Health, a Missionary Imperative

 Doctors, nurses, and medicines are gifts of God, and beautiful ones at that.       Our dialogue invites us to consider the ethics of the missionary as much as the personal values of the medical practitioner. Expert information presupposes virtue formation, which is not taught but caught, like honesty, loyalty, respect, caring, communication, patience, compassion. These are not subordinate to the vocabulary of micro-biology, scans, and laser surgery, but rather serve to prevent the split between role and person. The role develops but frequently enough the self remains anaemic and immature. This can happen in professions that are pressure-packed and highly competitive, and where ethics only enters as a factor in a dilemma.

          The discourse on health as missionary imperative must surely include the nurses and counsellors, among whom many religious sisters and priests are numbered. The nurses not only promote cheerfulness but in many instances they know the patient better, and even though they are not the locus of decisional responsibility, they are the effective channels of the discharge of that responsibility. Counsellors play a very significant role in the field of life-threatening diseases and terminal cases, helping those especially that have a very limited future. These people come with their fears, follies and families. Past memories are sharpened and future expectations are foreshortened. The ebb and flow of the meaning of life, suffering and death swirl around here. Without the counsellor who listens and reaches out there would be no healing even without hope of recovery. The understanding of pain is by way of understanding the person; and at least one-third of humanity has some pain. Pain is the instinctual cry for help. It is a mind-body event. It originates in the physical stimulus but is always refracted through the mind. At the centre of most pain is fear. The counsellor will help the patients to discern the meaning and place of pain in their life and with the doctor’s advice work out a pain control plan. This goes deeper than the popping of pills and the mechanics of injections; it is a call to personal values and theological ethics.          In his address to the Federation of Catholic Pharmacists on Aggression against Human Life and the Supremacy of the Moral Order, on 3 November 1990,  Pope St.  John Paul II said, “...the relation between the pharmacist and the one seeking medication goes far beyond its commercial aspects, because it requires an acute perception of the personal problems of the person involved as well as the basic ethical aspects of the service rendered to the life and dignity of the human person.”

          The thrust of the biblical narrative and precepts, especially the teaching of Jesus, furnished the Church down the ages with the leitmotiv to undertake the works of mercy in regard to human health and healing. Ever since the Renaissance, with secularisation in tow, medicine and theology have progressed on parallel lines. However, the basic virtues of justice and compassion have not entirely evaporated, and can yet draw upon the capital of the Jesus story, still deeply embedded in the collective consciousness, however secularist this may seem on the outside.

          The missionary’s task, buttressed by the bold teachings of a modern Church, is to recall the world of medicine, in which he/she is also actively engaged, to the precious values of human life and bodily integrity, illuminated by the mysteries of Christ. The Second Vatican Council and Pope St. John Paul II have made it abundantly clear that human health and humane treatment pertain to the fundamental rights of man, and as such is a specific sector for evangelisation. This has now assumed a very challenging dimension, that of the arena of hi-tech medicine, which, in its own context, cries out for the message of the gospel in terms of the age-old proclamation that is ever new:

 “And all flesh shall see the salvation of our God” (Luke 3,6).