'A Fair & Just Workplace'
Cochran, Clarke E.
tion, and anticrime initiatives, often in association with illusion of life without suffering, the denial of death, the Catholic Charities agencies or with other Catholic and non- pipe...
...Each floor of the hospice has its own kitchen, where breakfast is prepared...
...Catholic networks came to dominate the list C.E.c...
...Unless such a sense is palpable and routinely noticeable in Catholic health-care institutions, the institutions fail the "identity challenge" of what makes them distinctly Catholic, even when they meet their medical and economic challenges successfully...
...Still, they have left many people chronically disabled and their families ill-equipped to cope, financially, psychologically, and spiritually...
...Each produces new casualties, who find themselves (voluntarily or not) in medical or quasimedical April 7-9, 2000 settings-addiction treatment centers, mental-health facili-KEYNOTE ADDRESS- ties, shelters for victims of family abuse, and counseling THE ACTUAL PRESENCE OF THE MARTYRS AMONG US programs...
...If Catholic health Parish nurses already work with health-care institutions, care has any purpose in the new millennium, it will be as the parish staffs, and parishioners, not only to meet physical bearer of such a sacramental identity, of such a hope...
...On the contrary, Catholic health-care institutions the patient's real need is for conversation, help with house- and Catholic leadership in public policy are central in adwork, or support for family caregivers...
...For example, in the future hospitals should restructure intensivecare units to allow families more access to their loved ones...
...see sidebar...
...In past centuries, or refusal to perform certain procedures, it may be time to Catholics were organizationally inventive enough to create sell it to the highest bidder and put the resources to better use religious communities like the Little Sisters of the Poor or the elsewhere, meeting new needs with an institutional identiHawthorne Dominicans that met new needs...
...A Symposium • Third, the new American culture paradoxically blends a AGAINST FORGETTING: "winner-take-all" economy, the Reagan-Clinton model of Oscar Romero, the Central American Martyrs, and what John Paul II calls "superdevelopment, " with pockets of the Public Witness of the Church intense poverty...
...livering high-quality, advanced medical care, the more it Nevertheless, they are both too abstract and too generic to must wrestle with medicine's technological ambitions-the form a distinctive Catholic identity, whether in health care, 'A Fair & Just Workplace' n August 26,1999, Bishop William S. Skyl- of the largest not-for-profit hospital systems...
...With trends that include shorter hospital stays and the fragmentation of care between ever more specialized personnel, the task of incarnating Christ's healing becomes more urgent...
...Clearly, the church must challenge the economRodolfo Cardenal, SJ, San Salvador, El Salvador ic conditions that help produce such injuries, while simul-PLAY- taneously creating health-care institutions that recognize POINTS OF ARRIVAL: A JEAN DONOVAN JOURNEY the spiritual dimension of these ills and the sacramental diStill Point Theatre Collective mension of genuine healing of mind and spirit...
...Moreover, consolidations, rethe mission of Catholic health care, and efforts of organizations, and staff reductions in health care have labor to organize workers in Catholic institutions...
...But medicine itself, as the Institute of Medicine reported last year, can be pathological as well as curative...
...iven these challenges, what should those charged with maintaining and broadening Catholic health care in the new century do to ensure its Catholic quality and character...
...Such specificity reflects ever, recognizes the "special responsibility" of Catholic the last decade's troubled history of Catholic health health-care leaders to be more open and less concare and organized labor...
...Stories about Catholic facilities indistinguishable from their secular counterparts, though, are all too common...
...produced anxiety, high levels of uncertainty, and deep The character of the document reflects the heat of frustration, even among highly paid employees...
...These services are dressing social and policy needs...
...They are signs of hope and susso that every parish could establish a parish nurse program...
...Suppose, however, that a the cracks...
...tion, and anticrime initiatives, often in association with illusion of life without suffering, the denial of death, the Catholic Charities agencies or with other Catholic and non- pipe dream of pharmacological or surgical solutions to aging, Catholic community organizations...
...Principles like justice, freedom, respect for life, human Second, the more committed Catholic health care is to de- dignity, and the common good are vital to Catholic faith...
...This sensitivity to patients' needs expresses something distinctive, admirable, and generous about the Catholic way of doing things...
...Is it too much, too ty that is distinctively Catholic...
...What It Means to Educate for Justice...
...institutional creativity are both required and more realistic...
...It still A Catholic liberal education for social justice provides critical and necessary medical care...
...This model could be expanded...
...stimulate reflection...
...for example, false and misleading claims, over, unions are not Catholic organizations: They are threats and intimidation, misuse of supervisors' au- under no obligation to follow distinctive principles thority, and misrepresentation of Catholic social of Catholic social teaching...
...In addition, Catholic hospitals are often the best sources of the financial 420 Main Street • Nashua, NH 03060-5086 capital and medical legitimacy required by new institutional forms...
...Yet, even if universal health sacramental in character, not strictly medical...
...The SEIU douCare," the paper aims to define "common ground" bled its health-care members between 1996 and 1999, among Catholic social teaching on labor and work, adding 400,000 workers...
...This is not to deny that millions of persons benefit from the advances of medical science...
...Sabbatical Students Welcome 7135 Minstrel Way Columbia, MD 21045 1-800-382-4723 e-mail: mcdonald@loyola.edu 410-312-7644 FAX Commonweal 1 5 February 25, 2000 t hospital sy(^ health needs but to integrate spiritual, emotional, and sacraI N T H E S P I R I T O F J U B I L E E 2 0 0 0 mental healing...
...Catholics, therefore, are and the assumed irrelevance of the church's moral teach- a sacramental people and the Eucharist is the center of ings to many self-identified Catholics...
...Here is a brief set of recommendations...
...Women Religious, the AFL-CIO, and the Service Em- Despite the aim of "A Fair and Just Workplace" to ployees International Union (SEIU), it is not an offi- be evenhanded, it assigns greater obligations to cial policy statement but a working paper intended to Catholic health-care institutions than it does to unions...
...Despite wage increases for hospital Health Care and Work...
...As Catholic hospitals have established or affiliated with rehabilitation centers, it is not at all clear that they have successfully integrated pastoral care or sacramental environments as part of their therapy regimes...
...A case in point: Because breakfast is often the only meal cancer patients enjoy, Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, New York, goes to great lengths to insure that patients do so...
...If a Catholic nursing home, idealistic, to expect similar creativity today...
...Theologian Edward Schillebeeckx contended that the Yet these initiatives have their limits...
...Catholic hospitals, nursing homes, and other institutions Sacraments are meeting places where we limited human were to unite to ensure the financing and training necessary beings taste unlimited love...
...Seat belts, air bags, and level-one trauma centers have all saved lives...
...The result of a nearly two-year discussion union organizers and Catholic Healthcare West led to among representatives of the USCC, the Catholic the appointment last October of a mediator to superHealth Association, the Leadership Conference of vise negotiations...
...Moreeffort...
...Suppose shells surrounding essentially secular medical institutions...
...Washington, D.C.'s Christ House, Columbia REQUEST REGISTRATION INFORMATION Road Health Services, and Jubilee Housing, all inspired by voICE: (603) 897-8481 • E-MAIL: jannis@rivier.edu the nondenominational Church of The Saviour, might serve as models...
...First, the institu- church is the "earthly representation of the sign of salvations undertaking them harbor all of the internal tensions tion in heaven...
...Second, technological progress carries unintended consequences...
...But, the Catholic hospital is not an anachronism...
...Romero and and are denied basic human rights to health care...
...tance to local communities...
...Additional internal Catholic life...
...They must "find flesh," become incarnate, in words, gestures, and ambiance...
...Specialized Liberation Theology...
...Titled "A Fair and Just Work- workers in general, low salaries for many led to agiplace: Principles and Practices for Catholic Health tation for increased union membership...
...Yet other forms of as a Catholic institution...
...clinics, operated by the church in locales where such devPersonal Transformation and Solidarity...
...Mothers and Families of the Disappeared...
...None of these recommendations should be interpreted For example, Medicare and Medicaid reimburse only for as a call for Catholics to abandon hospitals or public-policy home-care visits that deliver a medical service-yet often advocacy...
...Signs and symbols-tangible, visible, and autensions stem from friction over Catholic labor teachings dible-tell Catholics who they are and identify the church to and the response of Catholic institutions to labor organizing non-Catholics...
...astation occurs, would appropriate institutional responses to PLAN NOW TO BE A PART OF THIS UNIQUE, INSPIRING OCCASION new challenges...
...Similarly, surgical and pharmacological progress has preserved not only severely damaged infants but also thousands Loyola College in Maryland Degrees of Compassion and Competence Pastoral Counsein Master of Science in Pastoral Counseling Master of Arts in Spiritual and Pastoral Care Certificate of Advanced Study (C.A.S...
...E Commonweal 16 February 25, 2000...
...The document recognizes that its call for a spirit of The document reserves prominent attention for collaboration is inherently in tension with the frictactics to be avoided by both sides in an organizing tions that create the climate for union efforts...
...The working And nearly 20 more papers, dramatic readings, and reflections on topics such as poor and recent immigrants go without health insurance the El Salvador Martyrs' Challenge to Spirituality in North America...
...In the last decade, birth care in hospitals has become more family-centered and less "medical...
...The nation and the church will be ill served if visits, where one person is the medical caregiver and the Catholic hospitals and clinics survive merely as Catholic others are volunteers recruited from local parishes...
...The traditional Nevertheless, as indicated above, it may be time for the (though only decades-old) nursing home has become the res- church to move more rapidly toward new types of instituidence for many, a place nonetheless shunned (even when tions...
...Commonweal 14 February 25, 2000 G bod3' mind spirit rrYAx.\ (zxi.Ia I\ IL'.K1I.'.SI education, or parish life...
...Doctor of Philosophy in Pastoral Counseling (Ph.D...
...SPONSORED BY THE CENTER FOR PEACE AND SOCIAL JUSTICE AT • Fourth, given these developments, the hospital is no longer the central location of sacramentally oriented Catholic health Rivier College care...
...Unionstad of Spokane, Washington, announced ization is one price that Catholic health care has had to O a working paper from the United States pay for its successful response to market-driven healthCatholic Conference's Subcommittee on Catholic system change...
...With Vatican II, the church rediscovered in the church itself: divisions between liberal and conserva- its own sacramentality: As Christ is the sacrament of God, so tive Catholics, the phenomenon of "cafeteria Catholicism," the church is the sacrament of Christ...
...Modpaigns against assisted-suicide initiatives, and they commit em medicine worships at the altar of research, development, themselves to measurable goals for indigent care and assis- and the market...
...frontational when unions try to organize, and it sumFundamental changes in organized labor and in mons the world of Catholic health care to live up to its American health care have converged in the last sacramental calling...
...Catholicism worships elsewhere...
...The working paper, howteaching to gain advantage...
...Thus, Catholic hospitals in particular should practice a studious skepticism about technological "progress" in contemporary medicine, and should make it clear that they exist to care for the whole person, not to propagate the latest "medical breakthrough...
...Catholic hospitals should devote substantial resources to developing similar types of care that underscore the Catholic understanding of life and death, not only for patients but for their families...
...Residents can smell the aromas of sizzling bacon and fresh-brewed coffee from down the hall before they ever see their meal...
...And Catholic health care would still face a crisis Catholic home-care agency were always to send a team on its of identity...
...They cooperate in cam- and the consequent spiraling rise in health-care costs...
...decade...
...of disabled and demented elderly persons...
...tenance, catalysts for growth and resolve...
...In the debate and the delicacy of the process that pro- California, angry charges and countercharges between duced it...
...If a hospital is Catholic only in name, residual history, well-run) by many potential residents...
...First, internal reform of the Catholic hospital should move it away from strict adherence to the culture of medical technology...
...Because they insurance were enacted, Catholic institutions would have cannot be reimbursed, the agencies are reluctant to have to serve millions of persons who would still fall between nurses and aides provide them...
...It may be a stretch for example, is not actively seeking partnerships with local to expect creation of new religious institutes dedicated to a parishes to foster the development of new structures of sacramental presence in rehabilitation, care for the mentally and sacramental care, it needs to rethink its reason for existence physically disabled, and care for the elderly...
Vol. 127 • February 2000 • No. 4
