Religious Freedom

The Catholic health care apostolate, to which CAPPA members belong regardless of our practice setting, centers on caring for patients in a manner formed by our religious view of Human Dignity. This view holds that all human persons have inherent dignity from conception until natural death regardless of their physical or cognitive ability. We are most concerned for the frail, vulnerable, and suffering, but we do not view any human life as one not worth living or acceptable to terminate. Like all of medicine, we “cure sometimes, treat often, comfort always”. We respect patient autonomy, but we do not view this as the highest good in patient care. We do not seek to preserve life at all costs knowing we are all destined to die in this world. We view the human person as body and soul, created by God with an eternal destiny with Him. Our bodies are not mere matter to be manipulated but are respected and treated for the purposes for which they have been designed.

As it is written in the Ethical and Religious Directives for Health Care Services, “The moral teachings that we profess here flow principally from the natural law, understood in the light of the revelation Christ has entrusted to his Church. From this source the Church has derived its understanding of the nature of the human person, of human acts, and of the goals that shape human activity.

Religious Freedom posts from Faith and Medicine