Catholic Health Care Advocates Papers
The Role of Catholic Medical Clinics in Building a New Culture of Human Life
Wallace Boever
Living "as if God did not exist" (i.e., an autonomous anthropology), has come to permeate all aspects of life, including health care. In denying the full truth about man and his destiny, the very art of medicine (ars medica), has taken on the mask and features of technique. Against this background of de-christianization and consequent dehumanization, the whole of the Church, including Catholic health care institutions, organizations and providers, has been called to involve themselves in a "new evangelization". The new evangelization contains both a judgment about the social-cultural situation (i.e., it is not fundamentally moral in nature, but ontological) and a proposal (i.e., a "civilization of love"). A civilization of love presupposes a communio anthropology, a fraternal solidarity — fostered by a "contemplative outlook" arising from faith — that makes visible a living sign of Jesus Christ and His Church in the world.n
Why the call for a new evangelization?
The concern of Pope Paul VI that cultures be evangelized "in depth and right to their very roots" has been taken up, deepened and amplified by Pope John Paul II under the name of "new evangelization". In particular, he has called the whole of the Church to involve itself in the re-evangelization of formerly Christian lands now thoroughly secularized. In his Apostolic Exhortation, Christifideles Laici (On the Vocation and the Mission of the Lay Faithful in the Church and in the World), Pope John Paul II wrote:
"Whole countries and nations where religion and the Christian life were formerly flourishing and capable of fostering a viable and working community of faith are now put to a hard test, and in some cases are even undergoing a radical transformation as a result of a constant spreading of an indifference to religion, of secularism and atheism. This particularly concerns countries and nations of the so-called First World in which economic well-being and consumerism, even if coexistent with a tragic situation of poverty and misery, inspires and sustains a life lived ‘as if God did not exist’. This indifference to religion and the practice of religion devoid of true meaning in the face of life’s very serious problems are not less worrying and upsetting when compared with declared atheism. Sometimes the Christian faith as well, while maintaining some of the externals of its tradition and rituals, tends to be separated from those moments of human existence which have the most significance, such as, birth, suffering and death. In such cases, the questions and formidable enigmas posed by these situations, if remaining without responses, expose contemporary people to an inconsolable delusion or to the temptation of eliminating the truly humanizing dimension of life implicit in these problems. . . Only a re-evangelization can assure the growth of a clear and deep faith . . .Without doubt a mending of the Christian fabric of society is urgently needed . . . But for this to come about what is needed is to first remake the Christian fabric of the ecclesial community itself . . .
At this moment the lay faithful, in virtue of their participation in the prophetic mission of Christ, are fully part of this work of the Church. Their responsibility, in particular, is to testify how the Christian faith constitutes the only fully valid response – consciously perceived and stated by all in varying degrees – to the problems and hopes that life poses to every person and society. This will become possible if the lay faithful will know how to overcome in themselves the separation of the Gospel from life, to again take up in their activities in family, work and society, an integrated approach to life that is fully brought about by the inspiration and strength of the Gospel.
To all the people of today, I once again repeat the impassioned cry with which I began my pastoral ministry: "Do not be afraid! Open, indeed, open wide the doors to Christ! . . . Do not be afraid! Christ knows ‘what is inside a person.’ Only He knows! Today too often people do not know what they carry inside, in the deepest recesses of their soul, in their heart. Too often people are uncertain about a sense of life on earth. Invaded by doubts they are led into despair. Therefore – with humility and trust I beg you –allow Christ to speak to the person in you. Only He has the words of life, yes, eternal life’" (34).
Pope John Paul II first issued the call for a "new evangelization" in his address to the bishops of Latin America in 1983. He said the present moment requires an evangelization that is new in "ardor, expression, and methods". Why a "new evangelization" now? Because secularism (living "as if God did not exist") has come to permeate human existence, "sometimes the Christian faith as well, . . . exposing contemporary people to an inconsolable delusion or to the temptation of eliminating the truly humanizing dimension of life . . .". Authentic humanism is at great risk when we assert that we belong to ourselves and to no one else. Christianity can only present its response, its originality, against this background. Thus, the "new evangelization" contains a judgment about the growing separation between faith and culture, between faith and how we live our daily familial, work and societal lives. Moreover, the "new evangelization" contains a proposal, summarized in the phrase "civilization of love".
Throughout his papacy, the Holy Father has vigorously promulgated the "civilization of love" as a cultural proposal to resist the ideologies of the civilization of production and use, "a civilization of ‘things’ and not of ‘persons’, a civilization in which persons are used in the same way as things are used" (Letter to Families, 13). He never fails to proclaim that the "civilization of love" originates in the Mystery that makes Himself known by entering history: "Christ . . . fully discloses man to himself and unfolds his noble calling" (Gaudium et spes, 22). The liberating truth about who we are and how we are to live can only be discovered and have a dramatic and decisive bearing on our lives and on the lives of our contemporaries when Christianity is recognized and grasped in its original, all-embracing Mystery. The love of Jesus Christ, or communio, is the Christian’s way of engaging all aspects of civilization; it is the good news we are called to announce and bear visible witness to with our whole beings. "The fulfillment of this task gives rise to civilization, which in the final analysis is nothing else than the ‘humanization of the world’" (Letter to Families, n. 13).
Though the expression, "civilization of love", has entered the teaching of the Church and by now has become familiar (if not trivialized in many sectors), its profound theological content and "method" is less well known, even within Catholic pro-life and NFP circles. Pope John Paul II has provided us with a renewed theological content for this cultural proposal through an extensive (five-year!) catechesis centered on the human person, understood within the mystery of Christ. This outstanding teaching has far reaching, even revolutionary, implications for how we go about living and communicating the faith, including the truth about freedom, the human body, sexual differences, and the communion of persons in marriage and in the family.
An evangelization that would not promote the full truth about freedom, the human body, sexual differences, and the communion of persons in marriage and in the family, would not be a true evangelization. Therefore, it is not possible to conceptualize a "new evangelization" which is not centered on marriage and the family. "Placed at the center of the great struggle between good and evil, between life and death, and between love and all that is opposed to love" (ibid., 23), the family is the first and most important "way of the Church" in the "new evangelization".
What is the role of Catholic health care institutions, organizations and providers in the "new evangelization"?
Does this focus on marriage and the family mean that Catholic health care institutions, organizations and providers are mere spectators in the "new evangelization"? Absolutely not! As the Holy Father stated, Christian faith today "tends to be separated from those moments of human existence which have the most significance, such as, birth, suffering and death". Don’t these significant moments of human existence, in some way, revolve around medicine, which is both a science and an art (ars medica)? In these situations questions inevitably rise to the surface: Why is there pain, why death, evil? Why is life worth living? What is the ultimate meaning of reality, of existence? What sense does it make to work, to love, to become involved in the world? Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Man is not content with reductive or partial answers. Man’s questions, even anguish in the face of the enigma of meaning, call for a response. "[The questions and formidable enigmas posed by these situations [birth, suffering and death], if remaining without responses, expose contemporary people to an inconsolable delusion or to the temptation of eliminating the truly humanizing dimension of life implicit in these problems".
Created in the image and likeness of God, man needs a total response. He possesses within himself a yearning for the infinite, which is satisfied only by an equally infinite response. He is made for truth and for the good, and only in the encounter with Truth and the Good does he recover himself. Man is not capable of forgetting all the need there is in his heart for fullness, truth and life: "Our heart is restless until it rests in Thee" (St. Augustine). Outside the mystery of the Infinite, man’s need for happiness, love, and justice never meet a response that fully satisfies his heart. He does not stop forming the questions that constitute him as a person (though they may be expressed in an awkward, obtuse or crude manner). These basic questions of life often surface most poignantly in medical clinic or hospital settings. Do we, health care providers, "consciously perceive" the many opportunities we have to announce Jesus Christ, to give transparent witness to the Gospel, and to invite participation in the work of evangelization?
"A handicapped person expressed these sentiments in a presentation in the Synod Hall: ‘It is very important to make clear that Christians who live in situations of illness, pain and old age are called by God not only to unite their suffering to Christ’s passion but also to receive in themselves now, and to transmit to others, the power of renewal and the joy of the risen Christ’ (cf. 2 Cor 4: 10-11; 1 Pt 4:13; Rom 8:18ff) . . . [We must look] upon the sick person, the bearer of a handicap, or the suffering individual, not simply as an object of the Church’s love and service, but as an active and responsible participant in the work of evangelization and salvation. From this perspective the Church has to let the good news resound within a society and culture which, having lost the sense of human suffering, ‘censors’ all talk on such a hard reality of life" (Christifidelis Laici,. 53 and 54).
Catholic health care providers are in a privileged position (and, therefore, have a profound responsibility) to "testify how the Christian faith constitutes the only fully valid response . . . to the problems and hopes that life poses to every person and society"
"This activity must be capable of sustaining and fostering attention, nearness, presence, listening, dialogue, sharing and real help towards individuals in moments when sickness and suffering sorely test not only faith in life but also faith in God and His love as Father" (ibid., 54).
Nothing less than an all-embracing faith in the living God is needed within Catholic health care (including NFP-only practices) or else it ends up becoming a pretext for some concern or other that takes on the mask and features of the modern technological, functional mentality, fueling the "culture of death", the antithesis of the civilization of love.
What is the decisive question for the future of Catholic health care?
The "new evangelization" is not a matter of ideas or concepts or programs or business plans. It is a matter of a deep and clear faith lived out in the daily fabric of life. "A faith that does not affect a person’s culture is a faith not fully embraced, not entirely thought out, not faithfully lived" (ibid., 59). Our primary duty is to "testify how the Christian faith [instead of finite things] constitutes the only fully valid response . . . to the problems and hopes that life poses to every person and society". We are called to show Christ as the criterion of truth and principle of life in the state in life and professional we find ourselves. Lives lived in an integrated manner, "fully brought about by the inspiration and strength of the Gospel", become a source of culture, indeed a new culture of human life.
Devastatingly, Catholic health care institutions, organizations, and providers in America no longer (except for a few notable exceptions) announce and visibly "testify how the Christian faith constitutes the only fully valid response . . . to the problems and hopes that life poses to every person and society". The Christian faith is not exposed, or is exposed only timidly, to the many sick and suffering who seek assistance from Catholic health care institutions, organizations and providers. At the same time, many of these same entities interpret the faith according to the framework and criteria of the world instead of judging the world, conceiving and carrying out their activities according to the categories that the experience of faith provides. Catholic health care desperately needs the "new evangelization" precisely because the Gospel of Jesus Christ has been privatized and/or reduced (at institutional, organizational, and personal levels) and, thus, in the end, made irrelevant and/or protestantized, rather than lived out as a cultural proposal.
Clearly "a mending of the Christian fabric" is needed. The "mending of the Christian fabric" cannot be done in a manner that assumes the Christian culture survives, but has only been abandoned for a type of lukewarmness. To quote the Holy Father again, "what is needed is to first remake the Christian fabric of the ecclesial community itself" in the eternal pattern of the communio of the Triune God revealed in Jesus Christ. Thus, the "new evangelization" requires both the retrieval of the foundational Christian experience of the Person of Jesus Christ and the experience of Church in the world at all levels. The experience of Jesus Christ in the Church embraces everything.
"Every activity, every situation, every precise responsibility — as, for example, skill and solidarity in work, love and dedication in the family and the education of children, service to society and public life and the promotion of truth in the area of culture — are the occasions ordained by Providence for a ‘continuous exercise of faith, hope and charity" (ibid. 59).
In a future paper we hope to address the practical implications of the foundational considerations set forth in this paper as they relate to Catholic medical clinics, which are, in many ways, the basic and vital cells for the renewal of Catholic health care. Catholic medical clinics, ordered in the eternal pattern of the trinitarian communio, extend Christ’s own incarnational and healing mission in the world. By becoming a living sign of Jesus Christ and His Church (communio) in showing love towards the sick and suffering, Catholic medical clinic physicians and staff help liberate society’s social-economic-cultural orders and give glory to God, which is the deepest reason for their existence (cf., ibid., 53; cf., David L. Schindler, Heart of the World, Center of the Church, pp. 10-11).
Let us now identify the causes and consequences of man’s (and thus the family’s) deep-seated malaise. The Vicar of Christ calls us to go deeper than any merely moralistic analysis of the problem. We may learn something new (something that has immediate concrete implications for our family, work and societal lives) if we refuse to be content with the false security of a past that no longer exists (i.e., "a viable and working community of faith") and, instead, make the effort to study and prayerfully reflect on man’s present position in the face of his destiny (i.e., his properly "human" condition in relation to the goal of human existence: to share, by knowledge and love–already here and now and forever–in God’s own life).
Why is it essential to study man’s social and cultural situation?
Pope John Paul II believes that it is essential to study and understand man’s social and cultural situation. He says that such an understanding is "an inescapable requirement" for promoting the true good of men, women and children, and, in particular, for the work of evangelization. We will not fully realize and be convinced about the need for a new evangelization unless we take into account the present social and cultural situation in which man (and the family) lives. Just as a physician would not prescribe a treatment without first examining the nature and circumstances of a diseased situation, so should we attempt to evaluate and diagnose why our society, which "from various points of view, . . . is a society which is sick and is creating profound distortions in man" (Pope John Paul II, Letter to Families, 20).
The social and cultural situation has become progressively complicated. This, in turn, has made it more difficult for many of our contemporaries to understand and embrace the teachings of the Church. Thus, it is all the more urgent and irreplaceable (cf. Familiaris Consortio, 30) that we take the time and make the effort to better understand "the circumstances, the questions and the anxieties and the hopes of the young people, married couples, and parents of today" (ibid. 4).
How can one come to better understand our present cultural and social situation?
It would be impossible to adequately summarize the present cultural and social situation and "how we got to this point" within the confines of this paper. Nevertheless, for the reasons noted above, one should not fail to gain a better understanding of the context in which man finds himself today. Perhaps the best sources for understanding our present social-cultural situation are Pope John Paul II’s own writings. In nearly every encyclical, apostolic letter and major address, as well as in his books, e.g., Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Love and Responsibility, and Sign of Contradiction, the Holy Father has provided us with deep insights into man’s present condition.
What inspires and sustains the dominant culture in today’s world?
"‘If God does exist, he doesn’t matter.’ God has nothing concrete to do with man. God is now extrinsic to human cares and human problems. Within this sphere, man is his own measure, his own master, the source both of the formulation of his plans and the energy needed to bring them about, the origin even of the ethical intention implicit in all he does. Thus, even if God does exist, within the sphere of human problems it is as if he did not. In this way, a division between the sacred and the profane comes into being . . . This division has in turn come to be the common ground of the learned; it has determined the cultural air we breathe, it has now become the dominant culture" (Luigi Giussani, Religious Awareness in Modern Man, Communio 25, p. 114).
Consumerism, as the Holy Father noted in the quote provided at the beginning of this paper, and positivism, as he has noted elsewhere (cf., Letter to Families, 13), "inspires and sustains a life lived ‘as if God did not exist’". Both consumerism and positivism, which "results in agnosticism in theory and utilitarianism in practice and in ethics" (ibid.), consist in an endless, successive preoccupation with finite entities.
"The consumerist seeks meaning and fulfillment through the acquisition of one thing after another. The positivist thinks along the (empirical) surfaces of things, gathering meaning through the endless addition of finite bit to finite bit. What both miss is the true Infinite at the heart of things, dispersing this true ("vertical") Infinite into endless ("horizontal") succession of finite entities" (David L. Schindler, Luigi Giussani on the "Religious Sense" and the Cultural Situation of Our Time, Communio 25, p. 149).
Though consumerism may take different forms, it always ignores man’s spiritual and social dimension — thus, his "unified totality". Pope John Paul II writes that rationalism has given the modern concept of man a distinctive dualistic character, i.e., it has brought about a radical contrast in man between spirit and body, between body and spirit.
"The separation of spirit and body in man has led to a growing tendency to consider the human body, not in accordance with the categories of its specific likeness to God, but rather on the basis of its similarity to all other bodies present in the world of nature, bodies which man uses as raw material in his efforts to produce goods for consumption. But everyone can immediately realize what enormous dangers lurk behind the application of such criteria to man. When the human body, considered apart from spirit and thought, comes to be used as raw material in the same way that the bodies of animals are used — and this actually occurs for example in experimentation on embryos and fetuses — we will inevitably arrive at a dreadful ethical defeat.Within a similar anthropological perspective, the human family is facing the challenge of a new Manichaeanism, in which body and spirit are put in radical opposition; the body does not receive life from the spirit, and the spirit does not give life to the body. Man thus ceases to live as a person and a subject. Regardless of all intentions and declarations to the contrary, he becomes merely an object. This neo-Manichaean culture has led, for example, to human sexuality being regarded more as an area for manipulation and exploitation than as the basis of that primordial wonder which led Adam on the morning of creation to exclaim before Eve: ‘This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh’" (Gen 2:23; Letter to Families, 19).
The promotion of health must also be worthy of the human person.
"In our society there is a risk of making health an idol to which every other value is subservient. The Christian vision of the human being opposes a notion of health reduced to pure, exuberant vitality and satisfaction with one’s own physical fitness, far removed from any real consideration of suffering. This view, ignoring the person’s spiritual and social dimensions, ends by jeopardizing his true good. Precisely because health is not limited to biological perfection, life lived in suffering also offers room for growth and self-fulfillment, and opens the way to discovering new values" (Pope John Paul II, Message for World Day of the Sick for the Year 2000, L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO, August 25, 1999).
Positivism kills faith and it stifles the expression of any sort of religious or truly philosophical question, which has been an integral part of man’s behavior in all times. Theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, outlines the distressing results:
"Whenever the relationship between nature and grace is severed . . . , then the whole of worldly being falls under the dominion of "knowledge," and the springs and forces of love immanent in the world are overpowered and finally suffocated by science, technology and cybernetics. The result is a world without women, without children, without reverence for love in poverty and humiliation — a world in which power and the profit-margin are the sole criteria, where the disinterested, the useless, the purposeless is despised, persecuted and in the end exterminated — a world in which art itself is forced to wear the mask and features of technique" (Love Alone, pp. 114-115).
Instead of a genuinely receptive-contemplative disposition toward the sick and the suffering, "open to encounter, dialogue and solidarity", the art of medicine (ars medica) has taken on the mask and features of technique. Without rejecting the achievements of modern science and technology, the true good of humanity should not necessarily be identified with them. Moreover, we must be careful, even within NFP-only medical practices, not to give disproportionate or premature "pride of place" to "technique" in our patient encounters.
What is the root problem of society’s sickness?
The root problem, following the thought of Pope John Paul II and others, is not so much the problem of God – the existence of God – but the problem of man, the knowledge of man. Inspired and sustained by consumerism and positivism, our society has broken away from the full truth of man, creating a profound distortion in him.
"Society has broken away from the full truth about man, from what man and woman really are as persons. Thus it cannot adequately comprehend the real meaning of the gift of persons in marriage, responsible love at the service of fatherhood and motherhood, and the true grandeur of procreation and education" (Letter to Families, 20).
Society’s (false) autonomous anthropological perspective denies the essence of what man carries inside, in the deepest recesses of his soul, in his heart. When the concept of the true nature of man – and the person as male and female, as husband and wife, as father and mother – is altered, man is no longer guided by ontological truth which ultimately resides in the will of God and is the basis of moral truth. As a result, the ethical and moral questions today are no longer a consequence of the (true) communio anthropological vision of man.
Pope John Paul II recently addressed the participants in an international study week on Marriage and Family and ask them to "attentively consider" the following:
"In comparison with 18 years ago when your academic journey began [i.e., when the Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family was founded], the challenge posed by the secular mentality regarding the truth about the person, marriage and the family has in a certain sense become even more radical. It is not only a question of debating the individual moral norms of sexual and family ethics. The image of man/woman proper to natural reason and, in particular, to Christianity is opposed with an alternative anthropology. The latter rejects the fact, inscribed in corporeity, that the sexual difference is an identifying characteristic of the person; consequently the concept of the family founded on the indissoluble marriage of a man and a woman, as the natural and basic cell of society, is critically challenged. Fatherhood and motherhood are conceived only as a private project, which can even be accomplished with the application of biomedical technology, without the exercise of conjugal sexuality" (L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO, September 1, 1999; underlining is mine).
This understanding should alert us to the fact that the Church’s teachings on human sexuality, marriage and the family will meet a resistance that is ontological before it is moral. Our cultural sickness is not fundamentally moral (i.e., it does not primarily consist in a bad use of one’s knowledge that is correctly received) but ontological (i.e., it is a flawed knowledge of being itself). Problems like contraception, sterilization, in vitro fertilization and abortion, in other words, are, fundamentally, problems about the nature of man. This being the case, Catholic medical providers should become familiar with Pope John Paul II’s — profound, but currently little known and read — Theology of the Body.
What are the anthropological consequences when man abandons the organic link with what constitutes him?
When man abandons the organic link with what constitutes him as a person, he becomes a being unknown to himself. Faced with a nature that is materialistically and autonomously understood, man searches for a purely human salvation. He rejects the truth inscribed in his being that the Person of Jesus Christ is the only full response to man’s profound yearnings and, instead, forms an individualistic relationship with an abstract image. Losing sight of Christ as the unique indispensable good, the Bride of Christ, the Church, is no longer experienced in all its integrity. It has no vital role or space in the day-to-day world. Christian faith becomes limited to partial aspects of life or to a religious piety deprived of reason. With the rejection of Christ and His Church, what is left to man in the face of values espoused by the dominant culture? All that is left is the mere temporal dimension of life. He is at the mercy of his sensibilities, his instincts, his fancies in the moment in which he lives. Life then becomes little more than a constant utilitarian calculation in order to maximize his self-interests.
"The modern age has made great progress in understanding both the material world and human psychology, but with regard to his deepest, metaphysical dimension contemporary man remains to a great extent a being unknown to himself. Consequently the family too remains an unknown reality . . . How far removed are some modern ideas from the profound understanding of masculinity and femininity found in Divine Revelation! . . . Modern rationalism does not tolerate mystery. It does not accept the mystery of man as male and female, nor is it willing to admit that the full truth about man has been revealed in Jesus Christ. In particular, it does not accept the ‘great mystery’ proclaimed in the Letter to Ephesians, but radically opposes it. It may well acknowledge, in the context of a vague deism, the possibility and even the need for a supreme or divine Being, but it firmly rejects the idea of a God who became man in order to save man. For rationalism it is unthinkable that God should be the Redeemer, much less that he should be ‘the Bridegroom’, the primordial and unique source of the human love between spouses. Rationalism provides a radically different way of looking at creation and the meaning of human existence. But once man begins to lose sight of God who loves him, a God who calls man through Christ to live in him and with him, and once the family no longer has the possibility of sharing in the ‘great mystery’, what is left except the mere temporal dimension of life? Earthly life becomes nothing more than the scenario of a battle for existence, of a desperate search for gain, and financial gain before all else" (Letter to Families,19).
What is the ultimate foundation of communio anthropology?
The Mystery of the Most Holy Trinity, revealed in Jesus Christ, is the very source of our being and therefore, the ultimate foundation of communio anthropology. Before creating man, the Creator withdrew as it were into Himself, in order to seek the pattern and inspiration in the mystery of His being, which was disclosed in Genesis 1:26 as the divine We. "From this mystery the human being comes forth by an act of creation: ‘God created man in his own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them’ (Gen 1:27; Letter to Families, 6). This is not pious pap! It is the very heart of the Gospel of life we are called to bear visible witness to as Catholic health care providers.
What is involved in remaking "the Christian fabric of the ecclesial community itself" within Catholic health care?
We in the Catholic medical community must appropriate this communio form of Trinitarian love in our places of work, with all its consequences, so that Christ can appear as an event in the lives of our co-workers and patients. It must become a lived experience, a cultural proposal, and not something merely "private" or "interior" that is separated from daily human existence. For the more Christian faith ceases to be the factor that determines our daily human experience and the more Christian tradition (understood as new life in Christ) is not perceptible as a human event in the hallways and exam rooms of our clinics, the more it ceases to constitute the central datum of man’s conscience. When Christian faith remains merely an organizational mission or vision statement or a "private" or "interior" endeavor detached from public and social life, it will be difficult to encourage adhesion and commitment on the part of others to the great mystery of God. Love must occur in man’s life.
"Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible to himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This, as has already been said, is why Christ the Redeemer ‘fully reveals man to himself.’ If we may use the expression, this is the human dimension of the mystery of redemption. In this dimension man finds again the greatness, dignity and value that belong to his humanity…" (Pope John Paul II, Redeemer of Man, 10).
The Holy Father, in this wonderful passage from his first encyclical, points out that the "human dimension of the mystery of redemption" involves the retrieval of the experience of Church in the concrete "circumstances" of interpersonal relationships. Thus, we must bear witness to the Christian faith not merely to those we encounter in our daily work, let alone in our place of work. To take up our responsibilities in the "mending of the Christian fabric of society", i.e., the "new evangelization", we must begin, by God’s grace, to transform the culture itself (including our work culture), from within. In transforming our work culture from within, we will contribute to the remaking of "the Christian fabric of the ecclesial community itself". Thus, our health care facilities must be transformed into "communio-ecclesial spaces and times" where the Gospel of life can actually be encountered, experienced and made one’s own. By following Christ and the teaching authority of His Church, we must become a living sign of His presence in the world so that man can recover his humanity and may be led to eternal glory.
"For this to happen, we need first of all to foster in ourselves and others, a contemplative outlook. Such an outlook arises from faith in the God of life, who has created every individual as a ‘wonder’ (cf. Ps 139:14). It is the outlook of those who see life in its deeper meaning, who grasp its utter gratuitousness, its beauty and its invitation to freedom and responsibility. It is the outlook of those who do not presume to take possession of reality but instead accept it as a gift, discovering in all things the reflection of the Creator and seeing in every person his living image (cf. Gen 1:27; Ps 8:5). This outlook does not give in to discouragement when confronted by those who are sick, suffering, outcast or at death’s door. Instead, in all these situations it feels challenged to find meaning, and precisely in these circumstances it is open to perceiving in the face of every person a call to encounter, dialogue and solidarity" (Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 83).
Wallace Boever, Clinic Manager Holy Family Medical Specialties Feast of St. Luke October 18, 1999
