Author Archives: Fred Yi

Organ Donation

Posted on by

 

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: It’s early morning at Washington Hospital Center and time for a quick prayer before Flavia Walton heads into surgery. For eight years, Flavia’s husband, Bill, has had severe kidney disease, and Flavia is donating a kidney. But her kidney isn’t going to Bill. They weren’t compatible enough—at least when it came to kidneys. So Bill had to be put on the transplant list.

BILL WALTON: You are placed on the list, and then the wait begins, and it goes on and on and on, and your only hope is you can check the list on the Internet and see if the numbers are getting any smaller. But they never do.

LAWTON: Then Bill and Flavia heard about a program known as a paired kidney exchange, where Flavia could donate her kidney to somebody else, and in exchange Bill would get a kidney from another donor who was a perfect match.

BILL WALTON: Bottom line here is you’ve got to give one to get one.

post07-organdonationLAWTON: The Waltons were part of the world’s largest kidney swap to date, sponsored by Washington Hospital Center and Georgetown University Hospital. It involved a complex chain of 28 surgeries at four different hospitals. Most of the donors gave a kidney in order to benefit a friend or family member. But a couple of donors did it out of a sense of altruism, with no particular recipient in mind. In the end 14 patients who had been particularly hard to match received kidney transplants. The donors and recipients were introduced to each other at an emotional news conference.

RALPH WOLFE (kidney donor speaking at press conference): I love this guy. I don’t even know him, but I love him.

GARY JOHNSON (kidney recipient speaking at press conference): You can’t imagine how fortunate I feel that somebody from somewhere in the universe came and gave me a kidney.

FLAVIA WALTON (speaking at press conference): To see someone that you love most in the world deteriorate is a sense of helplessness and powerlessness that you just cannot comprehend unless you’ve been there. But to be able to do something is so empowering, but it is such a blessing.

LAWTON: More than 100,000 Americans are currently on the waiting list for an organ transplant, the vast majority of them waiting for a kidney. Over the last decade, an estimated 60,000 people died while still waiting for a transplant. Given those numbers, many experts say there is a moral obligation to encourage more people to become organ donors.

post04-organdonationPROFESSOR ROBERT VEATCH (Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown University): Just a little nudge would do enormous amounts of good in terms of saving lives and making sick people’s lives better.

LAWTON: The incentive for Flavia Walton to become an organ donor was clearly to benefit her husband of 42 years.

FLAVIA WALTON: If God could give his son for me, or for us, I could certainly give a kidney to keep someone else alive. And I certainly want to keep him around as long as possible. I don’t know if he wants to keep me around that much longer.

BILL WALTON: No, I got no complaints.

FLAVIA: Okay, okay. But no, it was not a hard decision at all.

LAWTON: Living donors are screened psychologically to ensure they are not being unduly pressured into the surgery. It is major surgery, but because of medical advances the risks to the donors are quite low. Because of these factors, Professor Veatch at Georgetown University’s Kennedy Institute of Ethics says there are few ethical problems with kidney swaps such as the one the Waltons were part of.

VEATCH: If we can get a living donor we get a better kidney, a more viable kidney, and it shows up in the survival-rate statistics.

post02-organdonationLAWTON: His main ethical concern with the swaps is making sure that kidney patients without a loved one willing to donate are not pushed lower on the waiting list, particularly those with hard-to-match blood types.

VEATCH: We at least want to be fair with the people on the wait list who don’t have a family member available. Being fair might mean waiting a trivial extra amount of time, but we certainly don’t want to make those people wait years extra just because of the swap arrangements.

LAWTON: While the swap program has been successful, some other strategies to encourage organ donation have run into roadblocks because of the National Organ Transplant Act, which forbids any monetary compensation for organ donation. Twenty-five years ago, Veatch testified in support of that law, but he’s now urging that it be revisited. He’s calling for experimentation with some token financial incentives. For example, he would support a modest discount on driver’s license renewals for people who sign up to be organ donors. Or, he says, there could be a question on income tax returns asking people to be donors, and even offering a tax deduction for those who say yes.

VEATCH: It sort of taints the altruism of organ donation. On the other hand, real human lives are at stake here, and I would be willing to compromise the altruism at the margins if we can really save some lives.

post05-organdonationLAWTON: Veatch also says the religious community should do more to promote organ donation.

VEATCH: It’s considered an altruistic, charitable act, and all the major religions look favorably upon that behavior.

LAWTON: Veatch tries to counter one theological concern he hears among some conservative Christians, especially in the black church, who believe individuals will be bodily resurrected in the end times, and therefore they worry about the implications of organ donation.

VEATCH: The doctrine is when you are resurrected you will be resurrected to look like you, but with all the bad stuff fixed. So if you had cancer, the cancer won’t be there, and if organs had been procured, or consumed by fire, you will get a new version of the body.

LAWTON: Flavia Walton, who is a member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church, says she tries to address that theological issue in her community as well.

FLAVIA WALTON: I think that there’s some notion or some belief among many that feel that when we meet our maker, we have to meet our maker all in one piece. For me, it means I just want to meet the maker. I don’t think the maker cares whether I’m all in one piece or not. I don’t think that’s the issue.

post06-organdonationLAWTON: The Waltons say organ donation is of particular concern to African Americans because more than 60 percent of patients who need transplants are non-white. At the same time, African Americans have a disproportionately low rate of organ donation. The Waltons hope their story can help change that.

BILL WALTON: Exposure is key, and the more we can expose to that population that it works and we’re examples of that, the more emphasis we can get out there that spread the word and let’s proceed.

LAWTON: After two years on dialysis, Bill says he can’t believe how great he feels now. He says the gift of someone else’s kidney has meant everything to him.

BILL WALTON: Life, basically. You can’t get any more basic than that—life with a little ginger thrown in, because it’s a life that is much more comfortable than what I had.

LAWTON: Flavia says donating a kidney turned out to be a spiritual experience for her, definitely worth the short time she spent recovering from surgery.

FLAVIA WALTON: Just feeling good that I’ve been able to do something and that hopefully I’ll be able to make a difference not only in the life of the recipient of my kidney, but hopefully it’ll spread, and hopefully I’ll be able to make a difference in helping other people make a decision to make a difference in the lives of others.

LAWTON: And as politicians and ethicists wrestle over how to encourage more organ donations, the Waltons hope stories like theirs will be the best incentive of all.

I’m Kim Lawton in Washington.

Defiant Requiem: Verdi at Terezin

Posted on by

 

MURRY SIDLIN (speaking to singers): Every note. Get inside of every note. Inside of every note.

BOB FAW, correspondent: In a Washington, DC church an impassioned conductor implores his choir.

SIDLIN: Don’t move, don’t move. Very nice. What you’re doing is very nice, and there’s no room for that. It has to be extraordinary—the sort of thing that you will remember all of your lives.

FAW: Whenever he can Murry Sidlin urges them to do more, because what they are rehearsing, what they are trying to commemorate, is another performance by another choir in horrific circumstances: Jewish prisoners in a Nazi concentration camp.

SIDLIN (speaking to singers): To us it’s just damn words. They leave the rehearsal and walk over bodies to get back to their barracks. We cannot be indifferent.

post01-defiantrequiemFAW: This music, Verdi’s lyrical Mass for the dead, is a full-throated testament to the majesty and judgment of God, profound even in this rehearsal at Washington’s Kennedy Center. But it was perhaps never more powerful or poignant than its performance on June 23, 1944 in the concentration camp, Terezin, just outside Prague. When Jewish prisoners sang the requiem to their Nazi captors, that Catholic Mass, says Terezin survivor Vera Schiff, gave prisoners a way to defy the Nazis.

VERA SCHIFF: The text of the Latin prayers suggests that we all will be judged by the Almighty, and this will include the Germans. That was a promise. That the day will come in which we all will be facing the final judge, and that gave us a great deal of satisfaction and hope.

SIDLIN: It was cathartic, therapeutic, and important for them to remain dignified. They responded to the worst of mankind with the best of mankind. This is our way of fighting back.

FAW: In the cold, filth, and misery of a camp like this, a Romanian-born conductor, Rafael Schaechter, gathered 150 fellow prisoners, and in a dank basement with just one score and a broken piano taught them by rote Verdi’s sublime work. Choir member Edgar Krasa says Schaechter was extraordinary.

post02-defiantrequiemEDGAR KRASA: Socially he was a wonderful person, but once he sat behind the piano he was a real tyrant.

SIDLIN: The survivors who sang in this chorus say—said to me that when he started work on the requiem, and this is a quote, “he was like a crazed man on a mission.” He began to say things to them such as, “We can sing to them what we cannot say to them.”

FAW: Through the words in this Catholic liturgy, a Jewish chorus could stand up to the Nazis by letting them know what ultimately matters. Nazi propaganda films were made at Terezin to give the false impression Jews were happy there, well fed and cared for. When officials from the International Red Cross visited, things were spruced up even more. The Nazis asked Rafael Schaechter to perform that requiem for their guests. They probably couldn’t understand the Mass sung in Latin, but Schaechter and his choir understood exactly what they were doing.

SIDLIN: Here I can really make a difference—and not to all mankind. To myself, to my friends, to my colleagues, to my family I can make a difference. I can sing what I can’t say. I can respond in the best possible way to the unspeakable horror in which I find myself.

FAW: Performers could be deported to the gas chambers at Auschwitz, warned Jewish elders in the camp, if the Nazis understood the lyrics. So Schaechter gave his chorus a choice.

post03-defiantrequiemKRASA: He told us about the danger and said if you—whoever is afraid, there is the door, and you can go. Nobody left.

FAW: No one left?

KRASA: No.

FAW: The lyrics of the requiem and their hidden meaning were the source of the prisoners’ defiance. The second and longest movement, for example, tells of the day of wrath—Dies Irae: “The day of wrath, that day will dissolve the world in ashes. How great will be the terror when the judge comes” is how the Latin is translated.

SIDLIN: It’s very simple. God’s in charge of humanity, and if anybody fools around with that they’re going to hear from God.

FAW: Or take the final section—Libera Me.

SIDLIN: “Liberate me eternally from eternal death.” Terazín was eternal death. Through this music they found the mechanism by which they could sing to God with assurance that God’s presence is with them, and so I think they found in this work a spiritual reawakening or a spiritual reassurance.

post05-defiantrequiemFAW: The singing of Verdi at Terezin had a profound impact on the prisoners and singers, like survivor Marianka Zadikow-May, speaking recently at a symposium.

MARIANKA ZADIKOW-MAY: We wanted to be liberated and just hope that there is a loving Hashem in heaven who will hear you and liberate you.

FAW: In the wretched camp, says survivor Vera Schiff, Verdi’s requiem was a lifeline.

SCHIFF: It was part of the defiance, to keep up our spirits, to keep us in a frame of mind you want to live, you want to live another day. That was helping over the hunger, over the illnesses and deprivation, and that carries you a long way under the circumstances when we feared for our life day by day.

KRASA: We felt great because otherwise we had no opportunity to show the Nazis that we don’t, we’re not afraid of them.

FAW: Schaechter conducted Verdi’s Requiem 16 times at Terezin. After the final 1944 performance, he and most of the chorus were shipped off to the gas chambers at Auschwitz. For the few survivors, remembering brings pain and pride.

SCHIFF: I think it brings back twofold emotions: the emotion of course of sadness, because in my case I’ve lost all my entire family. But simultaneously I think I find that it was a great achievement of what people can do under unimaginable circumstances.

SIDLIN: This was not commemorating death. It was commemorating the beauty and importance of life.

FAW: When the requiem ends in the multimedia concert Murry Sidlin created to commemorate Terezin, the mournful wail of a train whistle sounds, and as the audience watches film of Jewish prisoners being transported to Nazi crematoriums, one solo violin plays an ancient Jewish song which the condemned sang on their way to death—a haunting tribute to Terezin, where in defiance there was affirmation, indeed a kind of triumph.

For Religion & Ethics Newsweekly this is Bob Faw in Washington.

Remembering Jewish Military Chaplains

Posted on by

This week Congress authorized a new memorial at Arlington National Cemetery for 13 fallen Jewish military chaplains. There are three existing memorials on Arlington’s Chaplains Hill: one for Catholic chaplains, one for Protestant chaplains, and one to honor chaplains killed during World War I. For more than three years, a coalition has worked to get congressional approval for a monument to Jewish chaplains. We spoke with Rear Admiral Harold L. Robinson, a rabbi and former chaplain, and William Daroff, vice president for public policy and director of the Washington office of the Jewish Federations of North America, about the importance of recognizing Jewish chaplains and the interfaith nature of the military chaplaincy. Photographs courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish Military History in Washington, DC. As told to associate news producer Julie Mashack. Edited by Patti Jette Hanley.

 

Children’s Hospice Doctor

Posted on by

 

DR. JAMES OLESKE (University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey): I don’t have a big lap like Santa. Do you like that rabbit? That’s yours. It’s a purple rabbit. That’s purple. Alright, I was told that three times he was in the ICU?

In the US we’ve been mostly concentrating on curing every child. We’re not going to let a child die. Now that’s a great challenge to motivate by, but the ones we can’t cure we just wash our hands and move on, and they’re left to their, by themselves.

Balloons! I guess this is part of our play therapy.

I went into pediatrics because I loved children, and I thought I would help children, and I wasn’t prepared to go to funerals, so many at least, in the beginning of my career. My teeth were cut on all the AIDS kids I took care of, and kids would come in, you know, with all their baby teeth were blackened down to the gum line. They’d have abscesses, and their thrush was so bad it would make it impossible for them to swallow or eat. So then you have an infant….In the beginning of the epidemic, when people were initially afraid, people who had AIDS and who were dying—they were left alone. Everyone shuns you, even your doctor. In that era I would reach my hand through the bars, because kids are always in these cages, and just hold their hand or leg and just, I guess, in my own way pray and hope and wish and lay hands on.

post01-childrensdoctorOne of the reasons I’ve gotten into the Circle of Life and palliative and pain management is that I saw what a bad job I did in AIDS—very painful disease, and I wasn’t aggressive in the beginning. I am now, but I learned. One of the patients I learned from was Quinetta. She had a tumor throughout her GI tract, and the only way she could relieve her pain, because I wasn’t giving her enough morphine, was to sit in bed scooched over and rocking, and somehow that helped her pain, I guess. When she died, I went in to talk to her grandmother, who I was very close with. I went into the room to tell her, and the next thing I know I’m in her arms crying, and she’s comforting me.

I just wanted to point out to the medical students that pain management and what I like to call palliative care in chronic diseases is not just taking care of children who are dying and end of life care like hospice. This is a much more long-term approach to how we improve the lives of children, and pain management has not been a great success by pediatricians in the past. I mean, we’ve been afraid to use drugs that really control pain and have undertreated pain for such a long period of time.

Less than 1 percent of patients with chronic illnesses ever get addicted and use drugs for drugs’ sake use. Ninety-nine percent of them never happen. So what we do is we don’t treat the 99 percent because we’re worried about this 1 percent, and it’s crazy. So for children it’s even more of an argument you have to make because people, “you’re going to make them addicts.” We’re not going to make them addicts.

post03-childrensdoctorMedical Student: She’s a 12-month-old female who has a history of MRSA positive abscess, who was readmitted on Sunday and started on a five-day course of antibiotics. She’s been doing well. She’s been afebrile the entire time.

Dr. Oleske: And we can take that nasty old IV out.

Medical Student: Yes, since she’s done with her antibiotics it can come out.

Dr. Oleske: Great. I’m going to give you this rabbit so you have two of them.

What the Circle of Life is all about is any child with a chronic illness that’s causing pain to be as aggressive with the pain management as you are with treating whatever the disease the child has so that when they do live longer it’s quality of life, and when the children are ready to go on Circle of Life is also committed to helping families deal with that dying process.

And we’re struggling. We have two non-paid physicians, we have two paid nurses, a half-time bereavement counselor, and yet we’ve been able to service so many families in New Jersey and make a difference.

Mr. Schorbel: Dr. Oleske, how are you? It’s good to see you. We’re glad you’re here.

Dr. Oleske: You know she is my favorite patient.

post05-childrensdoctorMrs. Schorbel: I know.

Dr. Oleske: I’m not supposed to say that.

I already had a group of patients that I think needed and would benefit from palliative care. One of them was my favorite patient of all times, Leann Schorbel.

Dr. Oleske: Is that light too much?

Leann was a special person. She sort of arrested, if you will, her mental and physical growth because of an endocrine problem she had, added to the GI problem she had…

Dr. Oleske: Two times in one week, huh?

…added to the immunology problem she had, added to the anatomical, ventricular, brain and blood supply system that she had. I almost wonder how she survived.

Dr. Oleske: If you were closer I’d come and draw your blood like I used to.

And I sort of grew up with Leann over the 25 years I’ve known her, trying to treat her immune deficiency.

Dr. Oleske: Well, you know that the specialist at the hospital should be able to draw blood. I’m not the only person that can do that.

post06-childrensdoctorLeann Schorbel: Yes, you are!

Mrs. Schorbel: Circle of Life will keep her at home. That’s what we need, and that’s the people that we want to be here. It keeps her surrounded by the things that she loves and still not feeling well it keeps us as a family together. We’re not separated because when you’re in the hospital you’re totally separated.

Mrs. Schorbel to Leann: There was one person that you like that was on it, and who was that?

Leann Schorbel: Justin Bieber.

Mrs. Schorbel: She knows that mommy and daddy are with her and that the people that will come in to help her are loving people that are very gentle and kind and they are going to respect what makes her feel good and they are not going to scare her.

Dr. Oleske to mother on ward: This baby looks really beautiful…

If you look at the history of Islam and the Prophet Muhammad, he made statements like doing good, kind act to others is important, but relieving the suffering of others the reward is God. And if you look at the Christian ethics, you have Christ saying, “Suffer the little children unto me.” It reminded me of the AIDS kids, you know. Christ, if he was here, he would have embraced the AIDS kids. He wouldn’t have said, ugh, I don’t want to get this disease. He wouldn’t have put on a gown and mask and gloves. He would have embraced them.

Dr. Oleske to nurse: So you want to tell me a little bit about the baby…

post07-childrensdoctorNurse: This baby is 20 days old.

Our role as physicians, as healers, is to relieve pain and suffering and to also meet the spiritual needs of the families and children. That doesn’t mean that you take on the role of their religious advisors but that, first of all, you respect what their religious and spiritual beliefs are, and I think it’s important for physicians to have some type of spiritual bedrock if they’re going to do this.

Nurse: We can dim the lights according to the time of the day.

When I was first in AIDS people would interview me and say you’re a pioneer, and I never knew what that meant. Did I carry a fork and I had overalls on? But maybe, in a way, Circle of Life is a little pioneering, but I’m hoping that instead of just being a pioneer we end up being the standard of care…

Dr. Oleske to patient: You have my bunny! I have the same one. We match!

…that what Circle of Life does is done for every child in New Jersey…

Dr. Oleske: This is a very beautiful young girl, mommy…

…every child in the United States, and internationally.

Voodoo

Posted on by

 

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: It’s about midnight, the first of November, known in the world of Voodoo as the Day of the Dead—a time to visit a cemetery and the spirits of those who have moved on. This is New Orleans, and the Voodoo priestess leading the celebration is Sallie Ann Glassman.

SALLIE ANN GLASSMAN: We all have loved ones who have passed, and what a comfort to be able to visit with them and to know that they are there with you and to be able to tell them that you love them and know that your message is received and just be in their presence again. It’s a tremendous comfort.

SEVERSON: It’s been a long evening, starting with the ritual dancing, the beat of the drums—Sallie Ann in her element. There are other Voodoo priestesses in New Orleans, but she is one of the most popular, one of the most unlikely—a Jewish girl from Maine who says she knew as a child that there was something different about her.

post01-voodooGLASSMAN: I started to put things together and realized that particularly adults were a little taken aback by me, and they really seemed a little afraid of me, and then I started realizing I knew more about them than they were telling me.

SEVERSON: Those outside the Voodoo realm seem to have always been afraid of it. She thinks she knows why.

GLASSMAN: I think when you ask questions about why is Voodoo so vilified the clearest answer I can give you is that Voodoo recognizes an invisible world of great power and of spiritual power and that the surface reality is really just the surface of things. There is a vaster, more beautiful world going on inside, throughout, above, beyond, within all of that.

SEVERSON: A majority of the Voodoo practitioners are women, and many are Catholic, according to Martha Ward, a professor of anthropology at the University of New Orleans. She wrote a book on the queen priestess of them all in New Orleans, who was actually two women with the same name, a mother and daughter, each known as Marie Laveau.

PROFESSOR MARTHA WARD: They were good Catholics. They were married and buried within Catholic traditions.

post02-voodooSEVERSON: And there are other similarities, she says.

WARD: Catholics have a lot of saints. They lose something so they have a saint for losing something. They have a saint for battered women. Whatever you want, there’s a saint that will specifically help you.

SEVERSON: In Voodoo they’re called spirits, the spirits of ancestors.

GLASSMAN: There are all these myriad spirits that are really intermediaries, and first I should say that there is a supreme deity in Voodoo. There is a God called Bon Dieu. But in between God and humanity are these thousands of spirits. Maybe one time you’re possessed by Ogoun, the warrior spirit, and another time you’re possessed by Erzulie Freda, and you see the world through rose-colored glasses.

KAREN JEFFRIES: When I look at Voodoo, I see this is a group of spirits that are there to help us in everyday life.

SEVERSON: Karen Jefferies moved to New Orleans after divorcing her husband, a Lutheran minister. She says she grew up in a fundamentalist Christian home.

JEFFRIES: Christ is still my foundation of spirituality, but then I find that Voodoo acknowledges another spiritual realm.

SEVERSON: She now owns a bed and breakfast in the French Quarter.

post03-voodooJEFFRIES: Shortly after I purchased this house I heard about a Voodoo ceremony for the protection against hurricanes, so I went and out of curiosity it was really fascinating to me. So I ended up going back to all the bigger public ceremonies that Sallie Ann Glassman would hold.

SEVERSON: As the celebration of the Day of the Dead danced on, there seemed to be a discernable change in Sallie Ann’s countenance.

GLASSMAN: There are different levels of possession that a person can experience, and when I go into that kind of a state I have no idea what’s happened. I just know that when I come out of it people are looking at me funny, and then I’m in a different place than I was before.

SEVERSON: Sallie Ann says she has been accused of casting spells on people, something she says she wouldn’t do even if she could. She says using black magic can be risky business. Professor Ward says cursing someone in Voodoo, such as sticking pins in dolls, is not something to fool around with.

WARD: All religions are used that way, period, full stop. I’ve done it and you’ve done it. Have you ever cursed somebody? We’re all capable of bringing mild to big curses on others. In Voodoo, what goes around comes around, and if I curse you, I’ll get fixed.

SEVERSON: She describes Voodoo as a religion that can be shared with other religions. In New Orleans, back in the early 1800s, Voodoo was the widely accepted religion among slaves, until the slave uprising that threatened white slave owners.

post04-voodooGLASSMAN: If you were a slave living in captivity and hard labor, and your prospects were certainly very limited, this belief in an invisible world of great spiritual power would certainly be empowering, and if you were a slave owner intent on keeping a people down, oppressing them, and this belief would be terrifying and disturbing, and instead of saying that the situation or the institution of slavery was this terrible evil, it was much easier to say these people are evil and we’re just keeping them contained.

WARD: They said “slave rebellions” like the same way we say “crime.” They were terrified. Voodoo went from being an ordinary, accepted thing to a demonized, stigmatized, racialized, sexualized white ideology.

SEVERSON: Sallie Ann says she knows what it’s like to be called evil.

GLASSMAN: And I’ll say to them how can you possibly think that it’s alright to call me evil? How can you think that? I’ve certainly been called a witch, sometimes a good witch, sometimes a bad witch. I’m not a witch. I’m just a person like anybody else.

SEVERSON: But she’s not just anybody else when she walks through the neighborhood. Everyone seems to know her and like her.

GLASSMAN: Being a priestess is a demanding job, and I say job lightly because it doesn’t pay. People come to me and need things. They need help. I’ll try to be a mediary between these individuals and help them to those crossroads where human prayer meets spiritual presence and do all kinds of healings.

post05-voodooWARD: Sally has worked tirelessly here in the community. She makes the streets safer because that’s something the spirits can help us do if we ask them—make our streets and neighborhoods safe for us. Help people put on roofs after Katrina.

SEVERSON: The priestess says the spirits have always protected New Orleans from hurricanes, and Katrina would have been worse if the spirits hadn’t intervened.

GLASSMAN: As it happened, Katrina did not hit us over the head. It did turn to the east, and it did downgrade from a Category 5 to I think it was a Category 3 or lower when it hit, and it wasn’t the hurricane that kicked our butts. You have to spend a little time taking care of your environment or you’re going to get hurt.

SEVERSON: After Katrina she spearheaded the drive to build this multimillion-dollar health and healing community center to help those struggling to rebuild their lives, both physically and spiritually. Still, she says, there are people who say it’s not a good idea to have a Voodoo priestess involved in such a public project.

GLASSMAN: But I always say to myself, you know, Voodoo’s early ancestors endured slavery and captivity, and they kept their beliefs alive. Who am I to be upset over having to defend a practice? Who am I to say I can’t handle this?

SEVERSON: It seems improbable that Voodoo will ever be widely regarded as anything but scary and dark and, in Sally Ann’s view, misunderstood.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in New Orleans.

Roméo Dallaire on Libya

Posted on by

As debate grows over US involvement in NATO’s intervention in the Libyan civil war, watch an excerpt about Libya from our May 23 interview with the force commander of the UN Assistance Mission to Rwanda in 1993-1994 and the author of “Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda.” His most recent book is “They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children: The Global Quest to Eradicate the Use of Child Soldiers.”

 

New Report on Catholic Sex Abuse Crisis

Posted on by

 

BOB ABERNETHY, host: A highly anticipated report on the causes of the clergy sex abuse crisis in the US Roman Catholic Church was released this week by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. The lead researcher said no one factor was responsible for the actions of the priests. Both celibacy and homosexuality were ruled out as causes. Instead, researchers found that priests were influenced by societal changes during the 1960s and 1970s, what they called an increase in “deviant behavior.” Several victims groups denounced the report, saying it does not place enough blame on the bishops who covered up abuse.

We discuss the report and the reaction to it with Kevin Eckstrom, editor of Religion News Service, and Kim Lawton, the managing editor of this program. Kim, is it the case that the report has something in it to make everybody unhappy?

KIM LAWTON (Managing Editor, Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly): Well, a little bit. When this crisis here in the United States really hit a boiling point in 2002, a lot liberals in the church said, well, the problem is this all-male priesthood and enforced celibacy, and that’s creating the problem. A lot of conservatives said it’s homosexuality and gay priests and that’s the problem. And this report said it’s not either one of those. But the report did say the social upheaval in the 60s and 70s, and there were critics who didn’t like that sort of blame-it-all-on-Woodstock idea. The report said that in seminaries priests weren’t being trained to handle the new sexual mores of the United States at that time, and there was a lot of stress, and that generated the problem, but that makes a lot of critics frustrated because they say it makes it a sociological problem and not a systematic problem and a spiritual problem within the Church.

John Jay College report on Catholic church sex abuseABERNETHY: And the fact is, Kevin, the abuses happened, whatever the causes.

KEVIN ECKSTROM (Editor, Religion News Service): That’s right. Whether it’s gay priests or celibacy or anything else, the fact is that this happened within in a very particular institution, the Catholic Church, that was incapable for 50 or 60 years of really handling this problem and dealing with it in an effective way, and a lot of times what they did was they shuffled it off to the side, or they said, oh, well, this isn’t really that big of a deal, or we can reassign this problematic priest somewhere else, and this— the way that this problem was handled did not happen in the same way in, say, public schools or boy scouts or whatever. So I think the bishops to their credit and the church to its credit gets—should be acknowledged that this is the widest study that’s ever been done on child abuse, child sexual abuse, but they don’t really quite go far enough, I don’t think, in saying how the church’s own responsibility contributed to it.

ABERNETHY: And there was nothing in the report, was there, about the bishops who moved around the people who were committing these terrible acts?

LAWTON: Well, the report does say that the bishops were part of the problem in that they didn’t deal with it or they spent more time focusing on the priests and not the victims who were being abused. But what the report doesn’t do is then come up with suggestions for dealing with that, for punishments, or for mandatory things that the bishops have to do when this happens, and that’s a frustration.

post02-sexabusereportABERNETHY: Do they have to report to law enforcement?

LAWTON: If it’s a state law, they do. The guidelines set up by the bishops encourage the local dioceses to report allegations to the authorities. But again, it’s not mandatory, it’s not binding and there’s no enforcement mechanism.

ECKSTROM: I think one of the big numbers, sort of one of the hidden numbers, actually, in this report was that only 14 percent of these cases over the 60-year period were turned over to law enforcement. That means that 86 percent of cases were handled internally in the Church, and the big criticism of the Church has always been that they don’t know how to handle it internally. And they say, oh, trust us, we’ll take care of it, don’t worry about it, but they’re not referring these to law enforcement, which is what a lot of people say they should be.

ABERNETHY: Is the problem over? To what extent has it peaked and gone away? There was something in there about …

LAWTON: Yeah, the report says it was a historical problem, and there certainly has been a decrease in the number of cases being reported. However, we’ve seen, we’re seeing right now in Philadelphia, in the archdiocese of Philadelphia there’s a situation going on right now where a local grand jury has suggested that 37 priests who were accused, with credible allegations of abuse, were allowed to remain in their posts, and the lay review boards that have been set up to help the Church monitor this—they were shocked to hear that. So there are clearly still a lot of issues.

ABERNETHY: Kevin, very quickly. Is it over or not?

ECKSTROM: Last year, in 2010, there were just seven cases reported of abuse that was alleged to have occurred in 2010. So, in that case, you are not seeing hundreds of cases of abuse, but what’s problematic for a lot of people is that the Church is not reporting any cases, and they are not releasing the names of accused priests that might encourage of other victims to come forward.

ABERNETHY: Many thanks. Kevin Eckstrom, Kim Lawton.

Builders of Hope

Posted on by

 

BOB FAW, correspondent: Question: What do this longtime alcoholic, this up and coming project manager, this receptionist who was homeless, and Noah Haynes, who just turned one, have in common? Answer: The chance at a better life because of this former corporate high-flyer and mother of four.

NANCY MURRAY (Builders of Hope): We’re building houses. We’re rescuing houses that are slated for demolition, rebuilding them and making them available and affordable to families who otherwise would be living in pretty substandard conditions.

FAW: For the past five years, her program, Builders of Hope, has found houses about to be demolished and put in a landfill.

MURRAY: So far, to date Builders of Hope has rescued eleven million pounds of debris from the landfill. The only inventory that we work with is inventory slated for demolition. I’d say 99 percent of the homes that are donated that are older have hardwood floors in them. We’re able to restore those. The roofs, the rafter systems, the floor systems—all in really great shape and very usable.

post01-buildersofhopeFAW: Nancy Murray’s nonprofit group rescues houses from commercial, road and hospital expansion as well as private donors who want to build larger homes. The houses are rebuilt and refurbished into energy-efficient green houses, as Josh Thompson learned when he moved into his Builders of Hope home.

JOSH THOMPSON: All the paints that they use are all low-chemical and designed to kind of produce a healthy environment.

FAW: Now that’s what we see. What we don’t see—tell me about the insulation.

THOMPSON: Yeah. What you don’t see is spray-on foam insulation across the whole house—amazing energy efficiency with that. You got all these windows are the double-paned.

FAW: In Raleigh, Durham, Charlotte, and other North Carolina cities, Nancy Murray’s Builders of Hope, with help from private and government funds, has restored nearly 100 houses, selling them at an average cost of $135,000. Putting them on land she has bought or that has been donated, Murray sells them at cost to low- and moderate-income wage-earners she calls the working poor.

MURRAY: You say affordable housing and everybody thinks, “Oh, those people.” Well, those people are your teachers, your firefighters, your police officers, your nurse. It’s 70 percent of the working population of any major city, and those are the people who need affordable housing.

post02-buildersofhopeFAW: People like Noah’s parents, Dana and Robbie Haynes.

ROBBIE HAYNES: There’s houses like this in the downtown area, but it’s just not with our price range. We couldn’t afford to have those upgrades and different things.

FAW: New home owners like receptionist Nikki McKinnon who also could not afford to buy much of anything on her $25,000 a year salary.

NIKKI MCKINNON: Just having your own—it’s nothing like it. It gives you just a sense of pride and worth. It’s just wonderful just to say that I actually own a piece of land in this world, you know. It’s nice.

FAW: Nancy Murray gave up her job as a marketing and advertising executive to start Builders of Hope with money she inherited from her father and with the knowledge of one of his businesses—construction.

MURRAY: We were building million-dollar vacation town homes, and we were displacing people when we bought property that were renting. We would tear them down and build something else, and I thought, wow, what we’re doing is wrong. You know, I started getting a conscience, like this is terrible.

FAW: So she traded in her stilettos for steel-tipped boots, even bought her own earth-mover. It is, she says, a kind of ministry.

post05-buildersofhopeMURRAY: There’s a verse in Matthew that states that you shouldn’t store your money up, you know, where moths and rust and decay set in, but to take that money and invest it in Kingdom work and to really be able to use it to make a difference in loving others and caring for others while we’re here on earth.

FAW: With a staff of 60, her Builders of Hope scours a 60-mile radius looking for houses, some donated by homeowners like attorney Bryan Brice, who get a handsome tax write-off and satisfaction.

BRYAN BRICE: This is reuse and recycle and and hope in a way that is affording home ownership to lower- and middle-income families, and if you look at this whole neighborhood it’s just amazing what they’re doing here to rebuild this area. We’re glad to be a part of it.

FAW: But there is more here being rebuilt than houses. Once, this neighborhood was crime-infested.

MURRAY: Gang members were giving some problems to some of our first homeowners here, actually. This was gang territory.

FAW: Now the area is virtually crime-free.

MURRAY: That demonstrates that revitalization really does work.

FAW: Her Builders of Hope also refurbishes and rebuilds rental units. That restoration and the rebuilding of the houses is performed in part through a mentoring and training program established by Murray. Her organization hires hard-to-employ men who’ve had prison records or substance abuse problems, like the long-term alcoholic Kennie Byrum.

post03-buildersofhopeKENNIE BYNUM: I could see that they cared about not only just me, not focusing on let’s stop what we’re doing and care about Kennie, but let’s bring Kennie along and show him that he can be part of something that deals with caring about others. It’s a fellowship that I’ve never witnessed before or been part of before.

FAW: So lives are also being transformed here as well as houses. Phillip Brickle, once a longtime drug addict who became a pastor, now owns one of Nancy Murray’s houses.

PHILLIP BRICKLE: It’s a place of peace. It’s a place of joy.

FAW: What’s it do to someone like that? Do they change because they now can live in a home like this?

BRICKLE: I believe it gives an individual self-worth. You know, it also gives an individual a feeling of ownership, and any time you have a feeling of ownership it gives responsibility. So I do think it does bring about responsibility, and whenever you have more responsibility, it brings about change.

FAW: Juggling house moving schedules with city zoning permits, among other issues, is a true test of Nancy’s faith.

NANCY MURRAY: I would get mad at God, you know. It was like, okay, you brought me here, you convinced me to do this, you know, this project is about to fall apart. Everything is going to go by the wayside.

post04-buildersofhopeFAW: Finally, she says she put her fate in God’s hands to guide her to make the right decisions. It was then, she says, Builders of Hope took off.

MURRAY: You’re saying, okay, we’re here for a reason. Why are we here? What do I need to learn? What people are going to interface with me because we’re in the midst of this problem that maybe because I’ve met them something else is going to happen? So you trust that everything happens for a reason, and it’s all connected, and ultimately gets you to the place where God wants you to be.

FAW: In addition to the projects in North Carolina, Nancy’s Builders of Hope moved, refurbished, and relocated 76 homes in New Orleans that were about to be demolished to make room for a new hospital. It’s estimated about 250,000 houses a year in the United States get torn down. Cities like Detroit and Dallas have contacted Nancy about her work.

MURRAY: This is a model that can replicate, and then it does have very important ramifications, I think, nationally in terms of being able to rebuild neighborhoods and to get people back in housing, but we do need funding. We need supporters.

FAW: With the constant fundraising it is a struggle, but the satisfaction, she says, is worth all the uncertainty and aggravation.

MURRAY: You move them in over there, and the eyes and the excitement and the warmth and the pride—it’s just so sweet to see that when you do give them an opportunity and you give them a chance and something beautiful that they deserve, they take care of it and they blossom and they grow, and they really create a new community for themselves.

FAW: Here, where because of one woman’s faith a house is not just a home, it’s a new beginning.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, this is Bob Faw in Raleigh, North Carolina.