Conference highlighted Church at service of the whole person

LOCAL NEWS

Conference highlighted Church at service of the whole person

BY RYAN MAYER

Director of Office of Catholic Identity Formation & Assessment, Archdiocese of San Francisco

The Church has always been at the service of the whole person, body and soul, and is often credited with establishing the hospital system.

In his 1995 encyclical letter “Evangelium Vitae,” Pope St. John Paul II observed that “the mission of Jesus, with the many healings he performed, shows God's great concern even for man's bodily life. Jesus, as ‘the physician of the body and of the spirit,’ was sent by the Father to proclaim the good news to the poor and to heal the brokenhearted.”(47)

It was the care and compassion that the early Christians showed the sick and suffering, in imitation of the Good Samaritan, that played a significant role in converting the Roman Empire: “See how they love one another!” the pagans would remark. Even today, Catholic health care institutions account for 1 in every 6 hospital admissions.

Compassionate care in service of human dignity is even more relevant for medicine in today’s increasingly secular culture. In response to this need, St. Patrick’s Seminary & University in Menlo Park hosted the 3rd Converging Roads conference on Saturday, Feb. 12. Converging Roads is a regional conference series “offering continuing education for health care professionals that equips them to practice the highest ethical and medical standards of their profession.” The theme of the conference, put on by the St. John Paul II Foundation with support from Region XI of the Catholic Medical Association, was “Health Care at the Service of Patient & Professional.” The event, co-sponsored by the Archdiocese of San Francisco, was attended by Catholic physicians, nurses, health care workers and others interested in the convergence of the “two roads” of health care and medical ethics.

Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone, in his homily at midday Mass, thanked the conference participants for being witnesses to the dignity of the person, recalling the fact that the practice of medicine and the care of the sick and suffering has been a hallmark of Christian practice from the beginning of the Church. In his welcome letter to conference participants, the Archbishop noted the “great debt of gratitude” that we owe to doctors, nurses and all health care professionals “for their heroic service toward their patients during these challenging times.”

The presentation topics were varied, but the thread that ran through each was the dehumanization of contemporary medical practice and the need for what St. John Paul II, in his 1980 address to Italian physicians, called the “repersonalization” of medicine.

The first and last presentations of the day served as fitting “bookends” for this theme. Dr. Michel Accad started the day with a talk on the traditional vision of the person and the cosmos in contrast to the modern vision. The former understands the person and the cosmos as imbued with order, harmony and purpose (and, we might say, makes science and medicine possible) and the latter vision reduces the person to a machine to be manipulated. In the final presentation of the day, pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Paul Hruz spoke about where this modern mechanistic vision of the person leads in the context of questions related to gender dysphoria and the medical science around transgender issues.

Ultimately, the “re-personalization” of medicine must begin with acknowledging life as a gift from God the Creator. Pope John Paul II observed that “when the sense of God is lost, the sense of man is also threatened. … He no longer considers life as a splendid gift of God, something ‘sacred’ entrusted to his responsibility and thus also to his loving care and ‘veneration.’ Life itself becomes a mere ‘thing,’ which man claims as his exclusive property, completely subject to his control and manipulation.” (EV, 22)

The Converging Roads conference and gatherings like it are signs of hope for the re-personalization of medicine in the great Christian tradition of caring for the whole person, body and soul. ■