Catholic Identity in Healthcare: The Consistent Life Advocacy (original) (raw)

Catholic Identity in Catholic Health-Care Institutions: Are We Doing Enough?

The Linacre Quarterly, 2010

The Linacre Quarterly. Amidst the current tumultuous climate of incessant debates and politicizing about health-care reform in the United States, in this issue of the Linacre, Doctor Guinan and colleagues provide information about pastoral-care practices in the Catholic hospitals within the Archdiocese of Chicago. 1 Their premise, that pastoral care is an important component of Catholic health care, is correct; and their question about whether spiritual concerns may be overlooked in a changing health-care environment, especially as relates to cooperation in immoral acts and lack of protection for conscience rights of health-care workers seems to be well-founded. Although they report data based on a small sample, and a simple survey with seemingly meager methodology, it nonetheless has a potentially large and significant effect if it stimulates more thought and dialogue about Catholic identity in Catholic health-care institutions. I think it will, but I have a major question: Is enough being done? In this study undertaken by members of the Catholic Physicians Guild of Chicago, the pastoral-care directors of twenty-one Catholic hospitals in the Archdiocese of Chicago were sent a one-page checklist survey. The aim of the survey was to make some assessment of the hospitals' Catholic mission. The survey addressed five major categories: 1) Catholic identity, as assessed by the name of the hospital, the presence of statues of saints, crucifixes, and holy pictures in the hospital; 2) the celebration

Managed Care, Catholic Vision, and the Claims of Justice

Christian Bioethics, 2000

There are numerous challenges posed to Roman Catholic health care institutions by recent developments in health care delivery. Some are practical, involving the acceptable limits of accommodation to and collaboration with secular networks of health care delivery. Others, quite often implicated in the first set, are explicitly theological. What does it mean to be a distinctively Roman Catholic health care institution? What are the nature and the scope of Roman Catholic institutional identity? More broadly, what is the moral relevance of themes in Roman Catholic social teaching to the provision of health care? This issue of Christian Bioethics addresses these questions with a spirited exchange among its authors. They offer noticeably different perspectives on the general cogency of Roman Catholic social teaching and different strategic recommendations for Roman Catholic institutions to maintain, or recover, their distinctive presence in health care delivery.

Healthcare's Ills: a Catholic diagnosis

The Linacre Quarterly, 2016

A critique of current American healthcare provision, showing how Catholic economic and social teachings point the way toward necessary reforms.

Curing and Healing: Vital Elements of Catholic Health Care

2017

In this research, the significance of curing and healing will be explored with an emphasis on how both are vital to Catholic health care. This essay aims to show that only by embracing both components can health care professionals truly care for the whole person. Moreover, Christian health care professionals ought to follow Christ’s example in order to serve in His mission of caring holistically for those that are ill. As Luke’s account of the Haemorrhoissa (Lk 8:42-48) not only provides a vignette distinguishing between curing and healing, but also an excellent example of how Christ attended to both elements, this essay will interpret this story in order to gain insight into the indispensability of both to whole person Catholic health care. Further, examples extracted form palliative care, an area of health care where curing and healing can be clearly distinguished, will be used to illustrate these elements in practical terms.

Institutional Conscience and Catholic Health Care

2007

Despite serious challenges to the identity of Catholic health institutions in the United States, both Church and society should continue to see them as privileged places of moral discernment. This discernment occurs in “institutional conscience,” namely, a dialogue among all those authorized to act on the institution’s behalf about institutional actions, for example, medical interventions. The institutional conscience of Catholic health institutions should be respected by society at large, leaving them free to practice Christian healing and to show the problems with certain practices that they eject, such as abortion, and to seek alternatives. I WOULD LIKE TO CONSIDER the hopeful, as well as difficult situation of Catholic health institutions today. Although some health care practices present serious challenges to the Catholic identity of these institutions, we should see them as privileged places for moral discernment. The modern health care institution combines a wide range of gif...

Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler, Pope Francis and the Transformation of Health Care Ethics

Journal of Jesuit Studies

Like several other theological works in the era of Pope Francis, this wellresearched scholarly volume contains a proposal for reforms in church-based institutions so that their operations reflect the renewed priorities of the first Jesuit pope. In this case, the authors maintain a sharp focus on one nation (the United States), one sector (healthcare), and even on one series of documents. At issue are the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (hereafter erd), a document first promulgated in 1948 to provide guidelines for the institutional life of church-sponsored hospitals, clinics, and healthcare facilities in the US. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (usccb) published the sixth edition of this important document in 2018. Although Salzman and Lawler provide insightful treatment of the evolution of successive versions of the erd, most of this volume analyzes the shortcomings of the 2018 edition. The authors' primary criticism is that the latest revision of the usccb document fails to incorporate the theological advances and pastoral priorities of the Francis papacy. The resulting inadequacies hold serious consequences for the important decision-making processes that unfold in healthcare settings. At stake are weighty prudential matters such as determining which treatments in end-of-life scenarios are licit and the terms by which Catholic hospitals collaborate with non-Catholic health care institutions. This diagnosis of the shortcomings of the erd document unfolds in the early chapters of the book, which take up such fundamental topics as moral anthropology, sources of ethical knowledge, and issues in ecclesiology as well as pastoral and spiritual care of patients in Catholic healthcare facilities. To extend the medical metaphor, the prescription for improvement appears primarily in an insightful final chapter titled "Suggestions for a Revised erd." Congruent with standard accounts of the evolution of the post-Vatican ii theological enterprise, the authors draw a contrast between inherited approaches to healthcare ethics (based upon natural law methodology and a set of rather static assumptions regarding morality and social order) and more adequate approaches that incorporate updated perspectives on cultural diversity, gender justice, option for the poor, the role of conscience, careful discernment, and respect for the dignity of all grounded in Vatican ii's call to scrutinize the evolving signs of the times. One handy way to capture this shift as it applies to healthcare ethics is to speak of a transition from a merely physicalist approach