Catholic hospitals: survival without moral compromise.

The three overriding challenges facing Catholic hospitals today are the decline in vocations, commercialization through competition, and the moral pluralism of participatory democracy. These problems lead to a single practical question: How can Catholic health care institutions preserve their integrity while surviving in today's fiscal and moral climate? Cooperation throughout the entire Catholic health care ministry is essential. Either the whole Catholic community will cooperate and make sacrifices to confront the eroding forces in a specifically Christian way, or the authenticity of the Church's healing ministry will gradually be compromised into extinction. As a unified entity, the Catholic community could more than adequately address the challenges facing it. The obstacles to a cooperative effort of this magnitude are obvious--community and professional pride, regional rivalries, differences of mission among sponsoring religious institutes, and natural resistance to central planning and organization. Today's exigencies are created less by a scarcity of resources than by a disinclination to share them. The problems are more complicated than they were 40 years ago, but the Catholic community also has more resources than then--more people, more money, more organizational and informational skills. We can do more with far less sacrifice than ever before in history. And to do so would offer the world a highly convincing evangelical message.