AMDG
Christ heals a blind man. May health care workers follow in the footsteps of the Great Healer.
Mike
Aquilina was the featured speaker for the 2018 Diocesan Men’s Day of
Renewal. He is the author of more than
forty books on Catholic history, doctrine, and devotion. The Fathers of the Church and The Mass of the Early Christians are
considered standard textbooks in universities and seminaries. Mike’s books have
been translated into more than a dozen languages, from Spanish and Hungarian to
Polish and Braille. The Grail Code has
appeared in ten languages since its publication in 2006. Mike has co-authored
works with Cardinal Donald Wuerl, theologian Scott Hahn, historian James
Papandrea, composer John Michael Talbot, and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame artist
Dion.
In 2011 Mike was a
featured presenter of the U.S. Bishops’ Leadership Institute. He wrote the
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ theological reflection for
Catechetical Sunday in 2011.
Since 2002 Mike has
collaborated closely with the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, which he
has served as an executive and trustee. He is past editor of New
Covenant: A Magazine of Catholic Spirituality (1996−2002) and The
Pittsburgh Catholic newspaper (1993−1996). He is also a poet and
songwriter whose work has been recorded by Grammy Award−winning artists Dion
and Paul Simon.
Mike and his wife, Terri, have been married since 1985 and have six children, who are the subject of his book Love in the Little Things.
THE CHRISTIAN ORIGINS OF THE HOSPITAL
By Mike Aquilinahttps://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/the-christian-origins-of-the-hospital)
Did you know that the institution we know as the
hospital is entirely an invention of the Catholic Church?
Well, it was. The ancient world had all the
material ingredients needed for such an institution. It had medical
professionals, and it had sick people. It had a centuries-old tradition of
medical science and technology. And yet it could not bring all that together to
make a hospital. There was no way to make such a venture profitable, so there
was no compelling motive to keep such a venture running during an epidemic.
What they had instead were individual freelance
practitioners, who moved from place to place like traveling salesmen — usually
outrunning their most recent failure. They passed down their knowledge, as
trade secrets, within their family and never risked public disclosure.
The pagans had medicine. What they lacked was
charity, as it came to be expressed in hospital-ity, the
virtue that gave the healthcare institution its name.
It was Christians who invented the hospital, and
they did this in response to a real need, an urgent need—in a time of epidemic.
It was the middle of the third century, and the
world found itself suddenly oppressed by plague. Scholars disagree on whether
the disease was smallpox or influenza. Some say it was Ebola. But whatever the
bug was, it quickly reached pandemic levels—and it stayed there for thirteen
years. In that time, the population of the empire was reduced by thirty
percent, and there was a corresponding decline in every sector of the economy,
not to mention the military.
The practice of Christianity was illegal. In
fact, it was a capital crime and it was punished more severely during the
plague. Why? Because traditional Romans blamed their run of bad luck on the
Christians’ refusal to sacrifice to the gods.
Governing the Church in North Africa at the time
was a bishop named Cyprian. He had been a prominent attorney in the city of
Carthage, earning renown for his work in the courts. And now he brought all the
powers of his gigantic intellect to bear on the problems of the Church in his
day.
Cyprian called his flock to act with heroic
charity during the plague, insisting that Christian doctors must
give care not only their fellow believers, but also their pagan neighbors—the
very people who were trying to kill them.
Cyprian exhorted his congregation: “There is nothing remarkable in
cherishing merely our own people … [We] should love our enemies as well … the
good done to all, not merely to the household of faith.”
And from this exhortation of a bishop came medical care as we know
it. The foremost expert on the history of hospitals, Dr. Gary Ferngren, made
this point emphatically in his recent survey published
by Johns Hopkins:
The hospital was, in origin and conception, a distinctively
Christian institution, rooted in Christian concepts of charity and
philanthropy. There were no pre-Christian institutions in the ancient world
that served the purpose that Christian hospitals were created to serve … None
of the provisions for health care in classical times … resembled hospitals.
This was not a local phenomenon. We possess similar testimonies
from Alexandria in Egypt and elsewhere. The great sociologist Rodney Stark
noted that the Catholic Church grew during this period at a steady rate of
forty percent per decade, and he believes that growth was due, at least in
part, to its profound and unprecedented public witness of charity.
The pattern emerged still more clearly in the following
century during the epidemic of 312. By then, the Christians were numerous in
every major city. So their efforts were more effective, extensive, and
visible. Eusebius, who was an eyewitness, reports that Christians
“rounded up the huge numbers who had been reduced to scarecrows all over the
city and distributed loaves to them all.”
Gary Ferngren, once again, states most emphatically that “The only
care of the sick and dying during the epidemic of 312-13 was provided by
Christian churches.” He adds: “No charitable care of any kind, public or
private, existed apart from Christian … care because there was no religious,
philosophical, or social basis for it.”
Epidemics were among the great terrors of the ancient world.
Doctors could identify the diseases, but they knew no way to stop the spread.
Antibiotics and anti-viral drugs were still centuries away in the future.
So when the plague hit a city, the physicians were the first to
leave. They knew the symptoms from their textbooks, and they knew what was
coming, and they knew there was nothing they could do to stop the inevitable
horror.
Christians couldn’t stop the plagues
either. But they could
and did risk their lives in order to serve chicken soup to the sick. They could
and did make a clean, well-lighted place for the sick to find rest. And some of
those sick people recovered as a result—and became Christians.
In time, those stable Christian institutions—those
hospitals—became de facto sites of medical research. Only there could medical
professionals gain experience together, compare notes openly, and make
progress.
Often you’ll hear people say that the Church has historically
waged a “war on science” or a “war on women.” That’s exactly wrong, and the
history of the hospital tells why. Many of the pioneers in the field were
women—Fabiola in Rome, for example, and Olympias in Constantinople. They
changed society in ways that pagan women could not. The Church made
opportunities that had been impossible in classical antiquity.
So, if we can fight this year’s disease with medicine, we should
thank our long-ago ancestors in the faith. And we might permit ourselves to ask
what wonders God will work through today’s circumstances.
For
another article by Mike Aquilina on the Christian origins of hospitals, see “How
the Church Invented Health Care” at https://angelusnews.com/voices/how-the-church-invented-health-care/. Thomas E. Woods Jr. PhD gives an overview of
the historical role of Catholic Charity in health care in Chapter 9 of his
book, “How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization”. For a video of his lecture on that chapter, see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9gFQy61JuA&ab_channel=catolicobruno.
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