She came to my pediatric clinic for her well-child exam with her mother. Fifteen years old, a child of undocumented immigrants, kind and smart and holy.
She wore a bright gold Our Lady of Guadalupe medal prominently around her neck. Through the interpreter, her mother told me that, in addition to the well exam, she wanted a referral to the Adolescent Clinic so my patient could learn about “womanly things.”
The mother broke down, stating that her husband had recently been deported, and she felt stretched and thin in trying to teach her daughter about “growing up” without a man in the home. She needed help.
Knowing what the Adolescent Clinic would likely advise my patient about “womanly things” (e.g., birth control, though my patient was not sexually active), I spent more time speaking with her, both alone and with her mother. I discovered that she was a sweet, artistic Catholic teenager who prayed every day to be a good person and that her family would be reunited one day.
Her mom, through tears, said, “What can we do without my husband?”
The Holy Spirit moved me to notice the glint of gold around her daughter’s neck, and with words that were not my own, I replied, “Yes, your husband has gone, but God has gifted you another Mother to help you until you can be together,” and I pointed to the Our Lady of Guadalupe medal the child wore around her neck. “You can ask her and her Son for help when you feel lost, and I will help you as much as I am able.”
At these words, the two nodded and hugged each other through tears, and I see this as one of the highlights of my career as a physician.
This is but one example of countless unseen “God moments” that Catholic healthcare practitioners experience in their daily practice as doctors, nurses and allied health professionals; those small encounters that bring meaning to our vocation as healers — trying to follow Christ’s example to heal while recognizing in the needy the suffering Christ himself.
But some in our culture, seemingly on an inexorable march to secularist ideology, want to ban these moments and make God the “outsider” in the sacredness of the practitioner-patient relationship. In post-modern medicine, where the only reality is the empirical and we are taught to “leave your faith at the exam room door,” ethical issues such as abortion, assisted suicide and transgenderism naturally alarm many of us who entered medicine because we were inspired by our Catholic faith.
The Catholic Medical Association (CMA) of Central Ohio (www.cmacbus.com) is a diocesan-endorsed professional organization dedicated to integrating the principles of Catholic faith with evidence-based medicine. We open our membership and participation to all healthcare professionals, administrators, social workers, counselors and students/trainees, as well as priests, seminarians and religious interested in the intersection of authentic Catholic principles and clinical practice.
On April 5 at the Pontifical College Josephinum, the CMA will be hosting our biennial Catholic bioethics conference sponsored by the diocese, Ohio Dominican University, The Catholic Foundation and other major Catholic institutions in Columbus. Online attendance is also available.
The one-day event on “Virtue in Medicine” will bring together national thought leaders in Catholic bioethics to discuss critical issues of the day to all who work in healthcare: from broad foundational topics such as dignity in medicine, institutional ethics, Hippocratic virtue and Catholic social justice in the face of disparities to specific issues such as mental health, infertility, and gender dysphoria.
Anyone interested in Catholicism and medical care is invited to attend. The CMA will also present its annual awards to local healthcare workers and institutions who have made a difference in building the culture of life in our diocese.
At the conference’s conclusion, graduating healthcare students will lead the attendees in a recitation of a Catholic version of the Hippocratic Oath and receive a “commissioning blessing” by CMA’s chaplain, Father Robert Penhallurick. Holy Mass will then be celebrated by Bishop Earl Fernandes (my younger, smarter but less handsome brother-ha!).
Seminarians, students and religious sisters who wish to attend but need financial assistance will be covered by the CMA. Continuing education credits are available. Registration, schedule and more information can be found at our website listed above at https://forlifeandfamily.org/events/cr25-cmoh/ or through the ad in this week’s Catholic Times.
Catholic physicians, nurses, and healthcare workers will continue to press forward with the most vulnerable in our society, challenging ourselves and our patients to look to our own “second Mother” — the Blessed Virgin Mary — for her unfailing intercession with her Son, the Divine Healer.
Please tell everyone about this incredible conference — sold out the last two times the CMA has hosted — and support it with your attendance and especially your prayers.
May the Holy Family keep you safe, healthy and always aware of His Divine Love during this Lenten season.
Ashley K. Fernandes, MD, Ph.D., is a professor of pediatrics and bioethics and a Board Member of the Catholic Medical Association of Central Ohio.