Catholic teaching and disparities in care. Our ministry is perfectly positioned to lead the struggle against inequities in health care.

Mr. McConnaha is communication specialist, mission services, ethics, Catholic Health Association. here is nothing revelatory in saying that Catholic social justice teaching is opposed to a health care system that provides one level of service and care to certain populations while at the same time providing another, interior level to others. One need not be familiar with Catholic social justice teaching to rightfully assume that the church simply does not smile on social structures that allow for unequal treatment of people in a community. Whenever one group in a society is treated unfairly, we who serve the ministry pause—driven by a sense of fairness, compassion, and, I daresay, guilt—to say that something here is unjust. We then busy ourselves about the work of making things right. Restructuring systems so that they better abide by precepts of social justice can certainly be accomplished without appealing to the theological aspects of certain truths about how we regard people and communities. Solutions for reducing health care disparities in the United .States have, in tact, been proposed and arc variously being instituted, all without reference to the wisdom of the church. So why bother exploring how Catholic social justice teaching can be applied to disparities in health care services when it may be enough to simply know that the church—like almost even" other religious entity— savs that all people should simply be treated justly?