Care for the sick and abandoned

by Letters Editor · October 3, 2013

From Fr Bonaventure Hinwood OFM, Pretoria

It is two and a half years since, on the basis of my experience during more than two months in hospital, I wrote a little and discussed much about the need for a more structured approach by the Church to people who are sick and in a hospital or similar care institution.

“…the Church through its ministers does not reach some Catholics, who then feel that it has abandoned them in their time of greatest need. ” (CNS photo/Gregory A. Shemitz, Long Island Catholic)

Back in hospital and having had time to think, I would like to offer a further suggestion:

It has become the policy of some organisations in the sick care industry not to supply to a third party any personal information about a patient. So a priest or extraordinary minister of the Eucharist cannot go up to the reception desk and pick up a list of Catholic patients.

The result is that the Church through its ministers does not reach some Catholics, who then feel that it has abandoned them in their time of greatest need.

This can happen because the hospitalisation has not been reported to the parish. It may be that prayers have been asked for the sick person, but with no indication where he or she is.

Possibly the hospital is outside the parish and the information has not been passed on.

It is the last two cases about which we need to do some creative thinking. My suggestion is:

1. When prayers are asked for a sick person, it is a routine question by the priest or his staff to ask: �Is he/she in a hospital or similar institution, and where?� If it is within the parish, it can be listed for the Communion-givers.

2. If the sick care institution is outside the parish, the information can be telephoned, faxed, or e-mailed to the parish nearest to it, and put on its Communion-givers� list.

3. Each parish get some Catholic organisation to take care of this ministry and its planning, if it has not got a secretarial staff able to handle it. Where this cannot be done in a particular parish, a neighbouring one should be approached.

4. Each diocese should have a secretariat for the care of sick institutionalised Catholics with its own episcopal vicar. He can approach some organisations or volunteer workers to centralise parish sick lists, which parishes should send in weekly, and dispatch the correlated lists promptly to the parishes.

5. The bishop needs to have this on his programme when doing parish visitation, because it must be diocesan policy and not left to the goodwill of individuals.

You cannot catch all the fish, but the finer the mesh of your net, the fewer will escape and be eaten by the sharks, leaving the Church because they feel it has abandoned them.