By the power of intellectual progress, he as born of the medical school, and became MD: The clashing notions of "healing" in medical science and Catholic health care
Rachelle Barina, MTS, PhD Candidate, St. Louis University
In medical culture and everyday rhetoric, the meaning of healing often refers to the restoration of health or more broadly, wholeness. Typically, the assumption is that advances in medical science and clinical practice increase the possibilities of healing. In this paper, I will argue the opposite: with advances in medicine and medical science, the space that is available for healing has effectively shrunk, usurped by the cure of the doctor and the epistemology of science. To make this argument, I will first begin by clarifying the meanings of cure, care, and heal relative to the body and person. I will show that in Catholic traditions, healing has a dynamic and intersubjective meaning, embodying a forward movement rather than a return to a previous wholeness. Thus, in Catholic traditions of care for the sick and in traditions of the saints, the person – not the body – is the object of healing. The end of healing that defines the act of healing is always the spiritual end of an embodied person. Second, I will show that beginning in the late middle ages with the tradition of the saints and miraculous healings, Catholicism began to give the epistemology of medical science authority over the Church’s understanding of healing. At the Church’s request, medical science began to define the healing of the body and the possibilities of Divine action on the body. The Church gave science increasing epistemological authority over the meaning of healing in miracles, and thus, for ontology and Divine causality. Third, I will argue that in the twentieth century with the solidification of modern Catholic health care institutions, Catholicism has allowed medical notions of healing to dominate, overshadowing the tradition’s influence over the ontology of healing and glorifying the modern physician’s ability to effectively heal. Consequently, curing and healing are increasingly conflated in care for the sick and dying, ultimately leading Catholic health care to embrace a vision of healing grounded in the limitations of the body relative to modern medicine rather than the possibilities of the person relative to her spiritual ends. Medicine dictates the end of healing as focusing on the body. When healing is understood medically as something that happens to the body, healing – the very mission of Catholic health care institutions and the purpose of medical practices –becomes distorted. People begin to function with the vision that no more can be done for a patient, that dynamic improvement cannot occur, that she cannot be healed. In such instances, the mission of healing the person is subordinated to the medical possibilities for the body; caring does not open onto the possibility for healing. And the entire mission of Catholic health care, the mission of healing as articulated in the rich theological tradition, becomes an impossibility.
In medical culture and everyday rhetoric, the meaning of healing often refers to the restoration of health or more broadly, wholeness. Typically, the assumption is that advances in medical science and clinical practice increase the possibilities of healing. In this paper, I will argue the opposite: with advances in medicine and medical science, the space that is available for healing has effectively shrunk, usurped by the cure of the doctor and the epistemology of science. To make this argument, I will first begin by clarifying the meanings of cure, care, and heal relative to the body and person. I will show that in Catholic traditions, healing has a dynamic and intersubjective meaning, embodying a forward movement rather than a return to a previous wholeness. Thus, in Catholic traditions of care for the sick and in traditions of the saints, the person – not the body – is the object of healing. The end of healing that defines the act of healing is always the spiritual end of an embodied person. Second, I will show that beginning in the late middle ages with the tradition of the saints and miraculous healings, Catholicism began to give the epistemology of medical science authority over the Church’s understanding of healing. At the Church’s request, medical science began to define the healing of the body and the possibilities of Divine action on the body. The Church gave science increasing epistemological authority over the meaning of healing in miracles, and thus, for ontology and Divine causality. Third, I will argue that in the twentieth century with the solidification of modern Catholic health care institutions, Catholicism has allowed medical notions of healing to dominate, overshadowing the tradition’s influence over the ontology of healing and glorifying the modern physician’s ability to effectively heal. Consequently, curing and healing are increasingly conflated in care for the sick and dying, ultimately leading Catholic health care to embrace a vision of healing grounded in the limitations of the body relative to modern medicine rather than the possibilities of the person relative to her spiritual ends. Medicine dictates the end of healing as focusing on the body. When healing is understood medically as something that happens to the body, healing – the very mission of Catholic health care institutions and the purpose of medical practices –becomes distorted. People begin to function with the vision that no more can be done for a patient, that dynamic improvement cannot occur, that she cannot be healed. In such instances, the mission of healing the person is subordinated to the medical possibilities for the body; caring does not open onto the possibility for healing. And the entire mission of Catholic health care, the mission of healing as articulated in the rich theological tradition, becomes an impossibility.