App to do the Right Thing
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A week ago I wrote a Letter to the Editor called What is a Parent to do?. I wrote about the experiences of two sets of parents, our friends, who have adult sons seriously ill but unable to get them medical attention. The letter to the editor was never published but neither set of parents was able to find health care for their severely ill sons. Both young men have brain illnesses which we call mental illness, where the young adult has to be of healthy mind to consent for medical attention, something nearly impossible when the young man has a mental illness. I heard from one of the couples today how they got their adult son three times to consent to hospitalization only to find the hospital releasing him in a day.
This last one, hospital releasing today, the son was prepared to stay for awhile but because he hesitated to take medication the hospital released him today. His roommates are finding his behavior terrible distressing and do not want him back. Taking him to their own house has been very hard on the whole family and not healthy for the son.
It is hard to believe that in this day and age where we are starting to learn so much more about the brain, persons with mental illnesses are treated this way. In the name of protecting a person rights they are taking the rights away. I know and written about this feeling of helplessness.
At a St. Vincent De Paul conference meeting tonight one of our members mentioned how a particular woman receiving a voucher for some basic human needs seemed to her to feel entitled to these things. I held my tongue while some agreed with her and one brave young woman said how we should not judge the person. Later in the meeting, on a completely different subject matter I had the opportunity to mention how the Constitution entitles all of us to rights of life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. I went on to say how the Gospel says we all have rights to beds, stoves and refrigerators. People laughed as did I, but there is some small truth to the message.
Tomorrow I go to my pretrial on charges I was trespassing when I tried to used my Marquette Library card to do some research on Dorothy Day in the Marquette archives. No one has given me a reason why I was banned from this Catholic Jesuit Marquette University, after 57 years of Jesuit education and association. The only thing that comes to mind is my participation with others over the years to get Marquette to Be Faithful to the Gospel and not host military training schools on campus. I guess they were tired of ignoring us and decided to make an example of me.
The Catholic Church is doing the same thing, ignoring the poor, in our request to use the 1.1 million dollars resulting from sales of three Catholic Church in North Central Milwaukee to provide a sustainable fund for works of mercy. It has been two years since the closing of the merged Catholic Church of Blessed Trinity and most of the money is still in bank accounts, between 1 million and 1.2 million dollars depending on how you count and how much has already been spent. Proposals how to spend the money have been discussed behind closed doors by a very small group of ‘advisers’ to the owners of the money, the five person Corporation Board headed by the Archbishop.
Not offering health care for adults with mental illnesses, teaching war and killing at a Jesuit Catholic University, the Catholic Church ignoring the plight of the poorest and most vulnerable, what is happening to our world today? We have technology and Apps for everything but cannot figure out how to do the “right thing.” We need an App for that?
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