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CHICAGO STUDIES
teen years from now we will be right back holding another emergency meeting on Catholic Hospital Directives-on other issues. I realize I have not restricted my comment to Directives fo•¡ Catholic Hospital Facilities only. I have talked of problems of Catholic doctors, Catholic patients and of hospitals. I have done so on purpose, for the problems although not identical, are intertwined and can not be totally separated. The Directives are but one facet of a much more general and serious problem. It is a problem of non-communication between the suppliers and consumers of only one product-medical carewhich should go into the development of the whole person. Regardless of how much consultation is alleged to have occurred between bishops, theologians, administrators and doctors, the fact of the matter is that there is none. There are bodies pasing motions and others writing paragraphs. What we need is prolonged, daily contact and joint study. It seems to me that only then can we produce catholic directives (note the small c) instead of slicing a person up into a soul and a body, and, at that, one body below and one above the umbilicus. We will need structures of communication which are functionally much more real and permanent if we are not soon to be without hospitals as we fear being without schools. In Europe the church is still wondering how it lost the working classes. I hope in the U.S. we will not wonder in 50 years how we lost the health professionals.