South Africa: No Funding for Catholic Hospitals?

In South Africa, Archbishop Wilfrid Napier OFM of Durban was shocked by the deep cuts being made by the South African government to Church-run hospitals and clinics. The 11% cut will have a dramatic effect on service, said a report in Melbourne's daily newspaper, The Age.

Asked the archbishop: “Is the severity of the cuts related to the religious affiliation and policies of the Catholic clinics or hospitals?” He said it is “possible to believe” that St. Mary's Hospital is out of favor because of its fidelity to Church doctrine, particularly its strong stance against abortion.

“Before the cuts were effected, we had a meeting with the health department asking them for extra funding. We were told that our clinics were not offering a holistic approach because they did not offer birth-control programs. It makes one wonder whether the cuts were done because of our attitude towards abortion. Is there something more than just financial constraints involved?” the prelate told the paper.

No other hospital of comparable size is being cut nearly as much, he added. While not disputing the archbishop's account of his meeting there, a spokesman at the health department disagreed.

“Everyone knows we are hamstrung by financial constraints. The cuts were made simply because of this. It's unfortunate that the Church believes they have been targeted because of religious policies. This is outrageous,” he said.

Did William Shakespeare Study to Be a Jesuit ‘Martyr’?

“But for a twist of fate, William Shakespeare might have been a Roman Catholic priest and spy in danger of being hanged, rather than applauded, by Protestant England's Queen Elizabeth I,” begins The Washington Post account of research by Richard Wilson, who with other donors is creating a $32 million Shakespeare museum in Hoghton Tower, England.

“Wilson, professor of Renaissance studies at Lancaster University, believes Hoghton Tower was once used as a ‘Jesuit clearinghouse’ from which young men would travel abroad to become priests, and that 16-year-old Shakespeare went there after being recruited by missionary (St.) Edmund Campion.

“For de Hoghton, owner of the hilltop manor and holder of England's second-oldest baronetcy, this theory builds on a family legend that a young man called Shakeshafte, who in 1580 worked for one of his ancestors as a tutor cum player, was in fact the Bard.

“If Shakespeare was Shakeshafte, he was a member of a household which was for six months, it seems, nothing less than the secret college and headquarters of the English Counter Reformation,” Wilson said.

Other strong evidence points to the connection between St. Edmund and Shakespeare (who, like any other Englishman of his time, spelled his name and many other words in no single, fixed manner throughout his life). In fact, if Wilson's analysis of dates is correct, it may have been Campion's capture and imprisonment in the Tower of London that prevented Shakespeare from traveling with him to the Douai school in France.

Douai (along with Rheims) is known for its translation of the Bible by expatriate Catholic Englishmen—but during Shakespeare's lifetime, in the years immediately following the Church of England's break with Rome, it served as a “school of martyrdom.” The seminarians there were trained to be shipped back into England, where they would minister the sacraments to as many people as possible until they were captured and killed, according to historians.

Scholars have debated for years—and perhaps always will—about Shakespeare's possible religious sympathies. While his plays do nothing to oppose the ruling Protestants of his time, they contain many Catholic themes and reference-points, according to Wilson and others.

Sisters Must Abandon Hospital After a Century of Service

In today's health care climate, where Health Maintenance Organizations and other health care profit-businesses dominate, patients can feel that their doctors' offices are crowded with unseen interlopers: insurance company overseers, lawyers threatening malpractice or product liability suits, and government regulators.

It is easy to forget that Catholic religious sisters invented hospitals, and had a monopoly on the industry for most of medical history. The Toronto Star remembered the not-so-distant better days in a June 28 report:

“The names are legendary at St. Michael's Hospital—Sister Vincentia, Sister Maura, Sister de Sales. In the old days, you never knew the nuns' last names, but you knew their reputation—they ran the hospital and they were strong, smart, and formidable.”

“Up until the more casual '60s, nurses stood when doctors and nuns entered a room. You knew the nuns were coming by the rattle of wooden rosary beads or the rustle of starched white habits.

“When there was chaos in the operating rooms, with surgeons competing for space, sisters were sent for to restore order and keep the peace.

“Their pockets were deep. Sister Maura McGuire could pull out a sandwich for a hungry man or a wad of cash for an impoverished intern's honeymoon.

“But in this new world of hospital restructuring and corporate rearrangements, the last of the Sisters of St. Joseph are leaving St. Michael's Hospital, which the order built and founded 106 years ago.”

“Chuckie Shevlen, a St. Mike's nurse for 33 years, appreciates the training [the nuns] gave her. ‘[They] made us feel it was magnificent, something as simple as giving someone a bath,’ she says.”