“Health service personnel, it would seem, should be at least as interested in eliminating death by starvation as they are death by cancer or heart disease.”

Presenting the keynote address at the Third Catholic Health Assembly, Sister Margaret Brennan, IHM, general superior of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, issued a strong plea for Catholic health personnel to consider the diseases of malnutrition and undernourishment.

She specifically mentioned the Symbionese Liberation Army, whose methods and philosophy she termed “violent and vitriolic,” stating that they have given a “dramatic demonstration that hunger and possible starvation prevail, not only in the desert drought areas of Africa, but within the borders of our own country.”

Adding that she did not agree with their methods, Sister, who is past president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, said she found it significant that “the focus of the media has been almost solely on the criminal aspects while hardly touching the issue and the anger that has called them forth.”

Sister described the 1,500 delegates as an organized social ministry, enjoying a favorable position of power, and also experiencing the weaknesses of not being able to act in favor of the poor because of other equally powerful structures.

“How do we use our power?” she asked the nation’s top health administrators, posing the additional question: “Is it too harsh to suggest that the AMA (American Medical Association) has done too much of our thinking.”

She referred to the active working relationship enjoyed by the two groups, observing that the AMA “has the power to be one of the most destructive lobbies in Washington with an almost unbroken history of opposing every good measure taken for the poor.”

Sister referred to “truly shocking figures that can be marshaled to show that we are well down on the list of Western developed countries in the matter of medical help we give all our citizens.”

Since cost of medical care is so great, she said, “it seems clear that only a comprehensive national system can supply it. Do we as the CHA take the leadership in pressing for this?”

She asked delegates if they see such a system “not as a matter of choice, but as an urgent claim of justice in order to guarantee that we will be free to provide adequate hospital services to all people, particularly the poor, the old, the blacks, the Indians, those in isolated areas?”

“While avoiding perhaps out and out socialized medicine in an American society that stresses individualism and personal rights, are we strong in promoting a system of universal, adequate, federally financed and regulated by consumer-agencies, as well as professional health, personal health insurance which will cover all legitimate health and dental care?”

Sister told delegates that they must continually ask just such searching questions concerning the personal dimensions of their ministry as well as concerning religious needs of their patients.

In her address, entitled “Sources of Unity,” Sister Margaret said the unity of the varied roles played by the delegates was to be found in their ministry of healing. “Ultimately, a Christian servant of those in need, that unity is sourced in the Gospel, in Jesus himself, the Healer par excellence.”

She presented a detailed scriptural account of Jesus’ role as healer, proclaimer of the Kingdom and inaugurator who calls disciples and sends them forth to realize the Kingdom.