The first week of September found me at the Catholic Medical Association\u2019s annual conference in Kansas City. The gathering of faithful Catholic health-care professionals featured several prominent speakers who delved into substantive topics rarely entertained by our mainstream medical authorities. For me and other Catholics in medicine, engaging conversations about living one\u2019s faith through medical practice are a balm for the soul. <\/p>\n
Among the weightier questions pondered was this: What is the purpose, or\u00a0telos, of medicine and toward what end is medical care rightly ordered? This question may not be one that the ordinary American, or even the average Catholic, has given much consideration. However, I believe it is a timely issue affecting all believers navigating the morass of confusion and chaos in which our contemporary medical establishment now finds itself. <\/p>\n
As a Catholic and a family physician, I\u2019ve contemplated my profession\u2019s societal role a lot over the course of my 20-odd years of practice. During my career, the prevailing medical culture has become more openly antagonistic to the foundational Western concept of the human person grounded in a Judeo-Christian ethos. For example, while the medical establishment\u2014already disposed toward liberal progressivism\u2014might have been more accepting of colleagues\u2019 viewpoints opposing abortion, recent years have seen an entrenchment of strident anti-Christian and anti-life positions by mainstream medical societies.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.<\/p>\n
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The most recent attempt to embed abortion absolutism into the fabric of family medicine is exemplified by two proposed resolutions entertained by the American Academy of Family Physicians\u2019 Congress of Delegates that would make abortion training mandatory for family medicine residency programs. Thus, the AAFP systematically subverts the ethics of Hippocratic medicine and delegitimizes its sizeable physician-constituency opposed to killing unborn human life. <\/p>\n
To be sure, medicine\u2019s leftward shift mirrors larger disruptive changes in American society. As\u00a0Archbishop Charles Chaput<\/a>\u00a0explains, \u201cAmerica\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0be the way it once was\u2026changes in the country\u2019s sexual, religious, technological, demographic, and economic fabric make that impossible.\u201d Still, mainstream medicine\u2019s complicit abetment of ideological regimes that contradict the shared Western cultural understanding of the human person have done tremendous damage to the countless victims of their lies while eroding the confidence of many Americans in the health establishment.\u00a0 <\/p>\n The confused state of our contemporary mainstream medical culture may provoke passing distress in the average right-thinking person who has not jumped on the ideological bandwagon of the zeitgeist. Medicine\u2019s politicized shift might seem like a peripheral concern for those not employed in the health-care industry. However, the implications of medicine\u2019s ideological capture are consequential for all Americans\u2014particularly engaged Catholics\u2014if we strive to live an integrated life in our pilgrimage toward Heaven. As with other areas of daily life, such as the education of our children, decisions about where we seek out medical care have implications for our integrity as Christians. <\/p>\n The aftermath of the Covid pandemic debacle has made many Americans aware of the pernicious ideological indoctrination foisted on their children at all levels of education. This has resulted in an increase in the number of\u00a0homeschooling<\/a>\u00a0families and a rise in enrollment in\u00a0private<\/a>\u2014particularly religious\u2014schools. Many state legislatures have responded to the demand for educational alternatives by enacting school-choice programs that support families\u2019 educational decisions. The importance of an educational culture that nurtures the domestic church brings to mind the old adage \u201cyou are what you eat.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n In the realm of medicine, mainstream institutions have taken positions that ape the general culture\u2019s obsession with self-identity and hyper-individualism. They have twisted the culture\u2019s historical understanding of the meaning of human dignity by qualifying it on certain terms and conditions\u2014such as \u201cconsciousness,\u201d \u201csentience,\u201d or societal utility. A proper Catholic response promotes a medical culture girded in the profession\u2019s commitment to the common good by honoring the authentic human dignity inherent in each person\u2019s condition as a reflection of the Creator. Thus, medicine fulfills its primary purpose\u2014to promote restoration of health and human flourishing through its uncompromising commitment to safeguard human life in the light of truth. <\/p>\n Once aware of the fallacies proclaimed by the prevailing medical culture, we must ask ourselves, \u201cWhat can be done?\u201d As Christians, we are called not to despair in our fallen world but rather to act as the hands and feet of Jesus in our own place and time. We cannot pretend we can correct the gargantuan problems in the culture singlehandedly or all at once. Like the proverb about eating an elephant, we must go about this monumental task by taking one bite at a time. <\/p>\n The natural \u201cfirst bite\u201d for a renovation of medicine is the reinvigoration of independent primary care practice based on Judeo-Christian ethics and Hippocratic principles. Primary care must be the beachhead for medicine\u2019s renewal because it takes place where people live and work. Its currency is time and relationship, which foster bonds of trust between doctors and patients. Primary care is where most people turn first when they encounter a medical concern; it is the area of medicine that seeks to make sense of patients\u2019 complaints as they describe them. The trusting bonds of the therapeutic relationship mean that doctors and patients are not interchangeable, as our 15-minute-visit conveyor-belt clinic protocols imply. <\/p>\n Primary care must be the beachhead for medicine\u2019s renewal because it takes place where people live and work. Its currency is time and relationship, which foster bonds of trust between doctors and patients.Tweet This<\/a><\/p>\n For Christian doctors and patients committed to medical care that reflects Christ\u2019s healing mission, I propose the following hallmarks of primary care rooted in Catholic social teaching:\u00a0 <\/p>\n Christian practice must uphold authentic human dignity, from conception to natural death. It must recognize medicine\u2019s duty to preserve and restore flourishing of the human person as designed by God. Failures to affirm life or the binary sexual nature of the human person are nonstarters.<\/p>\n A Christian medical practice demonstrates a proper understanding of Christian solidarity\u2014open to serving all for the promotion of the common good. This call to solidarity is an individual Christian commitment that cannot be fulfilled by legislation, social safety-net programs, or nongovernmental organizations.\u00a0<\/p>\n The call to Subsidiarity compels Christians to create local responses to local problems. It states that higher orders of societal organization should not interfere in lower orders\u2019 competent exercise of agency in addressing societal concerns. Top-down, one-size-fits-all health-care policies undermine Christian subsidiarity on the regular.\u00a0<\/p>\n Good stewardship means we are called to use God\u2019s abundant gifts judiciously in promotion of the common good. Primary care practices should remain as independent as possible of external forces that can hold sway over the way they carry out their healing vocation. In this way, they fulfill their purpose by rejecting wastefulness and coercion.<\/p>\n The steps to restore our corroded medical culture\u2014the way to \u201ceat the elephant\u201d\u2014begin with the establishment of independent primary care practices rooted in Catholic social teaching. Taking a cue from changes in education, Christian communities need medical care rooted in human dignity, solidarity, subsidiarity, and stewardship to be leaven in the world. In my book\u00a0Benedict Medicine: A Catholic Response to Rescuing the Profession\u2019s Healing Mission<\/a>, I outline how clinicians and patients can employ these principles so that independent Catholic physicians and the patients they serve can be models of true healing\u2014shining a light in the darkness of our present health-care malaise.\u00a0 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first week of September found me at the Catholic Medical Association\u2019s annual conference in Kansas City. 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