In defence of hospital Chaplains: Why the National Secular Society’s latest campaign will harm the most vulnerable
When my time finally comes, and I find myself in hospital dying from my abject failure to observe the Jamie Oliver list of approved lifestyle choices, I will have little interest in speaking with any hospital chaplains. As an atheist, I would probably gain little from speaking with somebody who believed I was about to pass into the after life. I could however, see myself making use of the councillors or therapists that hospitals have on call to assist the dying.
Thus I have no personal interest in opposing the National Secular Society’s latest campaign to get rid of government funding for hospital chaplaincies. Yet millions of my fellow Britons are in a situation opposite to my own. If you happen to believe in god, there is perhaps a limit to what you gain from a standardised secular counselling service. If , for example, you believe strongly in an afterlife, there is a limit to what you can gain from talking to a therapist or councillor who perceives matters of life and death in completely contrasting terms. Thus while I would be happy to have my psycological needs – and those of my hopefully atheist relatives – attended to by a well trained and hopefully atheist councillor, I can completely understand why hospital chaplaincy services are so well used.
The National Secular Society are calling for funding for chaplaincy services to be withdrawn. Instead, they argue that “if churches, mosques and temples wish to have representation in hospitals, they should do it at their own expense”. What this effectively means is that a hugely important service which is currently provided as a right would, in future, be dependent on religious charity. This may be OK for those who worship at the Church of England – with its enormous assets and millions of well healed parishioners – but for others the situation may be more hit and miss.
The NSS express outrage that these services cost the taxpayer £40 million. I must say that, spread over Britain’s population of 60 million people, this doesn’t strike me as an awful lot. Regardless of the fact that I am unlikely to ever use a hospital chaplain, I am happy to pay less than £1 a year to ensure that option is on the table for those who wish to use it. A religious person would describe this as looking after the spiritual needs of the dying. As somebody who doesn’t believe in the spiritual realm, I would see this as a good means of attending to an individuals emotional needs in a manner appropriate to them.
The real problem with the National Secular Society (NSS) is their desire to reduce services which often benefit from being deeply human, and indeed value laiden, into wage labour. Thus the NSS supported the suspension of nurse Caroline Petrie for the hideous crime offering to pray for a patient. I would have said “no thanks”. But I would not imagine that if she left her values, her deeply held feelings, and her perceptions of life and death at the door, and read from a list officially-approved comforting phrases, she would do her job better. NSS Leader Terry Sanderson, who gloated, after Petrie’s suspension was revoked, that she would now be forced to do her job “on her employers’ terms” perhaps thinks otherwise.
It is unfortunate that the NSS have effectively joined in with the cuts agenda. We should campaign for the NHS do its utmost to look after the well being of all in its care – even those who we happen to disagree with.
Reader Comments
When my time finally comes, and I find myself in hospital dying from my abject failure to observe the Jamie Oliver list of approved lifestyle choices…
Thanks for making me laugh aloud.:-)
Cheers dude, glad you appreciate:)
NSS a nest of embittered extremists? Who’d-a-thunk-it? This is a red herring in my book – the real issue is that counsellors should be professionally competent to deal with both theists and atheists.
(JPPS on NS platform, Brighton)
(This adolescent can consent to kill, but not to sex)
(The Abbeville Reds) (Built by the “Proletariat”)
(JPPS on NSS platform at Speakers’ Corner)
I read, last month, on the NSS blog, that the French “Libres Penseurs” (freethinkers) were organising a meeting at Abbeville, in France, to commemorate the martyrdom of François-Jean Lefebvre, Chevalier de La Barre, who was convicted of Blasphemy, by the “Parlement de Paris” (the chief judicial body, under the ancien régime), tortured and beheaded on 1st July 1766, in Abbeville. He was 19.
This was the last execution for blaphemy in France (In Britain, Thomas Aikenhead, was, in 1697, the last person to be executed for that offence; he was 21).
Although a Roman Catholic, I have always considered myself a secularist.
Indeed, I used to speak, every Sunday afternoon, on the NSS platform, at Speakers’ Corner, in the late 50′s and early 60′s.
I would occasionally chair the Sunday evening meetings, at the “Carpenter’s arms”, Marble Arch, -at the request of my old friend William McIlroy (the then General Secretary), and David H.Tribe, would often attend, at my place (10, Churton St.,Victoria), the evening meetings of the YOUNG SECULARISTS (which I founded in 1960).
David and I were often the guests (for Sunday lunch) of Len and Eva Ebury.
Len belonged to our team of Speakers (together with David and Jim Barker) -at Marble Arch, Tower Hill -and occasionaly in Brighton.
Finally, I published, at the time, several articles in THE FREETHINKER.
I therefore had no hesitation, in contacting the NSS and making a reservation for the “banquet” organised at Abbeville after the ceremony.
But lo and behold : having hardly stepped out of the train (after a tedious two hour journey), I suddenly realised I had been trapped !
The welcome committee (about 30 men, whose get-up was designed to avoid any mistake, concerning their social origins), started waving red flags but also red-and-black flags (anarcho-syndicalists), and escorted us to the “monument”, erected near the station in 1907, ad majorem proletarii gloriam (see inscription on photograph).
We then had to put up with half a dozen very boring speeches, made by representatives of marxist “freethinkers” -like free-mason Marc Blondel, ex-general secretary of Force Ouvrière, who started his speech with the old bolshevik stock phrase “Comrades, I bring you greetings from so-and-so (“je vous apporte le salut de…”); It was like being back in the days of Maurice Thorez…(who, incidentally, spent the four years of the German occupation…in Moscow), and the no less boring speech of Keith Porteus Wood, Managing Director of the NSS, whose french not being quite up to the mark, had requested a french version of Macbeth’s weird sisters (by the name of Christine Le Fur), to read it for him.
NSS President Terry Sanderson, kept quiet (probably saving his voice for the expected chanting).
Finally, it was over, and the 600 people present, started marching towards the Town Hall, where, 344 years ago, that poor youth had his tongue cut off, and was subsequently beheaded.
I joined the march, when suddenly, they all streched out their right arm and clenched their fist, in the old Stalinian style… and began to sing the “Internationale” !
That was a little too much for me, and I immediately stepped out of this unholy pageant and trotted off, by myself, to a niece little inn, near the Somme canal, where some traditional french food, helped me recover from
this altogether unexpected and particularly unpleasant experience.
What had happened to the National Secular Society I once knew ?
David Tribe was a personal friend of mine, and if he had been a communist (or a revolutionary syndicalist), I would have known.
As to Bill McIlroy (who worked at the GPO), if he was a Red, he certainly was very discreet about it !
Ditto for Len Ebury or Jim Barker.
Obviously, a process of politicization had been at work, within the NSS, since I left London, in August 1968… and I was totally unaware of it (the French weird sister should have warned me, as she is a specialist of the history of this organization -but of course, she is herself, as red as a poppy !).
However, I wasn’t only shocked by the political radicalization of the Secular Society, but also by the new rhetoric of its leaders, which I had spotted on secularism.org.uk, and that was made plain by Mr Porteus Wood’s speech (which, incidentally, had little to do with poor old de La Barre…) :
In the late old days, one of our favourite themes, in our weekly denunciation of the Roman Catholic Church, was the Holy Office of the Inquisition.
Week after week, not only did I inform my audience about the exquisite methods used by their personnel, during interrogations, but also, the minute I got off the platform (to make way for the next speaker), I would go and join the hecklers of the Catholic Evidence Guild, and ask Fr Michael Proudman, O.P., whether he had had any hesitation in joining a congregation founded by a certain Domenico Guzmàn, responsable for the death of more than a 100.000 Cathars (crusade against the Albigensis), as well as the 50.000 people burnt at the stake by the Inquisition.
To-day, the NSS seems to be concentrating its attacks on the old enemy, on just one theme : the prosecution of Catholic priest for pedophilia.
British critics of the new leadership of the NSS, have often stressed their very inadequate level of education.
In this particular matter, I wish to remind them that pedophilia concerns “children” (Greek paidos : child), and that 90% of the “victims” of Catholic priests, are adolescents.
One should in fact, talk of adophilia or ephebophilia.
Our twenty-first century witch hunters, consider adolescents to be mature enough, to partake in guerilla activities (…and maim or kill), but not sufficiently to consent -or not, to be “touched up” by an adult (whether he be priest or layman); as, indeed, there are very few actual cases of rape.
It has obviously not occurred to our present-day secularists that by making the Catholic Church (and the Anglican Church), their main targets, they are indirectly helping ISLAM to “take over”, so to speak, the land of free speech.
It has not occurred to them, that the already established 85 Sharia Courts of Britain will, much sooner than they expect, be sentencing “pedophiles”-and “ordinary” homosexuals, to whipping…or to death (as they do now, in Iran).
In their obsessional hatred of Christianity -and more particularly, of the Catholic Church, our leftist secularists, will have helped establishing in Britain,
the worst form of totalitarianism the world has ever know.
They will probably start realizing this when the jurisdiction of Sharia Courts is extended to non-Muslims.
But by this time it will be too late.
Jean-Pierre Pagès-Schweitzer
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
Jean-Pierre Pages-Schweitzer runs “Le Café-philo de droite” (http://cafephilodedroite.blogspot.com/, as linked on his name above), which exists to promote what it calls “the union of patriots” – sorry, “UNION OF PATRIOTS”. He’s the self-described link between all elements of the nationalist right in France.
One wonders why he has chosen a left-wing blog like The Third Estate to promote his nutty right-wing paranoid delusions.
Probably everybody to the left of Le Pen looks like a communist to Pages-Schweitzer.
Dan
Reuben,
I think it’s a shame that you’ve bought the Daily Mail line on Caroline Petrie. She was suspended because she broke the code of conduct. The code of conduct said that professionals shouldn’t use their privileged position to promote their personal beliefs. I’d be prepared to discuss how contraventions of that should be dealt with, with due regard for free speech, but the provision itself seems absolutely fair enough. Or perhaps you think that all public professionals should be free to proselytise on the job? Is that really what you want?
The NSS position on chaplains is a fairly basic secularist one. Here we have a situation where the state pays for priests. Is it so surprising that a secularist organisation would oppose that? I mean that the opposition to paying for priests is not primarily based on a philosophical/theological disagreement, but on a particular vision of how the relationship between the state and organised religion should be organised.
Why not talk about the principle at stake?
Dan