Vol. 10, No. 5 info@thespiritualherald.org www.thespiritualherald.org May 2011 © 2011 Eastern Tsalagi Publishing Co.

St. Vincent’s Hospital in Manhattan was the nation’s flagship Catholic medical institution.

 Catholic Health Care On Critical List
By Tom Toolen

NEW YORK--The nation’s legendary Catholic hospital system, the once-perfect combination of medical professionalism and big-hearted compassion that has saved millions of lives over the generations, is itself in the final throes of death.

Catholic hospitals are being closed down rapidly in cities across the nation because of issues that have nothing to do with outstanding medical treatment, but rather with the impossibility of delivering top-line and tender patient care and still keep an institution’s profit margin from going bust.

The reality is that superior acute care hospital emergency treatment is too expensive and critics say the final nail in the coffin for Catholic health care was the shutdown of St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village two years ago.

The renowned hospital where doctors and nurses literally have saved millions since its founding 160 years ago—from Civil War and 9/11 survivors to passengers on the Titanic—is a shell of its former self. It still occupies the same building but no longer offers the critical care so needed by residents in lower Manhattan.

So the largest city in the nation does not have a Catholic hospital offering emergency and critical care. Cabrini, another top hospital in lower Manhattan, was closed down a few years before, leaving residents of lower Manhattan to trek miles north to find an emergency treatment at Mount Sinai or Roosevelt hospitals.

The pain still...Read More


WASHINGTON--A flurry of activity is surrounding National HIV Testing Day, which is slated for June 27—illustrating the need for thousands of unknown carriers of the disease to come forward and save their lives.

Churches and other houses of worship around the country are becoming more involved, and joining in the effort to test people.

“It is imperative that churches get involved in testing people for HIV/AIDS,” said Rev. Dr. Luonne Rouse, a New York pastor and licensed therapist.

Rouse and others have noted the importance of diagnosing HIV earl...Read More

Muneer Awad

OKLAHOMA CITY--The American Civil Liberties Union has joined in supporting an Islamic organization calling for the rejection of a constitutional amendment because it discriminates against Muslim-Americans.

The issue is expected to go to the U.S. Supreme Court in the coming months.

The suit began when Muneer Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Oklahoma, was granted an injunction against State Question 755—approved by 70 percent of the state’s voters last November—that contained an amendment that singled out Islamic beli...Read More

Admiral Mark Tidd

WASHINGTON--The Navy’s decision to allow same-sex marriages to be performed has been stopped in its tracks by irate Congress members who protested the decision to the Navy secretary as a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Chaplains are now actively trying to get the word out about the reversal caused by the congressional uproar.

In a show of power, more than 60 members of Congress wrote to the Navy secretary to protest the new policy that said gay marriages could be performed under certain conditions.

After the letter from Congress, Rear Admiral Mark Tidd, c...Read More