Medicine, Science, & Ethics

Catholic Medical Professionals, we applaud your generosity and your commitment to providing healthcare to our community that reflects the profound respect due to the human person and the dignity of each and every patient.

A unique responsibility belongs to health-care personnel: doctors, pharmacists, nurses, chaplains, men and women religious, administrators and volunteers. Their profession calls for them to be guardians and servants of human life. Evangelium Vitae n. 89.

Some local Pro-life Medical Professionals

Ethical and Doctrinal Resources

• Links to Church Teaching on life issues
• The National Catholic Bioethics Center provides free consultation services to individuals facing difficult ethical decisions related to health care. In emergency situations, an NCBC ethicist is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by calling 215-877-2660. NCBC ethicists do not provide legal or medical advice. More information about NCBC consultation service.
• View information about video/audio resources from past Symposia for Catholic Medical Professionals hosted by Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien can be found.

Organizations that Support Catholic Medical Professionals

• The National Catholic Bioethics Center was formed to reflect on the unprecedented scientific developments that penetrate the very mysteries of life and pose serious ethical challenges to human culture and to promote and safeguard the dignity of the human person in health care and the life sciences.
• The Baltimore Guild of the Catholic Medical Association serves Catholic physicians in the Archdiocese to become more like the Divine Physician.
• The St. Gianna Physicians Guild seeks to unite and encourage Catholic physicians, and those in the health care profession, to promote and defend Catholic principles in a public way by word and example, and to inspire sanctification in their lives.

Please contact the Respect Life Office at (410) 547-5337 or life@archbalt.org with questions or suggestions.

Prayer of the Catholic Doctor, Pope John Paul II

Divine Physician, who in Your earthly life showed special concern for those who suffer and entrusted to your disciples the ministry of healing, make us ever ready to alleviate the trials of our brethren. Make each one of us, aware of the great mission that is entrusted to him, strive always to be, in the performance of daily service, an instrument of Your merciful love. Enlighten our minds, guide our hands, make our hearts diligent and compassionate. Ensure that in every patient we know how to discern the features of Your divine Face.

You who are the Way, provide us with the gift of knowing how to imitate you every day as medical [professionals] not only of the body but of the whole person, helping those who are sick to tread with trust their own earthly path until the moment of their encounter with You.

You who are the Truth, provide us with the gift of wisdom and science in order to penetrate the mystery of the human person and their transcendent destiny as we draw near to them in order to discover the causes of their maladies and find suitable remedies.

You who are the Life, provide us with the gift of preaching and bearing witness to the ‘Gospel of life’ in our profession, committing ourselves to defending it always, from conception to its natural end, and to respect the dignity of every human being, and especially the dignity of the weakest and the most in need.

Make us O Lord, Good Samaritans, ready to welcome, treat, and console those we encounter in our work. Following the example of the holy medical doctors who have preceded us, help us to offer our generous contribution to the constant renewal of health care structures.

Bless our studies and our profession[s], enlighten our research and our teaching. Lastly, grant to us, having constantly loved and served You in our suffering brethren, that at the end of our earthly pilgrimage we may contemplate your glorious countenance and experience the joy of the encounter with You in your Kingdom of joy and everlasting peace.

Amen.