Health Progress

Recently I traveled with Sr. Carol Keehan, DC, CHA’s president and chief executive officer, to St. Francis de Sales Hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, where we met with the three priests who have responsibility for management and direction of the hospital. In the course of our conversation, they voiced their struggles in managing the hospital’s mission of being the hospital for the poorest of Port-au-Prince’s population while attempting to maintain any semblance of a financial margin. It was fascinating to listen to their deliberations — the challenges and possibilities of seeking sustainability — in terms of attracting those who can pay while always serving those who are unable to do so...

Religious sponsors have led every step of the way in the Catholic Health Association’s community benefit work. Since the Ursuline Sisters’ 1727 arrival in New Orleans, women religious have modeled community health improvement by looking around, seeing what needed to be done and finding ways and means to improve the lives of poor and vulnerable people.

We have just moved into a season where the news of Jesus’ triumph over death will be front and center in our liturgical celebrations. As we passed through the celebration of the paschal mystery, we experienced suffering, the tomb of human death and the promise of eternal life fulfilled.

Enthusiastic statements like these stunned me when, years ago, I began leading formation groups. The goal was to help leaders pass on the Catholic health care tradition, not change their lives. Yet many participants said that’s what was happening. Today I have come to expect that although most formation participants will say the program improved their leadership, some also will say it was life-changing.¹

They’re all over the place today — Star Wars characters, superheroes, pirates, Minnie Mouse, witches, Minions from “Despicable Me” and, of course, nurses dressed as they usually are in your health care institutions, in white fishnet and 6-inch heels!

We often don’t see the extent of life-transforming changes, and the circumstances and decisions that led to them, until we look back. That’s because in the midst of such a transformation, we are busy taking the next step, and then, based on reflection and evaluation, the step after that. We are deeply involved in being present to the moment, knowing we are being led by something much greater than ourselves and trusting that movement. For 18 years, the Franciscan Sisters of Mary (FSM) have been in such a process...

In 1999, the Sisters of the Holy Cross and the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas came together, assessed the past, examined the present and created a new future for Trinity Health. Their goal was to preserve Catholic health care; their mission was to ensure that the human right to health care become a social right as part of a national understanding of promoting and providing for the general welfare. Thanks to the work of those prescient and courageous women religious, Trinity Health now is governed by a “mirror board” — a group of persons who carry canonical and civil responsibilities both as sponsors of Catholic Health Ministries and as directors of Trinity Health’s civil board...

Since 1727, when the Ursuline Sisters came to the United States, Catholic health care in the U.S. has sought to be a courageous and faithful reader of the signs of the times. It has tried to be attentive to the ongoing newness of God’s desire in responding to the health needs of people.

Spirituality” names an important domain of human experience that has contours influenced by varied religious traditions, but it is not always tied to any religious tradition in particular. It is influenced by the vast array of individual experiences of inner life, especially as transformed by the transcendent.¹ These individual expressions sometimes become part of religious traditions, spiritual classics handed on from generation to generation.²

As the structures of U.S. health systems evolve, a number of Catholic systems have found it necessary to transfer ownership of their hospitals to other-than-Catholic entities. In such cases, the selling sponsors have a key decision to make: Can the hospital maintain its Catholic identity after the sale?

Life in the church changes and evolves. So do the ministries of the church, for the church’s works must remain relevant as the times change and evolve. Thus the relationship between the church and the Catholic health care ministry has been adapting to a modern era in which founding congregations gradually relinquish control of the entities they created.

The story of Catholic health care spans generations, continuing to serve as an unbroken link to the healing ministry of Jesus. Through the Spirit’s creative provision, the unique charisms that strengthened and sustained the sisters and brothers who went before us continue today in the hearts and minds of lay and religious alike.

I had not heard the concept of ministerial sponsorship before joining the Catholic Health Initiatives. At first, it struck me as arcane jargon that was relevant only in the niche of Catholic health care.

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I have a confession to make: I was a mission leader for seven years before I had a good understanding of what sponsorship in Catholic health care is all about. I used to be embarrassed by it, until I discovered that many other senior leaders and middle managers also have no idea what sponsorship is. Many leaders are not able to tell you the names of the individuals who make up their sponsoring board or PJP. And the term PJP — public juridic person — is understood by even fewer leaders within Catholic health care...

Since the very beginning of his papacy, Pope Francis has provided a field day for the media. With well over 10 million people following him on Twitter, it is no wonder that many of his statements have become quotable quotes. One in particular has garnered much attention: “I see clearly that what the Church needs today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful; it needs nearness, proximity [to the people]. I see the Church as a field hospital after a battle.”

Philanthropy and community benefit have been closely related since the earliest days of health care. Religious and civic founders of the first nursing homes and hospitals received support from generous members of the community offering financial and volunteer resources. The connection remains today.

The word philanthropy comes from the Greek philanthropos, which means a love of humanity. The broader understanding of philanthropy recognizes anything that helps people to become more human is an exercise of love. This is consistent with Catholic theology’s understanding of the Incarnation and how our participation with grace is "sacramental."

There is an ethical issue closely related to philanthropy that also is a core value for many Catholic health care systems and included in the “Shared Statement of Identity for the Catholic Health Care Ministry.”¹ That value is stewardship. Some have suggested that “stewardship is the recurring theme in the Catholic social tradition that speaks most clearly to how and why people should care about the commons.”² Yet, it would actually be difficult to find the term stewardship mentioned at all in the Catholic social tradition...

Nearly 20 years ago, Fr. Richard McCormick, SJ, PhD, asked if Catholic health care could live out its mission in the current health care environment, which, at the time, he described as having the following characteristics: medicine as business, depersonalized care, cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, impoverished public hospitals, rampant mergers and competition, obsolescence of the hospital and threatened pastoral care.¹ I wrote an article reflecting on McCormick’s question and ended it, unlike McCormick himself, by expressing hope that mission was still possible for us within Catholic health care despite the various challenges...