Beyond the Field Hospital

Some who have a familiarity with Lumen Gentium, the Vatican II document, may recall the section of this dogmatic constitution on the images used for the Church. One of these images is the field (Lumen Gentium, 6). It is an image which takes up but four sentences in the text, each sentence drawing on words found in either the Old Testament or the New Testament. The operative words in the short description are tree, roots, vineyard, and branch.

I don’t know if Pope Francis had this part of Lumen Gentium in mind when he used the expression “field hospital” for the Church’s work back in 2013. He could have, but I doubt it. My guess is that the Holy Father had in mind something like what we Americans remember was depicted in the immensely popular television series M*A*S*H.

Readers will remember American soldiers during the Korean War being taken from the battlefield to a field hospital to be stitched up and or bandaged and, depending on the severity of the wounds, returned to the fighting. Captain Hawkeye Pierce (Alan Alda) had an immensely important role then—to save as many lives as he could. And that he did along with Col. Potter (Harry Morgan) and Capt. Trapper John McIntyre (Wayne Rogers)—all three of them surgeons in the same tent under the most disadvantaged of circumstances. Viewers at home knew intuitively it was a most serious sitcom, even if it had one-liners and zingers galore.

Binding up wounds is what Jesus did in His public ministry. We think of what He did for the woman afflicted with hemorrhages. All she wanted to do was touch the Lord’s cloak. She did, and immediately the flow of blood dried up. Two of the evangelists, St. Mark and St. Luke, point out that the woman had been suffering for twelve years. It was a chronic condition then, and thus it is not the same as being shot on a battlefield with the possibility of dying.

Far more common in Jesus’ ministry were the healings of the blind and the deaf. To get sight and hearing back are life-altering but not life-saving. When it comes to the Kingdom, life-altering is right there with life-saving. When we apply this understanding to the Church’s perennial work of evangelization, life-altering precedes, we should say, life-saving. The Church is the efficacious sign of salvation. This truth cannot be understood apart from the truth that the Church, by word and sacrament, is the signum conversio (sign of conversion).

We need to go back though, to the early days of this pontificate, and recall something else the Holy Father said regarding the field hospital. He said that the wounded should be treated right away. “Then we can talk about everything else,” he remarked. It is hard to disagree with Peter’s Successor when it is a real life and death situation, pastorally speaking. But how many pastoral encounters are there today when death is imminent? Not many I say, if my own priestly ministry is any gauge.

Going back more than forty years ago, the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published what is known as the Instruction on Infant Baptism (Pastoralis actio, 1980). It is a short document (just a few pages in length), and I made use of it when working with married couples who gave “witness talks” at what was known then as Baptism Preparation sessions for new parents. That was also a time when the Church in the United States had, by comparison, a lot of infant baptisms. The parish where I was assigned in the mid-1980s had Baptisms every Sunday of the month. Today, not even “big parishes” have Baptisms every Sunday of the month. 

According to Russell Shaw and David Byers, in their book titled Revitalizing Catholicism in America (2023), between 1970 and 2019, the number of infant baptisms declined by fifty percent! More to the point of this essay though, Pastoralis actio addresses the pastoral reality of families with little faith. In these situations, pastors could delay Baptism until such time that the parents give an assurance that their child would receive the Christian upbringing required by the sacrament (Pastoralis actio, 30-31). The Church, the document indicates, must have a well-founded hope that the Baptism will bear fruit (cf. Pastoralis actio, 30).

The pastoral scene has gotten a lot more problematical since the publication of Pastoralis actio. Little faith has been eroded to almost no faith at all in a deeply secularized country like the United States. If my own pastoral ministry is any indicator, I would pose this question: What about the widespread acceptance of cohabitation? Cohabitation before marriage has now become, in many cases, the suspension of marriage altogether. 

Still, the suspension of marriage does not mean the suspension of children. Rates of incidence for a lifestyle which involves no marriage but having children together is not the same in every location in the United States. Where I am on the map, it could be 10 percent, maybe even as high as 15 percent of the new parents I meet in face-to-face interviews to arrange for infant baptisms who are not married. More common, though, are those new parents who do get married but civilly. I would estimate that at least 50 percent of the new parents where I am assigned have not married in church.

Whether married in church or not, there is no regular habit of going to church on the part of these new parents. In fact, I can say that I have never seen any new parents in church before or after a Baptism in my current assignment. What to do then?

Well, the interview with the parents ahead of time is not just for taking information. It is that, but a fair amount of time is spent on marriage and attending Mass. It is not the kind of discussion that I am sure the new parents find comfortable. When they leave the meeting, they have probably concluded that it was not all that “welcoming.” But where else and with whom else are these matters going to be addressed?

And that is why I find the follow-up comment of Pope Francis to be perplexing. After the patient has gotten to the field hospital and his wound(s) have been treated, then and only then should there be “talk about everything else.” [Talk of] “high cholesterol and about the level of his blood sugars” comes later, the pope contends. 

But later never comes, given the patterns of pastoral life I have described here. Besides, Marriage and the Eucharist are not “everything else.” They are sacraments which most definitely are related to Baptism. Lest we forget that from the One Who died for us on the Cross flowed blood and water (John 19:34). And what about the man leaving his father and mother and being joined to his wife? Isn’t that one-flesh union a reference to Christ and the Church (cf. Ephesians 5:32).

There is also the initial condition of being wounded. Wounded by what? By original sin and personal sin, we have to say and say it above “everything else.” Shouldn’t these matters figure prominently in the momentous decision to baptize an infant son or daughter?

To change the imagery somewhat, let us think not of surgeons operating, and blood spurting all over the place just like in M*A*S*H. Instead, a better image, I think, is a doctor examining a patient, checking that patient’s eyes and ears.

In St. Matthew’s Gospel, the evangelist records how Jesus defends His use of parables by quoting the prophet Isaiah: “You shall indeed hear but not understand, you shall indeed look but never see.” Continuing to cite Isaiah, Jesus says: “[U]nderstand with [your] heart and be converted and I [will] heal them” (Matthew 13:14-15).

Conversion and healing can only be in relation to one thing: sin. Breaking free of personal sin comes with the light of faith. I see as never before, and it is grace which causes this to happen. I hear, too, in a new way, and that is because of the Word—the Word made flesh, as St. John tells us in the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel. He comes down then to encounter.

To encounter the priest before the celebration of Baptism is an opportunity for the vast majority of new parents to rethink the commitment they have made to life without the Eucharist and without the Church. They may have Christ to some degree or another but not the pleroma, not the fullness (see Colossians 1:19). This, after all, is what Jesus promised us: I have come so that [you] might have life and have it to the full (John 10:10).

[Photo Credit: 20th Century Fox]