Benedict Medicine: A Catholic Response to Rescue the Profession's Healing Mission

From Christ's healing of the leper to religious orders' tending to the sick in the wilderness of a newly discovered continent, history is replete with countless examples of Christianity's evangelizing ministry through the ages.

In more recent times, the Church's historical healing mission in the United States has been wounded by modern secularizing influences. Amidst this secularization, Christian doctors and nurses have come under increasing pressure to privatize their deeply held convictions in an industrial medical culture that is thoroughly antagonistic to the Christian worldview.

Benedict Medicine offers Christian hope amid this bleak cultural outlook, asserting that medical professionals must play a prominent role in reshaping the public moral order. Written by a Catholic physician for Christian medical professionals and non-clinical laypeople seeking to live their faith, this book details a practical approach to developing a medical witness in a hostile secular culture. It presents an antidote to the emasculation of faith's role in medicine and serves as a wake-up call to Christian medical professionals to see their practice as ministry and reclaim their call to be salt of the earth through the care they administer. It encourages the non-medical faithful to counter the secular healthcare industry by engaging with the medical profession on a spiritual level, as well as a practical one.

Benedict Medicine enlivens hope for devoted Christians-doctors, nurses and patients-by pointing the way toward a foundation of medical ministry in accord with the truth of the Church, guided by the principles of Catholic social teaching. Its pragmatic application of the Church's instruction informs the blueprint of a Christian primary care medical alternative that enjoins true solidarity, subsidiarity, and stewardship to serve human dignity at all stages and among people of all walks of life.

Benedict Medicine is a call to faithful medical professionals to overcome fear by witnessing to radical faith in practice, and to non-clinical Christians to consider their medical choices as integral to an intentional Christian life. Benedict Medicine challenges the Catholic imagination to do what Christians have done throughout the ages-engage the culture as a form of medical evangelization, collaborating with the One Divine Physician to "make all things new" (Revelation 21:5).

"Breen skillfully interweaves historical analysis, sociopolitical commentary, and theological reflection, ultimately proposing "Benedict Medicine" as a spiritually and ethically coherent model of primary care. "Benedict Medicine" contributes meaningfully to the intersection of medical ethics, Christian theology, and social critique, offering both diagnosis and remedy for the malaise afflicting modern medical practice."

Kristin Collier, M.D.

Associate Professor of Internal Medicine

Director, University of Michigan Medical School Program on Health, Spirituality and Religion

Michigan Medicine

"Benedict Medicine may be the clearest articulation of what many have known for some time, the uncoupling of Catholic social principles from the noble profession of medicine. With an anticipated renewed emphasis on these principles under the auspices of Leo XIV, Breen's work offers a timely and substantive guide to realize them in the medical profession."

John M. Travaline, M.D.

Roman Catholic Deacon in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia and Professor of Thoracic Medicine and Surgery