When “Medical Assistance in Dying” Comes After You

Last updated on: November 16, 2022 at 4:42 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Canada’s “Medical Assistance in Dying” program is in the disability news as “mental illness” has been added to the list of rationales for state-approved suicide — despite the acknowledged difficulty of distinguishing the suicidal patients from the ones who just want suicide. I’d like to back up today and talk very frankly about the temptation to suicide when experiencing any of the conditions, physical or mental, that Canada’s euthanasia policies cover. Proponents of assisted suicide make it sound as if... Read more

Catch Me Tonight on The Journey Home!

Last updated on: November 15, 2022 at 9:32 am By Jennifer Fitz

Update: Here’s the episode link! Just learned this morning that my episode of The Journey Home airs tonight! You can watch it live (free) online at EWTN’s website, or on TV if you receive EWTN with your cable service. For the watch-party experience, Matt Swaim writes: I’ll be monitoring the show and adding a few links from the @chnetwork account using the tag #JHprogram, in case you want to follow along on Twitter. I cannot say enough times how much fun I had... Read more

Could the Pope Be Black?

Last updated on: April 21, 2025 at 5:36 pm By Jennifer Fitz

This week I volunteered to answer a question posed to the Catholic Channel writers: Could the Pope be Black? Answer: Yes. Let’s narrow that question further: Could the next pope be Black, without any crazy circumstances, just a normal papal election producing that result? Answer: Yes. There’s no dogmatic (set in stone as a matter of faith and morals) way for choosing the Bishop of Rome, but the current procedures are this: There are (supposed to be) up to 120 cardinals... Read more

Parsing Out the Physical from the Psychological in Chronic Illness

Last updated on: March 16, 2023 at 9:05 am By Jennifer Fitz

Today I want to dive into a study brought to my attention by a usually very sensible health and fitness blogger, but who erroneously interpreted the results as evidence “long covid” might be primarily psychological in origin. Here’s the study: “Psychophysiologic symptom relief therapy (PSRT) for post-acute sequelae of COVID-19: a non-randomized interventional study.” Click on the “full text” tab to read it for free (you can also download the PDF if you’d like to save a copy). It’s a... Read more

Mental Reality Check on Auditory Processing Disorders

Last updated on: October 14, 2022 at 3:16 pm By Jennifer Fitz

H/T to Emily DeArdo who brought fully to my attention the debate (“debate”) about John Fetterman’s auditory processing disorder. I have no opinion about Fetterman’s candidacy in general, though taking a wild guess about that (D) after his name, it’s unlikely our politics overlap in a convincing way. I do, however, want to make some very candid clarifications, from personal experience, about how the “thinking” of auditory processing is not the kind of “thinking” that is relevant to information processing... Read more

NPR Media Disconnect with Real Life, Hurricane Edition

Last updated on: September 30, 2022 at 10:15 am By Jennifer Fitz

This morning while my kid was driving across town in an approaching hurricane to go babysit, I came across this headline at NPR and foolishly clicked: “More than 2.5 million Florida students have missed school during Hurricane Ian”. Pause for a moment and remind yourself that reporters at National Public Radio, and the editors who publish them, are presumably supposed to understand at least some tiny thing about their topic? At all? And on the face of it, the facts... Read more

Bad Medical Reporting Hurts Vulnerable Patients

Last updated on: September 10, 2022 at 10:11 am By Jennifer Fitz

It will surprise no one that I have a few criticisms of Suzy Weiss’s report “Hurts So Good” over at Common Sense. For those who haven’t read it, Weiss investigates the world of chronic illness social media, and makes a convincing case that there exists a genuine problem with aspects of that culture. I am going to accept at face value everything she does report, more on that in a second; where her journalism is sloppy, irresponsible, and shows profound ignorance of... Read more

Her Majesty’s Final Inkblot Test

Last updated on: September 9, 2022 at 4:32 pm By Jennifer Fitz

Something that astonished me, but shouldn’t have, is just how divided Twitter has been over the death of Queen Elizabeth II. Andrew Sullivan, a fan, gets right to the heart of her appeal: Elizabeth Windsor was tasked as a twenty-something with a job that required her to say or do nothing that could be misconstrued, controversial, or even interestingly human — for the rest of her life. . . . Perhaps the most famous woman in the world, she remained... Read more

The Climate of Racial Suspicion

Last updated on: August 31, 2022 at 6:40 pm By Jennifer Fitz

I want to comment on the video circulating now about the Black pastor who was arrested for being “suspicious” by watering flowers. I don’t know the details of this particular incident, but I have a story that I’ll tell in a second, and which relates to this one. Moral of that story: SWPs (Suspicious White People) are a disaster for American civil society. Okay so here’s my story, and for those who don’t know, I’m white, which is actually relevant... Read more

July-August Updates + Follow-up on that Dorm Story

Last updated on: August 10, 2022 at 10:56 am By Jennifer Fitz

Been awhile, huh? Sheesh, Jen. Okay, here’s what’s been going on since I last updated here: I drove up to Ohio to tape my conversion story with The Journey Home. Reminder that most (but not all, see below) of my Jesus-blogging has moved over to the substack. I don’t link backward from there to here, because the ‘stack is there to create a no-politics zone for those who don’t love debates. But if you’re a longtime reader here, definitely subscribe (it’s free)... Read more