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jman507
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So I suppose it’s just a case of either people pushing one’s morality on each another.
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Petergee
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To the best of my understanding, Jews and Moslems do NOT believe that there is anything intrinsically immoral about eating non-Kosher/non-Halal food, and certainly nothing at all immoral about anyone supplying it or about a non-Jew/non-Moslem eating it. The Kosher and Halal laws are there to remind Jews/Muslims that they are a chosen people under a special disciplinary law, NOT a moral law.
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Kaninchen
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You missed the point, I used the phrase ‘deal with’ in the context of the ‘check-out’. It was a matter of handling non-kosher items.
Being Jewish, I’m sure I’d really enjoy your discourse on the nature and purpose of the dietary laws - together with issues of ritual purity - but this isn’t really the thread for it.
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Petergee
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I think you’d better check, I’m pretty sure the same system is usual there. I’ve even seen it on numerous US TV shows and films.
See above. And yes I know for a fact even the USA has laws giving employees some rights.
You’re not listening are you? I pointed out repeatedly in some detail many of the other essential facets of a pharmacist’s job. And it’s got nothing to do with “religious beliefs” and I never suggested pharmacists whould mention their religious beliefs (in fact I strongly argued that they should NOT). So please don’t pull out that silly old canard about “imposing religious beliefs on others”. Pro-life pharmacists can be and are of many different religions, and none.
Again, see above re what a pharmacist’s job consists of. A robot or a trained monkey can mix medicines.
And to decline to supply it if it is not in accordance with therapeutic standards.
Which nobody here has suggested a pharmacist should do. Unfortunately some people seem to think they have a right to push their morality on pharmacists.
“Sermon”, “little speech”, whatever you want to call it: No-one here has suggested a pharmacist should deliver it and if you had a little more honesty and politeness you wouldn’t keep accusing me of doing so. When someone keeps arguing against things that I **haven’t **said, I conclude that it’s because they know they’ve got no argument against what I have said.
It’s very rude to pontificate about the duties of a profession when you clearly have little or no experience or knowledge of it and show a marked resistance to learning anything about it. And it’s very rude when someone has pointed out the correct title of his profession, to continue using what you know to be an incorrect name for it.
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Petergee
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You’re welcome to correct me if I said anything inaccurate about the Kosher rules. As I said I was only speaking “to the best of my understanding” which I have gained inter alia from working and socialising with Orthodox Jews over many years. I’ve seen them handle non-Kosher food (even unwrapped IIRC) on numerous occasions.
I also know several hijab-wearing, very observant Moslem checkout girls who happily checkout my non-halal food regularly.
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Kaninchen
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That’s really very, very nice but not to the point.
I’ve already said that I saw it as none of my business - just as, I’m sure, large numbers of Catholic pharmacists (not so ‘observant’ as yourself) would in the situation we’re discussing.
Throughout my part in the discussion, I’ve dealt with the situation as being one of the ‘market’ - my introduction of kosher/halal was a parallel matter of the ‘market’ and the possible reactions of consumers to actions of suppliers. What I’d said was this:
I didn’t say that all would - neither can you say that all Catholic pharmacists will refuse to fill prescriptions/sell ‘non-catholicversionofkosher’ goods. I was wondering aloud about the reactions of consumers, not suppliers.
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Catholig
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Isn’t there a bit of difference between “kosher” and birth control? I mean - a catholic not selling meat on friday would parallel your kosher situation.
A situation which I, as a catholic who has been abstaining from meat on every friday for the past few months, would feel to be ridiculous, because it isn’t immoral to eat meat on Friday (the only situation could be a sin is when the Church tells you not to - which would qualify as disobedience). I certainly would have no problem selling any non-catholic meat during lent however.
With birth control, however is different, because it is intrinsically evil. It is a mortal sin in and of its self. And besides that it leads to other things such as adultery. This is something that I would have a problem dispensing - and it in no ways is related to your kosher food bit.
Really which would a Jew find worse - the use of barrier contraceptives or the breaking of Kosher? Would a Jew honestly feel that a gentile is bound to keep kosher which is the recognition of a special covenant with god? And would a Jew honestly have no qualm selling condoms when it is a direct violation to God’s divine law?
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Kaninchen
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I’ve not been arguing about the morality of the situation (if I were interested in doing so, I’d be on a thread where it was the central issue), I’ve been arguing about the market and the market’s reaction to supplier behavior (because the subject of the thread is about potential supplier action).
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quiet52
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Every baptized Christian shares in the responsibility of preaching the Gospel, the Good News of Christ. We are to help bring Christ’s TRUTH to every corner of the world, in the name of the Trinity. We aren’t to abrogate the teaching of our faith to only the priest homilizing at mass. Hearing the Word during mass or other liturgy, and hearing the homily, are very important, of course.
But each of us is to share in the mission of evangelization by being courageous enough to live out the truths of Christ’s Word as well as proclaiming them whenever possible.
There are moral decisions to be made within many professions. We’re Christians first – before we are pharmacists, teachers, social workers, cashiers, yardworkers, plumbers, etc. etc. We’re to do our best to act on our faith, not on the values of the modern world, every day. Sometimes when we do so, we risk disdain from others, or other worse repercussions. It is part of being persecuted for our faith.
Every honorable profession NEEDS Christians who act on their faith – who truly listen to their consciences and who truly try to respond responsibly to the Word of God.
All of us should be praying for this pharmacy student. May he find a pharmacy willing to honor his conscience. May he be nourished in his faith by the gift of the Eucharist, so that the soil of his faith keep his roots healthy and his spine strong.
And may I be forgiven for mixing metaphors.*
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mesquite_magic
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KathleenElsie
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Well lets see. When I go into a Jewish deli that sells Kosher I don’t expect a ham sandwich. If I want pork or non Kosher I go to the deli down the street that is not Kosher. So what is your point? I have a choice to go and accept what they sell or go some place else.
I would expect the same from a pharmacy.
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KathleenElsie
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Sorry but there are many businesses in the Jewish part of Pittsburgh that only do Kosher and are closed for Sabbath. Some Jews do not hold with the dietary restrictions many do. There are signs on the door or counter stating their restrictions. Oh the blintzes are wonderful in Squirrel Hill.
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Petergee
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I didn’t say “all Jewish retailers supply non-Kosher food” and I never said anything about the Sabbath. AFAIK any retailer is allowed to close his shop on any day he wishes for any reason whatsoever. I merely said that AFAIK Jews do not believe that it instrinsically (i.e. by the very nature of the act, always and everywhere and by everyone) immoral to supply non-Kosher food.
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Catholig
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Kaninchen - you basically just ignored my post. You didn’t answer ANY of my questions and you entirely missed the point I was trying to make about dietary restrictions not equaling birth control. Please go bank and re-read my post.
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Petergee
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I’ve mentioned many facets of it, but the relevant point which you’ve apparently overlooked is the very first thing I said here:
The customer does NOT have an absolute right to get whatever he asks for or whatever the doctor prescribes. To assert this is to completely demolish the profession of pharmacy and reduce pharmacists to mere vending machines. ALL pharmacists are (or should be) making moral decisions dozens of times every day about whether to supply things which have been requested/prescribed. In some cases (eg dispensing prescriptions for narcotics to someone whom they know is a drug addict/dealer) it is against the civil law to supply and pharmacists can be de-registered for NOT refusing supply. Also a pharmacy student is more than just a checkout operator. A qualified pharmacist is legally and morally responsible for his/her own professional decisions and the law does NOT excuse a pharmacist from breaking the law simply because he/she was acting under instructions from his/her boss.
It is not “imposing my morality” on someone to say “I’m sorry I can’t assist you to do something which **I **consider to be immoral.” I don’t know whether or not the customer considers it to be immoral, nor do I claim to know. I just want to live my life doing what I think is right, without interference from anybody else, and let everyone else make up their own minds what they think is right and make their own choices what THEY should do without forcing me to help them do anything which I don’t think is right for ME to do. For some reason you think I don’t have this fundamental right, just because I’m a pharmacist.
If someone works in a knife shop he is employed to supply people with knives. If I said “Hello how are you? May I have that knife please, I want to use it to stab someone”, then I would be trying to impose my morals on the person who had the knife. If he refused to give it to me, he would not be imposing his morals on me, he would merely be refusing to let me force him to do something which HE finds immoral. My getting a knife from him is simply “receiving a service”, but the supplier nevertheless performs an immoral act if he knows the person he supplies intends to use it for an immoral purpose.
OK there’s been rudeness both ways. You would get a little touchy if you’d trained and studied and practised for years to do a difficult job and then someone who didn’t know much about your job insisted on telling you they know better than you how to do it.
You repeatedly accused me, inter alia, of saying pharmacists should deliver to their customers a “sermon” or a “speech” about morality and/or religion. I said nothing of the kind. The only thing I suggested pharmacists should say to customers to whom they decline to supply contraceptives/abortifacients, was only that IF the customer asks a question it is polite for the pharmacist to answer it.
A typical conversation might be:
“Sorry I don’t supply that.” **At this point or at any other point **customers can and do simply answer “OK I’ll try someone else then” and finish the conversation.
Or if the customer chooses he may continue:
“Why not?”
“My professional ethics.”
“What do you mean?”
“My personal moral convictions do not permit me to supply contraceptives/abortifacients” (I’m not claiming to know or control what YOUR moral convictions say about YOUR actions, only what MY convictions say about MY actions.)
“Can you please explain your reasoning? / Why do you say X is an abortifacient, I was told it’s “just” a contraceptive?”
etc. etc., IF the customer, who is in complete control of the conversation the whole time, wishes to continue.
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Petergee
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As the only market effect of a pharmacist declining to supply a product is that the profit from the sale of the product will go to another pharmacist (or perhaps the customer may decide not to buy it), I don’t see why anyone else should complain about it since the only person financially penalised is the pharmacist himself.
In practice however, it is common that pro-life pharmacists report that they get increased custom for legitimate purchases and so in the long-term increase their profits, because people generally like to shop at a pharmacist who they know has some ethical principles, even if the customers disagree with those particular principles. Perhaps this end result is what the people who are pushing the idea (that pharmacists must be forced to supply things they find immoral for themselves to supply), are so afraid of.
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Kaninchen
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Jewish deli, Italian deli, Polish deli, Iranian deli . . .
I made the point when I mentioned ‘Catholic Pharmacist’ – you’d know what you were getting because it was on the door.
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Kaninchen
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Sometimes the English language’s lack of more than a remnant of the subjunctive makes “what if . . .” thought-experiment questions slightly difficult to pose without creating the possibility of endless orthogonal conversational byways – I might easily have asked it as: “What if a bartender belonging to the religion of the Invisible Pink Unicorn, whose codes include a blanket statement about not selling Guinness to Irish males under pain of eternal torment, were to decide to refuse to serve Guinness to Irish males” – Please replace whatever “job/profession of the supplier, religious/moral code to be potentially outraged, kind of customer involved together with problematic item for sale” is necessary for a parallel argument to the subject under discussion.
I just chose kosher/halal because I’m Jewish and it seemed an obvious (purely for conversational purposes) commercial parallel (given that my part of the argument was about consumers and supplier behavior) and I’m not going to get into an argument about questions like the relative significance of ‘the intrinsic evil of birth control’ v’s ‘dietary laws and ritual purity’ because, as I indicated, it’s not what my part of the discussion has been about.
If the thread were only about the issue of ‘birth control’ itself, rather than the consequences of supplier actions in circumstances of moral objections, I would not have participated.
My apologies if the above appears unhelpful.
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Kaninchen
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Indeed - hopefully in circumstances where the consumer has fair recourse to what are legal/prescribed items. I’m not against the supplier refusing to provide, only that consumers have opportunities for purchase.
I can understand that there would be a commercial ‘halo’ effect amongst the local ‘observant’ population (particularly) in certain areas, of course - I do think your final conjecture is a bit, how shall I say it . . . erm . . . ‘spin-like’
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KathleenElsie
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I only wish this were true. But there ar many “lukewarm” or “moderate” catholics that do not follow the teachings of the Catholic Church.
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