"Introduction: Ministers of Life" (excerpts from the New Charter for Health Care Workers))

“1. The activity of health care workers is basically a service to life and health, which are primary goods of the human person. To this service is dedicated the professional or volunteer activity of those who are involved in various ways in preventative medicine, treatment, and rehabilitation…. dignity is elevated to a further level of life, that of God’s own life, inasmuch as the Son, in becoming one of us, makes it possible for human beings to become ‘children of God (Jn 1: 12), ‘partakers of the divine nature’ (2 Pet 1: 4)….the respect for the human person that human reason already demands is further accentuated and reinforced….”

  “2….’Therefore, it is easy to understand the importance, in the social health care services, of the presence…of workers who are led by an integrally human view of illness and who as a result are able to effect a fully human approach to the sick person who is suffering.’7

  “3….By the expression ‘health care’ we mean everything pertaining to prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation for the better physical, psychological, social, and spiritual balance and well-being of the person. By the expression ‘social health care services’ is meant anything concerned with health care policy, legislation, programs, and facilities….no institution can by itself replace the human heart or human compassion….”

“4….it must be the expression of a profoundly human commitment, made and carried out not just as a technical activity but as an act of dedication and love of neighbor.”

“5. Service to life is performed only in fidelity to the moral law, which expresses its values and duties…. the magisterium of the Church….is a source of principles and norms of behavior…. Through fidelity to the moral norm, the health care worker lives out his fidelity to man whose value the norm safeguards, and to God, whose wisdom the norm expresses….”

  “6. The Church, in proposing moral principles and evaluations for biomedical science, draws on the light of both reason and faith….‘the Church, by expressing an ethical judgment on some developments of recent medical research concerning man,…does not intervene in the area proper to the medical science itself, but rather calls everyone to ethical and social responsibility for their actions. She reminds them that the ethical value of biomedical science is guaged in reference to...the unconditional respect owed to every human being at every moment of his or her existence’13

  “7….those responsible for health care policies can bring about fruitful collaboration by acknowledging the distinctive character of Catholic health care facilities, thereby contributing to the building of ‘the “civilization of love & life,” without which the life of individuals & of society itself loses its most genuinely human quality.’18”

“8. Animated by the Christian spirit & outlook, the health care worker discovers the transcendent dimension peculiar to his profession in everyday practice. In fact, it surpasses the purely human level of service to the suffering person and takes on the character of Christian witness, and therefore of mission. Mission is equivalent to vocation 19….The health care worker is a reflection of the Good Samaritan…. the health care worker can be considered a minister of God”


“9….the therapeutic ministry of health care workers participates in the pastoral and evangelizing activity of the Church[24]…. Service to life thus becomes a ministry of salvation, or a proclamation that fulfills Christ’s redeeming love. ‘Just such people – doctors, nurses, other health care workers, volunteers – are called to be the living sign of Jesus Christ & His Church in showing love toward the sick & suffering,’ 25 in other words, ministers of life.”

“10. The present Charter wishes to support the ethical fidelity of health care workers….This fidelity is outlined according to the stages of human life: procreating, living, and; dying….”