HOSPICE BY THE SEA, BOCA RATON: STILL MAKING NO SENSE IN UNDERCUTTING CHAPLAIN

J. Grant Swank, Jr.


Trying to cover their bad image they set in place, Hospice by the Sea, Boca Raton Senior Chaplain Fred Mortensen stated the following after “Veteran chaplain Mirta Signorelli resigned last month.”


This Mortensen “explanation” does nothing to make sense. It only exposes him as a theological liberal who opposes believing Chaplains such as Signorelli.


Mortensen states via Sun Sentinel.com: “The only time the issue has risen among our hospice team has been concerning all-staff meetings that do not in any way include patients or families. Chaplains, who sometimes are asked to give inspirational talks at such meetings, have been told to keep the diversity of staff members' beliefs in mind. It was a ‘suggestion — not a policy, not a directive.’”


Now let’s get this straight. If a chaplain is working at hospice and is given a “suggestion” to go easy on mentioning “God” in staff meetings, that is in reality a “policy.”


Try defining it in any other way and you are canned. Ever been there? Done that? Then you know truth.


To quibble over “suggestion” and “policy” reveals the reality that Hospice administration is desperate in attempting to weave a cover over their misstep, in fact, their cruelty against a believing Chaplain.


Further, does not the administration know that when a believing Chaplain is hired—and becomes what they themselves refer to as a “Veteran” chaplain—that means that administration expects that individual
to be honest to that person’s ethic.


A believing chaplain, of all persons, is bound to a particular moral base that includes a particular theological terminology. The fundamental of fundamentals in that terminology is the word “God.”


Any questinos?


Moreover, if there is staff in staff meetings who are atheists or agnostics or whatever, let them be mannerly enough to live alongside a believing Chaplain who uses the word “God” and “Lord” and “Jesus” in inspirational messages to staff.


If they can’t live with that, then let them quit. They can get jobs at a humanistic hospice.


Don’t put pressure on the believing Chaplain to resign, making it so uncomfortable for her that she has no choice but to resign or compromise her believing convictions.


Instead, the administration defends the unbelieving staff members against a believing “Veteran” Chaplain. That is unethical. It is unkind. It is discourteous. It should then be broadcast to the world as a cruelty leveled against a believing Chaplain, hence these posts on various global websites.


In addition, everyone knows that there are believing Chaplains and unbelieving Chaplains. There are Chaplains who are humanists—that is, persons who don’t believe in any deity. Why they are “Chaplains,” only hell knows.


Now it is evident that the hospice head Chaplain is going to the press to say that Hospice by the Sea is reasonable in what it did. The believing Chaplain has been unreasonable, he states.


Who then is this head Chaplain? He is obviously a theological liberal who is an enemy to all believing Chaplains.


There are biblical clergy. There are unbiblical clergy.


They are both referred to as “clergy.” Now the unbiblical clergy head at Hospice by the Sea is lambasting the believing Chaplain in defense of the worldly Hospice by the Sea administration.


It’s an old fight—right against wrong, godly against ungodly, biblical believing personages against the opposite.