Health Calls Season 7, Episode 1 launches the new Health Reimagined season by exploring how moral imagination can help transform healthcare across the United States by responding creatively to pressing challenges.
Health Calls Season 7, Episode 1 launches the new Health Reimagined season by exploring how moral imagination can help transform healthcare across the United States. Host Brian Reardon and Executive Producer Josh Matejka welcome Daniel J. Daly and Thomas Bushlack of the Center for Theology and Ethics in Catholic Health to discuss how Catholic healthcare can respond creatively to today’s most pressing challenges.
Drawing on Catholic social teaching, whole-person care, and the healing ministry of Jesus, the conversation examines how leaders can move beyond technical solutions to imagine new possibilities that promote human flourishing, uphold human dignity, and strengthen the common good. Dan and Tom explain how moral imagination bridges theology and practice, helping organizations address emerging questions around AI, access to care, partnerships, and healthcare ethics. They also discuss the work of the Center and preview the work ahead of them in 2026 and 2027, including academic papers, conference visits, and podcasts.
Brian Reardon (00:06):
Welcome to Health Calls, the podcast of the Catholic Health Association of the United States. I'm your host, Brian Reardon. With me is Josh Matejka. Hey, it's good to be sitting next to you and not across the hall on a screen.
Josh Matejka (00:17):
Yeah, I think this is maybe only the second or third time we've done that since we started this, but yeah, it's good to see you.
Brian Reardon (00:22):
Yeah, we're kicking off a new episode of Health Calls, or new season, I should say, of Health Calls. And this first episode, we're going to be talking about he moral imagination of Catholic healthcare. And we're also doing this episode in conjunction, it's kind of a crosswalk, if you will, between Ethics on Call, which is the podcast of the Center for Theology and Ethics in Catholic Health. And we'll talk a little bit about the center in just a moment, but first let me introduce our two guests from the center. We have Daniel J. Daly. He's the executive director for the Center for Theology and Ethics in Catholic Health. And next to him is Thomas Bushlack. He serves as senior director for what we call CTECH or the center. Welcome to both of you. It's great to have you on the show for this first episode of our seventh season.
Josh Matejka (01:08):
Seventh season, yeah. All right.
Dan Daly (01:10):
Thanks for having us.
Tom Bushlack (01:10):
Yeah, it's great to be here. It's good
Brian Reardon (01:12):
To be here. So before we turn it over to you folks to talk a little bit about the center and then get into this issue of moral imagination, I want to turn to Josh and ask, we came up with this series on what we're calling Health Reimagined for the theme of season seven. Talk a little bit about how we came up with that.
Josh Matejka (01:29):
Yeah. And so this is, I believe, the third season where we've done a theme for all of our conversations in the podcast. And last year, we spent a lot of time talking about United for Change, which of course was in conjunction with CHA's assembly back in June 26th. And so when we were looking at what we wanted to talk about in season seven, we looked again to our strategic plan and into some of the bigger initiatives that we're looking at as an organization. And one of them is health reimagined. And that's a big question, re-imagining what healthcare looks like in the United States is massive undertaking and truthfully something we can't solve at this table, the four of us.
Brian Reardon (02:11):
We're going to give it our best shot.
Josh Matejka (02:12):
Yeah, yeah, in 30 minutes. But it starts with the imagine part of that phrase is we have to have imagination for what comes next or what could be different because one of the common themes of a lot of conversations around healthcare right now is, well, everybody knows that there's a broken part of the system, or at least in some part of the system is broken. And so how do we imagine something better? How do we imagine what's next? And so that's why I'm really excited that Dan and Tom are here because a lot of the work that they do at the center is revolving around that imagination and how it applies to the theology and ethics that guide Catholic health and our ministry as a whole. So I'm really excited to see them. I also produce Ethics on Call, so it's actually nice to get to sit down with them as opposed to hearing from them on the back end.
Brian Reardon (03:00):
So you're making double pay in this episode.
Josh Matejka (03:02):
I mean, that's up to y'all, I guess.
Brian Reardon (03:06):
But no, it is nice to have this sort of, trying to think of in the '70s and '80s, they used to do those TV shows where they would cross pollinate and stuff. So it kind of feels a little bit like that.sover show. Yeah, the crossover show. So that's what we've got here with, again, health calls and ethics on call. But for Dan and Tom, I think before we get into the topic of moral imagination, which I think there's going to be a lot to unpack there, let's remind our listeners and our viewers what the Center for Theology and Ethics and Catholic Health is all about. So maybe just kind of level set there and tell us a little bit about the center and the work you've been doing now for over two years.
Dan Daly (03:42):
Yeah, thanks Brian. So the Center for Theology and Ethics of Catholic Health is a research center that's sponsored by CHA. And so we got a ton of support from CHA to do the work of providing ethical guidance to the ministry on any number of questions. So we're tasked with taking up those pressing questions in Catholic healthcare, whether they're theological or ethical and providing some kind of guidance to the ministry. So we've done that on brain death, we've done that on AI, we're doing that on partnerships down the line on vaccine ethics. So whatever the issues are at the time, we're here to provide that guidance. We call it faithful guidance. We're faithful to the tradition, but we want to provide the guidance that helps Catholic healthcare to live into that healing ministry even more.
Brian Reardon (04:33):
And it's kind of a bigger picture work rather than, again, we have ethicists that work at CHA, but they're really working on the day-to-day stuff. Will you guys have a chance to step back and take a broader view?
Tom Bushlack (04:43):
Yeah, in fact, we're in regular conversation with CHA's ethicists and we just met yesterday and one of the things that's really helpful, we talk all the time that the issues that we decide to take up are not just the issues that Dan and I think are interesting as scholars or whatever. We've done focus groups, we talk to Nate and Brian, the ethicists about what are you hearing the members talking about? What are the questions that aren't resolved where that could really benefit from deeper theological ethical reflection and research? And then we can bring that back and say, okay, we can take the big picture, do some of the intellectual work. But even when we're doing the research, then it always comes back to how could somebody working in healthcare, whether they're a mission leader or an ethicist or a leader or executive, a clinician, we need to help them understand what the tradition is saying and where it's giving guidance.
(05:43)
We're not just interested in the pure ideas. Those are important, but then we always are bringing it back to the so what and how, especially if you're not trained theologically. So I guess you'd call it translation, you might call it imagination as a bridge to how we do that.
Brian Reardon (06:03):
Perfect segue. Yeah. And when we talked again this season, we're like really should ground the beginning of the season in Catholic social teaching in what you just said, the why and what we're about. And so I'm really fascinated to get in this discussion about what is moral imagination? I mean, I think the term itself seems fairly broad, and so maybe start with just what is moral imagination?
Dan Daly (06:29):
So it's a term that I don't think gets defined very well in the tradition, but the way that I understand it is, it's the capacity to discover new and creative solutions to the moral problems that we face. So it's always focusing on those moral problems. Think about access to care, think about whole person care, which you mentioned earlier. How do we find new and creative solutions? And so we need to engage the moral imagination to figure out, to envision things that haven't yet existed. I think that's what it is, and it needs to be engaged, it needs to be practiced, and it needs to inform the way that Catholic healthcare does its work.
Brian Reardon (07:12):
And how does human flourishing? We have that as sort of our end goal and our vision state. All the work we do in Catholic health and with our partners across Catholic Social Services, other partners of goodwill, it really comes down to not just the physical health, the mental health, the emotional, the spiritual, but it's all part of whole person care, but the end result should be human flourishing. So how does moral imagination, I guess, provide the fuel we need to reach that goal of making sure everybody can achieve human flourish?
Tom Bushlack (07:44):
Yeah, it's a great question. And Dan, you said moral imagination isn't fully defined. I would say whole person care and human flourishing is not always fully defined either, even though it's used frequently. And in fact, we've been talking about possibly taking up some work around what is whole person care? How could we flush that out specifically from within the Catholic theological ethical tradition? And again, then bringing it back to, so how would that guide our vision of human flourishing? I always find it interesting that if we think about human wellbeing as a whole, even from some of the sociological research that's been done, only about, I think it's about 10% of a person's wellbeing is influenced directly by healthcare per se. So if we do think holistically as a ministry, we provide that 10%, we need to do that as excellently as possible. But we also know that the people who walk in the door, that we have that term human dignity.
(08:48)
Well, the fullness of that dignity involves all the other 90% too, as well as the social context. So it's a massive task that our members and the people who work in healthcare are taking up every day to really meet people in that space.
Brian Reardon (09:08):
And I was just reading the new issue of Health Progress that'll be around the time this episode comes out on the fall issue of understanding Catholic healthcare. And there's a line in there about the need to combine professional excellence with moral clarity. How does moral imagination help bridge that?
Dan Daly (09:28):
Yeah, so I think professional excellence is the base, right? I mean, healthcare has to be clinically excellent. It has to be proficient. It has to be delivered efficiently, as efficiently as possible, but that's just the entry level. I mean, the real value that Catholic healthcare adds is not that it's clinically excellent, and it is, it's that it provides the whole person care that we discussed. It treats the person not as a disease or a problem to be solved, but a person to be cared for, healed, and healed in the way that Jesus healed. You think about how Jesus healed. Jesus healed by encountering the other, by touching, physically touching the other. And his healings always integrated the person back into the community. That's the key that you think about when he would heal people with leprosy, the celebration that those people had was both that they were cured of the disease and now they could be back in the community.
(10:24)
They were no longer ostracized. And finally, you see in those healings that people often made professions of faith after they were healed or they went to spread the gospel. So Jesus' healings touch the whole person, the body, the soul, the spirit, the relationality that the person has. And that is what Catholic healthcare can provide in a way that's different, even with the clinical excellence. It goes beyond that, to heal in the way that Jesus did.
Brian Reardon (10:56):
Yeah, go ahead.
Tom Bushlack (10:57):
We were just having this conversation this morning about when the center was named, it was intentional to say this is the center for theology and ethics. And so it's not that there's anything wrong with focusing purely on ethics, but that our scope is broader than just the clinical sort of bioethics bedside questions. And we take those up and we have. And we were just reflecting this morning on something that the Catholic tradition does very well is think about the role of institutions and organizations as maybe not as full agents in the human sense, but the fact that yes, the clinical is excellent, but a lot of what, and even when you read the ERDs in the preamble and the introduction, the first thing they talk about is the social responsibility of the entire ministry. We serve the common good and we do that through serving individual people, but we also think a lot about, and I should say the tradition has fought a lot about what does it mean to be a robust, healthy institution in a society that fosters virtuous decision making, that takes seriously the good of the individual and the common good of the community.
(12:20)
There might be other agents or people in our culture that ask similar questions, but that has always been a driving force within the Catholic tradition. So I do think that's something we bring not only to our own ministries, but then to the whole healthcare ecosystem that we find ourselves in the US in particular, I guess.
Brian Reardon (12:40):
And you mentioned decision making, and I think kind of bring this down to a practical imagination. I think we're getting a better understanding of what that means in relation to Catholic social teaching, to fostering human flourishing. But when it comes to a table like this where executives are sitting around trying to meet budget, trying to meet clinical benchmarks, Dan, where does moral imagination fit in that conversation? What are the benefits of bringing that into the conversation?
Dan Daly (13:06):
I would think that any good leader would have a robust moral imagination for this reason. All good leaders push forward their organizations. They don't take them and just kind of reiterate what's been done, but they imagine new possibilities, new ways of solving those problems that have plagued us for decades or centuries. So all good leaders have a robust moral imagination to see new possibilities. They're always aspirational, and the imagination opens up that aspirational side where you strive not just for goodness or for proficiency, but for greatness and excellence. And I think that's where the imagination is so important. When you think about the moral imagination, it's really stoked when we think about moral exemplars. So the Limatatsio Christi is an ancient practice where people would imagine, what would Jesus do in this situation? How can I imitate Jesus? Those of a certain age will remember the what would Jesus do bracelets, which in a kind of a trite way, a kitschy way captures that.
(14:10)
But what it captures is that we are imagining how Jesus would act in this situation. And I think that's the key, that leaders are imagining how what they're doing can be, that they can do it even better when they're thinking alongside Jesus or the saints or venerable Catherine McCauley and informed so much of the ministries of Catholic healthcare in this country, St. Francis. I mean, I think that the moral imagination is an essential tool for the leader to strive towards excellence.
Brian Reardon (14:49):
Yeah. And I think your point about what would Jesus do is an important one because it's not, like you said, just the touching, which would be the presence. Obviously we know the importance of accompaniment, but the other thing that Jesus did in a lot of the stories in the gospel when he healed, he often asked, "What do you want?" So there was that notion of subsidiarity and making sure that the person being healed had a voice. So I think when we look at the example of Jesus and healing, there's probably some lessons for executives making decisions.
Tom Bushlack (15:19):
Yeah. So I think about a process for developing moral imagination, you sort of look at what has been, and this is what we do and we introduce people to the principles of Catholic social teaching or the ERDs, like what has been before us? So we tell stories about the founders and the foundresses, and then we look at what is. These are novel new situations. People are always like, "Oh yeah, moral theology has to be rooted in scripture." Yes. They didn't have CRISPR technology when Jesus was healing people. So we look at what is, that presents novel questions, and then the imagination sort of engages both of those and says, "Here's what has been in the tradition, here's what is now, and here's what could be or here's where we are choosing to go." That's what a leader does. They put out a vision and then they get people to follow them and help bring that to fruition.
(16:15)
And one concrete example that I'll give, and this came from running a 18-month formation program for executives and leaders, was geek out for a second. In adult learning theory, there's two different ways to teach people something. You give them general knowledge and just say, "Learn this," and then they figure out where to do it. What they have found actually works better for professionals who are already in. The people that they already come with either medical degree or MD, RN, PA, or a business degree, an MBA, an MNA, or a finance degree. They know that. They're professionals. They're highly intelligent. But the other way to do it is to give people information right when they need it in the work, and they find that that's where people really learn on the job. So one of the things that we did is on the very first day, we asked each person, "Name a couple of projects that you're working on that are long-term projects in your department that you have not resolved yet." And we made them keep those in front of them the whole time we met.
(17:20)
So then when we introduced subsidiarity, common good, a directive from the ERDs, there was always time to say, now, what would you do if you looked at this problem through that lens that you've just been given? How would that affect your. It's an imaginative exercise. Oh, if I think about this from the standpoint of human dignity, I'm going to go in a different direction. And then we had them do a final project to present on it, and it was one of the most inspiring things I've experienced in my career because they know their stuff so well and they come up with things that I could never think of, but they're using the Catholic intellectual and moral tradition to do it. And just to give a quick example to make it even more concrete, I remember I had a supply chain leader in a formation and it's like, "Well, what are they going to come up with?" And they came up with this whole process that they brought to their team for how do we vet vendors that we're going to order supplies from in a way that we're actually thinking about how do they think about treating their people with human dignity?
(18:33)
How are they serving the common good? What kind of decisions are they making? How does choosing not just the cheapest and most cost-effective, but the best medical equipment or supply, how does that honor the dignity of our patients when they walk in the door? It's like something you would just never connect to it. And that's where I think the imagination starts to take off, and I know that our leaders in the ministries are doing that every day, and that's essentially what we support with our research, the resources that CHA puts out.
Brian Reardon (19:06):
Dan, any other benefits of incorporating moral imagination into decision-making?
Dan Daly (19:11):
Well, again, I think that it helps us to be aspirational. It helps us to see beyond where we are to get to a new place that's even better. But one of the things that I would say about that is it's not unrealistic. The moral imagination doesn't lead us to mythical solutions. It deals in reality, so you need to be that leader who knows what are the parameters within which I work, whether they're national, whether they're local, whether they're within the system itself, accrediting bodies, all of these things. We have these constraints, but within those, you've got to know all of those. What are the best ways? You're going beyond the moral minimum to the best way for us to live out this ministry. I would say for those people who might think that the moral imagination leads us to places that are unrealistic or mythical, I don't think that's true at all.
(19:59)
I think it helps us to envision practical operational ways to live out the ministry and promote it in a way that we hadn't in the past.
Brian Reardon (20:10):
And challenges, so again, I've referenced the fact of the financial pressures, just the fast-paced, you mentioned AI. I mean, everybody's like, "What do I do with AI? How is AI applied?" The center has talked extensively about that, but what would be some challenges that you'd point out for people thinking, okay, yeah, but this makes sense. I need to give the space for moral imagination, but maybe there's some things that they should be aware of that might either run into some resistance among colleagues or be something they should think about when they're applying that to conversations that they have that are tough decisions to make, whether it be financial, operational, clinical.
Dan Daly (20:52):
I think there are two challenges that I see. The first is time. You really do need time to do this. And so to create the space, create the time for this moral imagination to function, I think is important, but it is a challenge. The other one is culture. Do we have the culture within the organization that enables, that normalizes moral imagination? Do we need time and space? We need community to do this as well to take time to think how would Jesus respond to this new AI tool that we're bringing in or we're considering bringing in? I think to normalize that I think is key. So we need to normalize that within the culture so that people understand that we are going to give space and time for that moral imagination to take place. And so I think this is deeply tied in with discernment.
(21:45)
St. Ignatius talked about discernment in terms of the imagination. Many of our systems are very well practiced in discernment. They have discernment practices. We're already doing it to a certain degree. I think one of the things that we could do though is just raise it up within the culture that part of this discerning process is the need to imagine, whether it's with the terms of Catholic social though, whether it's with the exemplars that we have like Jesus and Catherine McCauley and others, but time is a challenge in the culture. We need a culture that understands this and understands the value of it.
Tom Bushlack (22:22):
I'll play off that. I think related to it, the pace is frankly relentless for our members and the work that they're doing, and not just in healthcare. I think as a culture, we're very good at and we're very focused on efficiency. I know that the margins are razor thin in healthcare, and so we have to be focused on efficiency. We have these experts, we have continual process improvement and we have Lean and Six Sigma, and there's probably newer ones that I don't even know about. Those things are important, but what you can't do without a moral imagination is you can't ask the question of what is the ultimate reason we want to be more efficient? It's not efficiency for the sake of efficiency. Pope Leo said that explicitly in his most recent encyclical talking about AI. Efficiency is a good thing, but it is not an end in itself.
(23:21)
So the moral imagination can say, "Let's be more efficient so that we have more resources to give to our patients and our community, so that we have more resources to give to our coworkers and especially our overwhelmed providers." And so it can ask those questions about what's the goal or the why. Why would we be more efficient? And our culture doesn't always foster those kinds of questions, but certainly those have always been alive in the Catholic intellectual tradition, and I don't think you can develop moral imagination without that. So the two have to be, I think, integrated to be done well or excellently.
Brian Reardon (24:06):
I'm going to ask you now a theological question. What role does the Holy Spirit play in your imagination?
Tom Bushlack (24:11):
Oh, good one. Yeah. Okay. You want to take it? Yeah. I mean, sure. Yeah. There's the nerd answer to it that gets into the theology of grace, which is interesting.
Brian Reardon (24:24):
Give us the nerd and the non-nerd answer.
Tom Bushlack (24:26):
Yeah. Well, I'm going to go with more of the non-nerd. You talked about it has to be given space, and I am a big proponent of. I think any leader has to have some kind of spiritual practice to ground them. And I would say that of even a leader who doesn't consider themselves religious in any term, a secular leader, that can be as simple as giving yourself time to read books and engage the imagination. They've found that people who read fiction are better capable of taking other people's perspective. It develops a muscle. The moral imagination is a muscle. And I'm a particularly big fan of having time for spiritual or contemplative practices that ground that, so that there are lots of things that happen, and there are purely spiritual, personal, theological reasons to do that practice. When you think about integrating that for a leader or into a ministry organizational context, of course, the founding sisters prayed for hours a day, communally and individually.
(25:35)
Most lay leaders can't pull off those kinds of numbers of time, but people do and can cultivate a daily practice that grounds them to pause, and it allows you to step back from the immediacy and the stress of the problem to see the big picture and to see things more holistically and imaginatively to not get. We all get blinders and focused on what we're doing and deadlines and the outcomes of the project. But again, it gives us that space to say, "What is the ultimate reason I'm doing this personally, professionally, as an organization, as a ministry?" So I think anything we can do to help support our coworkers and our leaders in cultivating space for that is really powerful.
Brian Reardon (26:22):
We mentioned whole person care, and I want to come back to that again, coming back to the practical. As we think about whole person care, again, body, mind, spirit, how does moral imagination help advance that? Because we talk a lot about that in Catholic healthcare. I truly believe that we are committed to that, that we, unlike, I'm not saying that other non-Catholics don't think about the emotional and spiritual wellbeing of the patients they serve, but I think we put an extra emphasis on that. And to live that mission, to walk the walk, what role does moral imagination play in supporting that?
Dan Daly (26:58):
So I think certainly moral imagination, when you engage the moral imagination, you are seeing beyond just the technical side of medicine and healthcare. As important as it is, it really is focusing us on the point that you made earlier on the end, what's the goal? And the goal is to care. The goal is to provide healing. If you go back to, again, go back to the healings of Jesus, Jesus was not a body mechanic. He didn't look at the body as a problem to be solved or fixed. He saw the person as a human being who was suffering, who needed to be loved, who needed to be cared for, and that is what whole person care is. Now, certainly they had physical, physiological needs that they needed to be addressed, and he addressed those. It's not that he didn't address those, but it's that he didn't reduce them to that.
(27:51)
When we start to think with Jesus, when we start to think with these exemplars, when we start to think with the common good, the preferential option for the poor, human dignity, it immediately orients us to whole person care, and it doesn't de-center the health needs that they have. It puts them in their proper context.
Tom Bushlack (28:11):
I'm thinking of a very recent example we had in discussion with an ethicist who's practicing in the ministry. Give an example of going in to talk to a patient who is dealing with end of life care questions and talking with the physician before that about there were some things going on with the kidney, and the ethicist was kind of like, "Let's not talk about the kidney when we get in there. Let's talk about, you know what that means medically, but let's talk about what does that mean for the patient? Because if you just give them the information that it's accurate, it's medically accurate, it doesn't help them understand that from a whole person perspective, that you can still use all the expertise that you have and package that in a way to say, as this disease progresses, this is likely what's going to happen, and this is what that's going to mean for you and your caregivers and your family.
(29:07)
And then we can have a whole person conversation that is going to guide the plan of care and medical kinds of decisions. But I thought that was a brilliant way of reframing the doctor is still the doctor and the expert in the things that he or she is, but we're bringing that to the whole person in a very particular way.
Brian Reardon (29:28):
I love that example.
Tom Bushlack (29:29):
Yeah.
Brian Reardon (29:29):
Josh, you've been sitting here quietly, listening, taking this all in. As we often do in our episodes, I always like to turn it back to you just to reflect or maybe ask a follow-up question.
Josh Matejka (29:42):
Yeah, thanks, Brian, and thanks Dan and Tom for all of this. Dan, something you keep coming back to that really interests me is when you talk about moral exemplars. I mean, another way to talk about it is the founding sisters of Catholic Healthcare. And one thing that I realize in the context of this conversation and recontextualizing in my head is when I hear those stories, there is such an urgency to the work that they did and the work that they were doing at the time that it's not that moral imagination wasn't there, but the imagination was almost in the work itself and in the doing. Something that we talked about even before we started recording is like, okay, so it can be really easy to get up here. It can be really easy to have these conversations around black wooden tables and get them out in podcasts.
(30:37)
But ultimately the imagination also expresses itself in the doing. So how would you two encourage leaders who want to have this active part of their work be this moral imagining, but also encourage them, "Hey, make sure that it is active in not only the work that you do in the conversations that you have, but in the conversations that you're having with your peers and the people that are reporting to you and the people who are on the front line of care."
Dan Daly (31:06):
Yeah. I think a key is it goes back to stories. It goes back to really understanding the stories of these women who were recording this in St. Louis, when this was the frontier, they came here and they founded hospice. Now if that's not an act of moral imagination, they saw people here suffering and they said, "We have capacity to come in." And they didn't even know really if they had the full capacity. They know they had some of the skills, but they saw a future. They envisioned a future that did not yet exist. And I think going back and seeing their imagination, their courage, their capacity to take on difficult challenges for the wellbeing of human beings, I think that's the key is to go back to stories and we would all do well to go back to these stories. Principles and concepts and rules provide some moral guidance.
(31:59)
There is no greater moral guidance than moral exemplars. And we already think like this all the time. We always make decisions where we're thinking, "What would my dad do in this situation? What would someone I really admire? What would they do?" It provides a lot of very good actionable guidance for what we do and who we become. So I would say go back to stories. It doesn't feel like the right move, but I think it's absolutely where we need to be.
Tom Bushlack (32:29):
And I agree. And I think you mentioned it's in the doing
(32:34)
And something that, again, going back to the sisters and up until today, that Catholic healthcare has survived because it's always been willing to innovate and try new things while staying true to its original mission and roots. And so there is a sense in which sometimes an idea starts to take form and people in healthcare are doers. And whether they're on the organizational side or the clinical side, we're going to get stuff done. And I think it was Pope Francis talked about initiating processes is more important than, I forget what the alternative was, but he talked about initiating. And so we're doing that constantly. I know you're highlighting on health calls the innovative things that Catholic providers and systems and ministries are doing. And so it's in that doing that the imagination is also refined because you start something and you think it's going to head in one way and then you discover some other benefit for the community or for your ministry or for your coworkers.
(33:38)
And so we need to keep that process alive. And that's also, I think the Holy Spirit is also at work, coming back to your point, in the doing of it and in the process. So it is like this sort of back and forth between the self-reflection and the contemplative and the active and the doing. But I think that's where ministry has always thrived.
Josh Matejka (33:59):
No, yeah, that's great. I love the exploration of, maybe tension's not the right word, but the doing and the reflection and now that's always kind of happening and feeding each other. So I love that. And speaking of initiating processes, Brian mentioned up at the top that this is sort of a crossover episode between Health Calls and Ethics on Call. And I mean, I know this well because I work with y'all on that podcast, but you're about to start your next season of Ethics on Call where you're going to be having a lot of these bigger conversations, but it also gets into the practical. So can you tell us a little bit more about where Ethics on Call is headed or tell the audience where Ethics on Call is headed and maybe what the center is doing next in this realm?
Tom Bushlack (34:45):
Yeah. So this episode that you're listening to now is the first episode of our second season of Ethics on Call. So we're kind of kicking it off with a bit of a different take. But yeah, we have lined up. Things might shift, but we're looking at doing some work around care for persons struggling with addictive behaviors and processes. We're looking at vaccine ethics as we are in this era of increased vaccine skepticism. What does the tradition say about conscience rights and obligation to the common good and how do we balance those kinds of things? We're going to look at Pope Leo's papacy at one year, see what has he contributed. So I think it's going to be a very interesting season that we have coming up. And then of course we have other projects that are ongoing as well. And maybe Dan, if you want to speak to some of those.
Dan Daly (35:45):
Yeah. So we've got a great season for Ethics on Call. And actually Tom, it's been a quick two years for Pope Leo. It's gone by quickly.
Josh Matejka (35:54):
He's been busy.
Dan Daly (35:55):
He's been very busy. He's been very busy. So we'll be at ASBH. So for those of you who will be at ASBH, please do look us up. We'll have a reception there for people in Catholic health. So please do...
Brian Reardon (36:06):
What's that acronym stand for?
Dan Daly (36:06):
So that's the Association for Bioethics and Humanities.
Tom Bushlack (36:10):
I think it's the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. Close enough.
Dan Daly (36:16):
Yeah. Well, yeah.
Tom Bushlack (36:17):
And that's been around for -
Brian Reardon (36:18):
You guys are checking each other.
Tom Bushlack (36:19):
Around for at least two years.
Dan Daly (36:21):
Yeah. And we'll continue to work on those white papers. One is on AI ethics and Catholic healthcare, and that is actually coming, that should be published later this year, so later in 2026. And then I know your paper on partnerships is coming along.
Tom Bushlack (36:40):
That'll be early-ish 2027 when that's made available.
Dan Daly (36:44):
And then next year we'll get into whole person care. You mentioned it a number of times, and as we noted, it's a concept that gets often used but rarely defined and we need a little bit more clarity on that. And then Tom, you'll be taking up a big project on access to care.
Tom Bushlack (37:00):
Yeah. How do we advocate for and practically think through how Catholic healthcare could support access for all? That's a big one we're going to take out.
Brian Reardon (37:10):
Another goal of our strategic plan.
Tom Bushlack (37:10):
Yeah, absolutely. It's very aligned with CHA's strategic plan. And we will also have our first issue of our journal, the Journal for Theology and Ethics and Catholic Health. So that will be 2027, somewhere in there. So that's another big thing that people can look forward to. Yeah.
Brian Reardon (37:30):
Well, again, we're looking forward to hearing all you're doing, listening to the new season of Ethics on Call. So it's great to hear some of the things that are coming up. And again, we're on this side of the podcast. This is Health Calls, the podcast of the Catholic Health Association of the United States. Again, I want to thank Daniel J. Daly. He's executive director of the Center for Theology and Ethics in Catholic Health and Thomas Bushlack. He is the senior director for the Center for Theology and Ethics in Catholic Health. That's a lot, but it's the center.
(38:00)
Love working with you gentlemen. Appreciate all the good work you're doing. Again, I'm your host for Health Calls, Brian Reardon. Josh Matejka is our executive producer. We're looking forward to a really good season of Health Calls where we're going to be looking at a lot of different topics related to what our members are doing to reimagine healthcare, to address whole person care, to address the needs of the community. So we invite you to look for new episodes about every two weeks. And of course you can download and listen to Health Calls on all of your favorite podcast streaming channels. And you can also go to our website, chausa.org, and access both this season and past season episodes. I do want to thank Once Films, that's what we're here today recording, and they're a great partner. Also, Sarah Marchant is our scheduling producer. She keeps us organized and on track, so thanks to both of them for their work.
(38:49)
And as always, thank you for listening.