François Legault and former Liberal recruiter Charles Sirois, are on the verge of leading a new party into the field. This party would concentrate on business and social issues, leaving independence on the back burner for at least a decade.

Suppose Legault’s party amalgamated with what is left of the Action démocratique du Québec. This would hurt the PQ a lot more than it would hurt the Liberals. According to a recent CROP-La Presse poll, this proposed coalition would gain 47 per cent of voter support (much higher than for the Charest Liberals in the last election.) This is pretty impressive for a non-existent party whose main message is that sovereignty has become irrelevant for solving any of Quebec’s problems.

So Pauline Marois is not only threatened from within the PQ, she is being pinched by both the left and the right. The odds of her surviving to fight the next election are diminishing by the day. The popular Pierre Curzi is waiting in the wings.

Meanwhile, another threat, outside provincial politics, is overtaking Quebec. It is what John Ibbitson in the Globe and Mail called “Quebec’s profound isolation.”

For openers, Quebec’s share of the national population is steadily declining, from 29 per cent in 1961 to 21 per cent today. Politically, the days when elites in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal shaped the national agenda are finished. The new consensus is between Ontario and the West. Quebec is outside that consensus. As of now there are only five Quebec MPs within the governing Conservative caucus.

These worrisome trends are bound to reshape the nature of nationalism in Quebec. Whether they accelerate the drive to independence or reassert the desire for good provincial government remains to be seen. neilmck@sympatico.ca

With the dogs at his heels, can Obama win again?

Neil McKenty

July 2011

Recently I watched the seven dwarfs performing at the second Republican debate.

Or as Jeffrey Simpson described them in the Globe and Mail: “What a collection of third-raters they were for a major national party: fringe characters (Ron Paul and Herman Cain), dullards (Tim Pawlenty), social conservative ideologues (Rick Santorum and Michele Bachman), egotists (Newt Gingrich, whose campaign staff has quit en masse over his eccentricities).”

Then there’s the reputed front-runner, Mitt Romney. He was so unpopular at the end of his governorship in Massachusetts that he decided not to run for a second term. Romney was for abortion before he was against it; for a health mandate before he dumped it; for a bailout before he saw the light. Does this mean that President Barack Obama will be re-elected next year in a walk?

By no means. But his problem is not the strength of his GOP opponents. It is the weakness of the American economy.

As I write this at the end of June, the U.S. unemployment rate is 9.1 per cent (well over one per cent higher than ours). The fact is, going as far back as Franklin Roosevelt in 1936 no American president has been re-elected when the unemployment rate has been higher than 7.2 per cent.

Could this be turned around before the election, which is 16 months away? Yes, it could. Some economists predict that at the end of 2012 the unemployment rate could be as low as eight per cent. Besides the trend is moving in the right direction. The Obama administration has already added 2 million jobs in the private sector.

There are a couple of other major issues that Obama is manoeuvring to be on the right side of. The first is health care. The Republicans’ rising star, Paul Ryan, is proposing a system whereby the government would give each citizen a fixed sum of money, a voucher, with which to buy the health care they need from insurance companies. But what if premiums go up and the government vouchers do not keep pace? Tough luck.

The Democrats made sport of this proposal by showing a video in which a government functionary (looking suspiciously like Paul Ryan) throws a sick “Granny” off a cliff.

Secondly, the issue that will have a major impact on the election is the astronomical size of the debt, which now tops out at $14 trillion. The way the Republicans want to deal with this is to cut programs, such as health care, and maintain tax breaks for the rich. The Democratic proposal is to save essential programs wherever possible, shut tax loopholes to rich corporations like the oil companies, and restore income tax rates for the wealthiest Americans.

To boil it down, the GOP argue that what ails the United States can be fixed by even lower taxes. David Brooks, the moderate conservative columnist of the New York Times, says of the cut taxes approach, it “is stupefyingly boring, fiscally irresponsible, and politically impressible.”

So Obama has running room to get on the right side of both these issues—health care and taxes. The economy still has 16 months to improve. This brings us back to a possible GOP nominee to challenge Obama in 2012. Of the eight now declared in the race we can eliminate five right off the bat – Santorum, Bachman, Paul, Cain and Gingrich. Santorum is a right-wing Catholic ideologue who wants to criminalize doctors and nurses who perform abortions. Bachman is a pleasant woman who got a law degree from a third-rate university, raised five children of her own and fostered 23 others. She will be supported by some elements of the Tea Party and nobody else. Ron Paul advocates a flat tax. Herman Cain made his money selling pizza. Neither will be a factor. Newt Gingrich is the only candidate I know who saved money by losing his staff. He’s a no-hoper.

That leaves three: Pawlenty, Romney and Jon Huntsman. Pawlenty is a bore and Romney is a flip-flopper. My instincts tell me that neither man will make it.

Huntsman is another matter. The former governor of Utah and ambassador to China is a quality candidate. If he can win the nomination (a long shot), he could give Obama a run for his money.

But are any of these candidates keeping Obama awake at night? He looks pretty rested to me.

neilmck@sympatico.ca

Vatican’s sense of firing priorities appalling

Neil McKenty

June 2011

The sexual abuse crisis in the Catholic Church continues to reveal fault-lines in its management structures.

Consider the sad case of William Morris, the Catholic bishop of a rural diocese in Australia. For 18 years he had been a popular bishop. Then, according to a small group of the conservative critics in his diocese, he went too far.

Bishop Morris issued a letter to his diocese in which he discussed the challenge of finding church leadership in the future because Australia faces a growing priest-shortage crisis. He noted that discussion was occurring in other parts of the church regarding ordination of married men and women as a way to address the problem.

Several months later, Bishop Morris was informed that the Vatican was conducting an investigation into his situation. He concluded early in the investigation that he was being denied “natural justice and due process” because there is no process within the church to deal with a bishop in this kind of circumstance.

Eventually, Bishop Morris was summoned to Rome for a personal meeting with Pope Benedict. First off, he explained to the pope his concern about the lack of due process.

According to the bishop’s notes, the pope replied in this fashion: “And then eventually the pope said to me canon law does not make provision for a process regarding bishops, and the successor of Peter nominates and may remove from office as he chooses.”

Then, although Bishop Morris begged for more time, the pope told him that he would have to resign and his resignation would be announced May 2 of this year.

The irony here is glaring.

On the one hand, Bishop Morris is peremptorily stripped of his diocese for daring to suggest that a discussion about ordaining women might be a good thing; on the other hand, almost all the bishops who aided and abetted sexual abuse by their clergy are still sitting on their episcopal thrones. The injustice is almost palpable.

To add further to the injury, Bishop Morris explained the Vatican misread his pastoral letter. He was not advocating any of the alternatives he raised, such as ordaining women. He was merely proposing for discussion alternative ministries that others had raised elsewhere.

The brutal handling of Bishop Morris fits into a broader context involving general tension between Rome and the Catholic Church in Australia.

There was a perception of Australian Catholicism in the minds of some in the Vatican as lax in applying church teaching and overly tolerant of liturgical innovations. Of course.

Bishop Morris, the head of a sprawling and sparsely populated diocese in an area of Australia known to be politically and socially conservative, provided an ideal target for making the point that any discussion of ordaining women is absolutely forbidden.

To make doubly certain that point was nailed down, the Vatican sent an emissary to investigate Bishop Morris’s position. The emissary was none other than the archbishop of Denver, Charles Chaput, one of the most reactionary and retrograde figures in the whole American episcopacy. Chaput duly made his report to Rome. Bishop Morris asked to see the report. Rome refused.

Bishop Morris wrote to his people: “I have never seen the report prepared by (Archbishop Chaput). Without due process it has been impossible to resolve these matters, denying me natural justice without any possibility of appropriate defense and advocacy on My behalf.”

The announcement of Bishop Morris’s forced retirement provoked an avalanche of support among Catholics in his diocese and priests in Australia. Hundreds of Catholics gathered for a candlelight vigil, expressing sadness and anger over the Vatican’s decision.

The National Council of Priests of Australia issued a statement that said: “We are appalled at the lack of transparency and due process that led to this decision by church authorities. We are embarrassed about the shabby treatment meted out to an outstanding pastor of this diocese who has faithfully ministered in the church in Queensland and throughout Australia since his priestly ordination in 1969.”

The group said it is “concerned about an element within the church whose restorationist ideology wants to repress freedom of expression” within the church and “who deny the legitimate magisterial authority of the local bishop within the church.”

In an interview, Bishop Morris said he felt sadness for the Catholic Church: “I really believe the church is at its best when it is most transparent, when the eyes of justice and the eyes of the Gospel are so clear that all rights are respected for individuals, no matter who they are in the community.”

So far as I know (at least outside of Australia) no bishop has stepped up to the plate to support Bishop Morris.

That’s understandable. No bishop wants to tangle with Rome. Leave comments at NeilMcKenty.com

Polls are little more than crystal balls in the leadup to May 2

Neil McKenty

May, 2011

Writing about a federal election a few days before the poll is as risky as Rollerblading on the autoroute, especially in this election, where the polls have been all over the map.

Not only that. The Quebec polls have the parties so topsy-turvy that it’s hard to give them much credence.

Perhaps we should not be surprised that an election that started in such a muddle was ending in a muddle. This was the election that nobody wanted. Conservative leader Stephen Harper didn’t want it because he wasn’t sure he could get a majority, and a majority is all he has ever wanted. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff didn’t want an election because his brain trust told him the party wasn’t ready.

Despite his positive attitude in public, NDP leader Jack Layton didn’t fancy an election so soon, as he was recovering from cancer and a hip injury. Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe’s team told him the Bloc’s polls were beginning to trend down and Duceppe wanted more time to fix them.

Then events (“Events, dear boy, events,” as British prime minister Harold MacMillan once called them) took over in Ottawa. Conservative MP Bev Oda lied to Parliament; Speaker Peter Milliken told Harper he was in contempt of Parliament; finally, the opposition parties ganged up and voted Harper out of office.

Harper visited the governor-general, the writ was dropped and we were off to the races. Harper stood his ground and argued that Canada has the best economy in the world – which, in many ways, it has. In the early days, Ignatieff got good notices. He said Liberals had better things to do with money than to give it to corporations in the form of tax cuts. Layton kept chirping away about the NDP’s social safety network and that more voters, especially in Quebec, liked his message. Duceppe went back to his old mantra about the Bloc looking after Quebec’s interests. It was beginning to sound tired.

Then came the debates. No game-changer there. No one threw a knockout punch. No one fell flat on his face. I expect the winner on points was Jack Layton, not only for his policies but also for his optimism. Four million sets of eyeballs watched the English debate, but the question remains: To what extent are Canadians really engaged in this campaign?

There is a little non-scientific evidence that I can throw in the pot here. On my blog, where much of the material is political, Canadian and American, an astonishing phenomenon emerged: During the campaign, there has been much greater response to my American political posts than to my Canadian ones.

There is one issue I’ve blogged about that I’ve never seen discussed elsewhere. The “birthers” in the U.S. don’t believe President Barack Obama was born there and say he’s not a real American. Our Conservative Party has spent millions to prove that Ignatieff is not a real Canadian, saying he has spent too much time in other countries and foreign universities and does not understand Canada from the grass roots up. This shows that parties on both sides of the border have their share of nutters.

As I write this, a few days remain. The polls have been showing a strong resurgence for the NDP. But the question here is whether this growing popularity can be translated into winning seats. To do so, the NDP vote must be concentrated enough to win more ridings.

An Ipsos Reid poll showed the NDP at 25 per cent and the Liberals at 21 per cent, the first time in 20 years the NDP has been ahead of the Liberals in the polls. These numbers have been translated into seats, giving the Liberals 53 and the NDP 48. This will probably give the NDP at least two seats in Quebec—Outremont and Gatineau.

The poll shows the Bloc running in second place in Quebec, at 27 per cent, slightly behind the NDP. According to the number crunchers, this would give the Bloc only four seats in Quebec. And the Conservatives are leading the poll with 43 per cent, enough to win 201 seats, a solid majority. Harper is so happy with these results that he is pretty much keeping his mouth shut. Gilles Duceppe was so devastated that on Easter weekend he resurrected Jacques Parizeau.

I would not be surprised if the NDP and the Liberals will come in with about 50 seats each. This will mean Ignatieff’s days as Liberal leader are numbered. (Keep your eyes on Dominic LeBlanc from the Maritimes.) And a triumphant Layton can hand off to Tom Mulcair at a time of his choosing.

As for Harper and Duceppe: The Conservatives will not soar so high and the Bloc will not sink so low as the poll suggests. After losing seats, I doubt Duceppe will want to stick around to lead a seventh campaign for the Bloc.

I expect Harper will win his majority. He will be around a lot longer than many Canadians want.

Comment at NeilMcKenty.com

American pews empty out as sex-abuse scandal escalates

Neil McKenty

April, 2011

Long-suffering Catholics, both Canadian and American, have been waiting patiently for the priest sex-abuse crisis to finally come to an end. Sadly it has not happened yet.

This spring, two developments indicated the crisis is far from over. In fact, it may be getting worse.

In the American Northwest, the Jesuit Order was forced to pay $166 million in damages caused by Jesuit priests and brothers mostly in native residence schools centred in Oregon. This is one of the largest payments made by the church or its religious orders since the scandal began in Boston some years ago.

In a shocker, the archbishop of Philadelphia, Cardinal Justin Rigali, placed 21 priests on administrative leave from clerical assignments in response to allegations of sexual abuse. This is the largest group of priests removed from ministry in the history of the American Catholic Church.

This unprecedented step to remove at one swoop such a large group came in the wake of the Philadelphia grand jury’s February report that charged Msgr. William Lynn, who led investigations of abuse allegations for the archdiocese between the years 1992-2004, with two counts of endangering the welfare of children. In other words, he is alleged to have shuffled priests around who had abused children.

The report also called for the archdiocese to “review all of the old allegations against currently active priests and to remove from ministry all the priests with allegations against them.” The archdiocese did not release a list of the suspended priests, but local media were running the names of priests who had been suspended. Named on the list were nine pastors, five parochial vicars, three chaplains, one pastor emeritus, two retired priests and one archdiocesan administrator.

Victims’ advocates expressed scepticism about the effects of the move.

“The suspensions are a long-overdue and begrudging step forward that temporarily makes kids safer, but they do nothing to address the ongoing deceit and callousness by Philadelphia Catholic officials,” said David Clohessy, a founder of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

“A grand jury found that the archdiocese misleads victims and endangers kids and has done so for years. That requires major reform by secular and religious authorities,” Clohessy added.

Another spokesperson for the victims said the fact that the 21 priests were kept in ministry after allegations against them were made raises questions about abusive priests still in ministry in other dioceses.

“We have no reason to think that Philadelphia is unusual in all this. No doubt there are priests who remain in ministry in other dioceses and no doubt review boards there are doing pretty much what they did in Philadelphia, which is to protect priests in the system instead of protecting the children.”

In a piece in the National Catholic Reporter, editor Michael Sean Winters called on Cardinal Rigali himself to resign. The cardinal, writes Winters, “was not only derelict in his duties, he completely misunderstood the nature and import of the promises made to the faithful at Dallas.” By “Dallas” Winters means the Dallas Charter, the norms and guidelines for the protection of children the U.S. bishops adopted in 2002.

The problem with the Dallas Charter is that there is not a single word in it about the culpability of bishops themselves. One of the biggest offenders was Cardinal Bernard Law, who presided over the church in Boston when the sex-abuse crisis exploded there a decade ago. Not only was Law not fired, he was summoned to Rome, where the Pope gave him a promotion.

There are rumours the same thing may happen to Cardinal Rigali. If things get too uncomfortable for him in Philadelphia, he will be offered a sinecure in Rome. But the Church as a whole is paying a heavy price for this unjust policy. Priests complain they are being left out to dry while their superiors, the bishops, get off scot-free. The faithful in Philadephia are in an uproar at the way the scandal has played out there.

It is likely the national scandal (the worst crisis to hit the Catholic Church since the Reformation four centuries ago) is having a terribly negative effect on Catholics in the pews. Statistics show that 75 per cent of Americans espouse the religious tradition in which they were raised but that is not true for Catholics. About 60 per cent of Americans raised as Catholics no longer practice their faith and about one-third have left the church entirely.

This is a fateful trend for the Catholic Church. If a few culpable bishops resigned, that might begin to turn the trend around.

Canadians not comfortable with idea of Harper majority

Neil McKenty

March, 2011

There are two questions fluttering around about a federal election: When will it be and will Prime Minister Stephen Harper achieve his majority?

The key date to keep your eye on is when the budget comes down toward the end of this month. Two parties – the Liberals and the Bloc – want an election. The Bloc wants one because the party figures it has Quebec sewn up and because it needs the money from taxpayer political subsidies.

It’s more difficult to understand why the Liberals want one. They are 14 points behind the Tories who, at 39, are on the cusp of majority territory. Perhaps Michael Ignatieff has concluded that he can run a strong campaign to win enough of the electorate over and take Harper to the cleaners. It’s a long shot.

As for the NDP, they can take an election or leave it. Whatever happens, it will almost certainly be Jack Layton’s last campaign. He wants some economic concessions from Harper. If he gets them, there will be no election. If he doesn’t, we’ll see.

The Harperites keep saying they don’t want an election. But as Jeffrey Simpson points out in The Globe and Mail, any government wanting an election will insist on the contrary. That’s why no one should take seriously declarations by Harper that he doesn’t want an election and that, if one should happen, it would be entirely because of the opposition.

Harper would go into a spring election not only with a strong lead in the polls, but with a strong record, especially in economic matters. Canada is doing far better than the U.S. and most other G7 countries.

Our deficit of $56 billion is about three per cent of GDP; the U.S. deficit amounts to $1.6 trillion, more than 10 per cent of American output. Canada’s unemployment rate of 7.8 per cent is far better than the nine per cent south of the border. The Canadian economy created 69,000 jobs in January, far more than the 15,000 forecast, while the U.S. economy produced 36,000 jobs, far fewer than the 150,000 predicted. Canada has recovered all the jobs lost in the recession while the U.S. has lost 7 million jobs, most of which are gone for good.

In a survey of 33 advanced countries by the International Monetary Fund, Canada ranks second only to Australia in a series of economic, health, social and education metrics, while the U.S. lags far behind in most categories. For example, Canada’s life expectancy at birth is 81.29 years compared with 78.4 years in the United States. Canada’s wellness index of 62 per cent who say they are thriving compares with 57 per cent in the U.S.

This is a splendid economic record for the Tories to take into an election campaign. But it is not only in the domestic arena that Harper has shone. He has acquitted himself very well on the international stage. When he stands beside President Barack Obama (with whom he gets on well) and makes a statement in French, or beside British Prime Minister David Cameron to answer questions in English, Harper does Canada proud.

But—and it’s a very big but, voters are reluctant to give Harper a majority government. Only 26 per cent of Canadians say they would be comfortable with the Conservatives winning a majority after the next election. About 30 per cent are decidedly uncomfortable with the prospect of a Tory majority, with the rest responding “somewhat” one way or another.

Still, the Conservatives are attempting the audacious feat of achieving a majority with only minority government polling numbers. Even if a campaign does not boost their overall popularity, they hope to pick off at least 13 vulnerable seats with most of their attention centred in suburbs around Toronto and Vancouver. We will have to wait and see if they kick in money to build a hockey arena to save their seats around Quebec City.

The Tories must contend with the block of Canadians who think if Harper manages a majority, he will zap us with a secret agenda. They believe he harbours a radical social and fiscal agenda he would unleash if given the opportunity. The right to abortion and gay marriage would be reversed; Canada Pension Plan privatized; health care turned over to corporations; the CBC stripped of its funding; safety and environmental regulations trashed. In a word, Harper would carpet-bomb the country back to the stone age.

Is it likely that Harper, having achieved his majority, would govern from the extreme right? I doubt he would make that political mistake. Unlike the U.S., Canada is a centre-left country. Our watchword is moderation. We do not like extremes. But Harper has another problem. Despite his solid economic and fiscal record, a significant share of the electorate simply doesn’t like the guy. For starters, they see him as controlling, secretive, manipulative and vindictive. His cabinet, with the exception of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, is one of the weakest in Canadian history. The ministers virtually have to ask Harper to go to the bathroom. If this bloc of disaffected Harper voters is large enough, he will have little chance of winning a majority.

That may not be entirely bad. Lester Pearson never had a majority and he passed some of the most significant legislation in our country’s history.

On the Shrivers, the Special Olympics and floor hockey

Neil McKenty

February 2011

I was enjoying a winter holiday in Palm Springs, California, when it was announced that Sargent Shriver had died. I met Shriver, married to President John Kennedy’s sister Eunice, in the early ’70s. I’ll come back to that in a moment.

Mr. Shriver was the founding director of the Peace Corps, the signature success of Kennedy’s New Frontier. He directed Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, founded Head Start, created the Jobs Corp and Legal Services for the Poor.

He served as president of the Special Olympics, which was founded by his wife. Writing in the New York Times, Bob Herbert said that “Mr. Shriver affected more people in a positive way than any American since Franklin Delano Roosevelt.” When I met Mr. Shriver in 1971, he struck me as an enormously enthusiastic and energetic man. I met him to discuss an award the Kennedys were making to Jean Vanier, the son of the former governor-general. Mr. Vanier was being honoured by the Kennedys for his work with the mentally challenged.

My boss at the time, the Toronto philanthropist and sportsman Harry “Red” Foster, thought it would be appropriate if Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau wrote a short statement to be delivered at the awards ceremony in Washington.

I called Mr. Trudeau’s office and he agreed to send a short statement to honour Vanier. There was, however, one condition: The statement would be in both English and French and must be read that way.

I explained Mr. Trudeau’s condition to Mr. Shriver and he readily agreed to find someone who would be able to handle the French.

At the event, however, somebody dropped the ball. To my exasperation, the statement did not get read in French.

I expressed my anger to Mr. Shriver. He was as upset as I was and apologized profusely.

As this was playing out, we were negotiating with Mr. Shriver’s wife, Eunice, for Canada to play a larger role in the Special Olympics. We had a Canadian Special Olympics at Exhibition Park in Toronto and we had been invited to join the Kennedys for the first international Special Olympics in Chicago.

One of the most successful elements of our own Olympics was floor hockey. We had convinced the National Hockey League to get behind this project and we were eager that Mrs. Shriver accept floor hockey into the American Special Olympics. To that end, I had several meetings with Mrs. Shriver in Washington.

What a tough lady she turned out to be—tough in the sense she knew what she wanted and used any means to get there. Smart, too.

I was not the only person who thought if Mrs. Shriver had been born later she might well have become the first female president of the United States.

She questioned me carefully about the suitability of floor hockey for the Special Olympics.

Then she bought our proposal lock stock and barrel. So far as I know, the game is still part of the Special Olympics program.

I am writing this while still in Palm Springs. While here, I’ve talked to a number of Americans about the Obama presidency.

Most people seem all for it or all against it. There is no middle ground. As one of the naysayers put it: “My husband had a job under George Bush and he lost his job under Obama.”

My own view is unchanged. If the unemployment rate comes down one full point or more, Obama will win a second term fairly easily. I mean, who is likely to beat him? Michelle Bachmann, the poor person’s Sarah Palin?

Time is ripe for a new political party in Quebec

Neil McKenty

Now that hunting season has begun, it behooves most Quebec politicians to head for the hills.

According to all the surveys, the popularity of the province’s politicians is dropping like a wounded duck. And this applies to both Ottawa and Quebec City.

A Léger poll shows the level of satisfaction with the federal Conservatives has dropped a full seven points. Only one in five Quebecers is happy with the political leadership in Ottawa.

The results were similarly dismal for the provincial Liberals. The level of dissatisfaction with Premier Jean Charest’s government is at a record-breaking 77 per cent, with only 28 per cent saying they would vote Liberal in the next provincial election. Support for the Parti Québécois stood at 34 per cent.

These figures must be seen in the context of a provincial scene where most of the news is negative. Whether it is the dirty linen on judge’s appointments being aired at the Bastarache commission, the ever-rising cost of health care, controversial language legislation or the government’s refusal to investigate the construction industry, there is not much for the ordinary voter to be happy about.

All this means that Charest, who must face an election within three years, is in dire straits politically. But the PQ leader, Pauline Marois, is right in there with him.

Let’s face it. Although Marois has been in public life for three decades, she has never really caught on, either with her own party or with the electorate generally. This could become more evident when she faces a leadership review next spring.

Unlike the Liberals who cherish their leaders so long as they are in power, the separatists seem to view their chieftans with considerable suspicion. As Don Macpherson writes in the Gazette: “Liberals are disciplined and remain loyal to a leader, especially when they are in power, until he loses an election. Péquistes, on the other hand, are impatient, nervous and suspicious of any leader not named Jacques Parizeau. Since they last held power in 2003, they’ve already had three leaders.”

What’s more, unlike the Charest Liberals, the PQ has a potential leader prowling around the precincts. That would be Gilles Duceppe, who is getting long in the tooth in federal politics. Duceppe threatened to run against Marois once before. This time, if she really stumbles, he might go through with it.

So what we have now in the province is a Liberal government that is dead in the water and a PQ opposition that is not exactly setting the heather afire. What better time to fly a trial balloon about a new party?

A group of former politicians (Péquistes François Legault and Joseph Facal) and business people think the time is ripe for a new party that would regroup federalists and sovereigntists around a centre-right agenda and leaving the “national question” aside.

A new poll shows that such a new party would win 30 per cent of the votes in a Quebec election, with the PQ at 27 per cent and the Liberals at 25 per cent. If nothing else, these results suggest there is a deep desire in the population to break through the federalist-separatist division to some third force that would concentrate on the economic and social well-being of Quebec.

Such a party would emphasize fiscal restraint and smaller government. But would the Quebec voter buy into such a program? Ironically, this is what Charest wanted to implement when he first took office eight years ago. Charest, a small-c conservative, hoped to cut back on Quebec’s bloated bureaucracy, reduce some services and cut taxes.

But Charest discovered to his chagrin that he could carry neither his cabinet nor his caucus on a program of serious fiscal restraint. The government was even afraid to raise the rates for electricity, something practically all economists urged them to do. Recently all it took was the prospect of a coming by-election for Finance Minister Raymond Bachand to shelve plans to impose user fees for medical visits.

So attractive as a new party might be, especially one that jettisoned the sovereignty question, it is not at all clear that it would be able to sell a policy of fiscal restraint, the very policy that Charest could not sell when he first came into office.

Furthermore, as Lysiane Gagnon has pointed out, the new Legault party looks much like the old Mario Dumont party. The Action démocratique du Quebec was also based on a centre-right agenda and a moderate nationalist approach (for most of its life it did not even take sides in the sovereignty debates). One difference is that Legault’s movement was born in Montreal and might eventually attract more high-profile personalties than the ADQ, whose scope was limited to eastern Quebec.

What this new party does right out of the gate is underline popular dissatisfaction with the two old parties. Another election is not required until 2013. That leaves plenty of time for the Liberals to replace Charest and for the PQ to do a makeover on Marois (or replace her with Duceppe.)

In the meantime, a group that has no leader and no name is more popular than the two other parties who have both. No wonder the politicians are heading for the hills.

Euthanasia or pain control — that is the question

Neil McKenty

October, 2010

This fall, about the time the provincial hearings on euthanasia began, I spoke with a retired neurosurgeon. I told him that 71 per cent of Quebecers supported euthanasia.

He scoffed at this revelation and insisted that most of the people in the survey didn’t know what they were talking about because their understanding of the concept of euthanasia was so confused. He said that the only way to clear up this confusion is to have crystal clear distinctions and definitions on the subject.

As a result of that conversation, I have worked out a little schema on the meaning of euthanasia. The first broad distinction is between active and passive euthanasia. Passive refers to the omission of any extraordinary means to keep the seriously ill patient alive, for example, not using heroic measures to resuscitate the person.

Many of us have left instructions to this effect in a living will. It would not, however, be appropriate to discontinue natural food or water. Neither would be considered an extraordinary means to prolong life.

I would divide active euthanasia into two categories. The first refers to the terminally ill patient arranging his or her own death. For instance, the person mixes a lethal dose of sleeping pills into a deadly cocktail and takes this potion.

The second (usually called physician-assisted suicide) occurs when the doctor inserts a drug into the patient’s body with the intention of procuring death (ostensibly because of intractable pain). It would not, however, be euthanasia were a doctor to inject accidentally a lethal dose of morphine into a patient when the doctor’s intention was to control pain, not to cause death.

There are a great many arguments for and against the practise of euthanasia. Those who oppose euthanasia argue that it constitutes a “slippery slope” leading inevitably to deaths that are neither wanted nor authorized. Evidence from Holland and Oregon, where euthanasia is legal, suggests that a worrisome number of killings are indiscriminate, wanted by neither patients nor their families.

One major reason for these unwanted deaths lies in the nature of our health system. A disproportionate amount of limited health resources are spent in the last days or weeks of a sick person’s life. Furthermore, hospital staff are often desperate to free up beds occupied by the terminally ill for younger people who still have their lives before them.

Those in favour of active euthanasia often argue that it is going on willy-nilly in Canadian hospitals. Much better, they say, to have it legalized so that euthanasia can be transparent and surrounded by safeguards.

Perhaps the most popular argument for active euthanasia is the fear most of us have of relentless pain during the dying days of our lives. It is this aspect of the euthanasia debate that I should like now to focus on.

Many years ago, I interviewed Dr. Balfour Mount, considered the founder of palliative care in Canada, on the pros and cons of euthanasia. Mount said 95 per cent of pain could be controlled by the medical team. That leaves only five per cent to cope with, perhaps even less now that pain management has vastly improved.

I would argue that most people, when they think of dying, also think of the ravages of uncontrollable pain and its assault on our desire to die with dignity. The real problem is the woefully inadequate facilities for dealing with pain. I assume that the best way of dealing with severe pain is in some level of palliative care. Yet, according to a recent article in the Globe and Mail, fewer than one in three Canadians have access to specialized hospice and end-of-life care.

According to the newly created Quality of Death Index, Canada ranks ninth among 40 countries in our provision of end-of-life care. (Britain is the best place to die.) It’s true we are renowned for our technical abilities – using medication and other such techniques as music therapy to lessen pain and suffering.

There are four principal reasons for Canada’s mediocre showing on end-of-life care, the Globe article says: It is poorly co-ordinated; it is expensive (many services and drugs needed at the end of life are not covered by medicare); patient-centered care is lacking (meaning the wishes of patients are not respected enough) and there is a shortage of policy leadership.

In Canada, about 240,000 people die each year. That will increase to 300,000 by 2021 and to 432,000 by 2041. The vast majority of Canadians die in old age. Two-thirds die of chronic illnesses such as cancer, cardiovascular disease, lung disease and illness associated with dementia.

Pain control is the most important issue for most dying patients. It is urgent that Canada develop a larger palliative-care network.

Patients should be able to expect, as an integral part of their health care, effective pain management, emotional and spiritual support, and comfort and care from compassionate and skilled people committed to honouring their dignity.

This scenario has been eloquently summed up by Dame Cecily Saunders, who spear-headed the modern palliative care movement: “We will do all we can not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die.”

A letter of thanks I was touched by Mr. Neil McKenty’s last article. His words were heartwarming because I have been devastated by the ugly, unkind, vilifying comments on my president (I have dual citizenship). The man has passed more legislation for the needy than any other president. — Geraldine Doucet

Obama pummeled from the Left and the Right

Neil McKenty

September, 2010

While holidaying in Maine this August, I managed to get in several rounds of golf. Since I was playing with strangers (except for two young students from Montreal), I took the opportunity to ask my fellow players how they felt about the current political situation in their country.

My first exchange stunned me. It was with a 40-year-old friendly chap whom I instinctively liked. I asked him what he thought about Obama. Like a sudden squall, his friendliness disappeared and his face darkened. “Obama,” he snapped. “I’ll tell you about Obama. He’s not a Christian, he’s not an American and his so-called election was illegitimate.”

Where do you go after a tirade like that? I quickly decided to keep my opinions to myself (I am still a big Obama supporter), stoically addressed my ball, and we continued our friendly game.

Sadly, my other encounters were no more fruitful. Every one of my erstwhile golfing friends in Maine said the economy was going to hell in a handbasket and that the crooks in Washington should be thrown out this November (presumably, although I didn’t say so out loud, to be replaced by another set of crooks).

I drew two conclusions from my golfing holiday in Maine: there is a great deal of genuine anger permeating the American electorate and a disproportionate amount of that anger is adhering to President Obama himself.

It is ironic, not to say unfair, that Obama is being pummelled from two sides, the Liberals and the Republicans. Other than saying no to all of Obama’s proposals, the GOP has no policies of its own except to cut taxes for the rich and reduce services to the poor.

What’s more the Republican party is being taken over by the extremists in its ranks, also known as the Tea Party. The tea-parties embody an attitude rather than a movement. They distrust all elites (including some in their own Republican party), they want smaller government and bigger defense and, when push comes to shove, they don’t believe a black man should be in the White House.

Let’s not beat around the bush here. A deep-seated racism runs through the Tea Party like a plague through a cornfield. Remember one of the heroes of the Tea Party is Glen Beck, the chief bomb-thrower at Fox News. Beck has said publicly, more than once, that Obama is a racist and he intensely dislikes white people. Well, the people in the all-white Tea Party intensely dislike Obama and they exhibit this by drawing a Hitler moustache on the President at their rallies.

In addition to Beck, the other big hero for the Tea Party is Sarah Palin who will have considerable influence on the elections this coming November. Palin is going around the country expending her considerable political capital by endorsing Tea Party candidates for the elections. When it comes to policy and which papers she reads, Sarah Palin makes George Bush look like a Rhodes scholar.

But when it comes to political muscle, Palin has lots and she is flexing it on behalf of the Tea Party. Fortunately for the Democrats some of the candidates put forward by the Tea Party are real nutters and will almost certainly lose in November. Take the case of the Democratic leader in the senate, Harry Reid, running for his senate seat in Nevada. Up till a few weeks ago, Reid was well behind. Then the Tea Party and Sarah Palin backed a woman for the GOP who wants to abolish the department of education, privatize Social Security and beef up the Pentagon. Now Reid is comfortably ahead.

So much for the Tea Party and the right wingers. President Obama is also besieged by the far left of his own party. Now you would think that left wing democrats would be as happy as clowns at a circuis. After all Obama passed the most comprehensive health care bill in a hundred years, adding 30 million people to the insurance rolls. He passed the toughest regulations on big business since the Great Depression. And he engineered the biggest job-stimulus bill ever.

But none of this seems enough for the Left. They argue that Obama caved on the Public health care option; that he has failed to regularize the situation of gays in the military; that the prison in Guantanomo Bay is still open and that the war in Afghanistan is getting worse.

So the president is caught in the midst of these warring factions. To the right he advocates big government and big spending and is very likely a closet socialist. To the left Obama has not used his congressional majorities to pass the liberal agenda they voted for in the first place.

And clouding all these calculations is the job picture. Almost 90 percent of Americans are not looking for jobs. But the 10 per cent who are constitute a political albatross dragging Obama and the democrats down in the polls. With the November elections now less than two months away, there is no question the tide of anti-incumbency is with the Republicans.

In fact, in off-year elections (where the presidency is not on the ballot), the party in power always loses seats. Some pundits are predicting a historic wipe-out. I think the democrats will lose seats in the Senate but not their majority. However, the Republicans might take the House of Representatives, in which case Nancy Pelosi would lose her job as speaker.

Other pundits are saying that Obama will be defeated in 2012 or that he will not even run for a second term. That is ludicrous. The fact is the Republican Party is even more unpopular than are the Democrats. And possible GOP candidates like Newt Gingrich or Sarah Palin will not intimidate Obama.

Furthermore I expect the president will make a major change in the democratic ticket for 2012.

Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden will change jobs. Obama-Clinton looks to me like a winning ticket.

Even in the hole, Canada trumps trading partners, but there is still work to do

Neil McKenty

July, 2010

One of our great prime ministers, Sir Wilfrid Laurier, reportedly said that the 20th century belonged to Canada. What would Laurier say today if he read the powerful numbers measuring Canada’s progress?

Consider the economy. Since July of last year, Canada has added more than 300,000 jobs. In May we added 25,000 jobs after piling up 109,000 in April. This brings the country’s unemployment rate down to 8.1 per cent, which is more than a full point better than the American rate.

The figures for Quebec are even better, at 7.9 per cent unemployment, which is below the national average, 8.1 per cent. Since last July, Quebec has added nearly 100,000 jobs.

The growth numbers from the Canadian economy are even more impressive. In the first quarter of 2010, the economy grew by 6.1 per cent. That’s on top of 4.9 per cent growth in the fourth quarter of last year – the two strongest consecutive trimesters in the last decade.

These figures show that the fundamentals of the Canadian economy are solid. Not only that, but Canada is in better economic shape than any other country of the G8. That applies even to the debt. Our debt at the end of the last fiscal year amounted to $47 billion, $6 billion less than Finance Minister Jim Flaherty forecast. So our national debt amounts to three per cent of GNP. That’s a lot less than some other heavyweights in the G8.

Look at the British deficit of $400 billion, 13 per cent of GDP. Or the American deficit of $1.6 trillion, which amounts to 10 per cent of GDP. Even in the hole, Canada is better off than our major trading partners.

And the rest of this year looks good. Private forecasters have raised their 2010 estimates for growth, saying the near-term outlook has “improved further” since a March survey. The inflation figures, too, are less worrisome.

Forecasters expect consumer price inflation of two per cent this year, well in line with the Bank of Canada’s target.

So what about Canada’s longer-term economic future? Some thoughts on that are outlined in a recent report called Open Canada, written by Edward Greenspon, formerly editor-in-chief of the Globe and Mail, who headed the panel that produced the report. The paper suggests that a once-in-a-century shift in world power is opening up a place for Canada on the world stage, but we have to step up and take it. The report points to a number of “game-changers” that have brought about that shift, including the relative economic decline in the United States; the growing economic role of China and India; an increasing global competition for resources, including energy, minerals, water and food; terrorism’s alteration of global security norms; and climate change.

“Open Canada has tremendous assets to achieve a global repositioning that advances our interests,” Greenspon writes. “What we lack are the strategies to leverage these interests to our best advantage. We need to get our policies right if we are going to situate ourselves in the sweet spot at the centre of global networks.”

This starts with smartening up about our love-hate relationship with the U.S. and becoming America’s indispensable ally, a pragmatic approach that does not have to mean marching in lockstep with Washington.

However, stepping up to the plate in Haiti and Afghanistan made Canada more relevant in the world and, by extension, Washington.

According to Greenspon, we must extend our networks around the world. “Canada can – indeed must – walk and chew gum at the same time. Most particularly, we need to be better friends with our best friend. And we need to make more friends in a world in which power, wealth and knowledge are accessible to all.”

The panel recommends that Canada invest in more innovation, find ways to make the oilsands environmentally friendly, and stop talking free trade while protecting our domestic producers with marketing boards.

Canada also needs to decide what our brand should be – clean energy superpower, international peacemaker and problem solver, Arctic power – and then work at becoming that thing.

The Open Canada report concludes: “We need to make a strong, credible and consistent case for the Canada we strive to be; otherwise we will allow others to define us – at best, as that nice country of little consequence, or at worst, as that dirty oil country or the little brother of the U.S. or that nation that clubs innocent baby seals. That is brand noise a country can do without.” On the basis of our strong economic performance – a vigorous recovery and solid banks – Canada held its head high at the recent G8 and G20 summits. Sir Wilfrid Laurier would be proud.

Time has come to re-examine first-past-the-post elections

Before the recent British election, there were three party leaders. After the election there were three party losers.

Labour leader Gordon Brown lost his government partly because he didn’t have a Clegg to stand on.

Lib-Dem leader Nick Clegg lost seats when all the polls said he would gain them. Conservative leader David Cameron lost a majority when the pundits said he should have won the election easily.

Although it is true the Tory leader has half the prime minister’s job, shared with Clegg, I would suggest that Cameron was the biggest loser. Facing a tired, dispirited Labour government that had been in power for 13 years and was headed by the unpopular and befuddled Brown, Cameron should have won in a walk. He came about 20 seats short of a majority.

This forced Cameron and the Tories to go to the Lib–Dems begging for their support. The analogy is not perfect, but can you imagine Stephen Harper, hat in hand, asking for the support of the NDP? Neither can I.

And make no mistake about it: The Tories have paid a high price for the Lib-Dems’ support. The more extreme or ideological parts of the Tory program will have to be tempered, in the interest of cabinet unity, by the more pragmatic and progressive influence of the Liberal Democrats.

For example, though the strongly euro-sceptical William Hague is the new foreign secretary, the fight with Brussels he was spoiling for before the election will have to be postponed. The government cannot do anything that Clegg, a strong pro-European who is Cameron’s deputy prime minister, cannot defend to his own backbenchers.

Any cuts in public services ordered by the new chancellor, George Osborne, will have to be such as can be defended by his Liberal Democrat rival and critic in opposition, Vince Cable, who also joins cabinet. The people most likely to be upset by this are on the right of the Tory party, for whom compromise of ideological principle is a very high price to pay for office.

Perhaps the Labour Party chose the better part by not pushing for a coalition with Clegg. Now Labour can recharge its batteries under a new leader, probably David Milliband, ready to pounce if and when the Cameron-Clegg government falls apart, as I predict it will in the next year or so over any number of issues, including deficit financing and the reform of the voting system.

In the run-up to the election, there was no more vexatious issue dividing the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats than voting reform. The Lib-Dems wanted it at all costs because, among other things, it would improve the chances of a third party winning more seats in a general election. Consider that in the recent elections the Lib-Dems got 23 per cent of the vote, but only nine per cent of the seats. The Tories did not want to touch reform with a barge pole because they argued rightly that it would militate against strong governments and condemn them to minority status forever. But it is the Tories who have had to put water in their wine. The government will apparently offer voters a referendum on a system of voting in general elections to replace the traditional first past the post, which is the system we have in Canada.

“Can you imagine Stephen Harper, hat in hand, asking for the support of the NDP? Neither can I.”

But the referendum that will be voted on in Britain is not for proportional representation as such.

(In Canada, three provinces have had referenda on proportional representation and all three have rejected it.)

The alternative vote is the system used by the House of Representatives in Australia. It works this way: The system allows voters to list their candidates in order of preference. Using the Canadian system, this would mean that if you liked the Conservative Party, you could vote for its candidate alone or you could vote for the Conservative as a first preference and then, say, the NDP.

If a candidate got 50 per cent of the vote or more, he or she would win. If not, the votes of the candidate who finished last would be redistributed, until a candidate got 50 per cent of first, second, or third preferences.

Discussing this method in the Globe and Mail, Jeffrey Simpson says it has four advantages. First, alternative vote gives voters something other than a black or white choice. Second, it moves a little toward matching total votes cast for a party with seats won. Third, it means that all MPs can say they received at least half the preferences, instead of in our system, in which many MPs garner fewer than half the votes. Fourth, it still usually produces a majority parliament (despite the fears of the British Tories).

Is it time for Canadians to look at Australia and Britain and modify our first-past-the-post system, which so distorts the relationship between votes cast and seats won?

Allegations of Vatican cover up of sexual abuse escalate

Neil McKenty

May, 2010

Scarcely a day goes by that the media do not carry another story on the priestly sexual abuse scandal enveloping the Catholic Church.

Now a bishop in Belgium has admitted to pedophilia and has resigned. Another bishop in Germany has submitted his resignation to Pope Benedict for the same reason.

Also, the pope has announced that the Vatican will take direct control of the Legionaries of Christ, a wealthy conservative confraternity of priests and seminarians whose superior, now deceased, has been discovered to have sexually abused young people, to have fathered two children and to have had several mistresses.

The Kansas-based National Catholic Reporter has been on this story since 1985. It reports that the senior Catholic bishop in Norway has resigned after confessing to sexual abuse of an altar boy 20 years ago.

Two new cases from the pope’s past have come to light. The first involves an Arizona priest who was accused of molesting children as far back as the 1970s. Allegations surfaced in the 1980s and the case was reported to then-Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1992. It took 12 years before the Arizona priest was defrocked in 2004. Critics see the long gap between accusation and penalty as another instance of a slow response from the Vatican.

The second case involves a priest from India who is accused of sexually molesting two teenage girls while working in Minnesota from 2004 to 2005. A prosecutor in Minnesota says she has been trying to extradite the priest from southern India to face the charges filed against him.

The priest returned to India when the allegations came to light in 2005. He works as a priest in the diocesan school office, handling administrative tasks. The priest has denied the charges and says he would be willing to return to the United States to clear his name. The American lawyer representing one of the priest’s alleged victims claims the Vatican has tried to keep the case quiet. “They kept it a secret because they were concerned about the protection of their reputation and not about the children who are at grave peril.”

Two other developments indicate how widespread is the crisis and how pressure is building on the Vatican and on the pope himself. In England, some are calling for the pope to be served with a criminal indictment when he visits the country in September.

This would happen under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which permits judges to issue arrest warrants for visitors accused of serious crimes, no matter where they live. In the same vein, former UN appeals court judge Geoffrey Robertson has called for the summoning of the pope before the International Criminal Court.

The veteran Vatican watcher, John Allen, says this is not just sensationalism. “The idea of an arrest warrant for the pope may not be as far-fetched as it sounds, given that all it takes is one activist judge willing to test the waters. That’s a scenario that becomes more likely as fresh revelations sour public opinion against the pope.

“To date, more than 10,000 people in Great Britain have reportedly signed a petition opposing the pope’s four-day visit, expected to cost tax-payers roughly $22.5 million.”

Meanwhile, two of the five victims of sexual abuse who met Benedict in Washington in April 2008 have announced plans for a massive gathering of victims and supporters in Rome in late October. The two men, Bernie McDaid and Olan Horne, hope to marshal 50,000 people in St. Peter’s Square. They also plan to invite the pope.

The two men are calling the event a Day of Reformation. They are aware of the provocative nature of that term in light of its 400-year historical association with Rome.

Furthermore, the scandal has spread to Italy. The media report that Italian civil authorities have investigated about 130 accusations of sexual abuse by priests against minors over the last decade, with arrests and convictions in several instances. According to press reports, not one of the cases was referred to the police by the local bishop.

The respected British Catholic journal The Tablet states that the scandal is so serious that “if any clear dereliction of duty on his (the pope’s) part is proven, there is nothing discreditable in calling for his resignation.”

Sadly for the Church of Rome, the scandal raises other questions about governance. More and more people, including Catholics, are beginning to see a Church where women are second-class citizens, homosexuality is seen as a disorder, and bishops lack accountability. Unless these anomalies are tackled – and soon – it is difficult to see how the pope can right the ship.

Repealing Obamacare legislation is no winning ticket for Republicans

Neil McKenty

April, 2010

If President Barack Obama never passes another piece of legislation, he will go down in the history books as the president who brought universal health care to the American people.

For more than a century, Democratic presidents like Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson had been trying for universal health care. They all failed until Obama found a way to reshape the country’s social welfare system. Obama delivered the goods and he delivered change to believe in.

This change will bring health insurance to 32 million Americans who now don’t have it. And that’s just the beginning: Starting this year, insurers are forbidden from placing lifetime dollar limits on policies, denying coverage to children because of pre-existing conditions and cancelling policies because someone gets sick. In 2014, insurers will be forbidden from denying coverage to people with medical problems or charging them more.

Not a single Republican voted for this health bill. The party of “No” has fought the legislation every step of the way. (It is fighting in the Senate as of press time.) The Grand Old Party has cozied up to the yahoos in the Tea Party movement to derail health care, if not now, then at election time.

Still, there is the odd conservative voice that rejects this knee-jerk opposition to health care or anything else that Obama tries to do. (Senator John McCain boasts that the Republicans will not support Obama on anything for the rest of this year.)

One conservative voice that I have a lot of time for is David Brooks, a columnist for the New York Times. Brooks is informed, balanced and knows that if the Tea Partiers take over the Republican Party, then the party is done. It is telling that in the runup to the November elections, the Tea Party is trying to back right-wingers who will try to knock off moderate Republicans. It they succeed, the GOP will become nothing but a Neanderthal rump.

Another conservative voice that I respect is that of our own David Frum, who lives in Washington. Frum is one of the very few on the right who think the Republicans all-out opposition to Obama’s health care bill has been a disaster. Instead of working with the Democrats for a bi-partisan bill, the Republicans decided to bring down the whole house of cards. They almost succeeded.

The Grand Old Party has cozied up to the yahoos in the Tea Party movement.

David Frum tries to explain the Republicans’ hysterical opposition to one of the great pieces of social legislation in American history: “There were leaders who would have liked to deal with Obama. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and on talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother?”

Yet the Republicans, egged on by the Tea Party, are determined to keep on fighting. They say they will make repeal of health care the centrepiece of their campaign for the off-year elections and argue the new health law is so unpopular that they will take back control of Congress.

It’s true that the party in power almost always loses seats in the off-year elections. And there is no doubt the Democrats will take a drop in the House of Representatives.

It would be a shame if Nancy Pelosi, the best speaker in American history, lost her majority. The chances of Republicans taking over the Senate is pretty much nil. Still, I hope the GOP goes all out against Obamacare this fall. I hope they promise to repeal it. How many votes would they get if they promised to repeal the law’s lower prescription drug prices? Would they argue that pre-existing conditions should prevent one from getting insurance? Would they try to bar children from using their parent’s insurance coverage? Would they repeal a cap on medical expenses? I don’t think repealing the health bill is a winning ticket for the Republicans. And when some of these health “goodies” kick in, I predict support for Obamacare will grow right across the country.

But suppose the Republicans won back both houses of Congress in November and proceeded to repeal the bill. Would Obama sign the repeal or veto it? Not much doubt there.

After a short break for the holidays, I hope the Obama administration will turn to tighter regulations on the financial industry. Then we can all watch the Republicans defend the bankers, investment dealers and hedge funds, the very people who got us into the financial mess in the first place.

Some of the pundits, especially on Fox, are predicting that Obama will be a one-term president. They also predicted his comprehensive health care would not pass. The Fox-bomb throwers will probably be as wrong on the first prediction as they were on the second.

The New York Times featured two stories on the priestly sex abuse scandal exploding across the Catholic world. For the first time, the sex scandal is beginning to envelop Pope Benedict himself. What did he know and when did he know it? A priest in Wisconsin, Lawrence Murphy, sexually abused upward of 200 boys at a school for the deaf. Catholic Church authorities in Milwaukee, including Archbishop Rembert Weakland, wrote to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who was in charge of dealing with abuse cases. Ratzinger did not respond.

Finally, canonical charges were brought against Murphy. He then wrote to Ratzinger, asking to be spared. Suddenly all action against him was halted. This scandal is the biggest crisis in the Church since the Reformation. Will the pope be able to lead the Church out of this quagmire? And if he cannot, will he resign? The jury is still out.

It's time to clear the air on euthanasia and assisted suicide

Neil McKenty

March, 2010

This fall the Charest government will consult Quebecers on euthanasia. Is it ever necessary? Is it morally wrong? Is it murder? Should it be a crime? Should doctors assist those who want to die?

These are a few of the knotty questions that must be faced in a discussion of euthanasia. Another involves the difference between euthanasia and assisted suicide. If another party performs the last act that intentionally causes a patient’s death, that constitutes euthanasia. For example, giving a patient a lethal injection of morphine or suffocating her with a pillow would be considered euthanasia.

On the other hand, assisted suicide has taken place. So it would be assisted suicide if some one swallows an overdose of drugs that has been provided by another person for the purpose of causing death. When a doctor provides the means to die, that is called doctor-assisted suicide.

There is a debate now raging in England on euthanasia and assisted suicide that is a foretaste of what Quebecers can expect this fall. Two cases illustrate some of the major issues.

The first case involved a mother named Kay Gilderdale. She was charged with the murder of her 31-year-old daughter, Lynne, who suffered from myalgic encephalomyelitis, also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. Lynn was paralyzed from the waist down, bedridden for 17 years, unable to swallow or speak, and communicated with her family through sign language.

Lynn dreaded losing what little dignity remained to her. She was in constant pain. Over the course of a year, she had written a long letter explaining why, and how much, she wanted to die.

The crisis came on a December night. Lynn tried to kill herself with morphine. She begged her mother to help her. Her mother did, then phoned their doctor to tell what she had done. She was charged with murder, but acquitted by a jury that heard of the countless times Lynn had asked her mother for help to die.

The other case ended differently. Frances Inglis administered a lethal dose of heroin to her son, Tom, who was in a persistent vegetative state after falling out of an ambulance. Inglis was found guilty of murder and sentenced to nine years in prison. One material difference in the two cases was that while Lynn had often expressed her wish to die – Tom had never done so.

These cases played out while the End of Life Assistance Bill was being introduced into Scotland’s parliament. The bill was introduced by Margo MacDonald, a highly respected politician who has Parkinson’s disease and has made it clear she does not want her husband prosecuted should she ask him to help her die.

“Dying is part of living,” she says. “It’ s the last act of your life, and if we accept the responsibility of how we live our lives, then I really fail to see where there is any demarcation of how we should die.”

Under MacDonald’s bill, assisted suicide would be available to anyone over 16 who is terminally ill or permanently physically incapacitated. It would not be available to those with dementia or other degenerative mental conditions. The suicide request must be made to a doctor and approved by a psychiatrist. This approval must be requested and accepted a second time after a “cooling off” period of 15 days. The bill also says the assisted suicide must be supervised by the approving doctor and that no one who stands to gain from the death can be involved. Close friends and family are not allowed to administer the lethal drug. MacDonald believes around 50 people a year would choose to die using this legislation.

Scottish Cardinal Keith O’Brien, a close friend of MacDonald, is opposed to her bill.

“How can Margo think like that?” he asked. “I love and respect her so much. Life is a gift from almighty god. If he can give it, he can take that gift from us. But we can’t say: ‘God, I am finished with it. I can’t cope with cancer or Parkinson’s.’”

The church also argues that such a law would threaten the weakest and most vulnerable in society. The British Medical Society opposes the bill on the ground that resources should be concentrated on palliative medicine and alleviating the suffering of the dying. Peter Saunders, a former surgeon and director of Care Not Killing, says the bill is well intentioned but dangerous, raising the possibility that some elderly or terminally ill people see it as a means of pressuring them to have an “assisted death.” A number of Church of Scotland ministers are supporting the bill. Doctors with religious or moral objections would not be obliged to help any patient take his or her own life.

What is going on in Britain and Scotland indicates some of the issues that will rise when the Quebec government consults the population on this subject next fall.

Morality and public health policy are at the heart of the controversy.

We are getting older, living longer and health care at the end of life is taking a disproportionate number of health care dollars. A full-scale public debate on all these issues will help clear the air.