Northeast Health has agreed to abide by Catholic health restrictions upon completion of its affiliation with two Catholic systems, St. Peter’s Hospital (part of Catholic Health East) and Seton Health (part of the Catholic Ascension Health system). That change in hospital policy means an end to abortions, tubal ligations, contraceptive counseling and other services at Northeast Health’s Samaritan Hospital in Troy and Memorial Hospital in Albany. The impact would be particularly severe in Troy, where the only other hospital is St. Mary’s, part of the Seton Health with which Northeast Health is affiliating.

Ugh. While this won’t directly affect me, it’s going to be bad news for the greater Albany region if most of our hospitals can’t offer contraceptives, particularly with the cuts to Planned Parenthood. There’s a compromise of sorts, but it’s marginal:

The solution is the Burdett Care Center, a 20-bed maternity facility on the second floor of Samaritan Hospital. It is separately incorporated to insulate the center from the Catholic restrictions that now prevails in the rest of the hospital. As part of the state approval, the center had to be completed prior to the secular hospital’s merger with the two Catholic health systems. The Burdett Care Center consolidates all maternity services from both Troy hospitals and allows women delivering babies to have post-partum tubal ligations

“insulate the center from the Catholic restrictions” That makes it sound like Catholic teachings are some kind of EM field.

The regional Planned Parenthood is keeping an eye on things. I like and respect the people who run PP, but I don’t know how much they can do in this situation.

Is this happening in any other parts of the world? Does the Catholic Church have an out-sized role in hospital care everywhere, or is it just here?

Rick Santorum is a nice smiley fanatic. He does not believe in evolution or global warming or women in the workplace. He equates gay sex with bestiality (Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum). He equates contraception with the guillotine. Only a brain-dead party could think him a worthy presidential candidate. Yet he is praised by television pundits, night and day, for being “sincere” and “standing by what he believes.” He is the principled alternative to the evil Moderation of Mitt Romney and the evil Evil of Newt Gingrich. He is presented as a model Catholic. Torquemada was, in that sense, a model Catholic.

I do love me some Wills, ever since I read A Necessary Evil in college. A few years after that he wrote a short biography of St. Augustine. Apparently he was struck by Augustine’s argument that honesty was always necessary, and he became frustrated with what he saw as dishonesty from the Catholic hierarchy.

From that frustration came his most controversial work, Papal Sin: Structure of Deceit. There he lays out most of the arguments he uses in the above article. It’s refreshing to see the Church get called to task for straying from its own principles.

Get it? Pain in the… nevermind.

That’s part of an “Unhate” campaign from Benetton. They got heat from the Vatican about it, and they pulled the image of the Pope.

But why just that one? Why is it more offensive for the Pope to be photoshopped kissing another world leader, but not other world leaders? Benetton said:

‘We are sorry that the use of an image of the pontiff and the imam should have offended the sensibilities of the faithful in this way. We have decided with immediate effect to withdraw this image from every publication.’

What do you think — should they have withdrawn the image?

And what do you think of the campaign itself?

Whatever it is, it’s brilliant marketing. It’s being talked about everywhere.

I thought that such devotion could only come from a religion, but now we’re seeing something similar at Penn State. If you haven’t kept up with the news, it appears that an assistant coach of the Penn State football team, Jerry Sandusky, sexually assaulted a number of young boys. It has been revealed that coach Joe Paterno had been aware of at least one of these assaults as early as nine years ago. After the allegation came to light, Joe Paterno was fired by the board of trustees. Now, some of the students are rioting. From the New York Times:

After top Penn State officials announced that they had fired Joe Paterno on Wednesday night, thousands of students stormed the downtown area to display their anger and frustration, chanting the former coach’s name, tearing down light poles and overturning a television news van parked along College Avenue.

The demonstrators congregated outside Penn State’s administration building before stampeding into the tight grid of downtown streets. They turned their ire on a news van, a symbolic gesture that expressed a view held by many that the news media exaggerated Mr. Paterno’s role in the scandal surrounding accusations that a former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, sexually assaulted young boys.

“I think the point people are trying to make is the media is responsible for JoePa going down,” said a freshman, Mike Clark, 18, adding that he believed that Mr. Paterno had met his legal and moral responsibilities by telling university authorities about an accusation that Mr. Sandusky assaulted a boy in a university shower in 2002.

Demonstrators tore down two lamp posts, one falling into a crowd. They also threw rocks and fireworks at the police, who responded with pepper spray. The crowd undulated like an accordion, with the students crowding the police and the officers pushing them back.

I just can’t believe this. Personal Failure at Forever in Hell can; she lives in Penn State territory. She reports: “I am right now listening to my coworkers going on and on about how terrible it is that Joe Paterno was fired. How dare they? JoePa was at PSU for 61 years, where’s the loyalty? JoePa did what he had to do, how dare they question it? JoePa is a good man, how could they fire him? None of what is being said about him is true, journalists lie.”

Ugh.

EDIT: This image from the protest sums it up:

Well, and I’d guess the whole priests-raping-their-children thing might have factored into it, too.

Catholic Ireland’s stunning decision to close its embassy to the Vatican is a huge blow to the Holy See’s prestige and may be followed by other countries which feel the missions are too expensive, diplomatic sources said on Friday.

The closure brought relations between Ireland and the Vatican, once ironclad allies, to an all-time low following the row earlier this year over the Irish Church’s handling of sex abuse cases and accusations that the Vatican had encouraged secrecy.

Ireland will now be the only major country of ancient Catholic tradition without an embassy to the Vatican. [...]

Dublin’s foreign ministry said the embassy was being closed because “it yields no economic return” and that relations would be continued with an ambassador in Dublin.

The source said the Vatican was “extremely irritated” by the wording equating diplomatic missions with economic return, particularly as the Vatican sees its diplomatic role as promoting human values.

Diplomats said the Irish move might sway others to follow suit to save money because double diplomatic presences in Rome are expensive.