CARDINAL NYCZ APPEALS – AND WHAT NEXT?
MILENA KINDZIUK
In the morning I heard on the radio: ‘We should not build our salvation at the cost of a patient!’. Where do these words come from? From nowhere else than from Ewa Kopacz, the marshal of the Seym. The same marshal who has recently explained on radio station one, being shocked by the person of prof. Chazan that ‘health service is an exceptional ministry to a patient. I was taught that it is health service’ – she said. Whereas, he, the poor man, does not understand this service. Therefore he did not want to kill a baby. Because if he had done it, he would understand the vocation of a doctor very well. He would serve to a patient, not turn away from the patient. Complicated? Putting it mildly it is manipulation to a large scale. In this way Jerzy Urban used to talk with the nation, saying that the Holy Mass for Homeland which had been celebrated by priest Popieluszko, were ‘sessions of hatred’ and if the priest had understood his vocation properly, he would not have celebrated the Holy Mass.
The fact is that a baby whom prof. Chazan did not want to kill, had serious genetic defects. And the baby died soon after the birth. But is the farewell with one’s own child and his funeral is something blameworthy? Isn’t respect to the human body an element of every civilization and culture?
The dismissal of prof. Chazan by president Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz from the function of the director of the Hospital of the Holy Family in Warsaw arouses opposition. It is – as archbishop Henryk Hoser notes – ethically unacceptable, unjustified and disproportional. It is unfair, absurd and legally doubtful. ‘A child in the prenatal period does not stop being the human being and a patient, regardless of the health state and regardless of anyone’s decision. Nobody is the lord of another man’s life’ – said archbishop Hoser. There was also a strong voice of cardinal Kazimierz Nycz who considered the dismissal of the professor as a dangerous precedence attacking the rights of not only the Catholics, but also all people. ‘The statutory law cannot force doctors to actions which are against their conscience. A doctor cannot bear consequences because of referring to the clause of conscience. If such situations exist, law should be improved, and a doctor cannot be punished – the metropolitan of Warsaw emphasized.
Will the appeal of the cardinal to ‘competent authorities for checking the writing about the clause of conscience in such a way so as not to collide with law of religion freedom’ bring any result? Indeed the president of Warsaw Hanna Gronkiewicz –Waltz, who dismissed professor Chazan, publicly admits to faith and to the Church. And this is obliging.
(AA)
"Niedziela" 28/2014