religion and profession

[cellio]

osewalrus posted an excellent essay on conflicts between religion and one's profession. He and I agree: you are completely free to practice your religion, but if doing so causes complications in your life, you -- not the rest of society -- need to deal with that.

Comments

[amergina.livejournal.com]

The morality of a country shifts over time. And science advances. I wonder how many pharmacists knew when they started their carrier that they would have to prescribe Plan B (and in Oregon, assisted suicide drugs) as part of being a pharmacist?

What if morality shifts in a way that your (wide use) morality/religion opposes? What happens then? Do you quit your job and start over?

[zachkessin.livejournal.com]

No one said it would always be easy. Sometimes being a Moral Person requires you to make a hard choice. If you object to giving out Plan B or birth control pills or whatever that is YOUR problem and you need to deal with it. If you have to leave your job and find a new one to live with yourself than that may be what you have to do.

[amergina.livejournal.com]

The other question I have is do you abandon your profession for your morality if you are also serving people who share your morality?

This becomes a wider question of "Should there be Catholic Hospitals?" since the prevailing wind happens to blow against Catholic morality.

Recently, in a community I read, a woman posted (in a locked post) about having been raped and that she was given Plan B and told to take it as it was a part of her rape kit (for prosecuting her rapist). She is Catholic and only realized later, when she came out of the traumatic daze of having being raped, what had happened. She didn't have the choice to even choose her morality.

There's a growing vocal section of American society that thinks that circumcision of male children is child abuse, mutilation, and barbaric. Should there come a point in the future where the majority of Americans feel that it is immoral to circumcise, is the answer for all Jews and Muslims and anyone else who would like to circumcise their son to move out of the US?

When can you take a stand to preserve your job, your service to others, or your ability to live in a society due to your morality?

It is hard, yes. I realize this. But when do you sit down and shut up and when do you stand up and shout out? And *who* gets to decide this?

[cellio]

The other question I have is do you abandon your profession for your morality if you are also serving people who share your morality?

I think everyone wins if a person in this situation can focus on serving people who share his morality. I have no more problem with the idea of Catholic (or Jewish or Muslim or Wiccan or...) medical practices than I do with such schools. People aren't all the same, and there's nothing wrong and quite a bit good with forming voluntary associations to meet the needs of a specific community. (This does not mean becoming insular, as it's not likely to affect all areas of life.)

The problem with "X hospitals" or "Y schools" or "Z pharmacies" arises when they're the only option. So long as there's a "public" or "secular" option, people can self-select into the specialization wihtout harming anyone else. There are parts of the country where I suspect that religious institutions would be in danger of being the only options (that is, there'd be no public hospital, just the Catholic one -- ok, Evangelical in the places I'm thinking of), but this is just a different form of the underserved-communities problem. (It's the same as when no one's willing to open a grocery store in the bad part of town.) I don't have a good solution to that; I merely point out that it's a broader problem.

She is Catholic and only realized later, when she came out of the traumatic daze of having being raped, what had happened. She didn't have the choice to even choose her morality.

That's really sad.

Should there come a point in the future where the majority of Americans feel that it is immoral to circumcise, is the answer for all Jews and Muslims and anyone else who would like to circumcise their son to move out of the US?

You know me; I don't think this is government's business. Given that, private practice will continue even if more and more hospitals say they won't offer the service any more. (And anyway, people who care about religious circumcission won't use the hospitals for it anyway.) So that wouldn't be a problem. If that pressure leads to a ban on circumcission, that's the same kind of problem as any other attack on civil liberties and personal freedom.

[cellio]

The morality of a country shifts over time. And science advances.

True. I think it tends to shift gradually enough that most people should not wake up one morning and suddenly find themselves unable to work. For example, a pharmacist who objects to dispensing birth control in a world that's starting to trend that way but isn't there yet can probably find employment in a venue where it doesn't come up -- elder care, Catholic hospital, etc. I hope. The suicide thing was a more sudden change, but even so it happened over many years -- time for people who objected to change their job situations so they wouldn't have to be involved.

What if morality shifts in a way that your (wide use) morality/religion opposes? What happens then? Do you quit your job and start over?

I think it's an unlikely scenario, as most fields support a fairly wide variety of types of position. But let's take an extreme, hypothetical example: suppose you're a clergy person and you lose your belief in God? If you're willing to pretend you can still find employment in, say, hospital chaplaincy (whether that's a good idea is a separate question), but broadly speaking, you're out of luck and you have to start over somewhere. You might argue that that's a case of you, not society, changing, but it's very unlikely to be a willful act, so the guy in that position probably sees either as "bad stuff happening to me", not "I've made a change in my life".