The Catholic hospital: options for survival.

The traditional mission of the Church and its ministry to the sick through the Catholic hospital is being called into question by the confluence of a series of internal and external forces. This questioning occurs simultaneous to the modern world's growing need for the unique contributions of Catholic hospitals. Constructive, careful, and intensive reexamination of assumptions about Catholic hospitals is in order--reexamination by the religious orders who operate the hospitals, by the ecclesiastic authorities who must ultimately approve them, and by the Catholic laity who support them. Each must examine these key questions: What is unique about the Catholic hospital? Is it needed in the modern world? Is that uniqueness indissolubly linked to operation by religious orders? How would an alternate model of the Catholic hospital system be designed? This article has attempted to prove that the Catholic hospital is indeed unique as a religious, Christian, and Catholic institution; that this uniqueness is especially pertinent to some of the major problems of the sick in the modern world; that in essence this uniqueness is not contingent upon operation by religious orders; and that new relationsh?IPS are possible between the laity, the religious congregations, and the ecclesiastic authority which will maintain the Catholicity of the hospital of the future, despite the actions of erosive forces which seem to threaten it today. The Catholic hospital remains one of the most visible and effective witnesses to the Christian message and the Mystical Body. We who constitute it are called upon to reexamine how its mission to the sick can be expanded, not contracted. Expansion requires new forms which promise as much for the future as the older forms have accomplished in the past. In assessing Christ's own healing mission, Romano Guardini pointedly emphasized that Christ was more than "the great philanthropist." Today the sick need such individuals more acutely and more profoundly than ever before. Therein lies the mission--and the obligation--of the Catholic hospital, which must continue into the future whatever new forms of organization exigencies may dictate. By concentrating on its essential features, the Catholic hospital can protect itself against dissolution and an inauthentic existence--alternatives which are neither Christian nor Catholic.