The Catholic Standard and Times

Revolutionizing healthcare
Conference urges hospital centers to provide Catholic alternatives to destructive procedures

By Barbara Fitzgerald
Special to the CS&T

Instead of telling patients what they can’t do, doctors want to establish fertility care centers in Philadelphia-area Catholic hospitals, based on the beauty of Church teaching regarding sexuality and family life.

The plan is designed, in part, to counter all the negative comments about Catholic bans on contraception, abortion, and embryonic stem cell research.
Catholics have powerful and more caring alternatives to those destructive techniques, clergy and medical professionals say, and it is time hospitals started promoting those alternatives instead of just saying, “We don’t do that here.”

While secular institutions offer abortions, sterilization and artificial reproduction techniques such as in vitro fertilization, Catholic hospitals need to offer patients a place within their own buildings for infertility care, natural family planning (NFP) instruction, pregnancy testing, and post-abortion counseling.

Without a Catholic alternative, patients usually resort to artificial techniques, often treating their reproductive systems with unnatural chemicals and causing the destruction of life.

Rather than being arbitrary, the Church is concerned with the patient’s highest good, Msgr. Kevin McMahon, a professor of moral theology at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, said during his talk at a recent conference sponsored by the Philadelphia Natural Family Planning Network and the Philadelphia Catholic Medical Association.

“People see the Catholic Church as some archaic, patriarchal, intellectually deficient, anachronistic organization that keeps spitting out edicts that it expects everybody to follow — no abortion, no embryonic stem cell research and so forth,” Msgr. McMahon said. “The Church is saying those things are wrong because they are. Why are they wrong? Because they are against the true good of a person.”

Women using the Catholic-approved technology agree.

“Women have a God-given right to reliable and competent healthcare, instead of being medicated and having their bodies and their babies destroyed,” wrote Monique Kendrikian-Sarkessian, in a letter to support the establishment of a Church-approved, hospital-based fertility care center. “Women need to know there are alternatives to dangerous fertility drugs and to immoral in-vitro fertilization.”

Lisa Brown, also in a written testimonial, said such a center “would empower women with information and support to counter the contraceptive ‘culture of death’ mentality that exists in most present-day obstetrics, gynecology and infertility treatment centers, including the so-called Catholic ones.”

As Catholic area hospitals struggle to compete with secular institutions for patients, they can easily blur their identity. Their core mission has to be grounded in the teachings of Christ, who came to bring life and heal the body and soul, added Msgr. James P. Cassidy, a former director of Department of Health and Hospitals of the Archdiocese of New York.

Dr. Lester Ruppersberger, an NFP-only gynecologist who works at St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne and an organizer of the conference, is hoping to establish a fertility care department using the NFP system at his hospital.

“Catholic hospitals have a mission to dispense the same teachings of the Catholic Church in a health-care setting,” Ruppersberger said.

He said the task is part of an epic battle for souls in today’s world.

Ruppersberger’s model is the Fertility Care Services Department currently operating at St. John’s Mercy Health Care hospital in St. Louis, Mo. In addition to offering fertility care and NFP services, that office has a speakers bureau and also sponsors regular mother-daughter teas for girls aged 10 to 17, “to discuss fertility and promote communication.” Similar programs are offered for boys in the same age group, which are called, “Father-Son Facts and Fun,” to emphasize “respect, understanding and appreciation for God’s gift of fertility and the goodness and wonder of growing up and becoming a man.”

His proposal is being considered by hospital administrators.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia does not own or operate any Catholic hospitals in the Philadelphia area. They are run by various religious groups, which can make individual decisions regarding the establishment of such centers.

The Archdiocese supports the concept of such programs, said Lisann Castagno, the assistant coordinator for natural family planning. She said the growth of such centers could encourage more doctors to set up NFP medical practices in the area.

A group of allied health professionals, Fertility Care Practitioners of Southeast Pennsylvania, are also seeking to establish a hospital-based fertility care center that would use the Creighton Model Fertility Care System, as does the center in St. Louis. That system teaches couples how to identify their fertile and infertile days through the observation and tracking of physical signs that are present in a woman. Naprotechnology, an emerging science established by the Pope Paul VI Institute in Omaha, Neb., has its roots in the Creighton Model system. It helps women better identify the reasons why they have trouble getting pregnant, then works to correct the problems to achieve a natural pregnancy.

Barbara Rose, a Creighton Model fertility care nurse, said there is an acute need in the Philadelphia area to offer couples, women and teens better choices.

Such a center also would be a haven for Catholic mothers seeking treatment for daughters with irregular menstrual cycles. Often, those young women are prescribed birth control pills to correct pain and bleeding. Rose said that might treat the symptom but it does not reveal the underlying cause for such problems.

With more meticulous tracking of a young women’s cycle, the problems can be identified and corrected, she said.

Couples facing infertility are often lured by advertisers to use artificial means that can lead to the creation of frozen and then discarded embryos.

“Artificial reproductive technology is not only anti-life ... it’s a considerable burden to couples,” Rose said. In addition, such testing can be humiliating for couples as well as putting a strain on their pocketbook and their marriage, she said.

Instead of treating infertility as a disease, naprotechnology methods treat infertility as a symptom. Rather than giving up, and resorting to artificial means to achieve pregnancy, women receive state-of-the-art care by doctors who seek to understand the underlying causes.

If there is an abnormality, naprotechnology-trained doctors would rather try to correct the problem through microsurgery than through artificial means.

Such techniques may not make as much money, said Dr. Faith Daggs, a fertility-care doctor who works for the Holy Spirit Health System in Camp Hill. But, it is “good medicine,” she said.

The idea of making Catholic hospitals more Christ-like isn’t new in the Philadelphia area. When the British painter Benjamin West was asked to compose an artwork suitable for America’s first hospital in the 1800s, he replied that his subject would be Christ, “the Redeemer of mankind, extending his aid to the afflicted of all ranks and conditions.”

That extraordinary painting, “Christ Healing the Sick in the Temple,” remains on display in the old Pine Building of Pennsylvania Hospital, illustrating that historically, health-care managers looked to the Divine Physician for guidance.

Bottom line concerns might have been important even then, but Benjamin Franklin chose for the motto for Pennsylvania Hospital the words of Jesus in the parable of the Good Samaritan: “Take care of him and I will repay thee.”

Barbara Fitzgerald is a freelance writer and a parishioner of St. Ignatius in Yardley. She can be reached at babsfitz@earthlink.net.

NFP classes offered by the Archdiocese

In 2006, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia will offer classes in Natural Family Planning as follows:

Mercy Suburban Hospital in Norristown: 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Friday, May 5 and 12; St. Ignatius Parish in Yardley: 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 4 and 11; St. Dominic Parish in Philadelphia: 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., Tuesday, July 11 and 18; Holy Redeemer Hospital & Medical Center in Meadowbrook: 10 a.m. to noon, Saturday, April 1 and 8 and Nov. 4 and 11; St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne: Tuesday, 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. June 6 and 13; Nazareth Hospital in Philadelphia: 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., Tuesday, Sept. 5 and 12.

To learn more about NFP classes, call the Family Life office at (215) 587-5639.

Pope John Paul II on the natural methods of regulating fertility

The following is an excerpt from a talk given by Pope John Paul II on the natural methods of regulating fertility, which is part of a brochure given to couples investigating NFP by the archdiocese’s Family Life Office:

“In the apostolic exhortation Familiaris Consortio I reminded the bishops and faithful alike about the urgent need for a ‘broader, more decisive and systematic effort to make the natural methods for regulating fertility known, respected and applied’” (Familiaris Consortio, N. 35).

“Church teaching about such a delicate and urgent issue in the life of spouses and society is often misunderstood and opposed because it is presented in such an inadequate and unilateral fashion. It stops at the negative judgment concerning contraception, which is always an intrinsically dishonest act; yet it rarely makes any effort to understand this norm in the light of the ‘total vision of the human person and vocation, which is not only natural and earthly, but also supernaturaal and eternal’ (Humanae Vitae, N. 7).

“In truth, only within the framework and responsibility for love and for life can the underlying reasons for prohibiting ‘actions which have the aim of and are used as a means for making procreation impossible’ (Humanae Vitae, N. 14) be understood.

“Only within the context of values such as these can spouses find the inspiration which allows them to overcome, with the help of God’s grace, the difficulties which they inevitably face when, under unfavorable social conditions and in an environment marked by readily available hedonism, they seek to follow a path which conforms to the Lord’s will.

“It is only by deepening the Christian concept of this ‘responsibility for love and for life’ that one can grasp the ‘difference, both anthropological and moral, between contraception and recourse to the rhythm of the cycle’” (Familiaris Consortio, N. 32).