Prof Jasenka Markeljevic, MD, PhD
„A Catholic Physician Treating a Non-Catholic Patient“
Analysis of most aspects of a Catholic physician treating a non-Catholic patient from the individual and institutional point of view requires a comprehensive approach that includes an analysis of the religious, cultural, intellectual and economic characteristics of a society, including the possibility for education and practicing religious orientation of both of them. The basic standards of the medical profession, the Hippocratic Oath, formulated almost 2500 years ago, represent the historical continuity of ancient-Christian tradition. In its original form it indicates how important it always is to continue ethical principles in a spirit of responsibility towards temptations and risks of the medical profession, respecting scientific researches, particularly now, at the beginning of the 21st century.
Today, the dominance of technological, scientific oriented civilization, deprived of religious views of reality, fulfils our every day life with personal imperatives of understanding eternity, constantly emphasizing the spiritual insecurity and loss of inner harmony. The biomedical approach to health, the biopolitics and the rapid development of science, allow us the use of new achievements in the field of biotechnology, genetic engineering and nanoscience promoting research aimed at human cloning, IVF procedure, pre-natal and post-natal euthanasia. In these circumstances, both Catholic physicians and non-Catholic patients are concerned about the same reality, only from different points of view.They both are faced with human disability, pain, fear and share the same fascination with mystery of life and suffering.
A Catholic physician believes that life and dignity of human beeing is a gift, created in the image and likeness of God (Imago Deus), and must be respected and protected from conception to natural death. The reality of Absolute truth of creation and its Creator arises out of the same human capacity for knowing factual reality and spirituality. Human being exists as an expression of absolute truth that is imprinted in our dignity, life, consciousness, conscience and heart. It is important to listen to the voice of conscience and to be aware of the Absolute.
A Catholic physician is faced with different medical guidelines, the “gold standard” which entails Absolutely, reference truth about the ethical and professional aspects of individual procedures in medicine, that define the international professional associations. In such circumstances, questions of how to respect different religious or non-religious beliefs of non Catholic patient are inevitably raised? How to implement the right to conscientious objector guaranteed by Resolution of EU Parliament? How to ignore the so-called “cost / benefit” principle, the influence of “linguistic engineering” and ethical relativism on non-Catholic patients?
A personal contact with a non Catholic patient is essential since suffering opens the possibility to realize the spiritual/religious dimension of life and recognize the authentic truth of the existence. Special attention has to be paid to the role of Christian hospitals and care centers for dying and the elderly as well as handicapped and abandoned children, and the disabled. Such places should be environments in which the pain and suffering in their human and Christian sense should be recognized and interpreted.
