I don't know how many of you saw this article on the NCR site: 2 Catholic school teachers fired over student journalist's pro-choice essay | National Catholic Reporter (ncronline.org)
"The Dec. 16, 2021, issue of the student magazine Elevate had just published when Maria Lynch, a faculty journalism adviser at Regis Jesuit High School received an email from Principal Jimmy Tricco: "Provocative piece for sure, which makes for good conversation," Tricco wrote in reference to "The Battle for [Our] Bodies," an opinion essay that a female student at the Catholic school in Aurora, Colorado, had written in favor of abortion rights."
"...Less than a week later, Tricco and the school's human resources director notified Lynch in an email that she was being fired for "poor judgment" and "personal misconduct" that they said had brought scandal to the school and "seriously damaged" its reputation. They also accused her of "not supporting the Mission and faith dimensions of Regis Jesuit High School."
"It's surprising," Lynch told NCR about the termination notice she received six days after Tricco's original email. Arduini was also fired amid complaints lodged with the school and the Archdiocese of Denver. Regis' administration "retracted in full" Elevate's Dec. 16 issue and is overhauling the school's journalism program.
"I think appropriate corrective action would have been to work with us to edit the editorial policies rather than to fire two teachers who had just started in the position this year," Lynch said. The editorial policies — which have since been removed from Regis Jesuit's website — stated that faculty advisers could not censor student-written stories and editorials with the exception of content relating to crimes and legal matters, obituaries and termination of school employees. Lynch provided NCR a copy of those policies."
"Lynch, who told NCR that she is pro-life and that she "frequently and fearlessly" shared those beliefs with her students and colleagues, said she followed the school's editorial policies."
"This situation seems to be a product of the larger society that can't imagine that a pro-life teacher would allow, via editorial policies, a student to publish a pro-choice article," Lynch said, adding that she welcomed challenges to the church's teaching on life issues."
"And I want my students to be able to express their questions and doubts in class and in writing so that we can engage in a real conversation with them," Lynch said.... The email copies that Lynch provided to NCR included messages between Lynch and Tricco about how opinion essays were selected for publication in Elevate, and how Lynch was hoping a pro-life rebuttal to the pro-choice essay might be published in a subsequent issue."
"...Mark Haas, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of Denver, told NCR that the situation at Regis Jesuit and the subsequent personnel decisions were handled by the school's leadership team. "As mentioned in Archbishop Aquila's letter, enough people reached out to him who were concerned about the situation that he felt compelled to respond, and also to offer the support and resources of the archdiocese where necessary," Haas said."
High school students getting themselves in hot water for stuff they put in the school newspaper is nothing new. What is new is that a piece which didn't violate the school's editorial policy could get two teachers fired. Faculty advisor to the school newspaper is usually a side gig for an English or social studies teacher. There is no indication that these teachers hadn't performed their main teaching duties satisfactorily.
Ms. Lynch indicated in the article that she had hoped to publish a pro-life counterpoint to the first student article. It seems like the administration could have talked to her before they knee-jerk reacted to the loudest voices to silence the newspaper.
And what effect is the action of the administration going to have on the student who wrote the essay? It is unlikely that it will convert her to a pro-life position. She is likely to be sad and angry that the essay cost two of her teachers their jobs.
It's probably not just going to drive out the student journalist, but many of her classmates. I read the story - it did not violate the rules at the time of publication. Now they have pulled the rules down, to revise them, obviously. I would think the teachers would have a lawsuit, except that religious schools seem to get away with all kinds of employment practices that are unacceptable in the general society. From what little I know of him, the bishop there is on the uber-conservative side, and he probably heard from parents who are similarly inclined. so he went ballistic. No free speech allowed in Catholic schools it seems. No thinking allowed. No freedom of conscience either, especially if it dissents on abortion. They probably just lost a couple of hundred kids who are on the cusp of independence - away from parents and parish for the next few years. How many will be back? Probably not many.
ReplyDeletePublic schools are having their own issues, too. It seems that many of them have an Index of Forbidden Books. And forbidden subjects that may not be discussed. In Texas there is talk of making teachers who do talk about the forbidden topics subject to lawsuits. I predict a shortage of teachers ( in some places there already is) because people aren't going to want to subject themselves to this kind of nonsense.
DeleteLawsuits? Like the abortion thing? What a Pandora's box the Supreme Court has left open. It empowers one segment of the population to persecute another. Distributed fascism.
DeleteKatherine, very true. There are now multiple topics that can get teachers fired in some states including discussing racism. But the stated rules at the Jesuit school were not violated. Firing the teacher was an over- reaction for a non- violation. It is likely in a Catholic high school that only a minority would agree with the student who wrote the opinion piece. But it is definitely possible that the students may still be upset with the firing of the teacher because she allowed the piece to be published, especially if they think it’s unfair because she didn’t violate the rules at the time - the PTB changed the rules after the fact.,Kids are sensitive to unfairness.
DeleteI didn't think much of the student editorial. It more or less parrots the same arguments the pro-Roe side has been offering for 50 years. It might have been more instructive for the teacher to have encouraged the student to look at why many Catholics who oppose abortion nevertheless do not support legal restrictions on it.
ReplyDeleteThe editorial isn't much of a showcase for the quality of Catholic education or faith formation.
The Sentinel suggests that parents were behind the retaliatory move against the teachers. I suppose if you are paying the school thousands of dollars a year to turn your kid into a good Catholic, the editorial might make you feel you were wasting your money.
All that said, firing people and muzzling students is no kind of showcase for the school or the Church. The school might have pulled people together by talking about diversity of opinion Catholics hold in a pro-life context. Instead, they are having the vapors over 500 words some teenager wrote. Inevitably, someone will ask, where was this kind of fast action when priests were sexually assaulting children.
And on it goes in the same tiresome death spiral of rancor and blame.
"I didn't think much of the student editorial. It more or less parrots the same arguments the pro-Roe side has been offering for 50 years"
DeleteThose were my thoughts as well. It would have been easy enough for someone else to write an opposing point of view for the pro- life side. As it was, the PTB shut down any further discussion. They didn't do their own point of view any favors.
I am disheartened by the dearth of thoughtfulness and imagination on both sides of the Roe debate.
DeleteFor 50 years it's been "You are killing the next Einstein" vs "You are killing women with back alley abortions."
Most of my Catholic women friends have disengaged from the harpies on both sides of Roe and are quietly trying to help women who are struggling with children.
One girlfriend helps with her step-granddaughter, who is severely handicapped with a poorly controlled epileptic condition. Seven years in a wheel chair with NG feedings three times a day because she has never been able to swallow.
Another one has an adult son with schizophrenia and is a volunteer with parents of teens with mental illness.
Another went on rounds with her school bus driver husband during the school closures. The district delivered free school lunches to all the families on the route. They also picked delivered notes and cards to and from kids and teachers. This served as a check-in for kids who were at home alone while parents worked.
These women don't have time to waste on marching around at rallies parading their self righteous indignation for or against Roe.
"The Sentinel suggests that parents were behind the retaliatory move against the teachers."
DeleteSeems likely enough. Parents usually are the ones who pursue these vindictive mob actions which result in teachers or parish staff members losing their jobs. At least this time it wasn't for being gay, so maybe the right wing Catholic mob is broadening the targets of its inquisitions, aka cancel culture.
It has happened in the past in Chicago, too. I'd like to think it wouldn't happen now.
"I am disheartened by the dearth of thoughtfulness and imagination on both sides of the Roe debate."
DeleteCouldn't agree more. Rhetorical points which used to get me all fired up now leave me cold and tired.
FWIW, our parish is looking for someone to lead our Respect Life ministry. I've mentioned I'd consider it, but I'd want to take it in a different direction. But I'm skeptical that the direction I'd want to take it in would resonate with what passes for pro-life adherence these days. As soon as I mention I think it's pro-life that we be vaccinated, I'll probably lose more than half the room.
I also strongly agree with the headline: this is a missed teaching moment.
ReplyDeletePart of the problem here, I think, is that the culture of Catholic schooling is characterized by an ecosystem of infractions and punishments. Rules are made, they're inevitably broken, and then someone needs to be punished. In this case, it seems the written rules weren't even broken (or maybe they were; the exceptions in the editorial policy are broad enough to cover just about any circumstance), but that pesky detail won't stop a certain type of Catholic administrator.
What would be a better way to handle it? At the risk of sounding like a broken record, the pope would offer us a spirituality of accompaniment. That would involve the parties meeting, conversing and listening, with the conversation guided by the principal or some other school official with some spiritual chops. Perhaps the conversation could cover topics like the purpose of a Catholic education, and the role of a free press in a local community - two topics on which Catholic social teaching has something to say. Maybe everyone would emerge a little more thoughtful and a little humbler than when they started.
" ... infractions and punishments."
DeleteDo you think that as the numbers of schools dwindle there is pressure on kids and teachers to carry a bigger burden to be extra good? I didn't follow it closely, but it caused a big flap when the Lansing Catholic High School kids took a knee at the national anthem some years back. There was a lot of rhetoric flying around about wanting the team to be role models of Catholic respectability.
In my experience with young people, the more rules you make, the more tied up in arguments and policing you become. Hard for education to get done amidst a lot of rule enforcement.
That Lansing flap sounds like the politicization of everyone and everything. The kids take political cues; the parents and other criticizers are responding according their political beliefs. Where is Catholic faith and Catholic social teaching in that flap?
DeleteRegarding the system of infractions and punishments: quite a bit of it is self-perpetuating. Infractions and punishments was how it worked when my grandparents and parents went to Catholic schools. They were the parents when I was in Catholic school, so they expected that same culture to be perpetuated. And now my generation are the parents, and it gets pushed along for another generation.
In my parents' and grandparents' day, they took the "militant" in the phrase "Church Militant" pretty literally. They thought the military was a fine point of reference for many other aspects of life. The church was a hierarchical society, just like the military. The priests were the commissioned officers, the nuns were the non-comms, the students were the buck privates. Or something like that.
In my experience, Catholic schools pride themselves on their discipline. It's one of the ways they distinguish themselves from their free competition, the public schools. Dress codes were and still are a big part of it. You should have seen the section in my high school's student manual on dress codes, especially for the girls. The boys' section was a single page. The girls' section went on for page after page. How short the skirts could be. What kind of shoes could be worn. What styles of collar on the blouses were acceptable. How many buttons on the blouse could be unbuttoned. What could be bare (very little) and what couldn't. How tight-fitting the clothing could be. What materials were permitted. And so on.
Yes, it all got blown way out of proportion. At first the school said the kids had a right to express themselves, but then parents started freaking out, and there were some incidents where racist names were called by opposing teams at games. Benching and threats of expulsion followed. Claims of racism were lodged against the school. At one point some spectator from the school showed up in blackface. There was finally a community meeting with demands for racial sensitivity training. The usual crap.
DeleteWhen my friends went to Catholic school, they all wore uniforms. There was some kind of occasional consternation over pierced ears and jewelry.
When The Boy went, there was a dress code. The boys had to wear khakis and shirts with collars, no prints, graphics, or lettering. Polos OK. In winter, I asked if a turtleneck was OK. There was a meeting, but it was approved as long as it was plain color and tucked in.
I didn't care for khakis because a) they show the dirt and b) they had to have zippers, which was beyond my sewing capabilities. The pants also required belts. Fortunately I could usually find stuff at the Salvation Army.
I don't remember the dress code being all that strict when I was a kid. In the lower grades we didn't wear uniforms, just dresses or skirts for the girls, and slacks that weren't jeans for the boys; shirts had to have a collar. Grades 6-8 we had uniforms. Plaid jumpers for the girls, of course I didn't like them. The boys had gray slacks and blue button-down shirts. Even in public high school back then the girls couldn't wear slacks, which seems weird now.
DeleteThe school my granddaughters attend has a lot of options for uniforms. The girls can wear uniform skirts, navy slacks, or walking shorts. They can accessorize as long as it isn't distracting. Both boys and girls can wear sweatshirts with the school logo. Seems like their school is more relaxed than mine was back in the old days. The girls were really bummed when they couldn't go in person last year.
I remember not being allowed to wear pants until junior year. I immediately bought two pairs of Levis jeans, made a bunch of paisley shirts, and put my hair in a braid instead of sleeping in rollers. My mother would sometimes cry over how I looked--hard to have been a beauty and end up with a mousey daughter--but my grades and attitude improved, and we didn't argue as much.
DeleteIn my Catholic grade school, the girls all wore maroon-ish plaid jumpers over white blouses. The boys wore light blue polos and some sort of dress pants - I don't know if there was such a thing as khakis then. A generation later, when I started sending my kids to our local Catholic school here in the 'burbs, its uniforms were identical to what the kids in my class had to wear in the '60s.
DeleteI went to a public middle school. Everyone dressed like a slob :-).
Back to a Catholic school in high school. The girls could between uniform skirts or pants, always with a white blouse and a plain vest the same uniform color as the skirts/pants. Each class had its own girls' uniform color, which it wore for two years and then switched to another color for the final two years. Thus, when one was walking down the hallway between classes, one could immediately identify a girl's age and year by the colors she was wearing. In my class, the girls' appointed color was brown the first two years, and then a sort of burnt orange the last two years. I remember many of the girls in my year being unhappy with such drab colors. Other classes had blue, green, red - brighter colors.
The boys didn't have assigned colors. We had to wear a coat and tie, dress shirt, dress pants and belt, and dress shoes and socks. Within those constraints, pretty much any fashion, cut, style, color, material etc. was acceptable. As this was in the 1970s, some of it was pretty bad. I remember I owned a brown corduroy suit for a year or two. Also a powder blue leisure suit, which per the dress code I wore with a tie (I think the discoing cokehead adults at Studio 54 in New York didn't wear ties with their leisure suits?)
The dress code included hair restrictions as well, and the boys had to stay clean-shaven. I think the priests that ran the place would have preferred the boys to all look like Marine jarheads, but it was the 70s, which was a pretty hairy time, especially for the children of the working classes, which was most of the families in this high school. The guys would let their hair be as long as the dress code would permit. Some of them spent a lot of time with the blow drier in the morning. This was the Farah Fawcett era, too, and some of the girls definitely were all-in on feathering. I didn't spend a lot of time on my hair. My hair didn't hang down, it pretty much grew outward from the scalp in all directions. During the summer months, I'd grow beards which were the envy of my guy friends, although I don't think the girls liked bearded guys as a general rule - but I was so inept with the girls, it didn't really matter either way in my case.
LOL about leisure suits. My husband had a couple, I kind of liked the powder blue one. His boss at work was a big guy. He wasn't Catholic but came to church with his wife on Easter. He had a bright yellow leisure suit for the occasion. We said he looked like Big Bird. Our older boy had a toddler leisure suit which got passed along to the younger one in due time. The little leisure suit got immortalized in my brother's wedding pictures. If my son want to kid me he'll say, "Mom. The shame of it. You took me to a wedding in a leisure suit!". I stillvthink it was kind of cute.
DeleteHa, Fernwood Tonight: Leisure suits cause cancer segment. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mAJmwL0a2B8
DeleteI went to parochial school from 1-4th. Girls wore jumpers and white blouses. The jumpers were an ugly shade of drab green. We all wore saddle shoes but I don't know if they were mandatory. Boys wore an ugly very light brown shirt with ugly dark brown pants. I was very happy to leave that uniform behind and wear normal clothes. This was many years ago, so even in the public school there was a dress code - all the girls wore skirts or dresses except when it snowed - then we were allowed to wear pants (not jeans). There was a dress code in my Catholic women's college too - no pants or shorts allowed except for a few specific occasions - with permission of the nuns. The Loyola fraternity houses were all beach front. We could wear pants or shorts to parties on the beach as long as we wore a knee-length, buttoned up coat (usually a raincoat) leaving and returning to campus - from the moment we left our rooms to the moment we returned to them and closed the door. Socks or stockings were required at all times outside of the dorms. Knee socks and Weejuns were popular for everyday wear on campus. I couldn't afford Weejuns but found some cheap clones.
DeleteAll of these rules disappeared the year after I graduated, when the all-women campus was closed and the female students joined the men at their campus. I was in the last graduating class on the all-women campus.
Our sons went to a Catholic all-boys elementary school. They wore khakis with blue oxford cloth shirts, belt, and the school tie. On dress days they wore gray pants instead of khakis and added the school blazer with a patch. Athletic shoes were OK on non-dress days. On dress days they were supposed to wear regular shoes. I quickly learned that Fels Naptha soap should be rubbed into the dirt and grass stains before laundering - a trick my husband taught me, that he learned from his mother. He taught me how to do laundry actually - I had never done it at home. Folding and ironing - yes, but not actually running the washing machine. I didn't know about separating darks from lights etc. The Fels Naptha worked like a charm to remove the grass and dirt stains almost every time without extra rubbing. I have told my sons about it, but they have a hard time finding in stores these days.
"There was a dress code in my Catholic women's college too - no pants or shorts allowed except for a few specific occasions - with permission of the nuns. The Loyola fraternity houses were all beach front. We could wear pants or shorts to parties on the beach as long as we wore a knee-length, buttoned up coat (usually a raincoat) leaving and returning to campus - from the moment we left our rooms to the moment we returned to them and closed the door. "
DeleteAnne, even for a Catholic school veteran like me, that was pretty strict :-). How did the young women at the college feel about this enforced modesty? Was it generally accepted, or a source of constant griping?
Gosh, all of you remember a lot about dress codes in high school and college. With one except I don't remember anything about them.
DeleteMy father never cared much about clothes. My mother used to place his newly washed shirts, etc. on the bottom of the drawers to their clothes chests, otherwise he would always take what was on top.
I suspect I also had my father's lack of interest in clothes. My mother probably put out clothes for me.
My first year of college was at Wheeling Jesuit College, the year after I left novitiate. It was co-ed, the only one of the Jesuit colleges and universities that was. We men had to wear suits and ties to class and the dining hall. After first year college I went to Saint John's in Minnesota. Really great place because they were already post Vatican II during Vatican II. I could be a pre-divinity student without declaring for the Benedictines or diocesan priesthood. They allowed other majors than philosophy (pre-divinity students were still required to have a minor in philosophy). Thankfully no dress codes for anyone in this all-male school.
Jim, everything changed when the women moved to the men's campus (and these days they outnumber the men on that campus). All those rules disappeared. Every time we left campus we had to sign out at the desk, supervised by a nun. We had to say where we were going and who we were going with, even if it was just up to the shopping mall with our roommates. Curfew was midnight. I was going though old papers recently, and found one of my sign-out sheets from senior year. I threw it away but am a bit sorry. It brought back a lot of memories. I found the handbook they sent me before arriving as a freshman, which included the dress code and a recommended clothing list. Besides a black dressy dress (cocktail but they didn't use the word) we were instructed to bring two pair of short white gloves and a pair of over the elbow gloves. It was a very different world then!
DeleteWe new alumnae were very jealous of how the women were allowed to live when they moved over to the men's campus. We had friends in the class behind us and they let us know! They enjoyed a freedom that we had not known. They were treated as adults, whereas even though most were 21 by senior year, we were still treated like young girls who had to be protected. This was when everything changed in America - the single sex colleges were all going co-ed - Catholic, Ivy League etc. It was the civil rights era, the anti-Viet Nam war era, the burn your bra era - the confluence of all the various "rights' movements. You were too young to pay attention I imagine- it was pretty settled by the time you would have been more aware of it all.
In 1970-1972, the state college I attended had a curfew for the women. The men had no curfew. The punishment for breaking curfew could be getting "campused", if they chose to enforce it. Campused meant you stayed put and didn't go anywhere on the weekend. I thought that was pretty unfair, it was actually more strict than the Catholic college I attended as a freshman.
DeleteI think the reason women vividly remember dress codes (which included rules about make-up and jewelry) is because sex was always the underlying the subtext. Girls were expected to learn how to project a virginal femininity: Be attractive but off-limits. Until I was 15, this was all confusing and full of unknown pitfalls.
DeleteAnd there wasn't any part of your attire that wasn't judged. Our gym teachers were very nice women, but they had talks about the "right" kind of underwear--and then, when you changed in the lockerroom, everyone knew if yours was right or not.
The gym teachers would lend out sanitary belts and quarters for the Kotex machine in emergencies, but you had to get a pass to go to the gym, which meant telling your male science teacher why you needed it. Then the gym teacher would make you fill out an IOU slip and give you a scolding about "being prepared."
Michigan is just now considering a policy requiring public schools to provide sanitary products to girls. About damn time.
I hated gym class. Catholic school didn't have it, and when I reached public high school, it wasn't required past 9th grade, so I only had it that one year, which was plenty. I had a male teacher, who was a nice guy. I'll admit I played him a little for sympathy on the monthly thing. I'd just mention being "indisposed" and he'd blush and let me sit in study hall instead of running laps. We were supposed to shower after class but none of us did except the serious jocks. We just sprayed on lots or Right Guard or Secret. The shower was communal and nobody wanted to be naked in front of others. Hopefully they don't have the communal showers any more, body image shame is bad enough at that age without that kind of exposure.
DeleteKatherine, gym was my high school nightmare. I am not at all athletic, was somewhat clumsy, and I was very modest. We had two gym teachers - both women. One was married to the boys gym teacher who was also the football coach. She was as tough on us as he was on the football jocks. But football was voluntary. Gym was required for all four years of high school - every day. I often had very bad cramps as a teenager but would never mention it during gym. I was terrified of the gym teacher and sure she would mock me if I told her. Just suffered through it. It was a public school, but since it was a small town in the mountains there were only about 275 kids in the high school and the two women gym teachers taught every class for all four years. There was no escape. They didn’t coach because there weren’t any team sports for girls. The boys had the standard extracurricular sports if they wanted - football, basketball, baseball and wrestling. There was a long communal stall with shower heads con both sides in the locker room that we had to walk through every day. The teacher sat at the end and handed us towels and checked off our names on her list. Nobody got to skip showers. Most of the girls didn’t seem to mind the public nudity. I hated it. On the one and only camping trip we took with our sons when they were young I was also mortified to see that the women’s bathhouse also had totally open showers. I waited until all the women were gone, dashed in under the cold water for a 30 second scrub, holding my towel away from me to keep it from getting wet, and was happy to never go camping again.it was just as uncomfortable an experience at 40 as it had been at 13. Most of the women didn’t seem to mind.
DeleteI hated gym class too, but it had nothing to do with showers or public nudity. I simply was too uncoordinated to even sweat. For example, I could never figure out how to dribble a basketball. Maybe the other guys took a shower, but I never needed one. I guess because I wear glasses and was very nerdy, the gym teachers never were very demanding of me.
DeleteI actually may have a very subtle lack of coordination. For example, I could learn to bat a baseball but if I hit the ball I simply got rid of the bat as quickly as I could without being aware of where it landed. They decided I shouldn't play baseball. Too dangerous somebody might get hit with my flying bat.
I didn't like gym. It might have been ok if they really wanted to make you healthier. The gym teachers only wanted to coach the sports teams. They told us to play basketball. I sometimes got out if it by forging excuse passes for band practice and then hanging out in the stairwell to the closed band room. We only had gym for two years. In my early twenties, I started karate, weightlifting and jogging. In a few months, life was a new experience. Everything I lifted, pushed or pulled felt so light. I felt as if I were transported to a low gravity planet.
DeleteBy the way, I found out my gym teacher's father was first chair in the horn section of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Maybe that's why I got away with the fake passes. I played the french horn.
I liked gym class activities, but hated seeing the film strip machine set up because there would be yet another deflating lesson in The Blossoming of a Young Lady.
DeleteLoved cage ball and anything you played with a paddle. I excelled at fencing, strong legs and a good reach. I didn't feel gawky for once. Long arms were an advantage. Plus there were some mean girls I didn't mind pretend-stabbing. I still get excited when I see movie sword fights. Basil Rathbone was the man!
Hmm. Jean - maybe you should start a fencing club at the church and invite all the church ladies to join.
DeleteI think that the fencing scene featuring Darcy in the 1995 BBC production of Pride and Prejudice was very popular with the women viewers.
Anne, I'll bet your classmates didn't like the communal showers either, even if they didn't say anything about it. Was there ever a teenager who thought her body was okay? Boys too had their issues.
DeleteWith the times being so fraught over sexuality and gender issues, I hope that most schools are doing away with communal showers.
I didn't mind gym class too much, although I wasn't a great or even very good athlete. I liked basketball, softball and volleyball. I didn't really have the build for football or wrestling. We had the communal showers, too. I guess I must have used them, because I remember the showers not having any cold water - they were scalding hot. Plus, they wouldn't give us enough time to both shower and change in order to make it to our next class. So I'm sure there were many instances of caking on a lot of deodorant and changing directly back into the school clothes. Little did I know, I was "pulling a Katherine" :-)
DeleteJim, LOL!
DeleteFriends, please say some prayers for my old work mate Howard Jenkinson, Ph.D. He has been on a ventilator for 3 days at Pocono Lehigh Valley Hospital because of COVID. I know he had a rare form of lung cancer (non-smoker) kept in check for years by oral chemo. Howard's a very devout Episcopalian. A nice soul and fellow physicist.
ReplyDeleteStanley, I will certainly keep him in my prayers.
DeleteOf course, Stanley. From the BCP:
DeleteHeavenly Father, giver of life and health:
Comfort and relieve your sick servant Howard, and give your power of healing to those who minister to his needs, that he may be strengthened in his weakness and have confidence in your loving care; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
Please also remember my friend Todd. He and his wife went to Italy and brought me back a rosary from Asissi that had been blessed there. Like good Methodists, they are cheerful supporters of whatever flavor your faith is. His wife died of breast cancer three years ago. His daughter, married the same year her mom died, is now on hospice with lymphoma. Visits are restricted because of covid.
Thank you Jean and Katherine. Beautiful prayer, Jean. I will pray for Todd and his daughter. Some people must bear so much.
DeleteStanley, I am praying for Howard. Jean, I am praying for Todd's daughter and for Todd.
DeleteSeems the prayer lists get longer every year.
Thanks very much, Jim. When one of the guys had a daughter dealing with breast cancer, Howard organized a prayer group. So it's his turn now.
DeleteStanley, any updates on how Howard is doing?
DeleteNothing yet, Katherine. If he were off ventilation, I assume we'd have heard. I'll let you know when I hear something. Thanks for asking.
DeleteJust checked my email. Sad to report that Howard died at the hospital with his wife, three daughters, stepson and pastor at bedside (this was Howard's second marriage). Thank you all so much for the prayers. May he rest in peace.
DeleteI'm so sorry to hear that, Stanley! May perpetual light shine upon him.
DeleteI am sorry to hear about Howard, Stanley. I am glad he had family with him.
DeleteThanks, Katherine, Jean and everyone. Here's Howard's obituary so you can see who you were praying for. I thought he was Episcopal but maybe he jumped over to the Lutherans.
Deletehttps://www.wmhclarkfuneralhome.com/obituary/howard-jenkinson
Stanley, this is sad news. I had hoped for a different outcome. Prayers ascending again for comfort for family and friends as they grieve the loss of their loved one.
DeletePrayers ascending - for Howard, and those who love him, and for Todd and his daughter and their family. Prayers that the love of those who surround them will give them strength and corsage during this difficult time.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Anne.
Delete