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October 26, 2008

Priests work to find ways to provide sacraments for patients admitted to non-Catholic hospitals

By Michelle Martin

ASSISTANT EDITOR

On an October Friday afternoon, Father Dan Mayall sat in his office in the Holy Name Cathedral rectory, looking at seven message slips requesting anointing of the sick for patients at nearby Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

He had just returned from one meeting, and was due to meet with staff at Frances Xavier Warde School in a half-hour. The anointing would have to wait until that meeting was over.

“Fortunately, none of them look like they are in immediate danger,” said Mayall, the cathedral’s rector and pastor.

He was the on-call priest for the nearly 900-bed medical center that day, in addition to his duties at the cathedral, because Northwestern Memorial does not have a full-time priest-chaplain on its staff.

Father William Moriarty, who resides at the cathedral, works part-time for the medical center, but was on vacation that week, Mayall said.

As Moriarty moves toward retirement, and Children’s Memorial Hospital gets ready to move to a new campus near Northwestern Memorial, Mayall is wondering how Catholic patients will get consistent access to the sacraments, especially anointing of the sick and confession, both of which require a priest.

“There’s fewer and fewer of us,” said Mayall, noting that the official priest staff at the cathedral is down to three, him and two associate pastors. Five more priests, including Moriarty, and a bishop live there, but they all have other responsibilities.

Mayall wrote about his dilemma in the Sept. 14 cathedral bulletin; within a day, he had heard from Northwestern Memorial and Children’s Memorial.

Peter Strenning, a chaplain at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, said Oct. 20 the hospital is trying to come to an arrangement with the archdiocese and Holy Name, but could not yet share details.

No easy answer

Father William Grogan, the cardinal’s liaison for health care, agreed that there is no simple mechanism anymore to provide sacramental ministry for Catholic patients in non-Catholic hospitals.

It’s a matter Grogan has asked the presbyteral council to take up, he said. In the meantime, patients at the 45 non-Catholic hospitals in the archdiocese receive care through a variety of mechanisms.

Perhaps most common — especially in smaller community hospitals — is an arrangement to call the local parish.

But priests aren’t always available, Grogan said, especially since many are the only ones assigned to their parishes. If they leave for a day off or on another call, there might not be anyone to cover.

“It was different in the past when you had five or six priests in each parish, and when people usually went to their local hospital, so the priests knew the people,” he said. “Now people usually don’t go to their local hospital, they go wherever their insurance sends them.”

In some places, groups of parishes have set up a schedule for who is on call on any given day to make sure a priest is available for anointings and other services, Grogan said.

Many parishes also regularly schedule services with anointing of the sick for parishioners who are suffering from serious or chronic illnesses, so fewer of them need anointing in the hospital.

The sacrament, which was once called “extreme unction” and generally reserved for the dying, now is seen as appropriate for anyone who needs healing from illness. That goes along with a theological change that happened over the last half of the 20th century.

As life spans lengthened, Grogan said, Catholics began to focus more on what makes a good life than a good death. As diseases that once would have proved deadly in a short time began to be managed long-term, people began to look for spiritual meaning in their illnesses. Many priests, he said, became less focused on ministering to the dying.

But people still die, and they still need ministers.

Staffing priests

Some non-Catholic hospitals provide the sacraments by having priests on staff. Father Deusdedit Byomuhangi, an extern priest from Uganda, ministers at Adventist LaGrange Hospital, under a contract with the archdiocese, said John Rapp, the director of pastoral care for Adventist Health Care. The organization operates four hospitals in the Chicago area, with three of them in the Joliet Diocese.

Father Deus, as he is known, is working on certification in clinical pastoral education, while he works as a chaplain, Rapp said.

“Our philosophy is that we are going to meet people’s needs wherever they are on their journey,” said Rapp, acknowledging that Seventh Day Adventists and Catholics are not known for close ecumenical relationships.

“A large portion of our patients are Catholic. It builds a bridge between our health care ministry and the Catholic community,” he said.

Rapp said Grogan was helpful in finding Byomuhangi and having the archdiocese arrange a religious worker visa for him. Most of the Catholic priests who work as chaplains in the archdiocese’s 22 Catholic hospitals also are from overseas, mostly from English- speaking countries in Africa and from India.

The University of Chicago Medical Center, which, like Northwestern, is a large university- based research and medicaleducation facility, has a large clinical pastoral education program on-site, so it generally has priests available, Grogan said.

Mayall said he doesn’t mind celebrating the sacraments when he is called. The problem is the on-call schedule makes it impossible to do everything else that must be done.

“I’ve never come back feeling bad about what I’ve done,” he said, describing a time when he anointed a young woman who was dying.

He anointed her head, and then her mother held one of her hands while he anointed it, and her father held the other hand. “It’s a tremendously powerful sacrament. Those are beautiful things.”