Poisoned Water

What does it mean to say that a particular style of medicine is ‘Catholic’? Most obviously, we note that Catholic medicine is not a different brand of medicine with its own unique prescriptions and surgical procedures. It is not a medical system set aside solely for Catholics or run exclusively by Catholics. Despite narrow definitions in California and in the Affordable Care Act about what constitutes “religious activity”, the care offered by faith-based institutions is itself always a religious activity regardless of the individual who personally acts in the provision of that care or the person who receives it. I never would have dreamed even as little as ten years ago that the State would define for me what constitutes my permissible religious activity. In effect, the State attests: You are free to practice your religion but we will tell you what is an acceptable practice and what is not.

Faith-based or Catholic Healthcare does not involve an excessive reliance on miracles and supernatural interventions. It does not involve a semi-superstitious reliance on chants and incantations. Nevertheless, Faith-based medicine is a different brand of medicine with its own unique prescriptions which call for a deeper reliance on God and a different view of mankind. It has its own surgical procedures which, while healing bodies, also recognize the need to excise sin and evil. Such healthcare treats a cancer or an infection but it never forgets the person so afflicted. It is a medical system not solely for believers but for the treatment of the entire human person as understood by the faith tradition involved. It does not rely excessively on miracles or supernatural interventions but it is not afraid of relying on them or of offering a hope which surpasses the vain and shallow hope of the world. Faith-based medicine is not so much about what is done medically as it is about what is done spiritually. In the Catholic tradition, we take our cue for medical mission from Christ Jesus Himself who healed the sick and comforted the suffering. We are all aware of the various healing miracles of Jesus and it is these healing miracles which give the impetus for the medical activities of the Church. Precisely because Jesus healed the sick, the Church is now involved in a healing ministry. When Jesus was asked by the disciples of John whether He was the Messiah He replied by saying: “Go tell John what you see and hear. The blind see, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.” Jesus pointed to His own care for the sick, suffering, lost and rejected as the verification that He was from God. It was a clear answer: ‘Yes, I am the Messiah’ but it was spoken in the universally understood language of compassionate action. The Catholic Church continues to speak that same language primarily through its social services and the provision of Catholic health care. The provision of these things, regardless of the source of funding, the person providing the service or the person receiving the service, is a religious activity. It is inseparably linked to the faith tradition which sponsors it. It is especially important to note that Jesus also clearly taught that He did not come only or exclusively for the healing of the body. If He had, He would have placed a much greater priority on healing. As it is He did not heal everyone who was sick, He did not raise up everyone who died, He did not eliminate a single disease though He had the power to do so. If we have any wonderment about this it is a sign that we do not properly understand what Jesus really came to do. The last line of His response to John is the key: “the poor have the good news proclaimed to them”. This was not just one element among all the rest, not one part among other pieces, it was what Jesus came to do. Our recognition and affirmation that Catholic health care is about spreading and proclaiming the Good News is necessary in order to assure that we never lose sight of the real meaning of and ultimate significance of health care. There was a time when it was perfectly clear what was good for the person and what was not good for the person, what was consistent with the Good News and what was not. There was a time, not long ago, when there were clearer notions of the dignity of the human person and what this meant for healthcare providers. There was a time when sterility was seen as a serious malady to be cured not a benefit to be sought and provided in a hospital. The mandating of sterilization in healthcare facilities, whether faith-based or not, totally redefines the meaning of health itself. There was a time when suicide was a crime against God and family not a benefit to be sought and provided by a physician. There was a time when people purchased health care coverage in order to assure a hope of accessing healing and life, not destruction and death. As has been stated so often in the past months, contraception, sterilization and abortion are not processes or prescriptions which enhance health or genuine wellbeing but rather diminish or destroy it. In both the Gospels of Matthew and Luke our Lord talks about His heavenly Father as one who knows how to give His children what is good. The Lord uses the analogy of a human father giving good things to his children. Our Lord says, “Which of you would give his son a stone if he asks for a loaf of bread or a scorpion if he asks for an egg or a snake if he asks for a fish?” His conclusion is simple, “If you with all your faults know how to give your children what is good how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask.” The situation in our society is now totally reversed. Now people come to our health care facilities, to health care providers and ask for and demand that which we know is harmful to and for them. They come and ask for the scorpion of contraception, sterilization or abortion, having been convinced that it is a good and good for them, and the government demands that we give it to them. Furthermore, in their confusion about the nature of man and the nature of what is good, they are outraged and angry at ‘Catholics’ or other faith-based institutions for refusing to give the destructive things which they desire. We must hold fast and simply say, We will not give you scorpions! Our heavenly Father knows how to give His children what they need and our Catholic and Faith-based hospitals must be the dispensers of proper and true healing. Faith-based institutions and all men and women of religious conscience must be free to give what God wants them to give and not be coerced to do that which is evil. The secular providers of health care do not recognize that the procedures prohibited by the Church are genuinely evil, a harm, a scorpion and a stone. They have been mislead to believe that some forms of mutilation and even death promotion are health giving bread and so they gladly and actively seek to provide it to their patients. I am reminded of the first temptation of our Lord in the desert. Remember it? Our Lord had been fasting in the desert for forty days and forty nights and in the most wonderful understatement in the Scripture we are told, “and afterwards He was hungry.” In this hungered state Satan approaches and attacks the hunger, “If you are the Son of God, command that these stones become loaves of bread.” The reply of Jesus set the tone for His entire ministry and it set the tone for the establishment of a model for Catholic healthcare: “One does not live on bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” We are attacked by Satan and by society with the same attack leveled at Jesus, ‘If you are so compassionate then change your Church’s teachings into something a lot more palatable.’ Our rejection of this temptation must be as resolute as the rejection given by our Lord, “One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

Contraception, sterilization, in vitro fertilization, abortion, assisted suicide and the like are all judged by our society to be bread and we know in faith that they are scorpions. Every one of these things diminishes and harms humanity, both the humanity of him or her who gives it and the humanity of him or her who receives it. Mutilation is not healing and assisting a suicide is not compassion. Faith-based medicine knows this! Men and women of faith are not here to provide whatever people want but to stand before them and give them what they need. We believe that people want bread, not scorpions but society has convinced them that scorpions are good for them and we seriously harm the people we pretend to help if we give them the scorpions they ask for instead of the bread they need. The world has a message for humanity and it is bad news. We have a message and we call it the Good News. People are thirsty and we should not be compelled to give them water which we firmly believe to be poisoned. We may not be able to stop others from giving them this poisoned water, but we should not and cannot give it to them and we must not be compelled to do so.

‘What’ we do as leaders of health care institutions or as faith filled health care workers is very important. We must hold fast to the simple axiom, ‘Good morals make good medicine’. There is nothing truly good for a person which is at the same time immoral. This is a truth of Catholic medicine which we can never allow to be diminished. Catholic medical provision must always be consistent with the teachings of the Church. Any failure in this regard is a failure to acknowledge that our vision of the person includes both a body and a soul. We cannot be compelled to ignore this doctrinal reality.

Catholic or Faith-based Health Care also has a unique Spirit-filled method and a very strong incentive for the proper preservation of that method. Many secular hospitals and secular health care facilities recognize and implement similar kinds of methodologies but they do this primarily from a secular perspective of customer satisfaction, profitability and good business relationships.  The Catholic incentive, our ’Why’ for the preservation of an appropriate Catholic method in medicine is, at least in the ideal, based on the conviction that the human person has a unique worth and dignity and that the person’s worth and dignity are neither lost nor diminished at a time of sickness, old age, debility or senility. When the concept of a person’s worth or dignity is based on some external factor, however noble that external factor may be, there will come a time when that motive for respecting the worth or dignity will fade, diminish and disappear. We stand on the principle that personal dignity is not based on anything external to the person but based on the person himself. So, for us, it is not enough simply to treat patients with respect. It is not enough to have a compassionate technique. It is not enough to engage the person in a holistic fashion. While we cannot presume to judge the motives of others we must be willing to question and judge our own motives.   The secular world is perfectly capable of replicating the proper methodology and of following the recipe of compassion but it will always be a little hollow, it will always lack a certain fire, it will always lack a certain conviction, it will always lack genuine power because there is a nagging question of ‘Why’. The medicine practiced in Christian institutions is different, at least in the ideal order, because it’s underlying reason, the ‘why’ of what we do, is Christ and because it is Christ who helps us determine what should be done and how it should be done. What does it mean for Faith-based institutions and Health Care workers to be effective? If the measure of that effectiveness is simply doing medicine extremely well and with great compassion then it would be enough simply to look at function. This is what the government does.  It fails to recognize the spirituality of the patient and the healing power of the spirituality of the institution.  Clearly our effectiveness in operating Health Care facilities can be evaluated partially on the basis of function but if we settle for that criterion then we compete with a worldly model on worldly terms and that is not where our true strength or value rests.  If we successfully compete for a greater market share and extend our presence into more communities, if we expand our facilities and lead the industry in creative innovation, if we treat people with compassion and are spoken of favorably in the market place but forget ‘why’ we are there it means nothing.  Saint Paul says as much in the beautiful and well known passage to the Corinthians: “If I … comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge … but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” Love is the defining and essential motivating element of Christian action and it must be the defining and essential motivating element for Healthcare facilities which desire to serve the entire person.  Authentic love, properly understood is the ultimate ‘why’ of all that we do.  This love is not simply a matter of acting with compassion or even of feeling a genuine compassion for those for whom we work.  It is a matter of genuinely caring for their personal and eternal salvation.  This becomes the proper definition of what it means to love:  To care for our own eternal salvation and the eternal salvation of another. This is the ‘why’ of the Church, the ‘why’ of Catholic health care. Saint Robert Bellarmine, S.J., very beautifully says: “If you are wise, know that you have been created for the glory of God and your own eternal salvation. This is your goal; this is the center of your life; this is the treasure of your heart. If you reach this goal, you will find happiness. If you fail to reach it, you will find misery. May you consider truly good whatever leads to your goal and truly evil whatever makes you fall away from it. Prosperity and adversity, wealth and poverty, health and sickness, honors and humiliations, life and death, in the mind of the wise man, are not to be sought for their own sake, nor avoided for their own sake. But if they contribute to the glory of God and your eternal happiness, then they are good and should be sought. If they detract from this, they are evil and must be avoided.” The reason for the existence of the Church, according to the Vatican II Documents, particularly Ad Gentes and the post Vatican Document on the Proclamation of the Gospel is the evangelization of the entire world. As Jesus said of Himself, ‘I have come that they may have life and have it to the full’, so also the Church says of Herself, acknowledging that the proclamation of the Gospel is the reason for Her existence, ‘I have come that they may have life and have it to the full’. Since there can be no contradiction between the mission of the Church and the mission of the institutions and members of that Church we must acknowledge that our mission and the mission of Faith-based Healthcare Institutions and Health Care Providers is ultimately the proclamation of the Gospel, bringing God’s Light and Life to the world. There is absolutely no contradiction between this proclamation of the Gospel and the provision of excellent medical care to those in need. There is however a great contradiction when the medical care itself stands in direct opposition to the Gospel which it must, of necessity, promote. The ‘What’ of Catholic Health Care may never legitimately conflict with the ‘Why’. We cannot give people stones, even if they ask for them, and at the same time claim to be fulfilling the Lord’s command to His disciples, “Give them something to eat yourselves”. We see a hungry, broken world. We see a world sick with it’s own chosen depravity. We see hurt and loss and grief and pain and perhaps we pray, ‘Lord please provide for them the light, the solace, the health, the knowledge, the clarity of vision that they need’