"The Healing Presence of Christ in the Practice of Medicine" (an audio link)

Dr. John Bruchalski is founder and head of the Tepeyac Family Center in Northern Virginia. I first heard of Dr. Bruchalski, after he founded Divine Mercy Care Pharmacy - one of the nation's only pharmacies refusing to do ANY business in contraceptives. As reported by CBS News on February 2, 2009,

• "Whether Catholics will be drawn to the pharmacy is uncertain. According to a Gallup poll published last year for an extensive study of U.S. Catholicism called American Catholics Today, 75 percent of U.S. Catholics said you can still be a good Catholic even if you don't obey church teachings on birth control."

Shame on all of us that our brothers and sisters are so abysmally informed about the Truth which would set them free! I believe that this situation is directly related to the apparently poor response of Catholics to heed Cardinal DiNardo's call to object to HHS mandates, which would effectively snuff out conscience protections and assault religious liberty. My personal opinion is that ads for pharmacies which stock abortifacient & contraceptives - which appear in so many parish bulletins - perpetuate the egregious error that this all of this is simply no big deal! In his 10/25/07 address to the International Congress of Catholic Pharmacists, the Holy Father instead reminded us that

• pharmacists are called to be "intermediaries between doctor and patient; they have an educational role with patients to teach them the proper dosage of their medication and especially to acquaint them with the ethical implications of the use of certain drugs. In this context, it is not possible to anaesthetize consciences, for example, concerning the effects of particles whose purpose is to prevent an embryo's implantation or to shorten a person's life. The pharmacist must invite each person to advance humanity, so that every being may be protected from the moment of conception until natural death, and that medicines may fulfil properly their therapeutic role....



• "In the moral domain, your Federation is invited to address the issue of conscientious objection, which is a right your profession must recognize, permitting you not to collaborate either directly or indirectly by supplying products for the purpose of decisions that are clearly immoral such as, for example, abortion or euthanasia....



• "It is also your duty to help young people who enter the different pharmaceutical professions to reflect on the increasingly delicate ethical implications of their activities and decisions. To this end, it is important that all Catholic health-care professionals and people of good will join forces to deepen their formation, not only at a technical level but also with regard to bioethical issues, as well as to propose this formation to the profession as a whole."

In a speech given at Christendom College, Dr. Bruchalski provides a disturbing and provocative overview of the state of Catholic health care (The Healing Presence of Christ in the Practice of Medicine, July 2008). How is it possible that absolutely prohibited procedures have ever been performed on Catholic hospital grounds? When there are so many Catholic physicians, how is it possible that there are only "69 obstetricians & NFP only doctors out of 80,000 in the United States"? Insightfully, Dr. Bruchalski discusses the "crisis of the laity in medicine,"referring to confusions between the ministry of the ordained and the apostolate of the laity.

Dr. Bruchalski does not stop at diagnosing the problems. He provides an awe-inspiring prescriptive call to return to the Truth!