A nurse is facing disciplinary action for simply offering to pray for the recovery of an elderly patient. While the patient did not object, Caroline Petrie, 45, is facing sanctions or even termination. Petrie is a serial prayer. She was suspended previously for breaching the “code of conduct on equality and diversity.” She has now been suspended again.
England is pretty rigid on displays of religiosity. In Heathrow check-in worker Nadia Eweida, was banned from wearing a cross around her neck at work.
Petrie was praying for May Phippen, 79, in December, at the end of a home visit. When Phippen mentioned the offer to another nurse the next day, the nurse turned prayer narc and turned in Petrie — even though Phippen did not object to the prayer offer.
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This reminds me of something that happened in high school. Me and a few friends were going to an Alice Cooper show. This was when he was still a big enough deal to attract protesters. They had a bunch of hyper-zealots passing out literature and generally interfering with the pedestrian traffic into the venue. When one went out of the way to block me and a buddy, I told him politely that he really needed to move. When he wouldn’t and insisted on starting to preach, we just both looked at him and went to go around. He forced a brochure in my buddy’s hand who responded with a “Keep your hands off me, douche bag.” The zealot responded with a “Jesus loves you!” To which my boy, not a confrontational guy by nature, calmly walked to the guy and screamed really loud, “Jesus loves Alice Cooper too, hypocrite!” My jaw hit the ground. He apologized to me for getting upset on the way in and told him to never apologize for being correct.
Mike,
I really agree that this is evidence, not of kindness but of arrogance. Why did the chaplin walk out in a snit on Yankee and her husband? If they don’t want the prayer that is their right. Another poster had to claim he was a Satanist before the hospital worker would put “none” in the box for what religion he was. We don’t have the right to determine another person’s conscience or spiritual decisions.
In Toledo I have been handed religious pamplets by car and appliance repairmen. Doctors will pray over you and you get lots of free “noo-age” bull crap just about everywhere, especially in Ann Arbor. My one really crazy christian neighbor wouldn’t say merry christmas to me because he’d heard I was an atheist and assumed that meant I worshipped Satan. (What part of a-theist does he not understand?)
Wasn’t it the Pharisees that beat their breasts and loudly said their prayers?
The insufferable behavior of the religiously smug is beyond annoying. If I believe in prayer than I’ll do it for myself. Making a public display of praying for someone is more about the the one praying then the one prayed for. If one assumes God’s omniscience than one assumes God is aware of each and every situation and will act accordingly. Do I personally pray? Yes I do. I’ve prayed for myself when health emergencies have stricken, or when i was seeking guidance for severe personal problems. I much more often pray for my family, or I pray for larger things than my own personal interest. Does it work? Who know, but it can’t hurt.
I even had a situation when a prayer helped me out of a depressing situation that threatened my family’s financial stability. I don’t know if there was heavenly intervention, but a valid path suddenly became clear to me and I was able to climb out of the problem having seen this new perspective. All of my prayer, except “davening” at Synagogue is private. “Davening” though is really taking part in a ritual and in many ways is a Jewish form of meditation, rather than specific praying.
For Christians, Jesus suggested that silent, private prayer was the best way to God. Unfortunately, the fundamentalist Christian crowd feels the duty to share their insights incessantly, despite Jesus’ teachings. That to me is self-congratulatory and therefore anything but the humility prided by all major religions. I wouldn’t want that nurse treating me.
Sally,
What you say is true because you used the key qualifier. “You just do it, on your own time.”
My husband went through surgery on his spine. When he came out of recovery and was still moaning under anasthesia, this guy whom I assumed was the chaplain walks in and first asks me if I want a prayer said for him. I said, no thanks. Instead of taking a hint, he says “well I’ll just say a prayer over him.” I told him no thanks again, and he turns in a snit and leaves. How things have changed since I was admitted to the hospital, where when I checked-in I was asked if I wanted a chaplain to visit. No not here, it was foisted on all.
Why can’t these people just leave others alone?
The thing is, you don’t ask someone if you can pray for them.You just do it, on your own time.
Lots of people pray for people that would otherwise decline prayer if offered.
There is nothing wrong with the woman praying for her patients.
The problem is nowadays is that we all have to walk on egg shells for fear of offending someone.
This was interesting because the patient’s reaction was very different from my experience of most religious people in the US. The patient is a Christian but still didn’t want the prayer. In the US, often times, you are going to get that prayer if it kills the prayer to give it to you!
I feel there is a great deal of arrogance in asking a patient if you may pray for them. If it is your belief that prayer will help, say it silently, it should still work. If the patient askes you to pray for them that is different. Bringing religion to someone who has not asked for it is disrespectful of others. This is done by well meaning people who are certain of the moral superiority of their religion, or even more specifically, their way of doing religion.
If I was a nurse and handed someone “God is not Great” I should get in trouble. It’s not my place as a nurse to convince someone not to believe in god/dess and it is not a believers’ place to put their beliefs on others. Besides, maybe these patients have concealed carry permits!