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**Cardinal calls Catholic health leaders to evangelize medical world
**By Nancy Frazier O’Brien
Catholic News Service
SAN DIEGO (CNS) – A Honduran cardinal challenged U.S. Catholic health care leaders June 5 to be witnesses in their professional and personal lives to the “humanizing and transforming spirit” of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, gave the keynote address on the first day of the Catholic Health Association’s June 5-8 assembly in San Diego.
“It is not important to ‘do a lot,’ but to take better care of the ‘evangelical quality’ of what we do, purify the content of our action, its evangelical value,” the cardinal said. “There are little and simple gestures that could show great love, intimate closeness with the ill, brave defense of their rights, and could point toward a more human and humanizing medical world.”
As examples of these gestures he cited:
– A “warm welcome to each person.”
– Providing assistance to “the most forgotten and marginalized.”
– Creating “more just and caring relationships.”
– Attending to the “most vital needs” of each person.
– Offering patients “the ultimate meaning of life, and definite hope when facing death.”
Cardinal Rodriguez emphasized that Catholic health care – and the role of the Catholic Church in general – goes far beyond merely providing sacramental ministry.
“When the main concern is the religious assistance to the sick, it is easy to forget” the need “for increasingly humanizing the medical world,” he said. In addition, he said, such an emphasis leaves out those who are “not at risk of immediate death” and leaves the main responsibility for such care to the clergy, who provide the sacraments, rather than to health care professionals.
But neither can Catholic health care be seen as a strictly medical function, the cardinal said.
Jesus’ curing activity in the Bible “is not pure medical service,” Cardinal Rodriguez said. “Rather, it is a healing action for the human person that reveals and incarnates God as ‘friend for life.’”
Evangelism “is not something added to the healing act, but actually it must be inseparable from that act,” he said.
Cardinal Rodriguez said such evangelism in today’s medical world should also focus on “spreading the Christian ethic about contemporary bioethical issues among professionals and helping sick people know the Christian meaning of pain and disease, their bond with the Crucified One, the sick person’s mission in the church, etc.”
“Understood in this way, evangelism creates a whole style of pastoral work,” he said.
The cardinal called for pastoral ministers involved in health care to be better trained in bioethical issues and the theology of pain and disease.
“We must count on persons who know how to talk to those who are ill and suffering, who know how to incarnate Christian doctrine in the medical world,” he said.
Cardinal Rodriguez closed his talk with a call for greater U.S. solidarity with developing countries.
“In our era, as never before, we all share the same destiny,” he said. “In our global village, we are all touched by the violence of terrorism, the decimation of peoples by HIV and AIDS, the tragic loss of life from natural disasters like the recent tsunami.”
The Honduran leader praised organizations like the Catholic Consortium for International Health Care, which is working to increase the commitment of U.S.-based health organizations to the sick and poor around the world. Both CHA and the Catholic Medical Mission Board are members of the consortium.
“Please continue with urgency and enthusiasm to extend your ministry of healing beyond the borders of your own country,” the cardinal said.
The global theme also was emphasized in a stirring opening ceremony before Cardinal Rodriguez’s talk.
With some 800 drums and other musical instruments distributed among the nearly 1,200 participants in the assembly, The Drum Cafe – a San Diego group with South African roots – led the audience in a simple lesson in drumming that emphasized the traditional African use of drums as a means of communication and a way of uniting people.
“Mission is the heartbeat of our ministry,” a narrator said. “In patient rooms, in activity rooms and in board rooms we can hear it beat.”
Source : catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0503348.htm
**By Nancy Frazier O’Brien
Catholic News Service
SAN DIEGO (CNS) – A Honduran cardinal challenged U.S. Catholic health care leaders June 5 to be witnesses in their professional and personal lives to the “humanizing and transforming spirit” of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Cardinal Oscar Rodriguez Maradiaga of Tegucigalpa, Honduras, gave the keynote address on the first day of the Catholic Health Association’s June 5-8 assembly in San Diego.
“It is not important to ‘do a lot,’ but to take better care of the ‘evangelical quality’ of what we do, purify the content of our action, its evangelical value,” the cardinal said. “There are little and simple gestures that could show great love, intimate closeness with the ill, brave defense of their rights, and could point toward a more human and humanizing medical world.”
As examples of these gestures he cited:
– A “warm welcome to each person.”
– Providing assistance to “the most forgotten and marginalized.”
– Creating “more just and caring relationships.”
– Attending to the “most vital needs” of each person.
– Offering patients “the ultimate meaning of life, and definite hope when facing death.”
Cardinal Rodriguez emphasized that Catholic health care – and the role of the Catholic Church in general – goes far beyond merely providing sacramental ministry.
“When the main concern is the religious assistance to the sick, it is easy to forget” the need “for increasingly humanizing the medical world,” he said. In addition, he said, such an emphasis leaves out those who are “not at risk of immediate death” and leaves the main responsibility for such care to the clergy, who provide the sacraments, rather than to health care professionals.
But neither can Catholic health care be seen as a strictly medical function, the cardinal said.
Jesus’ curing activity in the Bible “is not pure medical service,” Cardinal Rodriguez said. “Rather, it is a healing action for the human person that reveals and incarnates God as ‘friend for life.’”
Evangelism “is not something added to the healing act, but actually it must be inseparable from that act,” he said.
Cardinal Rodriguez said such evangelism in today’s medical world should also focus on “spreading the Christian ethic about contemporary bioethical issues among professionals and helping sick people know the Christian meaning of pain and disease, their bond with the Crucified One, the sick person’s mission in the church, etc.”
“Understood in this way, evangelism creates a whole style of pastoral work,” he said.
The cardinal called for pastoral ministers involved in health care to be better trained in bioethical issues and the theology of pain and disease.
“We must count on persons who know how to talk to those who are ill and suffering, who know how to incarnate Christian doctrine in the medical world,” he said.
Cardinal Rodriguez closed his talk with a call for greater U.S. solidarity with developing countries.
“In our era, as never before, we all share the same destiny,” he said. “In our global village, we are all touched by the violence of terrorism, the decimation of peoples by HIV and AIDS, the tragic loss of life from natural disasters like the recent tsunami.”
The Honduran leader praised organizations like the Catholic Consortium for International Health Care, which is working to increase the commitment of U.S.-based health organizations to the sick and poor around the world. Both CHA and the Catholic Medical Mission Board are members of the consortium.
“Please continue with urgency and enthusiasm to extend your ministry of healing beyond the borders of your own country,” the cardinal said.
The global theme also was emphasized in a stirring opening ceremony before Cardinal Rodriguez’s talk.
With some 800 drums and other musical instruments distributed among the nearly 1,200 participants in the assembly, The Drum Cafe – a San Diego group with South African roots – led the audience in a simple lesson in drumming that emphasized the traditional African use of drums as a means of communication and a way of uniting people.
“Mission is the heartbeat of our ministry,” a narrator said. “In patient rooms, in activity rooms and in board rooms we can hear it beat.”
Source : catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0503348.htm