This paper will examine the topic of identity in Roman Catholicism from the perspective of topics contained in or absent from mission statements of 25 Catholic health care institutions. In particular, I will look at these from the perspective of social justice as well as how this and other topics such as human dignity, the sanctity of life, stewardship, pastoral care and the likelihood of mergers with other institutions will affect the healing ministry of Catholic health care providers. The article (...) will conclude that there are three key dimensions to Catholic health care: leadership in advocating reform of the current health care system, care for the marginalized and under-insured, and the provision of pastoral care in all institutions. (shrink)

Edmund D. Pellegrino, John Collins Harvey, Kevin T. Fitzgerald, SJ; Must the Church be Mute Lest Its Truths be Distorted? A Response to Engelhardt, Christian bi.

There are numerous challenges posed to Roman Catholic health care institutions by recent developments in health care delivery. Some are practical, involving the acceptable limits of accommodation to and collaboration with secular networks of health care delivery. Others, quite often implicated in the first set, are explicitly theological. What does it mean to be a distinctively Roman Catholic health care institution? What are the nature and the scope of Roman Catholic institutional identity? More broadly, what is the moral relevance of (...) themes in Roman Catholic social teaching to the provision of health care? This issue of Christian Bioethics addresses these questions with a spirited exchange among its authors. They offer noticeably different perspectives on the general cogency of Roman Catholic social teaching and different strategic recommendations for Roman Catholic institutions to maintain, or recover, their distinctive presence in health care delivery. (shrink)

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.; The DeChristianization of Christian Health Care Institutions, or, How the Pursuit of Social Justice and Excellence can Obscure the.

H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.; Roman Catholic Social Teaching and Religious Hospital Identity in a Post-Christian Age, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies.

Corinna Delkeskamp-Hayes; Christian Credentials for Roman Catholic Health Care: Medicine versus the Healing Mission of the Church, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecum.

This review essay examines H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr.'s The Foundations of Bioethics, a contemporary nonfeminist text in mainstream biomedical ethics. It focuses upon a central concept, Engelhardt's idea of the moral community and argues that the most serious problem in the book is its failure to take account of the political and social structures of moral communities, structures which deeply affect issues in biomedical ethics.