Does Catholic sponsorship matter? Social science is beginning to reveal differences between the ministry and other forms of care (original) (raw)
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Women's Health Issues, 1999
Four case studies of successfully negotiated affiliations between Catholic and non-Catholic organizations reveal the strategies employed to address a range of reproductive health services. M uch attention has been paid recently to the implications of organizational affiliations between Catholic and non-Catholic health care organizations for the availability of reproductive health services in communities. 1 Consolidation in the U.S. health care industry is affecting all types of providers in today's market, including hospitals and systems sponsored by religious groups. Far from being irrelevant to business decisions, however, the different ethical and religious values of
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
Health progress (Saint Louis, Mo.)
Establishing and maintaining institutional identity is a challenge for leaders in Catholic health care. A process known as "progressive articulation" can be used to help leaders assess how well their organizations reflect Catholic social tradition and help them apply this tradition toward specific organizational practices. The particular approach described here is called the "Identity Inquiry and Improvement Process" (31P), and it takes Catholic social principles and translates them into criteria and benchmarks for assessing an organization's interactions with internal and external stakeholders. In other words, 31P seeks to make mission measurable and concrete.
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.
The Catholic Identity of Catholic Institutions
Theological Studies, 1997
This first Note on Moral Theology discusses the Catholic identity of three types of Catholic institutions-health care, social service, and higher education-that today serve a pluralistic society with some support from tax moneys. Dramatic changes within the Church and society have occasioned the following questions: Can and should such Catholic institutions exist today? What does it mean for them to be Catholic? How can they retain a Catholic identity?] M UCH HAS RECENTLY been written about Catholic institutions, especially health care, higher education, and social service. The discussion has raised significant contemporary questions about the Catholic identity of such institutions and about developing strategies for preserving Catholic identity in the future. 1 This note will consider first what is common to all three of these institutions and then the specific issues that arise in each of them. These institutions share a similar historical development and the same general problem of identity today. 2 Each of them came into existence in the U.S. in the context of a very Catholic subculture, in which religious communities and dioceses founded institutions primarily staffed by committed religious and priests and serving a Catholic clientele. As all three developed, they gradually became more professional in terms of a relationship to a profession (e.g. academic or so