Like so many other people this year, I recently found myself in church praying for the health of a loved one during a very serious medical operation. Luckily all went well, and so I was able to reflect upon how different the prayer responses (e.g. “Blessed be God forever”) felt in my mouth as I formulated them in Masses before, during and after the surgery, when expressing supplication, fear and thanksgiving, respectively.
As grateful as I was for the care my mother received, situations like these always serve as a stark reminder that we live in a nation where many, but by no means all, have access to quality medical services.
If one is looking for further evidence that Catholicism does not (and should not) perfectly align with one or another political party, debates over health care access would be as good a place as any to start. Pope John XXIII argued vociferously that human beings have the right to medical care without conditions and to be looked after in the event of ill health; disability stemming from work, widowhood, old age, unemployment or whatever through no fault of one’s own deprives him or her of the means of livelihood (Pacem in Terris, 11).
Pope John Paul II reiterated that Social Security, pensions, compensation in the case of accidents and health insurance are rights that cannot be denied in good conscience to workers (Centesimus Annus, 15).
Pope Benedict went even further, claiming it was the “moral responsibility of nations” to guarantee access to health care for all people living in their borders, irrespective of their economic status or ability to pay for it (Nov. 19, 2010, Statement to the Pontifical Council for Healthcare Ministry). In the same speech, he lamented “pharmacological, medical and surgical consumerism.”
After his recent operation in Italy, Pope Francis referred to “free health care, accessible to all” as a “precious benefit that must not be lost.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church is also unambiguous on the point (§2211), as is the USCCB Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (I, 10) and the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (§166).
Yet, as in so many other areas of human existence, estimates make clear that America is failing to live up to the church’s consistent message on this front, as more than 35 million Americans (many of whom are children) do not have health insurance or the access it provides in our current system.
The amazing work of the last year in terms of vaccine development and distribution, over the course of two very different administrations, does not diminish the pervasive “silent” pandemic of disparities in terms of affordable medical care that continues to plague society.
The percentage of the population that is uninsured or underinsured continues to trend upward in recent years and disproportionately impacts those who are African American or Latino, under 30 years of age, on the lowest rungs of the economic scale, and/or living in states without expanded Medicaid coverage.
Health and wealth continue to be linked in incredibly problematic ways in our nation, while Christ’s mission of healing and holistic human flourishing drew no distinction between the disenfranchised and those in league with the Empire of his day, as long as the latter were willing to divide their own possessions equally with the poor and restore fourfold that which had come to them through depriving others (cf. Lk 19:8).
I certainly claim no expertise in public health, nor specifically in medical ethics. But the long tradition of the church, with which I am at least rudimentarily familiar, argues consistently that the divinely endowed dignity of every human person is fundamentally ineradicable. The denial of necessary medical care is an ongoing affront to the majesty of God’s creative expression, whose glory is most evident in the human person fully alive, as St. Irenaeus put it: “Gloria Dei est vivens homo.”
It should go without saying that I am immensely grateful that my immediate family is able to access care and procedures that can sometimes border on thaumaturgic wonderworking; I only wish that the miracle of broadly sharing those resources with our brothers and sisters elsewhere didn’t continue to prove so elusive.
Originally from Collingswood, Michael M. Canaris, Ph.D., teaches at Loyola University, Chicago.
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