Bishop Robert Vasa, the coadjutor bishop-elect of Santa Rosa, CA, and the episcopal adviser of the Catholic Medical Association since 2002, presided at a White Mass for medical professionals over the weekend. In his homily, using the example of the Miracle at Cana, Bishop Vasa told the congregation that, when the “usual practice of medicine conflicts with faith, or conflicts with the moral code of our Church,” we must have the courage to follow Christ:
As Physicians who embrace the Catholic faith you must know that you cannot minimize or neglect reason or science in your pursuit of good for your patients. For you, however, as believers in Jesus, that reason will and must always be tempered by, and subject to, faith. As you face difficult situations and circumstances, you too need to hear the words of our all compassionate Mother, “Do whatever He tells you.” In those instances where faith and reason seem to be in conflict then, provided you truly know your faith, you will become convinced that it is reason and not faith which is involved in error. In our subjectivist, relativistic age which often masquerades as an age of pure reason it is tempting to put a lot more faith in science and reason than it is to put faith in God. Yet, both are acts of faith and both are directed toward a perceived god. For much of our society that god is science or government or technology. For us there is a greater God and a greater good. The wine stewards were wise enough to put their trust in the one whom Mary trusted. The Church now stands in the place of Christ and Mary still says to us, as she said to those stewards, “Do whatever He tells you.”
Read his complete address at the Catholic Key blog, here.
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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