After working as a nurse practitioner for more than 20 years in the secular medical field, Dede Chism’s frustration peaked. 

It has become increasingly difficult to be a practicing Catholic in the field of medicine. 

Every day, something new disheartened her. 

“I feel like we are always swimming against the current when we’re trying to practice fully Catholic medicine,” Chism told the Register. “For example, in the state of Colorado where I live, it is illegal for us to provide progesterone to a woman who started an abortion and changes her mind and wants to try and save her baby. She does not get to choose that.”

“The mother can only choose to abort. She can’t choose to save. It’s just cruel.”

Fed up by the system, Chism and daughter Abby Sinnett, also a nurse practitioner, founded Bella Health + Wellness, an Englewood, Colorado-based health clinic focused on Catholic medical practices. 

“I was on a retreat, and a group of women came up to me and asked if my daughter would consider starting a Catholic clinic,” Chism said, explaining that “regular secular OB-GYN clinics” promote “permanent sterilization, oral contraception, even abortion,” which are contrary to Church teaching. “So we started to discern whether we should start it.” 

While discerning and discussing the possibility of a Catholic clinic, Chism and her daughter attended a medical mission trip in Peru. 

“At the end of the mission, my daughter and I were on the roof of the mission. And she just said, ‘Mom, I think the Holy Spirit’s saying now’s the time to open a clinic,’” Chism recalled. “I said that I agreed.” 

Thus, Bella Health + Wellness was born. The clinic prides itself in its holistic, Catholic approach to medicine, adhering to the moral teachings of the Church regarding medical care and the dignity of the human person, found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, particularly in Paragraphs 2276 to 2291. It offers family care, pediatrics and OB-GYN services in an effort to provide families with a Catholic medical option. 

“We had 43,000 patient visits last year. We take care of full fertility, infertility care, OB-GYN care and surgeries; we practice family medicine, pediatrics and adult medicine, all aligned with the Catholic Church, but also very effective,” Chism said. “Bella and its success are really the fruits of God’s goodness. I mean, we have a successful Catholic practice smack in the middle of liberal Colorado.”

Chism is far from alone in her frustration toward the medical field. Catholic doctors and ethicists across the country have grown resentful of the often anti-Catholic practices that modern medicine has adopted. Even the Church has taken notice — planning to encourage and uplift the noble healing profession during the April 5-6 Jubilee of the Sick and Health Care Workers.

Every day, Joseph Meaney, a senior fellow and former president at the National Catholic Bioethics Center, receives a call from patients or doctors asking whether a certain medical practice is ethical or not. 

“Medicine is at the epicenter of many ethical issues today,” Meaney told the Register. “The biggest issues out there — abortion, assisted suicide, contraception, sterilization, etc. — try to get the medical profession to be part of the culture of death.” 

Even pediatricians are faced with these tough medical questions. 

“We had a good friend of ours who said she became a pediatrician because she wanted to avoid all the ethical landmines and thought that family medicine would be safe,” Meaney said. “Then all the transgender stuff hit and people were asking for her to prescribe puberty blockers for children.”

“She complained that there’s almost no way to escape the ethical dilemmas in medicine,” he added. 

This mentality is prevalent throughout the medical field, according to Dr. Anna Korkis, whose gastroenterology practice is in Ridgewood, New Jersey.

“The right to life is not upheld as it should be,” Korkis, who has been a doctor for more than 30 years, told the Register. “Tragically, medicine has just slowly changed to have more gray areas because people do not want to take responsibility for their actions and now believe that life is very disposable.”

Catholic doctors and nurses are often at the forefront of this battle. 

“When I have talked with medical students, those in residency and even from my own experiences, people try to push you and push your boundaries, asking, ‘Will you just do this anti-Catholic thing? Even just this one time?’” Chism said. “I would say that those are common experiences where Catholics get pressured to do things that they are not comfortable with, leaving them feeling isolated.” 

 

Finding Community 

As medical professionals work to uphold the dignity of each patient, they seek out support from other Catholic doctors through programs sponsored by organizations such as Legatus. 

Legatus, founded by Tom Monaghan in 1987, is a collective of lay Catholic leaders in professional fields that come together to discuss and support one another in the integration of their faith and work lives. 

Recently, Legatus has been working to support doctors and nurses. Since joining the organization, Chism has found that Legatus and its members have rallied around and embraced the mission of Bella Wellness, helping the clinic to grow. 

“The Legatus community has embraced us as they’ve learned about us,” Chism said. “We are just starting our first big expansion, which is to open a clinic in Bismarck, North Dakota, in partnership with the University of Mary. Seeing how the Legatus community in Bismarck has embraced us coming has been very helpful and inspirational. They are supporting us because they understand the impact that a strong Catholic clinic will bring to their community.” 

Outside of the communal support, Legatus offers a wide variety of formation opportunities for its members to help them grow in both their faith and knowledge of Church teachings. 

In his work with the National Catholic Bioethics Center, Meaney has worked closely with Legatus to create a series of lectures and support members facing ethical dilemmas. 

“Legatus has a monthly meeting, and so we have spoken at a lot of those different meetings,” Meaney said. “We also have a partnership with Legatus going back several years, where we offer ethical advice on a personal level if this member has ethical concerns or a dilemma with the work that they do.” 

“Legatus supports its members in faithful leadership, rooted in Catholic moral principles. Many of our members deal with bioethics issues, both personally and professionally. The 24/7 Catholic ethics consultation service in partnership with the National Catholic Bioethics Center offers expert guidance to help members navigate ethical challenges in business and life while remaining faithful to Church teaching,” Stephen Henley, president of Legatus International, told the Register in an email. 

Many doctors, including Korkis, also find Legatus’ lecture series informative and beneficial. 

 

Catholic Approach to Medicine

Catholic medical professionals continually find hope through the long-standing contributions that Catholics have made, and continue to make, to the medical field and the example of other Catholic doctors and ethicists like Meaney. 

“The Catholic approach to medicine is so healing; it is so good,” Meaney said. “One of my favorite stories is the development of the C-section. Prior to this development, babies were sometimes caught in the birth canal and couldn’t get out.” 

The Church criticized the accepted solution — “kill the baby to save the life of the mother” — arguing that doctors should try to find ways to save both the life of the mother and the child, Meaney explained. So Catholic doctors developed the cesarean section (C-section), which would save both the mother and child, he said. 

“They came up with this wonderful medical procedure that saves both the life of the mother and the child, even after the rest of the medical field had accepted having to kill the child,” Meaney said. “It just showed how the morality from the Church can help science move forward to do something better to save them both, rather than sacrifice the one to save the other.”

For many doctors, a culture change often begins within their own practice. 

Korkis has found that sometimes the best way to counter the vices of modern medicine is to simply treat each patient as if he or she were Christ. 

“We all need love, to be nurtured, kindness, to be treated as Christ,” Korkis said. “If we can introduce that into the medical field in the way that we treat our patients, we can minimize many of the things that create the symptoms of a culture of death.” 

Ultimately, health care must recognize the dignity of each human person and care for them in a holistic manner. Chism believes that if clinics and hospitals fully adopt this approach, the impacts will reach well beyond the medical field. 

“The darkness in the medical field is real, and it is killing people, from the inside out,” Chism said. “But when they can come in, and are cared for from the very core of their being, no matter where they’ve been, what they’ve done, who they are, they are loved and cared for, and through that are reminded that every cell of them has dignity.

“If they are treated like that, people will leave with their heads held high and return to home or to their work more aware of their dignity and others’ dignity.”