Medicine and the Church / Being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick

by Unknown

In the third part is a most welcome recognition of the position in the Church of that profession which the Evangelist of the Nativity followed.

‘The Committee believes that medical science is the handmaid of God and His Church, and should be fully recognised as the ordinary means appointed by Almighty God for the care and healing of the human body. The Committee believes that discoveries in the region of medicine and surgery come to man through Him who is the Light and the Life, the Divine Word.’

Then we have a brief recommendation that there should be an ‘addition to the office for the Visitation of the Sick of more hopeful and less ambiguous petitions for the restoration of health, always subject to the Will of God . . . ; and that these petitions be used in close connection with prayer for pardon and peace.’ And these prayers ‘may be fitly accompanied by the Apostolic act of the Laying on of Hands.’

In the final paragraph the Committee considers the suggestion ‘that these prayers should be accompanied by the anointing of the sufferer with oil,’ and after a brief historical résumé, concludes:

‘In view of this evidence and the conditions prevailing in the Church at the present time, the Committee is not prepared to recommend the restoration of the unction of the sick, but it does not wish to go so far as to advise the prohibition of its use, if it be earnestly desired by the sick person. In all such cases the parish priest should seek the counsel of the Bishop of the diocese. Care must be taken that no return be made to the later custom of anointing as a preparation for death.’

With unction I do not propose to deal here. The question is really theological; and the discussion as to its revival does not come within the scope of this book. It may be said, however, that the problem will probably solve itself in the near future, as in many missionary and colonial dioceses, and in not a few English ones, the oil is blessed by the Bishop, and may always be had by any parish priest whose sick people desire this ancient rite.

With one exception, to which I shall return later, the Report may be commended as a courageous, if rather jejune, effort to keep abreast of modern psychology and its more practical manifestations. Let me indicate briefly the encouraging signs in the Report.

(1) We have the definite confession that our present visitation service is not all that can be desired. That we should use more definite prayers for the recovery of the sick.

(2) The Report lays emphasis on the important truth that there must be no banishing of the doctor. Enormous harm has been done by the crude dualism of ‘Christian Science’—a theory which, if logically applied, would prevent persons renewing the tissues of their body by food, or removing dirt by soap and water. A doctor’s medicine is just as much a prayer, a spiritual thing, when it is properly used, as any formula of consolation inculcated by folk in ‘tune with the infinite,’ or people who indulge in ‘higher thought.’

(3) The Report guards—though perhaps not quite strongly enough—against the modern tendency to lay too much stress on mere bodily health. As Christians and men of sense, we can have nothing to do with a mode of thought that, by exaggerating the value of physical well-being, would cheerfully have condemned to some lethal chamber an Erasmus, a Coleridge, a Stevenson, or a Beardsley.