Abstract
The real pandemic in everyday American life is fear. We try to mask ourselves away from it with a culture of distractions, consumption, and delusions. All of which serve as anesthetics, and none of which works.
Fear is the infection at the heart of modern life. It makes us miserly and selfish. It robs us of our nobility by lowering the horizon of our desires. It dulls our appetite for something more and higher than the latest streaming service. And worst of all, it makes us cowards.
At the same time, life has become too big. The scale and complexity of our institutions, our hospitals, our corporations, our politics, and especially our problems, dwarf us. We are reminded of that every day by the dilemma of information overload and the invasive noise of the media. Nothing you or I can do will prevent a war with China or even end the war in Ukraine, yet we can’t escape hearing and worrying about both. Technology, for all its benefits, not only changes so much about our daily lives, but also changes it at an escalating pace. It turns solid things we knew about the world into liquid, and it cuts our psychological and social stability out from under us. The result is a feeling of confusion and isolation which leads to frustration and anger. That leads to depression and an abdication of personal responsibility.
The greatest strength of the American character –– respect for the individual and his rights –– also turns out to be its greatest weakness. Self-absorption disconnects us from each other. It leads to fragmentation and conflict. The result is the transfer of real power to the government to manage the turbulence which is what we have seen happen over the past several decades. The panic surrounding the COVID virus just sped up the process.
We are told relentlessly these days that we live in a rationalist and scientific age, free from superstition and illusion –– an age when we can master the limitations of nature. But there is something pathetically naïve in every such desire, especially the hunger to somehow defeat death. In response, the great Jewish medical ethicist, Leon Kass, asks the one key question: Why would anyone want another 70 or 700 or 7,000 years of this worldly life if it has no higher meaning beyond ourselves, no final goal other than a better version of “more of the same?” He ends one of his best essays with these words: [We need to] resist the siren song of the conquest of aging and death. [Instead,] let us … lift our voices and properly toast … to life beyond
our own, to the life of our grandchildren and their grandchildren. May they, God willing, know health and long life, but [may they] also know
the pursuit of truth and righteousness and holiness. And may they hand down and perpetuate this pursuit of what is humanly finest to succeeding generations for all time to come.
We need to see all of this through the lens of God's Word. The First Letter of John, chapter 4, verse 18, reminds us that “perfect love casts out fear.” Love is the glue that sustains all human relationships. It is the saving grace of our humanity, the connecting tissue between people and generations. It gives us a framework of meaning by embedding us in a narrative of hope larger than ourselves and the limits of this world.
In the end, priesthood and medicine are quite similar vocations. I use that word “vocations” deliberately, because in each case our work is a calling, a kind of ministry. It is not merely a “profession.” I became a priest because I wanted to help people; help them discover their dignity as children of God and help guide them home to heaven. I suppose you could say that a good priest is a doctor of the soul. It demands everything a man has to offer, every bit of his energy and attention.
The practice of medicine demands the same. You accept those demands because you entered the medical field to help people; to heal them; to give them sound bodies and minds so they could live the gift of this life to the fullest. And here's what that means. Whether we are conscious of it or not, whether we are in a generous mood on any given day or not, what we do –– what you do –– is a form of giving ourselves to others for their sake and benefit, not merely our own. There is a word for that. It's called “love.” Love is a matter of the heart. It's irrational, at least in a purely materialist sense.
C.S. Lewis described the chest, the human heart, as the “indispensable liaison officer between cerebral man and visceral man.” Blaise Pascal said that “the heart has its reasons which reason knows not.” Both saw clearly that it is the heart, not just our rationality, that makes us distinctly human. It is the heart that gives us love and courage, neither of which can ever be reduced to mere instinct and biochemistry. It is the heart that elevates us into something more than just very smart animals with appetites. In fact, one of the reasons why C.S. Lewis found the trend of modern science so troubling was its particular appetite for creating what he called “men without chests,” men without higher moral law, men without the constraints of love.
At the end of my life, I do not want to be held accountable for the kind of cowardice my predecessors had 90 years ago in Nazi Germany. I do not want the burden of explaining my lack of a backbone to the God of love. And I don’t think you do either which means, as Catholics, we need to change the way we think and act because whatever we have been doing so far has not worked.
The Church in the United States has been too comfortable for too long. She needs to move from assimilation to mission, from lethargy and mediocrity to apostolic witness. And that very much involves the Catholic Medical Association. The practice of medicine is the front line in the central moral conflict of our age: Who is man, and what does and does not serve human dignity? We are not powerless. None of us is ever really powerless because we each have a voice. Every time as an individual or as a group we say “no” to evil policies and “yes” to good ones –– as forcefully as we can –– we throw sand in the machinery of institutionalized wickedness. Of course, that has a personal cost, and we need to be willing to pay it. If we’re not, then we should stop trying to fool ourselves and others by claiming to be Christians.
This past year, as I traveled around my diocese celebrating the Sacrament of Confirmation, I noticed that an unusually high number of young girls were choosing St. Joan of Arc as their confirmation saint. In the Diocese of Lincoln, we confirm at the age of 11. I asked one of these 11-year-old girls, why she chose St. Joan of Arc. She looked at me and said, “Bishop, St. Joan of Arc was a very brave girl, and I don’t want to be afraid anymore.”
Before she went into battle on her mission to save France, against tremendous odds, Saint Joan Arc was asked if she was afraid. The young saint replied, “I am not afraid, for God is with me. I was born for this.” Brothers and sisters, we were born for these times, we were made for these times. God put us on this earth for this very moment in history. We must believe this with all our minds and all our hearts.
This is why the Church needs the CMA to grow –– in its numbers, its influence, and its resources. It cannot stay the same and do the work that needs to be done now so urgently. This is the task I leave you with today, and I am well aware it is hard but it is urgent and sacred work. The good news is that Scripture tells us more the 350 times to “be not afraid.” We just need to listen.
This article was first published September 18, 2023, in the CMA Blog. The Most Rev. James D. Conley, D.D., S.T.L., the Bishop of Lincoln in Nebraska, and Episcopal Advisor to the Catholic Medical Association, spoke on “The Heart Has Its Reasons: Thoughts on a Theology of Courage,” during the 92nd Annual Educational Conference Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023. This article has been approved by the Editorial Board of The Linacre Quarterly, though it has not been subject to peer review.