Relationship between the Catholic Church and health care
Marianne Cope and other Sisters of St Francis with the daughters of leper patients, at the Kakaʻako Branch Hospital, Hawaii, 1886. The Catholic Church established many of the world's modern hospitals.
The Catholic Church is the largest non-government provider of health care services in the world.[1] It has around 18,000 clinics, 16,000 homes for the elderly and those with special needs, and 5,500 hospitals, with 65 percent of them located in developing countries.[2] In 2010, the Church's Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health Care Workers said that the Church manages 26% of the world's health care facilities.[3] The Church's involvement in health care has ancient origins.
Jesus Christ, whom the Church holds as its founder, instructed his followers to heal the sick.[4] The early Christians were noted for tending the sick and infirm, and Christian emphasis on practical charity gave rise to the development of systematic nursing and hospitals. The influential Benedictine rule holds that "the care of the sick is to be placed above and before every other duty, as if indeed Christ were being directly served by waiting on them". During the Middle Ages, monasteries and convents were the key medical centres of Europe and the Church developed an early version of a welfare state. Cathedral schools evolved into a well integrated network of medieval universities and Catholic scientists (many of them clergymen) made a number of important discoveries which aided the development of modern science and medicine.
Albert the Great (1206–1280) was a pioneer of biological field research and is a saint within the Catholic Church; Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) helped revive knowledge of ancient Greek medicine, Renaissance popes were often patrons of the study of anatomy, and Catholic artists such as Michelangelo advanced knowledge of the field through sketching cadavers. The Jesuit Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680) first proposed that living beings enter and exist in the blood (a precursor of germ theory). The Augustinian Gregor Mendel (1822–1884) developed theories on genetics for the first time. As Catholicism became a global religion, the Catholic orders and religious and lay people established health care centres around the world. Women's religious institutes such as the Sisters of Charity, Sisters of Mercy and Sisters of St Francis opened and operated some of the first modern general hospitals.
While the prioritization of charity and healing by early Christians created the hospital, their spiritual emphasis tended to imply "the subordination of medicine to religion and doctor to priest". "Physic and faith", wrote historian of medicine Roy Porter "while generally complementary... sometimes tangled in border disputes." Similarly in modern times, the moral stance of the Church against contraception and abortion has been a source of controversy. The Church, while being a major provider of health care to HIV AIDS sufferers, and of orphanages for unwanted children, has been criticised for opposing condom use. Due to Catholics' belief in the sanctity of life from conception, IVF, which leads to the destruction of many embryos, surrogacy, which relies on IVF, and embryonic stem-cell research, which necessitates the destruction of embryos, are among other areas of controversy for the Church in the provision of health care.
^Agnew, John (12 February 2010). "Deus Vult: The Geopolitics of Catholic Church". Geopolitics. 15 (1): 39–61. doi:10.1080/14650040903420388. S2CID 144793259.
^Calderisi, Robert. Earthly Mission - The Catholic Church and World Development; TJ International Ltd; 2013; p.40
^"Catholic hospitals comprise one quarter of world's healthcare, council reports :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)". Catholic News Agency. 10 February 2010. Retrieved 2012-08-17.
^Matthew 10:8
and 26 Related for: Catholic Church and health care information
The CatholicChurch is the largest non-government provider of healthcare services in the world. It has around 18,000 clinics, 16,000 homes for the elderly...
Trócaire Christian humanitarian aid CatholicChurchandhealthcareCatholic school Catholic higher education Ad gentes Catholic lay organisations Agnew, John...
A health system, healthcare system or healthcare system is an organization of people, institutions, and resources that delivers healthcare services to...
CatholicHealth Initiatives (CHI) was a national Catholic healthcare system, with headquarters in Englewood, Colorado. CHI was a nonprofit, faith-based...
Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski (18 April 2009 – 12 July 2016) CatholicChurchandhealthcare Dolentium Hominum McElwee, Joshua J. (31 August 2016). "Francis...
not-for-profit grouping of healthand aged care services. CatholicHealth Australia was established by the Roman CatholicChurch in Australia as the representative...
Health (formerly Catholic Healthcare West) is a California-based not-for-profit public-benefit corporation that operated hospitals and ancillary care...
Conference of Catholic Bishops and came out in support of Barack Obama's healthcare overhaul, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The USCCB...
SSM Health is a Catholic, non-profit United States healthcare system. It has 11,000 providers and nearly 39,000 employees in four states: Missouri, Illinois...
education andhealthcare in the world. Among its other social services are numerous charitable and humanitarian organizations. The CatholicChurch has profoundly...
The CatholicChurch in Israel is part of the worldwide CatholicChurch, in full communion with the Holy See in Rome. The CatholicChurch in Israel is divided...
The official teachings of the Catechism of the CatholicChurch promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1992 oppose all forms of abortion procedures whose...
Distribution of Catholics The CatholicChurch is "the Catholic Communion of Churches, both Roman and Eastern, or Oriental, that are in full communion with...
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is the episcopal conference of the CatholicChurch in the United States. Founded in 1966 as the...
is an index of CatholicChurch articles. Portals and navigation boxes are at the bottom of the page. For a listing of CatholicChurch articles by category...
The Australian CatholicChurch or CatholicChurch in Australia is part of the worldwide CatholicChurch under the spiritual and administrative leadership...
Pastoral care for LGBT Catholics consists of the ministry and outreach the CatholicChurch provides to LGBT Catholics. There are official organizations...
part of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Green Bay. The sisters have active apostolates in education, healthcare, spiritual direction, and other community...
physical and mental health. Unlike the U.S., nations like Scandinavia, the U.K., Ireland, Japan and others have opted for a universal healthcare system...
Massachusetts merged with Allegany Health System and Eastern Mercy Health System in Radnor, Pennsylvania to form "CatholicHealth East", which has 23 hospitals...
111th United States Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. Together with the HealthCareand Education Reconciliation Act...
Duly HealthandCare Field is a baseball field located in Joliet, Illinois. The stadium was built in 2002 and holds 6,016 people. It is the home of the...
corporation, sponsored by the CatholicHealth Corporation of Ontario which is a healthcare sponsoring agency of the CatholicChurch. In 2011, the hospital changed...
The CatholicChurchand Judaism have a long and complex history of cooperation and conflict, and have had a strained relationship throughout history, with...
2018[update], the CatholicChurch is the country's second-largest religious grouping after Protestantism, and the country's largest single church or Christian...
Global Information