Cancer is always a crisis. You are either in the depths of despair or jubilant that you are cancer free, and at both these times you want your church and your faith to accompany you.
When I was again diagnosed with cancer and as reality was setting in, I called the patient counselling department at the British Columbia Cancer Agency in Vancouver and ask to be connected with the Roman Catholic chaplain.
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have a Roman Catholic chaplain here. Would you like some assistance registering for MAiD?” All seamlessly in one breathe, the person on the other end of the phone had just offered me death by something other than cancer, but she did not offer me any hope.
It is COVID – the age of the telephone appointment – and I missed seven in-person cancer checkups that had been scheduled three months apart. By the time I saw the lump sticking out of the side of my body it was Stage 4, metastatic cancer. No church. No chaplain. Just MAiD paperwork after painful biopsies and probing by unknown impersonal doctors.
Then, 14 months after being diagnosed with cancer and after four COVID vaccinations and while receiving chemotherapy that leaves me anorexic and destroys my immune system, I contracted COVID. On the day I was diagnosed, the fourth doctor to speak with me emphasized that I had one chance in 10 of not surviving.
When I was admitted to hospital, I called the hospital chaplain directly myself. The man who answered the pager explained he was a Catholic priest covering for the chaplain who was on vacation. He said he was rather busy, with “someone to talk with” that day.
I expressed the urgency, telling him I would like to receive the sacraments and explaining where I was in the hospital. He never showed up and never contacted me.
A few weeks later I spoke with the actual hospital chaplain whom I had a year earlier before surgery when he came prepared to administer all the sacraments. He was upset when he heard about the lack of response to my chaplaincy request.
These events should never have happened. Health-care chaplains need to live near the hospital so they can get there quickly when there is a medical crisis or emergency. What I now describe as “permanent vacation mode” clergy can live in a church residence or somewhere far away from people needing sacraments urgently or regularly and wanting to practise their faith.
That priest who didn’t provide the sacraments to someone in a medical crisis has never apologized for letting me face death alone.
I still have my faith but neither a church nearby nor a confessor. There is a pocket in Vancouver where the churches in walking distance are non-English, and being on chemotherapy I am not allowed to go to crowded churches where English is available but chemotherapy guidelines (similar to COVID restrictions) are not. My confessor of many years has moved out of the area. I miss a parish I can visit daily and receive the sacraments, but my faith is rock solid and based on a loving relationship with Jesus. Unfortunately, Jesus and I are going it pretty much alone at the moment with support from an Eastern rite church.
If I didn’t have a strong faith, MAiD would look like a pretty good way to solve a difficult emotional and physical problem. But I don’t think we can blame the pro-MAiD people when the church has been absent in cancer and COVID crises.
People are not leaving the church; they are responding to and copying the example of men who are ordained to celebrate the sacraments but are busy with meetings or chats or long commutes. These non-sacramental activities can be taken care of by a lay administrator. Only a priest can celebrate the sacraments. What a privilege! As lay people, we want the church to be there in times of crisis and celebration.
No chaplain in a hospital of crisis is a crisis. So is the unavailability of sacraments when you have a 10 per cent chance of dying. MAiD is here; where are the priests and sacraments? When will the church wake up and return to its mission and vocation?
Judith L. Watt is a Vancouver writer.