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Christology and the Essence of Catholic Health
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Conor M. Kelly
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Incarnate Grace:
Perspectives on the Ministry
of Catholic Health Care
EDITED BY FR. CHARLES BOUCHARD, OP, S.T.D.
39 eology and Health Care
1.2 CHRISTOLOGY AND THE ESSENCE
OF CATHOLIC HEALTH CARE
Conor M. Kelly, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor, eological Ethics
Marquette University
I
N HIS INSPIRING MEMOIR, TATTOOS ON THE HEART ,
the Jesuit priest Gregory Boyle reects on his ministry to gang
members in Los Angeles and repeatedly acknowledges that virtually
every aspect of his work dees conventional wisdom. His parish’s
willingness to welcome gang members, no questions asked, strikes most
people as an invitation to violence; his relentless eorts to hire formerly
incarcerated men from rival gangs to work at Homeboy Industries seems like
a recipe for disaster; and his managerial penchant for second, and third, and
fourteenth chances would get him laughed out of any self-respecting business
competition. Noting the juxtaposition with most denitions of common
sense, Boyle simply admits, “Not much in my life makes any sense outside
of God.”
1
It is a profound and moving confession, and I love sharing it with
my students because I think Boyle’s statement captures something of the
essence of what it means to be a follower of Christ in this world. I bring it
up here because I also think it says something signicant about the essence
of Catholic health care — a point Boyle himself suggested in his keynote
address at the Catholic Health Association’s 2016 Catholic Health Assembly.
Gregory Boyle, Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion
(New York: Free Press, 2010): 21.
1
Incarnate Grace40
Now, I am fully aware of the economic and social pressures aecting
Catholic health care, and I know there are many ways in which Catholic
health care institutions meet the traditional expectations of the health care
industry. After all, they are judged by the same standards of eciency and
patient satisfaction as their non-Catholic peers. But that is not the essence
of Catholic health care. ese characteristics are incidental attributes, not
the core identity. e heart of Catholic health care lies in the little things
and major commitments that make this ministry unique, such as charity
care, outreach to vulnerable populations, a focused attention on the
common good and the prioritization of Catholic ethical guidelines that
permeates all manner of health care services. At this essential level, there
really is not much that makes sense outside of God.
In order to understand Catholic health care, then, we need to understand
something about God. In the Catholic tradition, the most complete
understanding of God is available only in Christ, whom the Second Vatican
Council identied as “the fullness of revelation.”
2
Consequently, Jesus Christ
is the key to a true appreciation of the essence of Catholic health care. is
is as it should be, especially in light of the sacramental understanding of
Catholic health care institutions that Richard Gaillardetz has articulated
elsewhere in this volume. As Gaillardetz explains, church institutions
(including Catholic health care institutions) share in the mission of the
church, which is to witness to “the practices and values associated with the
reign of God.”
3
Since those practices and values are expressed in the person
of Christ, the primordial minister of the reign of God, we can fairly say that
Catholic health care institutions embody this mission whenever they make
Christ present in the world. Christology — the study and interpretation
of Jesus Christ — is therefore one of the most important theological
foundations for Catholic health care because one’s understanding of
Christ directly inuences one’s interpretation of what it means to make
2 Dignitatis Humanae (Nov. 18, 1965), 2. Available online at: http://www.vatican.va/
archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_
en.htmlhttp://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-
ii_const_19651118_dei-verbum_en.html.
3 Richard Gaillardetz, “Theology of Institutions,” 263 – 264 .
41 eology and Health Care
Christ present in health care settings. Yet because God is a mystery,
there is no single exhaustive account of Christ, and there are, instead,
multiple Christologies.
In light of these realities, the purpose of this chapter is to explore how
dierent Christological models can help explain the essence of Catholic
health care so that we might better defend those distinctive features
of the Catholic health care mission and identity that, much like Fr.
Gregory Boyle’s choices, do not make sense apart from God. To this
end, I would like to suggest that we can go a long way toward reaching
a fuller understanding of our essential task if we augment our typical
“Christ-the-healer” model of Christology with the “Christ of solidarity”
model found in contemporary liberation theologies.
CHRIST THE HEALER: A VISION FOR HOLISTIC
HEALING
In many ways, the most obvious parallel for linking contemporary Catholic
health care with the person of Jesus Christ is found in the healing miracles
of Jesus recounted in the Gospels. ere is no question that this was a
central feature of Jesus’ life, especially as the early Christian community
commemorated that life in their initial accounts. Across all four Gospels,
there are vivid stories of Jesus healing men, women and children from all
manner of aictions, including deadly fever (Jn 4:46-54), paralysis (Mk
2:1-12), blindness (Lk 18:35-43), hemorrhaging (Mt 9:20-22), leprosy (Mk
1:40-45), demonic possessions (Lk 26-39), and even death itself (Jn 11:38-
44). Judging by the number of times the Gospels inform us that people
came to see Jesus expressly to be cured (see Mt 4:23-25; Mk 1:32-34; Lk
6:17-19), we can surmise that Jesus had quite the reputation as a healer. As
a result, it is entirely legitimate to speak of a Christ-the-healer Christology
that emphasizes the healing work of God incarnate in Jesus Christ. Indeed,
Matthew’s Gospel uses one of his unique “fulllment quotations” to suggest
that Jesus’ impressive work as a healer partially conrmed his identity as
the Christ, for in accordance with Isaiah’s prophecy about the suering
servant, “He took our inrmities and bore our diseases” (Mt 8:17; cf. Is
Incarnate Grace42
53:4).
4
For all these reasons, the account of Christ the healer oers a viable
Christological model for articulating the essence of Catholic health care,
and we ought to take it seriously. I will, therefore, discuss the ways that
this Christology might help explain those features of Catholic health care
that are incomprehensible without reference to God. I will also describe
the limitations of this approach because, in the end, this model needs a
complement if we wish to capture the fullness of Catholic health care today.
In my view, a Christ-the-healer Christology has two key benets for those
who wish to dene and defend the unique approach of Catholic health
care as a ministry of the church: its logical simplicity and its description
of a distinctive way of healing. e rst of these advantages is fairly
straightforward. e image of Christ the healer is immediately recognizable
to those who have heard about Christ in almost any context. In fact, Jesus is
described as a miraculous healer in other religious traditions, most notably
Islam.
5
Christ the healer therefore provides a readily accessible link between
Christology and Catholic health care, allowing one to say simply that
Catholic health care makes Christ present by healing, just as he did while
on earth. e equation requires no mental gymnastics because it unites one
of the most familiar features of Jesus Christ with one of the most obvious
aspects of health care ministry. In addition, this Christological link presents
a no-nonsense response for the elements of Catholic health care that
would seem to defy common sense. Like the “just say no” campaign, this
Christology allows one to change the terms of the conversation and refute
would-be critics with a nice statement of one’s convictions — in this case:
He healed, so we heal. Given the clarity of that reasoning, not much more
would need to be said.
Yet other things can be said, because a Christ-the-healer Christology reveals
more than just the basic fact that Jesus healed; it also tells us something
about the way Jesus healed. is leads to the second key benet of this
Christology as a theological foundation for Catholic health care, because
Catholic health care does not merely make Christ present by engaging in a
4 On Matthew’s use of fulfillment quotations, see Daniel J. Harrington, The Gospel of Matthew
(Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991): 38 – 39, 116 – 17.
5 Warren Larson, “Jesus in Islam and Christianity: Discussing the Similarities and the
Differences,” Missiology 36, no. 3 (July 2008): 327 – 341, at 331.
43 eology and Health Care
healing ministry in general. Instead, it truly makes Christ present by trying
to heal in the particular way that Jesus healed. By building on
the Christology of Christ the healer, then, we can dene and strengthen
the distinctive approach to healing that sets Catholic health care apart
from its secular counterparts. We can do this most eectively by attending
to the implications that Jesus’ healing miracles would have had in his
historical context.
e rst thing to note about Jesus’ historical context is that most of his
ministry occurred in Galilee at a time when the ruling political authorities
were demanding higher payments from the area’s rural workers in order
to fund ambitious growth for urban areas.
6
As a result, “there were no
medical ‘safety nets’…. Debilitating illness, or disability resulting from
an accident while working, could mean descent into poverty and an
untimely death.”
7
Illness therefore brought stress and fear along with its
somatic symptoms, as most victims had to worry about the long-term
consequences of their poor health. Furthermore, illnesses in Jesus’ time also
included social consequences. A number of biblical scholars have noted the
distinction in medical anthropology between disease (as a biological reality
with pathological causes) and illness (as a psychosocial reality with cultural
causes) in order to insist that the illnesses Jesus confronted in his healing
miracles were not merely biological problems but also inherently social ones
as well.
8
John J. Pilch explains how leprosy serves as a paradigmatic example
because the actual (biological) disease of leprosy does not seem to have
been present in Galilee at the time Jesus lived, yet Jesus’ contemporaries
certainly identied a certain kind of skin condition as the illness of leprosy,
imposing specic social sanctions on those who exhibited symptoms of
this condition.
9
Most of these sanctions resulted from the “purity system”
that associated certain illnesses, including leprosy, with impurity, with the
implication that other healthy people should avoid those who were sick and
6 Eric Eve, The Healer from Nazareth: Jesus’ Miracles in Historical Context (London: SPCK, 2009),
125 – 27.
7 Harold Remus, Jesus as Healer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 2.
8 See, for example, John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened
in the Years Immediately after the Execution of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperOne, 1999), 293 –
94; Pilch, Healing in the New Testament: Insights from Medical and Mediterranean
Anthropology (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2000): 13 – 14, 24 – 25.
9 Pilch, Healing in the New Testament, 39 – 54, 142.
Incarnate Grace44
impure lest they also become impure by contact and association.
10
us, in
Jesus’ day, illness meant not only physical aiction but also social isolation.
Given this context, Jesus’ healing was both a transformation of physical
symptoms and a response to social rejection. According to Pilch, this is the
signicance of the fact that Jesus so often healed by touch, for “in these
instances…Jesus’ touching is a concrete way of demonstrating that the
individual is a full member of the community as Jesus understands it.”
11
e distinctive value of his healing miracles — at least from the perspective
of the ones healed — was the remarkable combination of physical
restoration alongside the possibility of returning to social life without any
stigma. Consequently, we might say that Jesus healed in a way that restored
and reintegrated people, both individually and communally.
12
Frankly, this
eect of Jesus’ healing should not be surprising, because “Jesus insisted
that his message of the kingdom of God was acted out in his miracles
and exorcisms.”
13
Since the reign of God is dened, in the words of John
Dominic Crossan, as “a divinely mandated and nonviolent resistance to
the normalcy of discrimination, exploitation, oppression, and persecution,”
it makes sense that we would see in the Gospel healings a reversal of
social marginalization.
14
e model of Jesus’ ministry, therefore, amounts
to a distinctive way of healing, because his commitment to the reign
of God points to a more holistic form of healing than simply curing
sickness and disease.
In light of the historical implications of Jesus’ healing miracles, we can
imagine how a Christ-the-healer Christology might helpfully legitimate a
similarly distinctive way of healing in contemporary Catholic health care.
Wendy Cotter explains that Jesus’ healings indicate the concerns that should
10 Eve, The Healer from Nazareth, 139.
11 Pilch, Healing in the New Testament, 52.
12 For more on the social impacts of Jesus’ healing miracles, see Keith Warrington, Jesus the
Healer: Paradigm or Unique Phenomenon? (Waynesboro, GA: Paternoster Press, 2000): 3 – 6.
13 Graham Stanton, “Message and Miracles,” in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus, ed. Markus
Bockmuehl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001): 56 – 71, at 57.
14 Crossan, The Birth of Christianity, 317. For a more comprehensive overview of the scholarly
understanding of the reign of God and its significance in Jesus’ ministry, see Lisa Sowle Cahill,
“Kingdom of God,” in Global Justice, Christology, and Christian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2013): 76 – 121.
45 eology and Health Care
animate his disciples, who, she contends, “must be ready to abandon
a cautious cultivation of public honor by conformity to social
strictures and obedience to social norms in their outreach to others…
[so that all] petitioners are received with the same equanimity, respect,
and concern, no matter their background or status.”
15
us, a dedication
to imitating Christ the healer would certainly justify the common
commitment to caring for the poorest and most vulnerable populations
despite the obvious business challenges accompanying this decision. At the
same time, this Christological model would also helpfully orient Catholic
health care to the importance of holistic healing. Just as Jesus responded
to physical symptoms and social consequences, Catholic health care can
make Christ the healer present by attending to all aspects of a patient’s
holistic well-being, not just his or her physical maladies. In a context where
“modern professional health care tends to treat disease but not illness,”
16
this attention to both phenomena would denitely qualify as a distinctive
element of Catholic health care that does not fully make sense according
to conventional standards. With the Christology just described, however,
it would certainly be reasonable in light of Christ.
We can now see the advantages of describing Catholic health care with
reference to a Christ-the-healer Christology. First, the visibility of this
aspect of Jesus’ ministry oers an easy explanation for the fact that Catholic
health care exists at all. Second, the specics of Jesus’ work as a healer justify
Catholic health care’s distinctive commitments to underserved populations
and to holistic care. While these benets are signicant, there are also
important limitations that accompany this Christological model, which
undermines its potential as an exclusive theological basis for mission and
identity in contemporary Catholic health care. Consider what I called the
most obvious advantage of a Christ-the-healer Christology: its emphasis
on healing. is does provide a clear link between the work of Jesus and
the work of Catholic health care, but, for all its clarity, this connection is
dangerously narrow. Yes, healing is an important aspect of Catholic health
care, and a focus on holistic healing is even more essential, but responding
15 Wendy J. Cotter, The Christ of the Miracle Stories: Portrait through Encounter (Grand Rapids,
MI: Baker Academic, 2010): 255.
16 Arthur Kleinman and Lilias H. Sung, “Why Do Indigenous Practitioners Successfully Heal?,”
Social Science and Medicine 13B, no. 1 (1979): 7 – 26, at 8.
Incarnate Grace46
to symptoms — even when those symptoms are dened broadly — is
not all that Catholic health care does. Preventive care is another major
component of Catholic health care that is increasingly vital in today’s
context, and yet this aspect of the mission is not easily captured by an
emphasis on healing. Granted, if we expand Jesus’ healing to include not
only diseases and illnesses but also sicknesses (i.e., the social conditions
that increase risk factors for diseases), then there might be an argument for
some elements of preventive care, especially when that care is directed to
vulnerable populations.
17
Even this does not go far enough though, because
preventive care is a requirement for all and population health must address
the concerns of everyone in a given community, so this Christological
model can only justify a portion of Catholic health care’s essential tasks.
Another potential shortcoming in the Christ-the-healer Christological
model is its inability to account for the nite nature of human health
care. Christ healed by the power of God, and so the Gospels attest to an
utterly successful healing ministry. ere were no illnesses that Jesus could
not overcome. As we know all too well, though, this is not the case for us
today. Even when we set aside preventive care and focus exclusively on those
patients who do come to Catholic health care seeking help with symptoms,
there are conditions, diseases, and even illnesses we are powerless to cure or
improve. While this is not an insignicant problem for medicine in general,
it is an even bigger concern for Catholic health care, where long-term care
facilities greatly outnumber hospitals, meaning that much of our health
care ministry is directed at those patients who are unlikely to nd medical
healing.
18
When we attempt to justify the work of Catholic health care
primarily on the basis of a Christ-the-healer Christology, we also leave this
signicant portion of Catholic health care mission unaddressed.
For all these reasons, a Christ-the-healer Christology is a natural and
benecial model for Catholic health care, but it is not comprehensive
17 For the distinctions between disease, illness, and sickness, and their connections to healing
ministry, see Crossan, The Birth of Christianity, 293 – 95, 302.
18 According to the Catholic Health Association, there are approximately 600 Catholic hospitals
in the United States versus 1,400 “long-term care and other health facilities.” Catholic Health
Association of the United States, “Catholic Health Care in the United States: Facts and
Figures,” last modified January 2016, accessed August 11, 2016, https://www.chausa.org/
about/about/facts-statistics.
47 eology and Health Care
enough to stand on its own. Certainly, its simplicity and its focus on
holistic healing are undeniable assets, but the gaps surrounding preventive
and long-term care are too important to ignore. As some of the most
prominent components of Catholic health care today, preventive care
and long-term care both demand an adequate Christological foundation.
Fortunately, the Christ-the-healer model does not have to operate in
isolation. ere are other Christological options, and the Christ-of-
solidarity model developed by liberation theologians is particularly well
suited to expand our understanding of the theological rationale for the
essence of Catholic health care in these areas as well as others. Alongside
Christ the healer, this solidarity Christology translates to a particular
way of responding to patients in need, helpfully oering an additional
image of Christ that can dene and defend all aspects of Catholic health
care ministry, not just healing.
CHRIST OF SOLIDARITY: A MISSION
OF ACCOMPANIMENT AND A COMPLEMENT
TO CHRIST AS HEALER
e central message of a Christ-of-solidarity Christology is that God is
with us in a profound way through the person of Jesus Christ, the Word
made esh. Proponents of this Christological model insist that, in Christ,
God’s presence with humanity is radical and exhaustive, such that there is
no element of human existence that is left untouched by God. While the
argument for this closeness often focuses on the experience of suering,
the implications of this Christology for Catholic health care extend beyond
the immediate parallels one might see in the many ways Catholic health
care institutions respond to suering. Ultimately, this Christological
model oers the theological foundation for a distinctive mission of
accompaniment that Catholic health care institutions can embody in all the
human interactions that they sponsor, from surgeons working to address the
pain of acute wounds to primary care providers developing wellness plans
for healthy young adults to hospice nurses preparing patients and their
families for the end of life. In this way, a Christ-of-solidarity Christology
has the power to explain all aspects of Catholic health care with reference
to the Catholic understanding of God as revealed in Christ.
Incarnate Grace48
e primary basis of the Christ-of-solidarity model is experiential more than
theoretical. us, we should not be surprised that liberation theologians
have contributed much to this Christology, because liberation theology
is emphatically attentive to the historical implications of Christian
faith commitments.
19
e roots of this Christology predate the birth of
liberation theology, though. Most observers point to the Second World
War when the atrocities of the Holocaust prompted Dietrich Bonhoeer, a
German Lutheran pastor and captive of the Nazi regime, to declare, “only
the suering God can help.”
20
Jürgen Moltmann, a fellow German and
theologian, took this claim to heart as he grappled with the horrors of the
war and its aftermath, prompting him to search for the suering God. He
found the answer he needed in the cross of Christ, who died “‘for us,’ so
that he could be the Brother of all forsaken people and could bring them to
God.”
21
In Moltmann’s interpretation, the point of the death of Christ was
not only to free us from sin, but also to show us “that God could be beside
us in our suering and with us in our pain. at means: God’s solidarity
with us.”
22
rough the work of the Spanish-born Jesuit Jon Sobrino,
who spent considerable time living with the poor in Latin America, this
conviction has become a staple of liberation theologies because it provides
hope to the oppressed, “who rejoice in having a God who comes close to
them through his suering.”
23
Today, liberation theologians writing from
a variety of contexts take this claim seriously and insist that the saving
message of the cross is not just the victory over sin and death found in the
resurrection, but also the complete solidarity of God with all those who
suer found in the cross itself.
19 For a good overview of the methodological commitments that distinguish liberation theology,
including an emphasis on history, see Francis Schüssler Fiorenza, “Liberation Theology,” in
New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,
2003) 8:554 – 56.
20 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, enlarged ed., ed. Eberhard Bethge, trans.
Reginald Fuller, Frank Clarke, John Bowden, et al. (London: SCM Press, 1971), 361 (letter
from July 16, 1944).
21 Jürgen Moltmann, Jesus Christ for Today’s World, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, MN:
Fortress Press, 1994): 36.
22 Moltmann, 38 (original emphasis).
23 Jon Sobrino, Christ the Liberator: A View from the Victims, trans. Paul Burns (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 2001): 272.
49 eology and Health Care
Obviously, the Christ-of-solidarity model says something specic about
the problem of suering, but it also reveals a more general point about
the signicance of Jesus Christ. As Sobrino’s discussion of solidarity
Christology makes clear, the true importance of saying that Jesus is God,
even as he suers and dies on the cross, is that this creates an unqualied
“anity” between God and humanity, which “reach[es] down to the
deepest levels in human beings, to where the expectation of salvation is
most necessary and, at the same time, seems most dicult to achieve —
in suering.”
24
From a Christ-of-solidarity perspective, then, Jesus’ passion
and death are the paradigmatic proof of a conviction that the Gospel of
Matthew attaches to the birth of Christ, namely that Jesus is “‘Emmanuel,’
which means ‘God is with us’” (Mt 1:23). It is therefore tting that Sobrino
would insist, “e cross should not be seen as an arbitrary plan of God’s
or as a cruel punishment inicted on Jesus, but as a consequence of God’s
original choice, incarnation, a radical drawing near for love and in love,
wherever it leads, without escaping from history or manipulating it from
the outside.”
25
us, the central message of this solidarity Christology is
not that God is with us in our suering — although that is true — but that
God is with us in everything, in a way that is so deep and all-encompassing
that it does not exclude the most trying elements of the human condition.
is is the fundamental insight that the discussion of Christ’s suering
reveals, and this is the reason that the Christ-of-solidarity model represents
a helpful addition to the Christological explanation of the essence of
Catholic health care.
In terms of practical implications for Catholic health care, the Christ-
of-solidarity model provides the basis for articulating and defending
a distinctive mission of accompaniment. Since the key claim of this
Christology is that God is always with us, professionals working in Catholic
health care can make the Christ of solidarity present whenever they are
present to the people in a deep way that imitates Jesus as Emmanuel.
Consistent with the emphases of the theologians who have developed
this Christological model, health care workers can embody this form of
24 Jon Sobrino, Christ the Liberator, 266.
25 Jon Sobrino, Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological Reading of Jesus of Nazareth,
trans. Paul Burns and Francis McDonagh (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1993): 244.
Incarnate Grace50
compassionate presence most directly in their interactions with those
who suer in some way. is solidarity Christology also implies a holistic
approach to health care in Catholic settings, encouraging every professional
to move beyond symptoms in order to treat persons. Specically, the
Christ-of-solidarity model promotes an openness to the other that seeks
genuine understanding, so that health care professionals might truly be
with their patients, working and walking alongside them in every aspect
of their treatment, sharing the human and not just the medical experience.
e point of this interaction is not healing, which is already presumed by
the health care setting, but accompaniment, which is the distinctive feature
added by placing this interaction in a Catholic health care context.
As we can see, the Christ-of-solidarity Christology illuminates a particular
way of healing in Catholic health care, but it does so in a fashion that shifts
the focus away from healing. As a result, this Christology has the advantage
of explaining additional aspects of Catholic health care, adding to the
explanation of the essence of Catholic health care that a Christ-the-healer
model provides. After all, the vision of accompaniment derived from the
Christ-of-solidarity model is both appropriate and eective in the context
of healing, but it is hardly restricted to the response to suering. Sobrino’s
description of God’s solidarity with us in Christ applies just as well in other
contexts, including the two signicant contexts left under-analyzed in the
previous Christological model: preventive care and long-term care.
Certainly Sobrino’s account of “a radical drawing near for love and in love,
wherever it leads,” suggests a rationale for Catholic health care’s concern
with preventive care, which requires a full picture of the patient’s life and
lifestyle, and which seeks to build a non-judgmental relationship of care
“wherever it leads.” Signicantly, this rationale is relevant in all cases, not
just in eorts to provide preventive care for underserved populations. At
the same time, the image of God’s solidarity on the cross also justies a
preferential option for otherwise abandoned populations in Catholic health
care. Hence, this Christology provides a balanced defense of preventive
care in Catholic settings. Similarly, because Christ’s accompaniment in
solidarity is based on God’s decision to join with our shared humanity, a
solidarity Christology can also inform and defend the growing commitment
51 eology and Health Care
to population health that places Catholic health care workers in solidarity
with the broader communities in which they are located. When guided
by the Christ of solidarity, these activities will be undertaken as a form
of institutional accompaniment alongside a corporate people, reecting a
willingness to share the burdens of the community as a whole for the long
haul and a readiness to work with the community to empower its members
to nd solutions from within, rather than imposing them from without.
In addition, this Christological model also oers a theological foundation
for the Catholic commitment to long-term care. Insofar as Catholic health
care makes the Christ of solidarity present, it will be faithful to its patients,
even when medical solutions are either not viable or no longer desirable. In
these moments, the vision of a God who accompanies us “without escaping
from history or manipulating it from the outside” is exactly what drives the
readiness to be at the bedside, sharing in the frustrations of medical futility
and human nitude. As one can imagine, this is especially pertinent in the
context of care for the elderly as well. Often we cannot cure those who are
aging, but we can always accompany them. Quality senior care, like quality
long-term care, will require us to deepen our understanding of God’s solidarity
with us in Christ especially as we accompany those preparing for death.
To give one practical example, this vision for solidarity through
accompaniment is beautifully embodied in the reections of Mary Lee
Freeman, a palliative care nurse practitioner who relayed in an issue of
Commonweal that her work is driven by the realization that she is “the
last new person to get to know them,” which means that she is always
attentive to the ways that she can aord “the dying person…a last chance
to be better than he [or she] really was.” Her words in that essay show
a level of familiarity with her patients as unique human persons with
individual histories and deeply human needs that can only come from a
true accompaniment.
26
If Freeman’s experience is any indication — and
I believe it is — then Catholic health care already embodies the mission
of accompaniment that emerges from a solidarity Christology, especially
26 Mary Lee Freeman, “Caring for the Dying: My Patients, My Work, My Faith,” Commonweal 131,
no. 2 (Jan. 30, 2004): 11 – 15.
Incarnate Grace52
in long-term care settings. is means that the solidarity Christology of
liberation theologies can indeed speak to the essence of Catholic health care,
because it oers a clear rationale for the kind of distinctive work that already
sets Catholic health care apart. Hence, the Christ of solidarity model can
extend the insights of its Christ the healer counterpart, helping us to explain
with greater precision why long-term care is such a major component of
Catholic health care today.
For all these reasons, the Christ of solidarity provides a strong and
encompassing Christological foundation for Catholic health care, helping us
to expand our horizon and deepen our explanations beyond the convictions
that naturally emerge from a Christ-the-healer model. Of course, Christ the
healer is and likely will remain the more obvious image for Catholic health
care, but this is not a bad thing because a Christ-the-healer model reinforces
the Catholic commitment to holistic care. By appealing to the Christ of
solidarity as well, we can then develop a comprehensive explanation of
all the aspects of Catholic health care that set this work of the church
apart from other, non-Catholic approaches. Signicantly, the Christ-of-
solidarity Christology justies a mission of accompaniment that can imbue
every interaction in a Catholic health care setting with a profound sense
of Catholic identity. Of particular importance in today’s context, this
embodiment of Catholic identity does not presume any particular faith
commitments from the parties involved. e Catholic nature of this mission
comes from the link to the person of Christ, whose Incarnation, ministry
and death all attested to a way of being in solidarity with us. Catholic health
care institutions embrace this decidedly theological mission and identity
whenever they insist that compassionate solidarity and accompaniment
constitute the distinctive essence of health care in a Catholic setting. By
asserting that the rationale for this essence is Christ himself, Catholic health
care institutions ensure that they are fullling their sacramental mission as
an institution of the Catholic Church. e Christ-of-solidarity Christology
therefore provides a rich theological foundation for Catholic health care
that applies to all aspects of this ministry and is accessible to all those who
wish to contribute to this mission, even in a pluralistic context. Ultimately,
if that is not enough to defend my claim that we should look to extend our
Christological reections beyond Christ the healer to also include the Christ
of solidarity, then I do not know what is!
53 eology and Health Care
CONCLUSION
I think that everyone involved in Catholic health care would agree that
there is something distinctive about this approach to health care, and
(I hope) everyone would also agree that we ought to keep it that way.
Preserving this distinctiveness is no easy task, especially in an increasingly
complex and competitive health care marketplace. We will have a better
chance of success, though, if we are able to identify and defend the essence
of the Catholic approach to health care, for the essence is that which is
most at risk to market pressures because the essence makes the least amount
of sense in light of conventional reasoning. Indeed, much like Fr. Gregory
Boyle’s work with gang members in Los Angeles, not much about that
essence makes sense outside of God. is is especially true when we dene
that essence with reference both to Christ the healer and to the Christ of
solidarity, for as the Episcopal priest Samuel Wells has persuasively argued,
“Our culture’s operational assumption has long been that the central
problem of human existence is mortality,” so most institutions are oriented
to xing the problems caused by nitude. In contrast, there is not a lot of
sympathy for those who would suggest that isolation is the real problem
that must be countered with a shared presence of accompaniment before
we introduce action.
27
Yet the latter approach is the essence of Catholic
health care, which spends resources and energy on accompanying everyone,
even when the prospects for overcoming human nitude are long gone.
By most conventional standards, this would be a foolish choice, but when
we ground Catholic health care in the dual Christologies of Christ the
healer and the Christ of solidarity, this becomes the only choice, and
that makes perfect sense.
27 Samuel Wells, “Rethinking Service,” The Cresset 76, No. 4 (Easter 2013): 6 – 14, available
online at http://thecresset.org/2013/Easter/Wells_E2013.html.
Incarnate Grace54
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1.
What Christological image holds the most relevance for your work in
Catholic health care: Christ the healer, the Christ of solidarity or some
other image? Why?
2. How would you dene the essence of Catholic health care? In what
ways, if any, would you connect or relate this essence to one of the two
Christological models mentioned above?
3. To what extent does the essence of Catholic health care require an
explicit reference to theological commitments such as Christology?
