Editor:
I would like to challenge the statement made by the current Delta Hospice Society leadership – that DHS has always been a Christian faith-based society.
When Ms. Ireland began to refer to DHS this way and that therefore it should be exempt from the law, I shook my head in disbelief. I have resided in Delta 20 years as a clergy person involved in the larger community. When I and other ministerial colleagues heard this our response was “This is news to us.”
I have participated in many meetings, presentations, read literature and visited our parishioners in hospice and have never heard this.
Nancy Macey, former Executive Director met with me and a few members of the Ladner United Church because we had property to develop. Our property was too small and far from the hospital and as was discussed in that meeting by Ms. Macey that locating a hospice beside a church would give the wrong message - that it was faith based and connected to a Christian church.
If DHS were a Christian faith-based society (many years before the current leadership) and therefore exempt from MAID, what is the need of this hostile takeover and new constitution? Why didn’t Nancy Macey and the former leadership just inform the government of this and then move on?
All our lives have been changed by the pandemic in ways we are all aware of. What did Christian Churches and all other caring institutions do? Putting organizational issues and financial anxieties they focused on caring for people, being the keeper of their brothers and sisters.
This is not what the DHS did.
Ms. Ireland and the board used the cover of the pandemic to execute the final moves in their “palace coup” by creating a proposed new “Christian constitution” sent to all current members by mail with a mail in ballot. The current constitution says nothing about being Christian faith based.
The new one certainly does.
To me, having read the document it I would assess it to be a hastily cranked out document with some reference to God’s purpose, inserting the Apostle’s Creed as the measuring stick of Christian faith along with giving the Board arbitrary unexplained power to accept and remove people, even current members from DHS. To call it a proper governing document for a society of this size based on what many of us know about the time, consultation, discussion amongst members and re-writes a proper constitution requires is a huge stretch of the imagination.
At great financial expense members received this package in the mail, given a date to return their ballot with their name on it and as the covering letter says please just vote yes and trust us.
Then after pulling off this constitutional administrative miracle they claimed the excuse of administrative burden in the process of accepting or rejecting the flood of new applications. How could we, the little society of DHS, deal with that?
No reason was given with acceptance or rejection letters. Many rejections were well known community leaders or persons with a long-term history of supporting DHS with money and time. How did they choose?
It seems plausible that using available intelligence they welcomed those who supported the current direction and rejected those who did not.
This is an end run hidden by a pandemic, an abuse of power and a definite lack of trust in God.
Mature Christians engage in open process, transparency, and community conversation because they trust God to lead them. Telling people to vote yes based on a document they have had had no consultation about or input into is a definite lack of faith in God and smacks of manipulation at a time when people are vulnerable.
Some members do not support MAID, but neither do they support the attempt to make DHS a faith-based society. That is such a major change and it is not clear what the larger intentions are as Ms. Ireland is on public record as supporting the extreme right wing conservative Christian agenda for North America which goes much further than MAID. DHS becomes a piece in a larger political religious struggle which is playing out before us in the U.S. and Canada.
We are moving towards what is known as a “pyrrhic victory”. A pyrrhic victory is a supposed win that is really a loss because of the destruction on the organization in the process. The current chair and board may “win” in court but at what cost. Ironically before the attempt to “Christianize” DHS people of good heart have worked effectively with persons of all faiths, religions and out looks. Now we have two groups, angry, bitter, and unable to dialogue together. We are witnessing the damage.
I do not have any wish for DHS to be linked to a larger political and social agenda as has been articulated online by its current chair. I am part of the group supporting the taking back of DHS to be the kind, compassionate and caring organization it has always been and one that is in line with the law.
Major (Rat’s) the Rev Jim Short MMM CD
