“Not on my shift”

This, from NBC News, is very cool:

Brain surgeon walked six miles during snowstorm for emergency operation

by Becky Bratu, staff writer, NBC News

Not a snowstorm, a traffic jam or a daunting six-mile walk through fresh powder could stop an Alabama neurosurgeon from getting to the hospital where he was needed for emergency surgery.

Dr. Zenko Hrynkiw had to travel from Birmingham’s Brookwood Medical Center to Trinity Medical Center to perform the operation Tuesday, but a sudden snowstorm had snarled all traffic, with thousands of drivers getting stranded for hours.

Authorities in Alabama had declared a state of emergency only for the southern half of the state, leaving out hard-hit Birmingham and sending available equipment the other way.

Getting to the hospital by car would’ve been nearly impossible.

Instead, the neurosurgeon decided to make the trek by foot.

“It really wasn’t that big of a deal,” Hrynkiw said Thursday. “I walk a lot, so it wasn’t that big of a deal.”

He said he left Brookwood  around 10:45 a.m. ET — and by 12:45 p.m. he was already operating on the patient.

And the good doctor said he was even able to receive the patient’s CT scan via text message while walking toward the hospital.

The emergency surgery was for a traumatic brain injury and Hrynkiw is Trinity’s only brain surgeon, according to The Associated Press.

“He had a 90 percent chance of death,” Hrynkiw said. “If he didn’t have surgery, he’d be dead. It’s not going to happen on my shift,” he added.

“Without the surgery, the patient would have most likely died,” Steve Davis, charge nurse in the neuro-intensive care unit at Trinity, told the AP. “But he is doing well.”

Google Maps estimates the distance Hrynkiw walked at around six miles.

“This just speaks volumes to the dedication of the man,” Davis said. “When I saw him, all I could say is ‘you are a good man.’”

Video here.

Reading the signs of the times

The USSCB’s Labor Day 2013 statement:

The current [income] imbalances are not inevitable, but demand boldness in promoting a just economy that reduces inequality by creating jobs that pay a living wage and share with workers some profits of the company. It also requires ensuring a strong safety net for jobless workers and their families and those who are incapable of work. As individuals and families, as the Church, as community organizations, as businesses, as government, we all have a responsibility to promote the dignity of work and to honor workers’ rights.

Since the end of the Civil War, unions have been an important part of our economy because they provide protections for workers and more importantly a way for workers to participate in company decisions that affect them. Catholic teaching has consistently affirmed the right of workers to choose to form a union. The rise in income inequality has mirrored a decline in union membership. Unions, like all human institutions, are imperfect, and they must continue to reform themselves so they stay focused on the important issues of living wages and appropriate benefits, raising the minimum wage, stopping wage theft, standing up for safe and healthy working conditions, and other issues that promote the common good. The Church, in accord with her principles on the life and dignity of the human person, wishes to collaborate with unions in securing the rights and dignity of workers.

Private enterprises, at their best, create decent jobs, contribute to the common good, and pay just wages. Ethical and moral business leaders know that it is wrong to chase profits and success at the expense of workers’ dignity. They know that they have a vocation to build the kind of solidarity that honors the worker and the least among us. They remember that the economy is “for people.” They know that great harm results when they separate their faith or human values from their work as business leaders.

Full text here.

Pope Francis, yesterday, on the situation in Syria:

[B]rothers and sisters, I have decided to proclaim for the whole Church on 7 September next, the vigil of the birth of Mary, Queen of Peace, a day of fasting and prayer for peace in Syria, the Middle East, and throughout the world, and I also invite each person, including our fellow Christians, followers of other religions and all men of good will, to participate, in whatever way they can, in this initiative.

On 7 September, in Saint Peter’s Square, here, from 19:00 until 24:00, we will gather in prayer and in a spirit of penance, invoking God’s great gift of peace upon the beloved nation of Syria and upon each situation of conflict and violence around the world. Humanity needs to see these gestures of peace and to hear words of hope and peace! I ask all the local churches, in addition to fasting, that they gather to pray for this intention.

Let us ask Mary to help us to respond to violence, to conflict and to war, with the power of dialogue, reconciliation and love. She is our mother: may she help us to find peace; all of us are her children! Help us, Mary, to overcome this most difficult moment and to dedicate ourselves each day to building in every situation an authentic culture of encounter and peace.

Mary, Queen of Peace, pray for us! [Off-script: Let’s all say it together: Mary, Queen of Peace, pray for us!]

Full text here.

Theologians speak up on protecting the common good

Catching up after being at the GU conference I mentioned in the last post (which was quite good), I see that a few days ago, a group of more than 150 Catholic theologians from universities around the country offered “On All of Our Shoulders: A Catholic Call to Protect the Endangered Common Good.” It’s well worth a read.

Charles Camosy responds well to the question, “Is it partisan?”, here. It’s clear that these theologians would not have felt the need to issue this statement in the first place had some prominent American bishops not chosen, in recent months, to focus with laser-precision on certain issues, and with specific approaches to those issues, that put Republican politicians and policies in the best light possible. Camosy writes of “the context out of which this statement comes”:  “There is no confusion about how the views of Biden and other pro-choice Democrats line up with Church teaching. However, there is tremendous confusion about the matters of Catholic Social Doctrine brought up in ‘On All of Our Shoulders’ — and this is why we crafted and circulated it.”

“The moral measure of the budget”

In early March, the Chair of the USCCB’s Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development and the Chair of its Committee on International Justice and Peace sent a letter to Congress on the moral implications of the federal budget.  Nearly a month later, this letter deserves more attention than it has received. 

A snippet:

We offer the following moral criteria to guide difficult budgetary choices:

1. Every budget decision should be assessed by whether it protects or threatens human life and dignity. 

2. A central moral measure of any budget proposal is how it affects “the least of these” (Matthew 25). The needs of those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty should come first.

3. Government and other institutions have a shared responsibility to promote the common good of all, especially ordinary workers and families who struggle to live in dignity in difficult economic times.

Another:

The moral measure of this budget debate is not which party wins or which powerful interests prevail, but rather how those who are jobless, hungry, homeless or poor are treated. Their voices are too often missing in these debates, but they have the most compelling moral claim on our consciences and our common resources.

It’s a two-pager that’s well worth the ten minutes it’ll take for a close read. The letter is here, in .pdf form.

Ryan on the purpose of government

[It is probably impossible for anyone interested in addressing Catholic social teaching and its real life application to avoid talking politics. I have no intention of making this blog a partisan project. I don’t feel any strong loyalty to either major political party in the United States, and there’s no doubt in my mind that both of them fall far short of the ideals that Catholic social teaching presents, each in their own specific and significant ways.  I’m sure the shortcomings of both will come up here, and I’ll also address the more general issue of “being political” when it comes to talking Catholic social teaching in a post sometime. I felt the need to say it now, though, since this is the first post here that has a political tone to it.]

If a doctor doesn’t know she’s supposed to be healing people, her patients are in trouble.  If a teacher has somehow failed to realize that teaching kids is the point of the job, his students will be the losers. Similarly, one would hope that a politician would have a good understanding of the very purpose of government. Of course, being human, they all fall short of living out the principles at times. But having the wrong definition in mind to begin with is bound to lead to big problems.

A comment offered by Congressman Paul Ryan in defense of his controversial budget plan caught my eye yesterday.  Ryan, a Catholic, has been both praised and criticized for the way he proposes to shape the federal budget.  From a Catholic social teaching standpoint, in my opinion, it not only falls far short of the priorities a just and moral budget ought to reflect, but it works against many of those priorities. What caught my eye seems to help explain the shortcomings.

In a commentary Ryan offered in defense of his plan, he wrote, “Promoting the natural rights and the inherent dignity of the individual must be the central focus of all government policy.”

This is worth pointing out, especially because Ryan is Catholic; because he’s appealing to moral principles to defend his plan; and because it tells us how he sees his role as legislator.  Note the emphasis on “the individual” in this sentence. From a Catholic point of view, he is mistaken about the purpose of government, and the difference between what he says and the way the Church sees it is significant, because it reflects the very criticisms of the Ryan budget plan that so many have been offering.

In fact, the whole purpose of government, as the Church sees it, is the protection and the promotion of the common good. For example, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches,  “It is the role of the state to defend and promote the common good of civil society, its citizens, and intermediate bodies” (CCC 1910).  In his landmark 1963 encyclical on human rights, Pacem in Terris, Pope John XXIII wrote, “The attainment of the common good is the sole reason for the existence of civil authorities. In working for the common good, therefore, the authorities must obviously respect its nature, and at the same time adjust their legislation to meet the requirements of the given situation” (n. 54).

Many have argued that it is precisely this that the Ryan budget fails to do. See, for example, here and here.  [UPDATE:  Here and here, too.]

Ryan is right to invoke dignity, but the protection of dignity is inseparable from the common good. Indeed, ignoring the common good always undermines human dignity.

Whose dignity does Ryan have in mind? Which individuals is he looking out for?  If we revised his comment so that it makes reference to “the inherit dignity of all people in our nation,” could we say it with a straight face?

To anyone familiar with priorities of the Republican party these days, and the Ryan budget as an expression of it, it’s clear that the Congressman’s comments were intended to support individual enterprise and individual freedoms in the market.  These things are not bad in themselves.  But Ryan’s plan raises them to such a high priority that the common good suffers.  And other fundamental principles of a well-ordered and just society (as Catholic social teaching understands it), like solidarity and a preferential option for the poor, are nowhere in sight.