Catholic and Enjoying It!
from a reader who is a doctor:
The ill infant and genetically ill neonate is the case for universal care. If they cannot get care, they will die. Their care is not cheap and, for example, a premature infant runs up bills over half a million. Most of America could actually not pay that.
“Get sick and die” is not a universalizable axiom, is not Christian for you or for those around you, and is often the bold cry of the routinely healthy. It fails to account for those who require care that only the community can assist with-such as the brain-injured adult, the mentally retarded, or the schizophrenic. Such comments lack any sense of community and fail to illustrate the role that our previous suffering pope taught us-how to receive care when one is needy.
“Get sick and die” is horrifying and is a stoic ethic, not Christian. It is pagan and denies the existence of the community as the Mystical body of Christ.
The pagan (and libertarian) approach comes to us from, I believe, Confucius: Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.
The Christian approach is “Do to others what you would have them do to you.” A Christian civilization does not say to the ill infant and genetically ill neonate, “If they be like to die they had better do it and help decrease the surplus population” when their parents cannot afford care for them. In the end, the sort of people who yelled “YEAH!” at the thought of uninsured people dying are pagan, not Christian. i don’t see how to square that mentality with the gospel.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In