Temperance is the fourth cardinal virtue. Many people take it to mean a moderation of one’s quest but in fact it is not any moderation but one that is versed towards the realizing of one’s inner order or the disposition of one’s various parts into one unified whole. Like all the other cardinal virtues, temperance is therefore subservient to practical reason. Without reason, there can be no temperance at all but only vicious behaviour. I very much consider what is going on around us at the moment as encompassing this type of behaviour. We have a government that has lost all modest semblances of moral rectitude and order in government. Nowhere is this more seen than in last week’s issue with the Church.
Last week, the Church issued a report, calling on the government to be careful in passing legislation against the forced Conversion Therapy on people with a homosexuality or gender identity disorder. The report rightly pointed out that it was against any type of Conversion Therapy carried out against the patient’s will. However, it also urged caution in the restrictions the State might put on any therapeutic or investigative intervention in a professional/client relation in line with any client’s free will. This is fundamental! One of the biggest misunderstandings currently doing the rounds is that people are either sexually heterosexual or homosexual. Nothing could be further from the truth! Sexual orientations do not come in black or white hues but in various shades of grey. As the name LGBTIQ itself implies, people might feel they belong to different categories of sexual orientation. If one, for example, considers oneself to have both heterosexual and homosexual tendencies, one might wish to investigate this further with the help of a therapist or doctor and might wish help to direct one’s behaviour in a particular direction alone. I know several patients who are bisexual in orientation but chaste and happily married! There is no way that this type of therapy should be excluded by law!
The Prime Minister, intemperate politician that he is, saw an occasion for spin to further his cause with the MGRM, and spin he did. He alleged that he was disappointed by the Church, that it was back in the Middle Ages. He stated that the Church was saying that homosexuality was an illness or pathology. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The Church simply defended the rights of individuals to seek any sexual therapy they considered fit with their therapist/doctor especially when they were queering their sexual orientation. Nor did the Church report ever say that homosexuality was related to paedophilia! This was all political hype and offered the MGRM the opportunity to jump on the bandwagon which it has unfortunately firmly hitched to the intemperate Labour Party. In the end, none of the allegations were true but were in effect rightly founded. However, the spin of lies was out and what the government wanted!
In its intemperate struggle for the votes of the unquestioning and the unwary, and in its lack of searching in a serious manner for the common good, the State is using these spin techniques to cover up its inefficiencies in run-of-the-mill state matters. For example, I have recently noticed that patients sent for referrals to Mater Dei Hospital are falling foul of the reception system at the hospital, which seems to have become a battle ground for Labour MPs, Parliamentary Secretaries and Ministers in their quest to dish out personal favours and gaining votes, especially when they some come from the same electoral district!
In the recent past, persons referred with urgent tickets of referral for suspected cancer were referred to hospital customer care and seen within a week. I do not know what happened to this system but three medical cases I have had recently, have me worried. In the first case a patient with daily vomiting and retching asked for an urgent appointment. She was given an appointment for weeks later and I had to intervene personally with the surgeon to see her earlier. On endoscopic examination she was found to have cancer of the oesophagus! Patient number two had a sudden increase in prostate specific antigen (a test for prostate cancer) and the value was quite high. On urgent referral to the hospital urologist, he was given an appointment by the hospital reception six months away even though he was asked to speak to the customer care section with an urgent ticket of referral! Again I had to intervene with the surgeon personally to have him seen earlier and he is now waiting for an MRI. A recent third case is still currently playing out. I sent a female patient with a lump in her left breast immediately with an urgent referral to the hospital reception for the breast clinic. She was not given an immediate appointment as was the praxis until recently but told she would receive an appointment by post! This is incredible and just not on! We are dealing with the lives of individuals here. The state is passing death sentences on these people! These events signify a serious breakdown in the systematic entry point of patients into the health care service. This seems to be symptomatic of the whole civil service which is being changed into a Labour Party club, as unfortunately seen in the seventies and early eighties.
It is this intemperance in its backyard that the government should tackle and not waste time running down serious organisations like the Church and other NGOs. A true case of seeing the twig in others’ eyes and missing the log in yours! Also a case of an inefficient and intemperate government!
[email protected]