The mayor of New York thinks it best for New Yorkers to suffer a little bit whether they agree with him or not because... hey... he's in charge and he knows what's best:
Yesterday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and city officials unveiled a new initiative to limit supplies of
prescription painkillers in the city’s emergency rooms as a way to combat what they described as a growing addiction problem in the region. Some critics, as documented by The New York Times, however, felt the move would unnecessarily hurt poor and uninsured patients who use emergency rooms as their primary care doctor. Needless to say, Mr. Bloomberg was not swayed by this line of argument. “The city hospitals we control, so … we’re going to do it and we’re urging all of the other hospitals to do it, voluntary guidelines. Somebody said, oh, somebody wrote, ‘Oh then maybe there won’t be enough painkillers for the poor who use the emergency rooms as their primary care doctor,’” the mayor said on his weekly radio show with John Gambling. “Number one, there’s no evidence of that. Number two, supposing it is really true, so you didn’t get enough painkillers and you did have to suffer a little bit. The other side of the coin is people are dying and there’s nothing perfect … There’s nothing that you can possibly do where somebody isn’t going to suffer, and it’s always the same group [claiming], ‘Everybody is heartless.’ Come on, this is a very big problem.”
Actually, there's a bigger problem Mayor Bloomberg. Elizabeth Scalia points it out:
As the Deity’s presence in the public arena is reduced, it is replaced with control freaks like this guy, who has decided so what if you have to suffer a little, as long as no one has unused pain killers in their medicine cabinets.
Christian theology has the means and the practices to help us bring meaning to our suffering, if we must suffer. Under secular theology (seculalogy?)if (because the mayor of the city wants to make sure you don’t have an errant Vicodin laying about) you must suffer a bit, well…”offer it up” for the sake of
heavenBloomberg’s burgeoning SkyDaddy sensibilities.
Into the vacuum created by society's dismissal of God enters those with God-complexes who think they know better then anyone what's best for people.
And trust me, there's a lot of that going on today.
Of course, there is a fix and it begins with you and me.
Faith is much like a muscle, atrophying when not exercised and, sadly, lacking the power to influence those around us positively when allowed to atrophy.
It's time to take your faith to the gym that is Mass and regularly.
Just do it.
If society were to welcome rather than dismiss God, those with God-complexes would need to find something else to fill their megalomania.
Just do it. No excuses.