title: "Like shining from shook foil". A "virtuous organization" is prepared to treat both the body and the soul.
abstract: The Catholic health care ministry is about mission, and the role of organizational ethical reflection is to encourage people in the ministry to think about the institutional performance and practice of medicine within a ministry of the Catholic Church. By engaging a creative process that identifies the needs of people served by Catholic health care, institutions are able to mediate the healing and redeeming power of Jesus, thereby creating virtuous organizations. To depict the mission of Catholic health care as an extension of the healing ministry of Jesus is to evoke explicitly Catholic theological language, and such language is appropriate because Catholic health care is a ministry of the Catholic Church. The church itself is the embodiment of the healing and redeeming ministry of Jesus, and the institutional ministries it has created over time need to bear witness to this fundamental reason for their existence.
authors.affiliation: Catholic Healthcare Partners, Cincinnati, USA.
authors.forename: John A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Gallagher
mesh_terms: D002410:Catholicism; D004645:Empathy; D004991:Ethics, Institutional; D006694:Holistic Health; D016519:Hospitals, Religious / Q000941:ethics* / Q000458:organization & administration; D006801:Humans; D020380:Needs Assessment; D009937:Organizational Objectives; D010327:Pastoral Care; D014481:United States