Sponsorship Resources

A valuable and timely guide for new, current and prospective sponsor members about the distinctive role of sponsors and important role of the laity for the health ministry of the Catholic Church. The guide highlights the vocation, personal qualifications and recruitment of individual sponsor members and the importance of their ongoing formation and spiritual development.

This educational resource highlights the role and importance of sponsors in the Catholic health ministry to support sponsor formation, board education, leadership development and training initiatives. Theologians, sponsors and leaders in Catholic health care provide insights about the meaning of sponsorship, historic roots of the ministry, role of the laity, responsibilities of sponsors, canon law, theological foundations of sponsorship, sponsor formation, and the future of sponsorship as we answer the call in the Parable of the Good Samaritan to "Go and Do Likewise."Designed for individual or group learning, the DVD contains an Introduction and eight segments which you may view individually or as a whole as your schedule permits. Video segments include:Welcome and Introduction (Run time 4:38)Watch on YouTube  The Ministry of Sponsorship (Run time 5:19)Watch on YouTube  Creating Catholic Health Care: A Heritage of Caring (Run time 8:35)Watch on YouTube  Baptismal Call of the Laity: Carrying Out the Healing Mission Today (Run time 5:09)Watch on YouTube  Keepers of the Flame: Roles and Responsibilities of Sponsors (Run time 9:03)Watch on YouTube Canon Law and the Church’s Health Ministry (Run time 5:49)Watch on YouTube Rooted in Faith: Theological Foundations of Sponsorship (Run time 7:40)Watch on YouTube  Living the Values: Sponsor Formation and Education (Run time 9:19)Watch on YouTube Go and Do Likewise: Embracing the Future (Run time 14:18)Watch on YouTube Watch the entire video on YouTube (Run time 1:09:50)Overview of SponsorshipA Supplement to CHA's sponsorship video, "Go and Do Likewise. Sponsorship of the Catholic Health Ministry."By: Karen Sue Smith

The CHA Study Guide for The Pastoral Role of the Diocesan Bishop in Catholic Health Care Ministry, a newly revised document of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), is a valuable resource for bishops and health care leaders to reflect on the mutual responsibility for our health ministries and explore ways to foster greater collaboration. The revised document and study guide provide a clearer understanding of the important relationship and roles of those who are responsible for the Catholic health ministries within the United States. This documents includes the exact test of the USCCB document, discussion questions to facilitate group study, sidebar commentary and extended endnotes and references to CHA resources that pertain to various parts of the document.

Caritas in Communion, begun as a white paper commissioned by the Catholic Health Association, engaged theologians, economists, public policy experts, health care executives and sponsors in a year-long study regarding the changing health care environment and its impact on the Catholic health ministry. The resulting book, authored by M. Therese Lysaught, moral theologian at Loyola University, Chicago, explores topics of Catholic Identity, the Principle of Cooperation, and ministry implications of for-profit business models. While this book was written specifically for Catholic health care, its implications for Catholic Identity in a pluralistic world extend beyond this ministry to Catholic education and social service organizations as well. This article serves as an executive summary of the book.

This publication from the Catholic Health Association incorporates the original text of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services alongside annotations from ethicists throughout the Catholic health care ministry. Annotations include commentary, literature, and links to online articles that can help guide your understanding of this crucial document. Presented in simple top-to-bottom alignment with the original text, The Ethical and Religious Directives: Annotations by the Catholic Health Association of the United States is a must-have resource for any heath care facility or system looking to carry on Jesus’ loving ministry now and into the future.Since their initial conception in 1948, the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services – commonly referred to as the ERDs – have served as a moral compass for Catholic health care. Grounded in important aspects of Catholic Social Teaching such as the inherent dignity of all people and the common good, the ERDs have long served as a critical document when facing emerging dilemmas and questions facing the ministry regarding social justice, technology, etc.

This guide will help users understand the role and importance of a Public Juridic Person (PJP): a legal entity in the Catholic Church that is established by canon law to perform a specific function.

We are the people of Catholic health care, a ministry of the church continuing Jesus' mission of love and healing today. As provider, employer, advocate, citizen — bringing together people of diverse faiths and backgrounds — our ministry is an enduring sign of health care rooted in our belief that every person is a treasure, every life a sacred gift, every human being a unity of body, mind, and spirit.

CHA presents this new publication in support of persons with direct responsibility for the temporal goods of Public Juridic Persons in the Catholic Church. The resource updates and builds upon the 1994 CHA document, Inventorying Church Property and Other Administrative Matters, and provides a great deal more foundational canonical information and praxis in the administration of temporal goods. Written by Fr. Frank Morrisey, OMI, Ph.D., JCD, and Sr. Peggy Martin, OP, JCL, the publication is part of a series of resources from CHA to assist sponsors of Catholic health care in the effective exercise of this important ministry of the church.To set the stage for the 2017 publication, the preface is a reprint of a 2016 Health Progress article, “Ministerial Juridic Persons and their Communion with Diocesan Bishops,” that highlights the need for doctrinal, pastoral and canonical formation – particularly in the area of stewardship of temporal goods. The Appendix contains three sample inventory documents to assist administrators in applying material in this document in maintaining accurate inventories of ecclesiastical goods. The Appendix also includes a reprint of an August 2014 Vatican circular letter that provides much of the basis for the current understanding and practice that this publication expands and applies to the Catholic health ministry.

Theology, described in the eleventh century by St. Anselm* as "faith seeking understanding," is a discipline that necessarily follows experience. Grasping that single point is critical to the theological enterprise we are about to undertake concerning health care.Consider, as a classic example, the case of the earliest Christians, those men and women who observed Jesus firsthand, assessing his life from what they saw and heard. Their faith was rooted in their experience, both as individuals and as a diverse group of Jews and Gentiles brought together in relationship by Jesus himself. This "unlikely community" sprang into action soon after Jesus' death and resurrection, evangelizing the known world because their experience of Jesus had been compelling, transforming. Their hearts burned within them. Yet it took decades before these eye witnesses and early disciples, all part of an oral culture, began to recount in writing their memories of Christ, their crafted reflections on the meaning of his words and deeds, which were later collected by the Church into the New Testament. Like those first followers of Jesus, the Church has struggled over two millennia to understand more fully the very faith it professes. Painstakingly, building upon Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience, it has produced the ongoing interpretive body of work known today as Christian theology.