HETHICS—GROUP 9

Spirituality of the Ministry of Health Care

Galilea | Mortola | Lubo

INTRODUCTION

- Spirituality inspires and shapes the commitment of religious communities to found and sponsor
institutions to care for the sick
- Wellspring of moral living
- Spiritual disciplines have positive medical value and is significant in overall well-being of the
patient
- Holistic care = standard of care; modern practice that expresses philosophy of care
- Comprehensive and total patient care that considers the physical, emotional, social,
economic and spiritual needs of the person; his or her response to illness; and effect of
the illness on the ability to meet self-care needs

ETHICS in HEALTH CARE

Decision-making is influenced by both act-centered and person-centered factors. But ideally, a

decision must be more act-centered than person-centered.

 Act-centered final decision

- Justified moral position that is based on principles and considers consequences

 Person-centered final decision (natural human factor)

- Influenced by personal character/deep dimensions of self/inner dynamics of human
action (stable identity, deepest desires and ideals, loyalties and commitments, beliefs and
attitudes, motivation and perspective, values and virtues) which is also influenced by
spirituality

SPIRITUALITY in HEALTH CARE

- Spirituality is what we ultimately value with our commitment. It shapes the perspective from which
we see everything. The choices we make are based on the person we become and express our
spirituality.
- Christian spirituality ultimately values God and committed to live in relation to God, revealed in
Jesus, as the source and end of all love, the One in whom everything else has meaning and
worth
- Basic Christian Kerygma is that God has first loved us and that accepting this love opens us to
love all things in return so we must assume responsibility for ourselves, others and the world

ETHICS + SPIRITUALITY in HEALTH CARE

 Question to be answered by patient:

- Does the proposed treatment offer a reasonable hope of benefit?
- Will the proposed treatment impose an excessive burden to patient or family?

Patient must weigh benefits and burdens. Weighing the benefits and burdens is influenced by the
patient’s spirituality. It will reflect what the patient values most about life.

 Question to be answered by medical practitioner:

- Will the treatment maintain or enhance the love for life?

 Question to be answered by proxy who will decide for someone else:

- What is the person experiencing now or may experience as a result of further treatment?
 The interpretation of the proxy of what the patient is experiencing now or may experience later is
influenced by what the proxy values more in life.

CONCLUSION

The moral decision to refuse treatment or to undergo treatment cannot be separated from one’s
spirituality—deepest longing for what makes life ultimately meaningful.

Spirituality is not restricted to the inspiration of religious communities to engage in ministry of caring
for the sick nor is it just a practice of prayer and sacramental rituals. Rather, it encompasses the whole of
life lived in relation to God as or absolute value. It influences our outlook in life and supports our moral
character.

Ethics is not restricted to decision-making and justifying. Rather, it is also concerned with the inner
dynamics of personal action which is influenced by spirituality. To identify a problem and soke it is not just
a moral skill but also a measure of spirituality.

GOALS OF PASTORAL MINISTRY

1. To heal
2. To sustain
3. To guide
4. To reconcile

Healing and sustaining- have in mine something broader than physical and phychological healing and
encouragement in times of sickness, ministers cannot heal and sustain if they are not intimately
concerned with problems of physical and psychological health

C and reconciliation- especially effective when they occur in times of health crisis

PASTORAL CARE
- Directed to spiritual needs that are often appreciated more deeply during times of illness,
pastoral care is an integral part of Catholic health care.
- encompasses the full range gof spiritual services, including a listening presence; help dealing
with powerlessness, pain, and alienation; and assistance in recognizing and responding to
God’s will with greater joy and peace”

CLINICAL PASTORAL EDUCATIONr

- accredits programs for preparing priests and lay ministers in this approach through
supervised experiences in health care facilities
D
PASTORAL CARE AND ETHICAL COUNSELLING

Counselling of the sick

- While human decisions to be ethical first must be free, the sick suffer from various limitations
of their psychological freedom.
When their illness is mental, this freedom is severely restricted or even eliminated by
neurosis or psychosis.
When it is physical, however, the sick still suffer some degree of constraint because of
weakness, mental confusion, depression, and so forth, consequent of their physical condition
and also because they are confined to a narrow and unfamiliar social situation.
- Ethical counseling of the sick, therefore, must first aim at creating an atmosphere in which the
client’s freedom is maximized.
- Persons who are confident of God’s loving and forgiving care have a peace of mind even in
the face of suffering and death that makes it possible for them to face difficult decisions with
serenity and sanity
Counselling of Medical Professionals
 - Same principles to be followed with sick clients, although freedom is not limited by illness
- Suffer from certain biases and conflicts of attitudes, and many value systems very different
from those of others, including the minister
- Minister should express his own honest opinions and engage respectful dialogue with staff
persons, seeking a common ethical ground

OBJECTIVE OF SPIRITUAL CARE

- This task is to say, as much or more by presence, attitude, and nonverbal symbols as
by the exhortatory word, that God is present to sick persons in their fear or suffering.
- Spiritual guide must manifest that God is a loving, caring father, a cosuffering Lord Jesus,
a healing spirit present as the one God actively loving the sufferer, but this is a presence in
mystery
- There is a sense of judgment, the perception of one’s responsibility for the consequences of
one’s misuse of God’s loving gift of free will and of the grace to use it well that one has
rejected. The minister should not deny this. Indeed, a minister symbolizes this judgment. The
minister also overcomes judgment, however, by being a sign of mercy and reconciliation

CELEBRATING THE HEALING PROCESS

The specific spiritual task of pastoral care is not exhausted simply by counseling. It must
not be confined to talking about the presence of God, but it must deepen into experiencing
that presence in prayer, worship, celebration, and communion (CCC 2000, 1135 ff.).

Anointing the sick

- The rite of anointing of the sick brings this out clearly (Paul VI 1972) It is not merely for the
dying, as formerly, but for any person seriously ill (Graumann 2002), when the person’s
condition is “serious,” which should be judged not merely in physical terms but also in
psychological terms.
- They should not anoint when the illness is one in which recovery is assured and that
consequently does not appear to contain any serious threat.
- What such sufferers need is the reassurance that their people and their God are still with
them.
Priest supplies the sign of this by touching a sufferer.
This touch means “presence” and “acceptance” and as such is common to all the
sacraments.
It is a special type of touch in this case, however, a healing touch because it is the
“anointing with oil,” a common form of healing remedy that has the sense of soothing pain
and infusing life and movement. Its significance as a spiritual healing is given by the wo
rds spoken.

Sacrament of Reconciliation
- Sickness is sometimes the reminder that we need that the sacrament of reconciliation, or
penance, is an apt means to facilitate conversion.
- This sacrament of reconciliation, or rite of penance, for the sick can be celebrated in the form
of a penance service in the hospital chapel or even in the ward, with the invitation to all who
wish to make individual confession and receive absolution

Baptism
- it still is obligatory to administer baptism to children to manifest the concern of the Church and
thus to keep alive the consciousness of the dignity of the human person from the first
moments of existence (CCC 2000, no. 1250)
- Consequently, nurses and physicians should baptize infants who are in danger of death and
even miscarried fetuses who exhibit human form and some sign of life.
- They should pour water on the child (on the head, if possible) so as actually to
touch its skin and should say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
 - In this way they express Christian reverence and fellowship with this little
person who will forever be part of the Trinitarian community.
- If the infant is surely dead, baptism should not be administered, but the family of the infant
may be assured that God’s mercy has been implored through the prayers of the Church.
- For the dying unconscious adult, it is permissible also to perform such a baptism with the
condition, “If you are not baptized, I baptize you.” Clearly this is not a grave obligation unless
the person has asked to be baptized before lapsing into unconsciousness.

Eucharist
- the supreme sacrament and sign of the Christian community, indicating that such patients
remain a part of that community, even when absent from the public worship assembly, and
that they are destined for eternal life with the community (CCC 2000, nos. 1211, 1374; John
Paul II 2003) life-giving, health-giving sacrament, as the eating of bread and drinking of wine
are the basic symbols of the power to live and under these signs Jesus, the Lord of Life, is
himself present to give us eternal life.
- In a hospital it would be appropriate when possible to have the sick who are able and who
wish to listen to the mass in the chapel on closed-circuit radio or television then to be brought
communion immediately after the mass.

REFERENCES

https://www.chausa.org/docs/default-source/health-progress/spirituality-and-ethics-in-healthcare-pdf.pdf?
sfvrsn=0

Health Care Ethics by Ashely and O’rourke