Involved in life's sufferings

	Bishop Robert J. Banks

Catholic hospitals have been an item of interest for me in the past couple of weeks. It began with a letter from a local parishioner. He was wondering about ways in which priests could be more involved in the lives of people. His main suggestion seemed to be that priests might take up nursing at local hospitals. In that way they and, therefore, the Church, could be seen as doing something important for ordinary people.

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Maybe I misread his letter and missed the point of his suggestion. In any case, my response was that the Gospel was more important than a hospital. I like to think that bringing the Gospel and the sacraments to people is a way of being involved in their lives.

When I wrote about the Gospel being more important than a hospital, I had in mind all the men and women who have given their lives to hospital work over the centuries as women and men religious. It was belief in the Gospel of Jesus Christ that led the founders and foundresses of their religious communities to live out the Gospel by caring for the sick. Many of the hospitals throughout Europe and the United States came into existence because religious sisters, brothers and priests believed in the healing ministry of Christ that is described in the Gospel.

Besides the men and women religious, from the very beginning of the Church, Catholics have cared for the sick. According to sociologist, Rodney Stark, one reason for the spread of the early Church was the attention Christians paid to the sick. When a plague struck a city, most people would head for the countryside, but Christians would stay and care for those who were ill.

Here in modern northeast Wisconsin, we are blessed to have a number of hospitals that were started by religious communities of sisters. These hospitals are multi-million dollar operations now, involving thousands of people who are not sisters; yet, often, the only reason the hospitals were able to begin 100 years ago was the sacrifice of the sisters. They nursed, cleaned, begged and even dug gardens to raise food for the patients.

As these thoughts were going through my head, the mail dropped on my desk included a report from Holy Family Memorial Hospital in Manitowoc. The report was the annual Social Accountability Record in which the hospital describes and tries to quantify the many ways in which it serves the general community and also shows what it does for the poor, the uninsured and the under insured. I was impressed.

The Social Accountability Record is part of an effort by the national Catholic Health Association to have Catholic hospitals examine and describe more closely the ways they serve the communities in which they exist with special emphasis on their service to the poor. In other words, our Catholic hospitals want to provide the best professional service to all who come, but they also want to continue their tradition of caring, as best they can, for the poor. I believe that just about all hospitals have care for the poor as part of their mission, but Catholic hospitals have a special reason to include such care in their mission: the Gospel.

As I finished reading that, another piece of mail was added to my in-box. An issue of Health Progress with an article entitled, "Invisible Radicals," written by Dr. Sioban Nelson from the University of Melbourne in Australia. Dr. Nelson tells the story of the important role Catholic sisters played in the hospital world here in the United States. "By 1915, Catholic hospitals accounted for half of all such institutions on the North American continent."

Dr. Nelson also tells about the characters in some of the religious communities. One sister toured the cowboy camps and lumberjack mills by train, handcart and snowshoe to provide care. Sr. Blandina was protected by the outlaw Billy the Kid because of the care she gave his wounded men and Sr. Mary of Jesus went West with a brace of pistols.

Mother Joseph Pariseau, a Sister of Providence, led the first white women to cross the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana in response to repeated pleas by Chief Seltice of the Coeur d'Alene Native Americans. In less than 50 years, Mother Joseph and her group built 11 hospitals, seven academies, two orphanages and five schools. Mother Joseph was the builder and architect, and a statue of her is in the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

According to Dr. Nelson, it was epidemic nursing that brought the nursing work of the sisters to prominence. "The sisters displayed something extraordinary in volunteering to nurse in the cholera, smallpox, yellow fever, and typhoid hospitals... It was the same behavior that astounded Romans during the plagues of the third century."

The sisters were not only brave; they were professional. Between l889 and 1929, they organized 425 schools of nursing. Sisters were commonly on the boards of nurse examiners for individual states and made significant contributions to literature about the nursing profession. In Utah, the Sisters of the Holy Cross helped shape the laws that governed nursing in that state. And it seems that sisters had something to do with the founding of the famous Mayo Clinic.

As I read all this, my mind went back to the Pope's Lenten message in which he urged us to focus on almsgiving this Lent. He ended his message by talking about those who give more than money: "[Jesus] asks those who hear his voice to give their lives for others. This sacrifice is a source of self-fulfillment and joy, as is seen in the eloquent example of those men and women who, leaving all security behind, have not hesitated to risk their lives as missionaries in different parts of the world. It can also be seen in the response of those young people who, prompted by faith, have embraced a vocation to the priesthood or religious life... It is likewise the experience of the growing numbers of volunteers who readily devote themselves to helping the poor, the elderly, the sick and all those in need."