The Wendland Story

Unrealized by most, the ELCA is involved through one of its members in one of the most significant world-wide ethical decisions being made these days. Attorney Janie Siess of Lodi, CA, is a former organist at St Paul Lutheran and currently a member of Emmanuel Lutheran in Lodi. She represented the plaintiff in a suit brought by his mother and sister in behalf of Robert Wendland, in a case that has gone all the way to the California Supreme Court. Despite Wendland's death earlier this summer, making the trial moot, the Court has considered it so important in American jurisprudence that it will continue the trial to bring it to a decision.

Attorney Siess sees her role as a "matter of faith," said her former pastor, Larry Gedde, "a courageous battle against great odds; she believes she is being tested and beset by significant forces of evil because of her conviction."

Thomas J Marzen, General Counsel, National Legal Center for the Medically Dependent & Disabled, recounts the story of Robert Wendland, in National Right to Life News, (28:6). Excerpts from his article follow.

The lives of virtually all the mentally incapacitated adults in California who have not made their wishes clear, literally hang in the balance, awaiting the decision of the California Supreme Court in a case that will determine whether Robert Wendland would have been allowed to continue to live or whether he would have had to die by dehydration, in a case which has been inaccurately described as involving a "right to die."

It would be difficult to exaggerate how much is at stake in Wendland v. Wendland. It represents a major step down the slippery slope in which the logic of decisions reached for an entirely different category of disabled people is used to justify the removal of food and fluids from a man who has a severe disability but is clearly conscious. To appreciate its magnitude we have to go back to a seminal 1976 case and trace the arc of subsequent case law.

In Quinlan, the New Jersey Supreme Court in 1976 held that the parent-guardian of Karen Ann Quinlan, a permanently unconscious young woman, could order withdrawal of the respirator. However, When it was withdrawn, Karen unexpectedly continued to breathe on her own. Withdrawal of nutrition and hydration was never an issue and Karen lived for another decade.

The next phase of "right to die" litigation was the issue whether or when it was permissible to stop the use of tube feeding and hydration to sustain the lives of others like Karen Ann. The cases turned on the use of "artificial" methods to feed and give hydration to highly vulnerable patients said to be in a "persistent vegetative state ("PVS"), a diagnosis that remains controversial even today. The patient is said to be permanently unconscious, but nevertheless has sleep-wake cycles that sometimes mimic consciousness. Patients breathe on their own, but they cannot efficiently swallow. So they require "artificially" provided food and fluids. Typically this is nothing more complicated than four or five cans of Ensure a day, poured or pumped through a plastic tube into their stomachs or small intestines.

Who Makes the Call?

Who makes decisions for these people and what limits, if any, are there to the conservator's actions?

In case after case and in state after state over the past three decades, courts have held (with only a few exceptions) that guardians of patients unable to make their own medical treatment decisions can legally order withholding or withdrawing of tube feeding/hydration. The result is death by dehydration and malnutrition.

The courts empowered guardians to order withholding or withdrawing of tube feeding/ hydration in the "best interests" of patients only if the patients were deemed either to have terminal conditions or to be permanently unconscious, as PVS patients are said to be.

What if neither condition prevailed? Courts have held that for those patients tube feeding/ hydration can be withheld or withdrawn only if the patients had left behind "clear and convincing" evidence that this is specifically what the patients would have wanted.

Thus, the Michigan Supreme Court held in Michael Martin that a wife-guardian could not order withdrawal of tube feeding/ hydration from him. Though unable to make treatment decisions and unable to swallow, he was not unconscious. In fact he used a wheelchair effectively and enjoyed attending Tigers baseball games. Moreover, Mr. Martin had left behind no clear, convincing, or specific evidence that he would not want to be fed or hydrated under his present circumstances.

Likewise, the Wisconsin Supreme Court held in Edna Floss that the guardian of Edna Floss, a person with Alzheimer's disease, could not withhold tube feeding/hydration from Ms. Floss unless she was deemed to be terminally ill or permanently unconscious – or unless Ms. Floss had left behind clear, convincing, and specific evidence that this what she had wanted. Ms. Floss met none of those criteria.

The California Story

Enter the case of Robert Wendland. In 1993, at the age of 42, he incurred a severe head injury as the result of an auto accident. He was in a coma until January 1995 and recovered through several levels of consciousness.

According to documents filed with the California court, he had since acquired abilities to operate a motorized wheelchair, to move himself in a manual wheelchair, to balance momentarily in a balance frame, to indicate "yes" or "no" on a communication board, to draw the letter "R," to paint, and to play wheelchair bowling. He was clearly not unconscious, but he remained unable to make his own medical treatment decisions and required tube feeding/hydration to continue to survive.

In mid 1995 his wife and conservator (guardian), Rose Wendland, asked a California trial court to authorize her to order withdrawal of Robert's tube feeding/ hydration. His mother, Florence Wendland, and his sister, objected.

The lower court denied the wife-conservator the power to order withdrawal of the tube feeding/ hydration because she had not provided "clear and convincing" evidence that this would be Robert's decision. The California Court of Appeal reversed the ruling.

The appeals court held that, even without clear and convincing evidence of patient intent, a conservator had the authority under California's guardianship statute to order withholding or withdrawing of medical treatment, including tube feeding/hydration, unless it were shown that the conservator were acting in "bad faith" - that is, with an evil or invidious motive.

The Court of Appeal decision essentially gave a green light to California conservators to order foregoing any and ail forms of life-sustaining treatment and care from their mentally incapacitated wards. Conservators of older persons with various forms of dementia, people with mental retardation or other mental disabilities or illnesses-virtually anyone unable to make their own treatment decisions-would thus be authorized to decline to feed/ hydrate wards unable to swallow normally. They would be permitted to refuse other equally necessary and equally easy to provide forms of life-sustaining care for other wards with different disabilities.

Possible Rulings

What about people who've never been able to make treatment decisions or who failed to leave behind clear and convincing evidence that they wanted to be fed and hydrated should they become unable to swallow normally? If the appeals court decision is upheld by the California Supreme Court, they would be at the mercy of whichever family member (or stranger) ended up being appointed their guardian.

Thus a California Supreme Court decision that upheld the Court of Appeal would expose virtually all those in California who need a guardian because of mental disability-tens of thousands of people-to the most obvious sorts of euthanasia-by-omission. Such a decision of the highest court of the state with the largest population in the nation might also influence the courts of other states to reach similar conclusions, leading to the deaths of countless thousands of mentally incapacitated people.

The authority of the guardian to order withholding orwithdrawing of minimally burdensome treatment or care such as tube feeding/hydration, would be expanded beyond "terminal condition" and "permanent un-conscousness" to embrace virtually all persons with mental disabilities. The law could effectively protect only those who once had the ability and foresight to publicly object to this form of euthanasia-those whose guardians choose life on their behalf - and those whose guardians are plainly acting with evil motives.

An appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court should be expected whatever the outcome in the California Supreme Court.

Whether it would accept the case is unclear, although there appears to be a reasonable possibility of review especially if the California Supreme Court decides in a mannerthat places it in conflict with the Supreme Courts of Michigan and Wisconsin. And, in Wendland v. Wendland, the U.S. Supreme Court might well decide whether or not euthanasia-by-omission will become the law of the land.

[EDITOR'S NOTE: On 8/9/01 theCalif. Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of Wendland's mother, Mrs. Florence Wendland. It said that a conservator (Wendland's wife who petitioned her husband's death by malnutrition and dehydration) must show "by clear and convincing evidence, either that the conservatee wished to refuse life-sustaining treatment or that to withhold such treatment would have been in his best interests." Lacking any such formal order of his wishes, the court ruled the life-sustaining food and water could not be denied. The Court continued, "The decision to treat is reversible; the decision to withdraw treatment is not." ELCA member, Attorney Janie Siess, responded that she was "in complete joy" over the ruling.]

The Evangelical Lutheran Congress in America
By Pastor Brad Jenson

What is the Church? Answer; "The church is the assembly of all believers among whom the Gospel is preached in its purity and the holy sacraments are administered according to the Gospel," (Augsburg Confession, Article 7).

QUESTION: What is the ELCA? Answer: It is, in part, a religious pseudo-congress.

In Indianapolis, at its recent Church Wide Assembly, the ELCA, amongst other business, conducted its foreign and domestic policy. On the legislative docket in Indianapolis were the following foreign policy resolutions: "Economic Sanctions against Iraq and Cuba," "Stand with Africa," "Support for the Haitian People," "Global Warming," "Asylum Seekers and Refugees," "Israeli-Palestinian Relations," and "Support for the People of Vieques, Puerto Rico." Then there was the ELCA's domestic policy agenda: "Racial Hate Crimes," "Temporary Assistance to Needy Families," "Late-Term Abortion," "Congressional Voting Representation forthe District of Columbia," "Health Care Policy," "The Family Farm," "The Birmingham Pledge," and "Peace." These resolutions percolated up through synodical assemblies to the churchwide assembly.

Why a Congress?

QUESTION: Why gather in a church assembly to function as a pseudo-congress? Answer: There are four reasons given below, in ascending order of importance.

First, after World War II, Lutherans in the United States developed a bad conscience about alleged "Quietism" among many Lutherans in Germany during the Nazis regime-even though the religious situation in Germany at that time was quite complex and it may not have been primarily, or at least not singularly, a matter of theological "quietism.''

Second, the decade of the 1960s-when many of today's mainline Protestant leaders were coming of age-was a time of hyper-activism. Many of these activists as well as their younger counterparts-who come out of seminaries having been taught by the old activists-continue to be drawn to issues which come down the pike as concerns of the secular, political left. Activists old and young convert such secular concerns into resolutions for consideration at synodical and churchwide assemblies.

Third, discussing and supporting such foreign or domestic policy resolutions plays a psychological role as a mood enhancer for liberal-minded assembly-goers. Never mind that such resolutions are often quickly forgotten-sometimes before the end of the assembly! What is important is that it felt so good to be in favor of whatever-it-was.

Fourth, and for Lutherans the most important, is the confessional reason for such resolutions: The loss of both awareness of and confidence in the Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms as professed in the Augsburg Confession, Article 28 and in many other writings of the Lutheran reformers. Furthermore, this doctrine is often confused with the so-called American "wall of separation between church and state." But the Two Kingdoms doctrine is a distinction, not a separation.

The Confessional Results

The practical confessional effect of operating within the Two Kingdoms doctrine is to avoid the pitfalls of quietism on the one hand and hyper-activism on the other. The Two Kingdoms doctrine allows one to understand how the religious left and the religious right are both kissing and hissing cousins. They are kissing cousins in the sense that they operate with the same theological principle, which drives them to attempt to control the state. They are hissing cousins in the sense that they feud over what direction (right or left) to exercise that control.

When he was still a Lutheran, Richard John Neuhaus spoke at the first Call to Faithfulness Conference held at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, and made this helpful statement: "On social and political issues where it is not necessary for the church to speak, it is necessary that the church not speak. Where it is necessary to speak to public policy, the church speaks proscriptively and not prescriptively.2" This is not quietism, nor is it hyper-activism. It is an excellent statement about how the Two Kingdoms doctrine ought to function in practice.

For example, it was necessary for the Church to speak against Nazism and the Holocaust during World War II, against the denial of civil rights to African Americans during and prior to the 1960s, and against apartheid in South Africa in the 1970s & 1980s. It is necessary today forthe Church to speakagainst partial birth abortions, against racism, and againstthe rapid erosion of marriage and the family-the consequences of which are increasingly measured in violence and death. Such speaking is proscriptive which means that the church speaks against something.

But when the Church speaks in this way, it does not speak p rescripti vely (i.e., it does not call for support for particular pieces of legislation or other government action). Even when it is not necessary for the Church as a whole to speak, individual Christians are free to participate in public policy issues as they see fit-as citizens-but not in the name of the Church.

For Freedom We Are Set Free

A return to the Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms would help the ELCA focus more clearly and effectively on the task of sharing the Gospel with an increasingly unchurched culture in this country and around the world. But such a return is not merely aconceptual matter because the ELCA-along with all mainline churches-is in bondage to the spirit of political correctness and cannot free itself. Political correctness is not only a political movement which has obscured the Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms in Lutheranism, it is a bondage which can be described in Pauline terms as the Church having turned back "to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits, whose slaves [the Church] wants to be once more," (Galatians 4: 9}. Since the church wills this bondage, don't look for things to change anytime soon. So, watch for further mood enhancers in the next pre-assembly CWA packet, as ELCA assemblies continue to play-act as a congress conducting foreign and domestic policy and feeling so good about doing so.

Pastor Jenson serves at Kenwood Lutheran Church, Duluth, Minnesota

1 Richard John Neuhaus, "To Serve the Lord of All: Law, Gospel, and Social Responsibility," Dialog, Vol. 30, Spring 1991, p. 145.

Dutch Courage

Now that State-sanctioned killing has come to the Netherlands, Pete du Pont, former Governor of New Jersey, shares this dramatic hospital moment, (Opinion Journal 4/25/01):

Attending Physician: "Goedemorgen, Grandmother. You are a very sick old woman. The independent physician and I have reviewed your medical records, and we don't believe you're going to get any better. Are you in pain?"

Grandmother: "Yes. I hurt so much I want to die." Attending Physician: "Did you hear that, Doctor?" Independent Physician: "I did.

Attending Physician: "Very well. Initial here, and hand me the syringe."

And so the Dutch doctor, under the terms of the newly enacted Termination of Life on Request and Assisted Suicide Act, legally kills the grandmother The doctor is clear of liability. The preamble to the new statute says, "It is desirable to include in the Criminal Code grounds for granting immunity to a physician who 'terminates life on request or provides assistance with suicide.'"

One death completed, the doctors move on to the next bed.

READER RESPONSES

DEAR EDITOR:

AN OPEN LETTER to The Bishop, Deans, and Synod Council of the Upstate New York Synod, ELCA, from Richard J. Niebanck,, VDM, STS (7/19/01)

Blessed be God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, now and forever. Amen.

It is with great sorrow and dismay that I write to you. After much prayer and reflection I have been led to conclude that, by its recent actions on "Welcoming" and "Blessing," the Upstate New York Synod has departed from the historic consensus ecclesiae catholicae and has thereby forfeited any claim it may have had to be an "expression" of the church catholic. Having thus stepped outside the apostolic faith as confessed through the ages and set forth in the Lutheran Confessions, the Synod has brought about a status confessionis on this territory, throwing pastors and people into a crisis of conscience.

To illustrate the gravity of this situation, I submit the following two quotations which appeared in an article by the distinguished Lutheran theologian and ethicist, Gilbert Meilander, now teaching at Valparaiso University. The article appeared in the Fail 1997 issue of Pro Ecclesia.

1. From German theologian Wolfhart Pannenberg: "If a church were to let itself be pushed to the point where it ceased to treat homosexual activity as a departure from the biblical norm and recognized homosexual unions as equivalent to marriage, such a church would cease to be the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church." (p.444)

From "The St. Andrew's Day Statement" (1995) of a special working group of the Evangelical Council, Church of England: "The primary pastoral task of the church in relation to all its members, whatever their self-understanding and mode of life, is to reaffirm the good news of salvation in
Christ, forgiveness of sins, transformation of life, and incorporation into the holy fellowship, [assisting] its members in a life of faithful witness in chastity and holiness, recognizing two forms or vocations, marriage and singleness (Gen. 2:24; Matt. 19:4-6; I Cor. 7 passim). There is no place
for the church to confer legitimacy on alternatives to these." (p.447)

Since it has indeed deliberately, publicly, and officially chosen "to confer legitimacy on alternatives to these," the UNY Synod has taken a stand that, in addition to being unconstitutional, is schismatic, sectarian, and heretical. These actions were nothing if not ill-considered and precipitate. Their proponents treated the issues as if they were matters of mere policy. The alleged synod-wide study was a sham. The Assembly debate was dominated by emotional special pleading and appeals to personal experience. Most disgraceful was the mow-'em-down-and-take-no-prisoners Juggernaut engineered by the Bishop and his hand-picked resource team. It was as if a delicate surgical operation had been turned over to a committee of un-trained enthusiasts making life-and-death decisions by majority vote.

For me, and I daresay for many others, the UNY Synod has now become completely devoid of ecclesial weight. Faithful pastors are now forced to consider the Synod as a mere fiction of corporate law to which they are linked professionally by an accident of history. They and their fiocks are thrown into a Congregationalism they never sought. I weep inwardly at what can only be called an atrocity perpetrated on the Body of Christ by the very person who should have been guarding against it. I find myselt suddenly out of communion with the Synodical Bishop and with those others who assisted in the perpetration of this atrocity.

What might this mean? At least the following:

I will not communicate at any synodically-sponsored eucharist or at any altar at which the Synodical Bishop may be presiding.

Neither the Synodical Bishop nor any representative of his shall conduct or participate in my funeral. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.

DEAR EDITOR:

May I share an [edited] letter I received from my brother-in-law, Vic Felton,

Dearest Brother Fred,

The "Ordination" problem should not be accepted from the Episcopalian-Roman Catholics, since the word "Ordination" does not appear in the Bible. When our Lord Jesus Christ entered the ministry nothing was said about being ordained; only the empowering of the Holy Spirit appears, along with the Heavenly Father's words, LISTEN TO HIM! When my class was approaching graduation from Concordia Seminary, Prof. Theo. Graebner told us not to bother with the practice of ordination. He added, "I myself was never ordained, nor were others among Synod's clergy!" You are right in objecting to legalized clergy management.

Dr. Fred Schoenbohm, Waverly, IA.

Perspectives

SYDNEY DIOCESE FACES SPLIT WITH CANTERBURY-The ELCA was sold a bill of goods when agreement for "full communion" with the Episcopal Church (Anglican) was pushed through the Churchwide Assembly, despite the certified and voted objection of 1/3rd the Assembly and 2/3rds of the ELCA as represented by the voters at their own previous synod assemblies. The most vociferous support for the agreement-still widely echoed and reechoed around the ELCA-is that the historic episcopate is "a sign of the UNITY of the church." Here's the kind of UNITY we are going to inherit as all our bishops are installed one by one with the special sacramental grace given by the Episcopal bishop's hand upon their head, when they are installed as finally permissibly qualified by the Episcopalians for the historic episcopate.

Anglicans Jessica Berry and Jonathan Petre write: "The worldwide Anglican Church faces a fresh and serious test after the new Archbishop of Sydney promised to let lay people preside at Holy Communion.In an act of defiance that will dismay Dr George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Peter Jensen said last week he wanted to permit unordained people to celebrate communion in his diocese. The practice is anathema to most of the Church and has been strongly condemned by the 1998 Lambeth Conference of Anglican bishops in addition to Dr Carey, the nominal head of the worldwide Church. It was, however, approved in principle two years ago by the evangelical Sydney diocese, even though Dr Harry Goodhew, the then archbishop, refused to introduce it because it could result in the diocese being cast out of the Anglican Communion. Canon Peter Jensen was elected archbishop of Sydney, 6/5/01.

Dr Jensen, an outspoken evangelical, said he was keen to implement the reform, despite Dr Carey's views. He said: "I hope this will not force a schism within the Church. I believe it will not. I see no reason why it should and I hope that no one takes that attitude. There is nothing whatever in the Bible about who should preside over Holy Communion, so I wonder why this matter is being treated with much more seriousness than something like the consecration of women bishops."

Canon David Hamid, the Anglican Communion's director of ecumenical affairs, pleaded with Dr Jensen to "examine his conscience". He said: "The last thing we need in the Church is more division." Many Anglican evangelicals believe that there is no special significance in being ordained.

They believe that the role reserved for priests - consecrating the bread and wine at the Eucharist - should be open to anyone. The official view is that priests have a special status - and the issue could prove to be as divisive as that of women bishops.

Dr Jensen recently described "clerical domination" as a "curse". He said: "Responsibility for the Bible and the gospel in Church and community belongs to all of us. We cannot leave it to the professionals." The Archbishop said he intends to use "well-trained laymen" and hoped to introduce the practice without breaking Church law. Dr Jensen, who also disapproves of women priests and homosexual "marriages", is no stranger to controversy. Last week, he accused John Howard, the Australian Prime Minister, of being "out of touch with God" for refusing to apologize to Aborigines.

EVANGELICAL ABORTIONS: Agape Press reports that according to the Guttmacher Institute, an affiliate of Planned Parenthood, almost a quarter-million abortions are performed each year in the United States on women who identify themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians. Approximately 1.37 million abortions are performed in the United States year, and 37.4 percent of them are done to Protestant women-approximately one-half (about 18 percent) of whom profess to be born-again believers, 246,600 aborted babies each year in America

LC-MS AND THE ELCA: After extended debate, the recent Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod convention affirmed its late President A.L.Barry's judgment, which he had sent in a letter to the LC-MS delegates before his death, that during theological talks with the ELCA, the "LCMS indicated to the ELCA that in light of its theological direction we cannot consider them to be an orthodox Lutheran church body, and they expressed their feeling that precisely because we do not agree with their ecumenical agreements they regard us in a similar manner." [In recent years, the ELCA has entered into full communion with three

Reformed church bodies, and with the Episcopal Church and the Moravian Church in America. The relationship allows exchange of clergy and permits members of the churches to take communion at each other's altars.]

The affirming resolution added, "We of the LCMS recognize that many of our brothers and sisters in the ELCA remain faithful to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we resolve to reach out to them in love and support."

In a predictable response, the ELCA's presiding bishop, H.George Anderson, said that the resolution "saddens me a lot. We were not expecting it, because to our knowledge no formal study of this issue had been presented to the [LCMS] assembly. For me it's a little hard to take seriously a doctrinal statement with no formal study."

Commented one observer: Good grief! "No formal study" is exactly the process George Anderson advocated for the ELCA for the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification (JDDJ). When six Lutheran seminary faculty called for such formal study, they were dismissed by the [Philadelphia] Churchwide Assembly and the process was rushed through. [Ed.note: Resolution to approve this pivotal and doctrinally suspect document with the Roman Catholics was adopted with less than 5 miinutes Assembly discussion.] We have here a classic case of the pot calling the kettle "black." Nonetheless, Anderson makes a good point on the question of formal study of doctrine. Since there was no formal study of the JDDJ in the ELCA, we should not take the JDDJ seriously.

FELLOWSHIP OF CONFESSIONAL LUTHERANS

333 Mo/mo Way, San Jose, CA 95119 (Tel: (408) 972-2448)

Dear Friends in Christ's Priesthood of Believers,

This first year of the new millenium saw momentous things in our Church:

The meeting of the ELCA church-wide assembly, the passing of a resolution allowing for "wiggle room" for those who for the sake of Lutheran doctrine, can not accept the historic episcopacy in ordinaining pastors, the authorizing of a four year study on homosexuality, the establishment of a new fellowship and communion, Lutheran Congregations in Ministry for Christ (LCMC) - both a fellowship where evangelical minded persons and congregations can come together, and a church for those congregations which feel constrained to leave the ELCA.

Throughout, our Fellowship of Confessional Lutherans (FOCL) has remained faithful to its commitment to Jesus Christ as the only Savior of all humankind. We proclaim this pivotal truth, along with the centrality of Hofy Scripture, both Law and Gospel, as the source and norm for all doctrine, faith and life. We have attested that the Lutheran Confessions are a true exposition of the faith delivered to the Church, and that the ELCA should be faithful to the Gospel in accordance with these confessions.

We have tried to be a "positive, pro-active and affirming presence within our Church," not a disruptive, negative voice. We have avoided hearsay and gossip in our reporting through our newsletter, FOCL-Point, not attacking persons but stating positions and facts, theological and otherwise, as they happen. In addition to our newsletter, FOCL has continued to offer SATIS EST Scholarship grants to pastors serving in congregations, to further their Biblical and/or confessional studies.

Now once again we ask for your support - through prayer and by financial support. You receive FOCL-Point free of cost, yet it takes money to print and distribute our quarterly newsletter. All other services are met by volunteer effort. Our scholarship fund needs to be replenished each year if FOCL is to continue to make study grants to pastors in need. Don't miss this opportunity to join us in our mission to keep the ELCA firmly rooted in the centrality of Christ and His Word and faithful to our Lutheran Confessions. A thousand, five hundred, one hundred, fifty or even thirty-five dollars is not too much to give toward this ministry, We are counting on you to support our ministry- Remember that our challenge is your challenge, our mission is your mission.

As ever in Christ,

The Rev. Dr. Herbert G. Schaefer, President; The Rev. Dr. George Muedeking, Editor