Around Town: Business As Mission, St. Paul’s as sanctuary, Coldest Night

The BAM Vancouver Conference is offered by YWAM Vancouver, and is sponsored by Trinity Western University, City in Focus, Rise Above Finance, Tenth Church, BetterIt Workplace Chaplains, Midland Industrial Covers and BAM Canada.

I have been to earlier versions of BAM and even as a non-business person can see the tremendous potential in the movement.

Go here for more information and here to register. The conference will be held at Civic Hotel, located next to Surrey City Centre’s SkyTrain station, near King George Boulevard and 104 Avenue.

St. Paul’s, sanctuary

St. Paul’s Hospital is moving from Burrard Street to just east of Main in the Downtown Eastside. The new building is going up and things are, apparently, moving along well. But a controversy which arose last year is likely to last well beyond the time the move is completed.

St. Paul’s, as a Catholic institution, has refused to allow euthanasia on its property, and that has made some critics very upset.

Some groups are not even satisfied by the provincial government’s November 29 announcement that “Medical assistance in dying (MAiD) services will soon be available for people within a Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) clinical space adjacent to St. Paul’s Hospital.”

The BC Humanist Association, for example, described that prospect as “demeaning and dehumanizing,” adding:

The BCHA is calling for the province to tear up the Master Agreement with the Denominational Health Association that permits religious facilities to deny healthcare services, such as abortion, contraceptive prescriptions and MAID.

Brian Bird, a lecturer at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at UBC, wrote a comment on the situation for National Post February 19: ‘Sanctuaries from euthanasia must be protected.’ Noting that a constitutional challenge appears to be on the way, he offered several suggestions about what the Supreme Court of Canada should do if it hears the case of St. Paul’s.

He followed up:

 That analysis should be enough for the court to conclude that it is constitutionally valid for provinces to allow organizations to decline, for conscientious or ethical reasons, to provide euthanasia. This conclusion is reinforced by the fact that Canadians have largely had little difficulty accessing euthanasia since 2016.

He added:

The court could note the value in preserving some health-care spaces as sanctuaries from euthanasia, where patients seeking life-affirming supports know they will never be invited to consider ending their lives instead. We already have evidence of the pressing need for these spaces, yet the legal challenge that is reportedly being pursued against St. Paul’s would claim that these spaces should no longer exist. . . .

Euthanasia never should have come to Canada, and perhaps we will one day realize that. Until then, we are going to have to find a way to manage our differences on this topic. The militant intolerance directed toward St. Paul’s demeans the “free and democratic society” that the Charter declares Canada to be. If this intolerance leads to the courtroom, our judiciary should not hesitate to say the same.

Go here for the full comment.

Several readers of The B.C. Catholic were most unhappy with the way things are going, also opposing the provincial initiative, though for other reasons. One said: “The decision to allow MAID beside St. Paul’s Hospital is devastating to our faith roots.”

The B.C. Catholic posted an article earlier this month which expresses some views of Archbishop of Vancouver Michael Miller on the topic of legalizing and normalizing euthanasia: ‘MAiD for mental illness must be stopped, not paused, Catholic and legal experts say.’

Coldest Night

Will February 24 be the coldest night of the year? Well, several local groups – and many more across Canada – have agreed that it will.

The Coldest Night of the Year is “a winterrific family-friendly 2 or 5 km fundraising walk in support of local charities serving people experiencing hurt, hunger and homelessness.”

There are two main ways to participate:

•  Main Event: All CNOY locations will host an organized, in-person main event – complete with 2km + 5km signed routes, rest stops, volunteers and snacks at the end.

•  Offsite Walk: All CNOY locations will welcome offsite fundraisers who self-organize either with friends or individually, walking any day in February on a route they choose.

Coldest Night works right across Canada:

Each year in February, tens of thousands of Canadians step outside the warmth and comfort of home to shine a light of welcome and compassion in their communities. Since 2011, the Coldest Night of the Year has raised over $75,000,000 across Canada in 190 Canadian communities – 100% of net proceeds stay local to support our CNOY charity partners. Learn more about our history.

Here are some of the local groups participating in Coldest Night:

Go here for many local events and here for more than 200 job listings.