An answer from a systematic exercise (theology)

Systematics Exercise Question 2 Silva Redigonda Summers ago I served as a chaplain intern at a Catholic hospital. I chose to work on a floor with those suffering from HIV and cancer. I did not select the floor because of any interest to work there or noble cause. I selected it because no one else wanted to work with HIV patients. We had completed a tour of the floor and the Head Nurse told us how important our work was there. I also spent two weeks in palliative care. I felt through that whole time as if I was impersonating a real chaplain and felt so ill equipped for all the suffering I was about to see. I was to deal with patients of various religions, some recognized as a religion and some not. With all this suffering, I saw their struggle and I became to some, a source of strength. I could no longer pray outside of the hospital. I could only gain strength from the nature around me in my garden. I marvelled at the roses and the birds and squirrels. I became my patients’ connection to God and I was so ill equipped. This is about being with a family at the bedside of a cancer patient. How many times was there no family? Now, I know how I can link the Trinity to being with a family at the bedside of a cancer patient, how I can relate to a scripture and conciliar materials from the course. One of the things I learned about Augustine, Aquinas and Lonnergan that separates them from others is that they provide direction. Act, Act, Act plays on my mind as does the Holy Spirit. There is that sense of spiritual direction, that guiding which was perhaps working intrinsically within me, though I was unaware at the time. I often ask for grace and perhaps I received it to help me to respond to the needs of my patients. Gilles Mongeau in class said you cannot understand the Trinity unless you are more like the Trinity. Perhaps is some small way I am there, on the right path. I was working one afternoon at the hospital when a nurse who seemed very upset informed me that a woman had just been informed that she had brain cancer and she was taking it badly. I rushed to her side and introduced myself as the chaplain intern. She grabbed my hand and tears flowed from her eyes. She was scared and asked me to help her pray. “I forgot how to pray!” she cried out. She started to recite the “Our Father” and I helped her. She slowly began to remember and found some comfort. She told me her fears as her husband quietly left the bedside and went to sit behind a curtain away from my patient’s view. He held his head down in grief as his wife wanted to know why this was happening to her. She was a good person, why would God do this to her, she asked? My heart ached for this family. Tears flowed from her as mine remained within my heart. I stayed with her, listening to her, praying with her, being with her. Later I spoke to her husband and he broke down in grief asking me why God would do this. I think I said that God does not do this and there is a lot we do not understand. Kelly’s “The Trinity of Love” p 117 speaks of symbols as “affectively – charged compact presentations of the mystery, be they deeds, gestures, events, words or persons.” I apply this to my being with this family. There was so much love in that room that fear only increased the forcefulness and power of that love. Not only did this family love God, they accepted though terrified what was happening to them. I did not give this family a rosary because they were not Catholic but I did give Rosaries to others who would wear it lovingly around their necks, or near their person. This presentation of the mystery has been a new learning theory for me though I practiced it unknowingly. Thomas did not try to prove the Trinity. His aim was to provide a theological wisdom: “an overall intelligible coherence in the data of faith” (Kelly, p 121). That is what happened to me that day with that family. I could not prove my Trinity or my faith and there was no need to prove anything nor could I. There was an acceptance of mystery, a presence of God, Son and Holy Spirit. There was perhaps a theological wisdom in being a support, a source of love for that family as God is a source of love for me. Kelly describes “The loving principle” as the Father and the Son being one as the source of love, though distinct as Father and son (p128). Thomas was an unidentified guide to me because it was love that so inspired me in that hospital and it is the theme of love in the Trinity that so comforts me. “Each of the divine persons is God, knowing, willing, acting in a divine way…the Father is the unoriginated source of the Son and the Spirit, the Son by being begotten of the Father, and with the Father, breathing for the Spirit; the spirit by being breathed forth in love.”(Kelly, 130). I have a better appreciation of this phrase after being in the service of so much suffering, yet so much love, that I can more fully appreciate the spirit of love. But love was not always there for all my patients. I know we are speaking of cancer and I shall risk it and speak of a HIV patient because he may have had cancer too but the HIV was killing him. He was delirious and I would see him on his stretcher in the hallway. The hospital team was just waiting for him to die. He was not responsive I was told. “He does not know you are there”. I would speak to him whenever I saw him and did see a response. One day I went into his room and he spoke. He was coherent. He told me that when he was 12, his step father forced him out of the house because he was gay. This boy had lived on the streets after that. He told me he had no friends as they had all died from HIV. He had no visitors. He also told me he was Catholic. I spoke to the Head Nurse about him who could not believe he was actually lucid. “It is miraculous” he responded “if that is true”. The miracle soon faded, as my patient’s responses became more routine. I learned from the Head Nurse that he had contacted my patient’s mother and she had no intention of visiting him but was hopeful that he had some life insurance. I brought my patient a rosary and his eyes lit up. Those beautiful, big blue eyes, was all that was left of the man he may have been. He reached out and our fingers touched and I don’t think I have ever felt so much contact to another person with such a light touching of fingers. If the Holy Spirit was not at work with us that day, I would not know what to describe it. His mother did tell his sibling about this brother dying and the relative took the trip to Toronto to visit him. I was so grateful that one person went to visit him. I also asked a visiting priest to visit him. “Is this routine, the priest asked”? No, I replied. He did not ask for a priest but I think you should visit him. He is a Catholic. I felt that I did my job. The priest later told me, he did visit him and I was pleased. But the response from clergy was not always affirmative and that made it more difficult for me. The Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions in 1965 (D’Costa, p. 101) was a much needed reformation of thinking. One chaplain of another faith told me how much of a disdain she had for Catholics. She told me that a nun from Africa had told her she would go to hell because she was not Catholic. I told her that the nun was stupid and she should not take that seriously. It is too bad that I was unaware of Fr Feeney at the time. I could have supplied a more informative response. I could have said that this priest was punished by excommunication for not being able to say otherwise but that it was also good because it forced the traditional teaching of “extra ecclesiam nulla salus” interpreted as outside the church there is no salvation to be re-examined. It was never formulated or applied to non-Christian religions in the technical sense in which they are understood. There is no doubt that non-Christians may be saved (D’Costa, pp 101-102). I am always surprised when I hear such a statement that you have to be a Catholic to be saved, especially one evening from a student in a class. I have never thought of myself as being more special to God as a Catholic than anyone else on this planet. I enjoyed reading D’Costa because I see how religion also damages, “..the best of the Enlightenment within the Roman Catholic tradition. Equality will become the equal and inviolable dignity of all persons.” The one person I could not help was a Jehovah Witness woman who was dying from cancer. Try as I might to help her deal with her approaching death (she had refused a blood transfusion) I could not get her to talk about her feelings. Her husband stopped me. My patient told him that she would probably feel better talking about this but she would not contradict her husband and her husband would not contradict his God. I was helpless and for the first time, I had to accept defeat. I could endure his wanting to convert me (which the other chaplains found amusing) but I had to stop trying when he told me that I understood his position. I did and said that they could contact me if they wished. It was the first time I had a wall placed between me and a patient that I had tried to penetrate and failed. “It is God’s will” he would constantly say and this phrase has become a nightmare to me and now I remember why. This patient would have died anyway, but at least a blood transfusion could have extended her life and who knows. This patient had the “Kingdom of God” in the form of attractive men in suits forever visiting her. Though my visits were tolerated I realized that I was doomed for hell and they were trying to save me. Fr Feeney was in that room that last day, when I had to accept what he had believed that everyone that does not believe as they believe will be doomed to hell. I understood Fr Feeney as I connect him to them. Where is the compassion and the love of God when one person or religion believes that all others are doomed. It saddens me that people of my own faith sometimes believe that. I have no allusions anymore that clergy are all wonderful. My cancer patient who had the cancer in her brain remarked that she had spoken to an Anglican priest whom she had found comforting. That evening I saw the duty chaplain. I had been told that she had been a Roman Catholic but had become an Anglican to be a priest. She always wore her priestly attire and I was pleased to tell her that she had such an impact on my patient. I asked her to visit her because she had just been informed that her cancer was in her brain. I was so disappointed when she remarked that she did not remember the patient and she was too busy. I was stunned. “But she is dying and she was just informed?” I repeated. My shock must have been evident because she came to me later and asked if I really thought she should visit the patient. “It is up to you” I replied. Where was the love? Where was the Trinity in that hospital which bore the insignia St. Redemptoris Missio 29 reveals that the Pope sees the natural questing of men and women related to the action of the Holy Spirit (D’Costa, p 107). I am on a quest and I am so totally open to be guided. When I was debating to go to a Theological program or continue in psychology, I was in my living room. I said out loud, God I have done what I wanted to do all my life. Now it is your turn. What do you want me to do? My theology contact called me and interviewed me right away and said I was accepted. I contacted the Director for the Psychology program and informed him of my decision. I sometimes wonder if I have made the right decision, but then I realize that the decision was made for me. When I now counsel and find my clients who have suffered so much that their views of God are so twisted and unhealthy, I find solace in remembering what Augustine taught that God is known to each person within them. I now think of God being imprinted in the soul of each person I see. I pray that the Trinity remain alive within me as it is at this moment and that I am given the grace and guidance to do what is right for each client that comes to me. “There is, the harvest of the Spirit and it is experienced interiorly and personally as”love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control (Gal:5:22) [Crowe, p 331] . Back to the present: It has been a very busy time for me so I thought I would cut and paste the answer to a question I was given in grad studies. As I look back now, I remember how much I was surrounded by suffering. There were quite a few incidents that were similar and amendments and omissions were edited to paste this and protect the identities.