Although there is a considerable body of research surrounding the question of the psychological impact of abortion on women who undergo the operation, and the men who are the fathers of aborted babies,  very little research has been done on the impact of performing abortions upon abortionists. The issue is so politically charged that it would be extremely difficult to find an unbiased study.

Rachel MacNair is the director of the Institute for Integrated Social Analysis in Kansas City, and author of Perpetuation-Induced Traumatic Stress: the Psychological Consequences of Killing (2002), which examines several groups that kill, including war veterans and executioners. Her research found symptoms similar to Post-Traumatic Stress among groups that were required to kill, including abortionists.

Only two scientific studies have actually been conducted to study the psychological impact of abortion, which MacNair summarizes: M. Such-Baer’s Professional Staff Reaction to Abortion Work in a 1974 issue of Social Casework, and K. Roe’s Private Troubles and Public Issues: Providing Abortion Amid Competing Definitions in a 1986 issue of Social Science and Medicine. MacNair, summarizing Roe’s study, found that “’almost all professionals involved in abortion work, reacted with more or less negative feelings.’ Those who have contact with the fetal remains have more negative feelings than those who do not, and their response varied little: ‘All emotional reactions were unanimously extremely negative…Particularly striking was the fact that discomfort with abortion clients or procedures, was reported by practitioners who strongly supported rights and expressed strong commitment to their work. This preliminary finding suggested that even those who support a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy, may be struggling with an important tension between their formal beliefs and the situated experience of their abortion work.”[1]

Seeing the psychological parallels between abortion providers and other groups experiencing Perpetuation-Induced Traumatic Stress, MacNair concluded that emotional support groups would be an obvious answer to the problem. Yet at the time of writing, she was unable to find such groups, in large part because abortion providers are unwilling to appear conflicted about the work that they do. In a revealing meeting of the National Abortion Federation in 1993, conversations “illuminate[d] a rarely heard side of the abortion debate: the conflicting feelings that plague many providers: the notion that the nurses, doctors, counselors and others who work in the abortion field have qualms about the work they do is a well-kept secret.” (Gianelli, American Medical News 1993)

MacNair’s research is not sufficiently rigorous to draw a correlation between providing abortion and the criminal activity of Kermit Gosnell, but it does suggest the deeply traumatic psychological impact on health care practitioners. Is it possible that repeatedly performing a traumatizing act causes a psychologically stable person to become unstable? Is there a parallel between the soldier who “goes off the deep end” and the abortionist? Regardless of where a person stands on the legality of abortion, the psychological ramifications of performing abortions are a topic worthy of serious scholarly inquiry, and a field of clinical practice that ought to be cultivated. After all, there is an entire population of medical professionals who are not receiving the treatment and compassion that they need. Imagine the good that could come about by addressing their needs.

On February 18, 2010, the FBI raided Gosnell’s “Women’s Medical Society”. They thought they would find illegal sales of prescription drugs, but what they found was far worse. The grisly details have been reported in the media. During the raid Gosnell admitted to performing abortions after the legal limit of 24 weeks gestation. The evidence evaluated by the grand jury report suggests that Gosnell was guilty of infanticide.

The story is deeply disturbing. Gosnell had very little regard for the women he saw as patients. Grossly unqualified staff, including a 15-year-old high school student working at the clinic, administered anesthesia. According to the grand jury report, the Pennsylvania Department of Health  had citied numerous violations, yet the issues were not corrected. The department then decided not to inspect abortion clinics at all because of the political controversy surrounding the issue of abortion. Even though there were multiple reports, no action was taken.

The portrait of Gosnell’s practice is graphic and perverse, but it highlights a progression in crime made possible by abortion. Once an unstable individual like Gosnell is allowed to kill babies in utero, it becomes very difficult to limit that killing.  What distinguishes a 24-week-old fetus from a 25-week-old baby? What distinguishes a 30-week-old baby killed within the womb from a 29-week-old baby killed shortly after delivery? Gosnell saw no real difference. Our society has made it legal to take the life of a child before she is born for any reason. For the kind of person who is willing to take that life, what difference does a week make?

Unbelievable as it may seem, there are a number of prominent writers who have defended abortion, even after acknowledging that the developing fetus is a human person. Mary Elizabeth Williams, in an article on salon.com entitled So what if abortion ends life? makes the argument that life begins at conception, but that the life of the child is less valuable than that of the mother. In the Journal of Medical Ethics, published in February 2012, Alberto Giubillini and Francesca Minerva co-authored an article supporting infanticide entitled, After-birth abortion: why should the baby live? The article makes the claim that fetuses and thus newborns do not have the same moral status as “actual persons”. Giubillini and Minerva have argued in favor of precisely what Gosnell has done.

Both of these positions are much more honest than we are used to hearing; they both admit that abortion kills a human being. They are also both quite comfortable saying that it does. It is not my goal to shame these authors, but only to point out that they have taken as a principle the distorted morality of legalized abortion; that is, they believe that killing an innocent human being can sometimes be justified. I think it is critical to recognize that they have reached an important logical conclusion about the way our society interprets moral code. By allowing the exception of abortion, it creates an inconsistency that undermines the authority of law.  Once that authority is lost, once morality and legality do not coincide, arguments like those made by Giubillini and Minerva start to be taken seriously.

Gosnell’s case is the lived example of the total devaluation of human life that abortion promotes. I pray that this case is viewed as a warning, and serves to renew respect for the dignity of the human person.

I have set before you life and death . . . choose life (Deut 30:19)

The choice that Moses set before the Israelites as they prepared to pass into the Promised Land is a choice that is set before us today in a variety of ways. The exhortation to choose life applies to the decisions we make as individuals to serve the Lord of life and treat others with the justice that human dignity demands. It applies to the choices we make in political life to secure the rights of the needy and defend the unborn, aged, infirm, and disabled. In every aspect of our lives, we are called to choose life and so build up what Bl. John Paul II has famously termed “the culture of life.”

The opposite of choosing life, as the passage from Deuteronomy makes clear, is choosing death. Likewise, as our late great pope has told us, the opposite of the culture of life is the culture of death. To choose death is to violate the Fifth Commandment: Thou shalt not kill. This is so whether one chooses to cause his own death (suicide) or the death of another (homicide, “assisted suicide”).

Choosing death in these ways is a grave offense against the person killed, against that person’s family and community, and ultimately against God, the Lord of life and the sole arbiter of life and death.

Responding to the exhortation of Moses that is repeated over and over again in Scripture and in the Tradition of the Church, we are always to choose life. We are to protect, nurture and sustain our own lives and the lives of others, acting as faithful stewards of God, the Lord and giver of life. Nevertheless, we are not to choose to sustain bodily life at all costs. We recognize this in a profound way in the Passion of Christ and in the martyrdom of so many of the saints. Jesus and his faithful witnesses gave up their lives willingly. They did this not by choosing to cause their own deaths, but by choosing that which is greater that bodily life: faithfulness, truth, the salvation of the world, eternal life in God’s kingdom.

For Christians, suicide and martyrdom are polar opposites. Suicide is the choice to cause one’s own death. Martyrdom is the choice to allow one’s death to be caused by others for the sake of greater life.

Most of us will not have the opportunity to die as martyrs. Many people do, however, confront challenging circumstances that require them to distinguish between choosing to cause death and choosing to allow death to occur naturally for the sake of a greater good. This seems to occur most frequently in the world of modern healthcare. Medical technology has provided us with ever-developing methods for preserving as well as destroying human life. People with terminal diseases have more and more ways of keeping themselves alive and more and more ways of hastening their death. Pregnant women have ever greater means at their disposal both to save the lives of their unborn children and to bring about their deaths. How can the terminally ill and their families know when allowing death is morally legitimate? How can parents know when causing the death of their unborn child in order to save the mother means allowing of death as an unfortunate side-effect rather than choosing death in act of homicide?

The Catholic Church has the resources with which to answer these questions. The Church’s Tradition distinguishes between ordinary and extraordinary means of preserving life. It identifies the conditions according to which an evil result can be permitted as a side-effect of a good action. Often these principles can be applied easily and straightforwardly to the situation at hand. Sometimes applying such principles correctly is difficult and complicated. In every case, however, arriving at the right answer to questions concerning life and death begins with asking the right question.

The right question is not the question of life or death: Should I live or should I die? Is life worth living or not? Does that person’s life have any value? These are questions we have already answered in responding to the exhortation of Moses. We choose life! We choose to value, uphold and defend the dignity to all human life. We reject the suicidal choice, whether assisted or not, in favor of causing death. God, not man, is the arbiter or life and death. Our task is to gratefully protect, nurture and sustain our lives as long as God’s providence permits.

The question that is rightfully ours to ask and answer isn’t whether or not life is worthwhile; it is whether or not this or that procedure, treatment or intervention is worthwhile. We know that life is always good. The question is whether this or that lifesaving measure is good or whether it is in fact evil, as in the case of direct abortion, or its burdens outweigh its benefits, as in the case of a painful and unpromising chemotherapy. It is this question about the worthiness of a certain life-sustaining course of action to which we apply the resources of Catholic teaching, asking whether a particular means of sustaining life is ordinary or extraordinary, or whether or not an evil effect of an action is justly permitted.

We start by choosing life, affirming its value and God-given dignity. We choose to protect, nurture and sustain life and never to make death our aim. The further choices that confront us regarding the ways we go about sustaining life can still be difficult and confusing. If, however, we are firm in our fundamental life-affirming choice and rely on the guidance of Catholic teaching we can be confident that, even when we decide to allow the natural process of death to occur and entrust our loved ones to mercy of God, we will still be faithful to the exhortation of Moses:

I have set before you life and death . . . choose life

Conscience, according to St. Thomas Aquinas, is the act of the human intellect by which “we judge that something should be done or not done.”[1] This judgment is to be based on our knowledge of what is right and wrong for us to do, knowledge that we acquire both from our natural God-given ability to discern right from wrong (natural law) and from the truth about right and wrong that God has revealed to us through Scripture and Tradition (divine law). When we make correct judgments of conscience and act accordingly, we therefore participate in God’s wisdom and act in accord with God’s will. Bl. John Paul II has referred to this human participation in the law of God as participated theonomy.[2] In a similar vein, the Second Vatican Council document Gaudium et Spes calls conscience “man’s most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths.”[3] When we act according to correct judgments of conscience, we act from the depth of who we are as free persons who are at once masters of our own acts and children of our heavenly Father.

Since it touches the core of what it means for us to be human, made in the image and likeness of God, conscience is to be respected and protected as an essential element of human dignity. This means that, with rare exceptions, no one should compel another person to act against his or her conscience. It also means that we ourselves should always act according to our own consciences. A man’s conscience is his honest judgment of what is right and wrong for him to do. To act against your conscience is to do what you honestly think to be wrong. For that reason, conscience is said to be binding. We are morally bound to do what we think is right. Even if someone is in fact wrong, making an errant judgment of conscience, that person is bound to do what he or she honestly (even though wrongly) thinks is right.

That doesn’t mean that the person who follows his or her erring conscience is necessarily excused from guilt. In such a case, the person may or may not be responsible for the wrong he or she does. It depends on whether he or she should have known better. We are duty bound to follow our consciences, but we are also bound to form our consciences. Errant judgments of conscience are without excuse when one “takes little trouble to find out what is true and good.”[4]

“Conscience must be informed and moral judgment enlightened,” the Catechism tells us. [5] This formation of conscience is a duty and a prerequisite for living morally upright lives. At the same time, forming our consciences is more than a duty, more than a minimum standard with which we must comply. “The education of conscience is a lifelong task”[6] that we are to engage in with the help of parents and teachers, the benefit of experience and moral maturity, and the guiding light of God’s Word and the authoritative teaching of the Church. Such an education leads a person to authentic virtue and the freedom to act with excellence in concert with the Divine Wisdom “whose voice echoes in his depths.”

This understanding of human conscience is the basis for correctly understanding and applying what bioethicists have called “The Principle of Autonomy,” by which they mean “the right to make moral decisions that affect oneself and are free from interference by others.”[7] In the medical context, the right to autonomous decision making is seen as belonging primarily to patients. Patients should be free to make decisions about their own health care without interference from others. This right can be seen to be both based on and limited by a Catholic understanding of human conscience.

The right of patients to autonomous decision making is based on their rights as human persons to follow their consciences. To make judgments of conscience and act on them is to exercise the rationality and self-determination that are at the core of our human dignity and our participation in the wisdom and freedom of God. To prevent a human person from exercising and following his or her conscience is therefore to prevent that person from exercising those aspects of his or her personhood that are most authentically human and most approximately divine.

Such restriction of personal freedom is usually oppressive and generally to be avoided. There are, however, exceptions.

The limitations on the right of patients to autonomous decision making is also based a right understanding of human conscience. Patients, as all human beings, have a right as well as a duty to exercise and follow their consciences. At the same time, they have a right and a duty to form their consciences. A patient’s autonomous decision making, even when it should not be restricted by others, may be erroneous and therefore dehumanizing. In that case, a person who has been given the great dignity of sharing in the wisdom and freedom of God, whether through negligence, weakness, or vice, stains that dignity and betrays the purpose of his God-given freedom of conscience. Patient autonomy is also limited by the consciences of other interested parties. Doctors, nurses, and family members have consciences too. Neither the person who approves, performs, or consents by proxy to a course of action desired by a patient can set his or her own conscience aside. These people are bound by the same duty as the patient both to form and follow their consciences, through which they remain true to their own dignity as self-determining human beings and children of God.

On April 10, Joseph Sullivan and I gathered with a group from the medical community for the last of our Healing Community nights this year. Our discussion centered on the ethical challenges raised by genetic medicine, including the topic of genetic diagnoses of unborn children. Prenatal genetic diagnoses can be achieved by testing the genetic make-up of an unborn child either in utero (in the womb) or in vitro (in a test tube). In vitro testing frequently accompanies in vitro fertilization (IVF), which is itself ethically problematic.

The Catholic Church teaches that IVF is immoral because it separates the conception of a child from the conjugal union of the child’s parents. As the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1987 instruction Donum Vitae states, “The gift of human life must be actualized in marriage through the specific and exclusive acts of husband and wife.”1 Put another way, a “child has a right . . . to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents.”2 Another reason for the Church’s judgment that IVF is immoral is that it typically involves the fertilization of many embryos and the destruction of those embryos not selected for implantation. As Donum Vitae says, “Human embryos obtained in vitro are human beings and subjects with rights: their dignity and right to life must be respected from the first moment of their existence.” 3

When IVF is accompanied by prenatal genetic testing, additional ethical problems can occur. An embryo that is found genetically undesirable is likely to be destroyed precisely for that reason. In such a case, the injustice of discrimination is added to the injustice of killing. Moreover, the attempt to identify and implant a genetically desirable embryo is likely to lead to the fertilization and destruction of increased numbers of newly-conceived human beings.

Prenatal genetic diagnoses during pregnancy are not so ethically problematic. Genetic diagnostic testing is commonly administered as a standard aspect of prenatal care. It can assist parents in preparing for the challenges of raising children with genetic disorders such as Down’s Syndrome. In some cases, prenatal genetic testing can even lead to the diagnosis of disorders that can be successfully treated by gene therapy. In these cases, prenatal genetic diagnoses can be morally good. Difficulties arise when prenatal genetic diagnoses are made for the purpose of aborting unborn children that are found genetically undesirable. As in cases of genetic testing in vitro, this use of genetic testing in utero compounds the evil of killing the innocent with the evil of unjust discrimination. It also leads to the proliferation of abortions.

The ethical problems presented by prenatal genetic diagnosis seem to be rooted in a mindset that people can have about having children. Many people, especially married couples, want very much to have children. This desire is natural and good. Having children is also a task given us by God, whose first words to the human beings he created were “be fruitful and multiply.” So when couples find themselves unable to have children it can be a source of great sorrow. Married couples faced with this situation deserve compassion and often profit from the assistance of natural methods and medical specialists to achieve pregnancy through their acts of conjugal love.

The desire to have children is good. It becomes ethically problematic when the desire for a child leads a couple to suppose they have a right to a child. When a couple embraces this mindset, they necessarily think of the child in a false way. Their potential child is no longer someone they might receive as a gift from God, but someone they might produce with the assistance of technicians. The child is then thought of not as a human subject possessing rights of his own, but as an object that his parents have the right to possess. As Donum Vitae puts it,

A true and proper right to a child would be contrary to the child’s dignity and nature. The child is not an object to which one has a right, nor can he be considered an object of ownership: rather, a child is a gift, ‘the supreme gift’ and the most gratuitous gift of marriage, and is a living testimony of the mutual giving of his parents.4

This kind of mindset becomes even more troublesome when someone imagines they not only have a right to a child, but the right to the child they want: the perfect child. Coupled with the practice of prenatal genetic testing, this way of thinking can lead to tragic results. If a couple imagines they have a right to a genetically flawless child, they can use genetic testing as a means of producing such a child. The tragedy is that to produce the “right” child, it is often found necessary to destroy the “wrong” child, if not multiple “wrong” or “unnecessary” children. This misuse of prenatal genetic testing can, in turn, reinforce the troublesome mentality. Insuring the genetic wellbeing of one’s children is a desirable thing. Now that this desire can be fulfilled through prenatal testing, it becomes tempting to fulfill this desire at all costs, even the cost of unborn human lives.

The right to life is the right of every human being, including an unborn child, to have his own life valued and respected. It is not the right of one human being over the life of another. Human beings should be valued for who they are themselves, not for the fulfillment they bring to others. Human beings are subjects to be loved, not objects to be used. Human life is not a commodity. Having children is not like picking apples. We cannot just keep the ones we want and throw out the ones we do not.

1 CDF, Donum Vitae intro, 5.

2CDF, Donum Vitae II, 8.

3 CDF, Donum Vitae I, 5.

4 CDF, Donum Vitae II, 8.

On February 6 of this year, several U.S. government agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HSS), proposed new rules regarding mandated “preventive services” that include contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs. These “services,” deemed morally objectionable according to the teaching of the Catholic Church, are mandated as an extension of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare). The law, enacted March 23, 2010, requires that group health insurance plans provide benefits for preventive health services without cost sharing. On August 1, 2011, HHS and other agencies released guidelines including the objectionable “services” under the umbrella of the preventive health services mandated by the law. On February 10, 2012, HHS issued final rules that defined who would be considered a “religious employer” and therefore exempted from the mandate to include the objectionable “services” in employee health plans. After widespread objection to the government’s mandating the aforementioned “services” and its narrow definition of a “religious employer,” and after many lawsuits have been filed by employers that the government does not consider “religious,” the rules proposed on February 6 represent the government’s latest attempt to respond to concerns raised.

These concerns are, first and foremost, concerns about religious freedom. Religious freedom is a human right that is recognized both in the U.S. Constitution and in the teaching of the Catholic Church. In the Constitution, freedom of religion is the first freedom guaranteed under its Bill of Rights, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or preventing the free exercise thereof.”  According to the Church’s teaching in the Vatican II document Dignitatis Humanae, “nobody may be forced to act against his convictions, nor is anyone to be restrained from acting in accordance with his conscience in religious matters . . . within due limits.”[1]

Providing insurance benefits for contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs clearly goes against the consciences of many, especially those who’s consciences are formed in accord with the teaching of the Catholic Church. For Catholics who think with the Church in these matters, providing these so-called “services” is contrary to exercising their religion, which, for them, is not limited to what they do on Sunday, but includes how they conduct themselves in their personal and professional lives.

In their February 6 proposal, HHS attempted to respond to some of these concerns. The attempt was twofold. First, a broader definition of a “religious employer” was proposed. The new definition would drop three of the four conditions contained in the previous definition: (1) that the employer have the inculcation of religious values as its purpose, (2) primarily employ persons of that share its religious tenets, and (3) primarily serve persons that share its religious tenets. The new definition of a religious employer eligible for exemption from the mandate would include only the fourth condition: that the employer be a non-profit organization described in a section of the federal tax code as a church or association of churches. The second novelty in the HHS proposal is what it calls an “accommodation” for religious organizations that do not fall under its definition of a “religious employer.” For objecting non-profits that present themselves as religious organizations, the “accommodation” would somehow provide the objectionable insurance coverage to the employer’s beneficiaries at no cost “while insulating their employers or institutions of higher education from contracting, arranging, paying, or referring for such coverage.”[2]

This proposal contains positive changes that would in some ways lessen the unjust violations of religious freedom inflicted by the contraception mandate. Despite these proposals, however, serious objections remain. These objections are summarized in the official comments submitted by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops:

First, like earlier iterations of the regulation, the latest proposal requires coverage of items and procedures that, unlike other mandated “preventive services,” do not prevent disease. Instead, they are associated with an increased risk of adverse health outcomes, including conditions that other “preventive services” are designed to prevent.

Second, no exemption or accommodation is available at all for the vast majority of individual or institutional stakeholders with religious or moral objections to contraceptive coverage. Virtually all Americans who enroll in a health plan will ultimately be required to have contraceptive coverage for themselves and their dependents, whether they want it or not.

Third, although the definition of an exempt “religious employer” has been revised to eliminate some of the intrusive and constitutionally improper government inquiries into religious teaching and beliefs that were inherent in an earlier definition, the current proposal continues to define “religious employer” in a way that, by the government’s own admission, excludes (and therefore subjects to the mandate) a wide array of employers that are undeniably religious. Generally the nonprofit religious organizations that fall on the “non-exempt” side of this religious gerrymander include those organizations that contribute most visibly to the common good through the provision of health, educational, and social services.

Fourth, the Administration has offered what it calls an “accommodation” for nonprofit religious organizations that fall outside its narrow definition of “religious employer.” The “accommodation” is based on a number of questionable factual assumptions. Even if all of those assumptions were sound, the “accommodation” still requires the objecting religious organization to fund or otherwise facilitate the morally objectionable coverage.

Fifth, the mandate continues to represent an unprecedented (and now sustained) violation of religious liberty by the federal government. As applied to individuals and organizations with a religious objection to contraceptive coverage, the mandate violates the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.

“We are willing, now as always, to work with the Administration to reach a just and lawful resolution of these issues. In the meantime, along with others, we will continue to look for resolution of these issues in Congress and in the courts,”

As a priest here at the Church of St. Catherine of Siena working for the Dominican Friars Healthcare Ministry of New York, a big part of what I do is to celebrate the sacrament of Anointing of the Sick. Along with other priests here at St. Catherine’s, I am regularly celebrating this sacrament as part of my routine visits to patients in the hospitals. I also celebrate the sacrament of Anointing as part of the pastoral care I am called upon to provide in emergency situations to patients who are actively dying. These emergencies can occur at any time of day or night, and the priests at St. Catherine’s are always “on call,” available to stop what we are doing and go to care for patients and their families in their emergent spiritual needs. As I write these words, I have the pager, by which we receive these calls, clipped to my belt. In our community, we half-jokingly refer to the pager as “the communicator of God’s will.” When God wants one of us to go to one of our neighboring hospitals to minister to his people, the pager will beep. 

Only the priests of St. Catherine’s carry the pager because celebrating the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick is a priestly act.  This is made clear in a passage from the Letter of James that we frequently read as part of the celebration of this sacrament: Are there people sick among you? Let them send for the priests of the Church, and let the priests pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord.[1] It is only a priest who can celebrate the sacrament of Anointing, yet the celebration of this sacrament is not just the act of an individual priest, but of the whole Church. This is the teaching we find in Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church: “By the sacred anointing of the sick and the prayer of the priests the whole Church commends those who are ill to the suffering and glorified Lord, that he may raise them up and save them.”[2] This passage is also quoted by the Catechism of the Catholic Church at the very beginning of its treatment of the Anointing of the Sick.[3] It is the whole Church that commends the sick person to God through the celebration of this sacrament by the priest.

This teaching is significant for us, because, while we priests are the ones celebrating the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, we do so as part of a healthcare ministry that includes religious brothers and sisters as well as lay people both within and beyond our parish who actively participate in the work of the ministry in vitally important ways. Moreover, Dominican Friars Healthcare Ministry of New York, while distinct from the Church of St. Catherine of Siena, is intimately connected to it. The service that forms an essential component of our parish life is particularly extended to the healthcare community in our midst. It’s no accident that St. Catherine of Siena, the patroness of our parish church, is also the patroness of those who care for the sick. All of us in this church, therefore, are called to participate in the healthcare ministry. Many do this through active service or by providing much-needed financial support, but everyone can be part of this ministry through personal prayer and through the liturgical prayer in which we worship God as a community.

In the celebration of the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick, “the whole Church commends those who are ill to the suffering and glorified Lord.” In our healthcare ministry here at St. Catherine’s, the whole parish community takes part in commending to the Lord the sick in the surrounding hospitals through the sacrament of Anointing. What I and my brother priests do in celebrating this sacrament is intimately connected to your service, prayer, and worship on behalf of the sick and the dying. But what precisely are we doing by commending the ill to the Lord through the anointing of the priest? The effects of this sacrament as listed in the Catechism are these[4]:

• The uniting of the sick person to the passion of Christ, for his own good and that of the whole Church
• The strengthening, peace, and courage to endure in a Christian manner the sufferings of illness or old age
• The forgiveness of sins, if the sick person was not able to obtain it through the sacrament of Penance
• The restoration of health, if it is conducive to the salvation of his soul
• The preparation for passing over to eternal life

What the Catechism has to say about this last effect of the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick is especially noteworthy. It states that when the sacrament is given “to those at the point of departing this life . . . the Anointing of the Sick completes our conformity to the death and Resurrection of Christ, just as Baptism began it. It completes the holy anointings that mark the whole Christian life: that of Baptism which sealed the new life in us, and that of Confirmation which strengthened us for the combat of this life. This last anointing fortifies the end of our earthly life like a solid rampart for the final struggles before entering the Father’s house.”[5]

Let us therefore be united as a church in commending our brothers and sisters, those sick and dying in the hospitals of our parish, to the merciful care of the suffering and glorified Christ. May each of us recognize the part we are called to play in assisting our fellow pilgrims along the final stages of their journey to the Father’s house.

Celebrating the sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick is something I do as a priest, but it’s also something I and my brother priests do on behalf of the whole Church as part of a ministry connected with this church. You are a part of that. Thank you for your support, your service, and your prayers.