“I Was Sick and You Visited Me”: The Sick as a Locus Sacramentum and the Perichoretic Heart of Chaplaincy

This article takes up the critique of ‘generic chaplaincy’ forwarded by the journal Christian Bioethics. The historical characterization of chaplaincy that shapes this critique is challenged by the work of Gunter Risse, Christopher Swift, and others. Their claims about ‘catholic’ chaplaincy are challenged by the historical practice of Catholic health care as well as the teaching of the church found in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services and the theology of the Second Vatican Council. Overagainst their instrumentalist view of chaplaincy, the article explores the theological dynamic inherent in the scriptural commendation “I was sick and you visited me” (Matthew 25:36) and developed in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 2020 document Samaritanus Bonus. Joined to the work of Pope Francis, Samaritanus Bonus illuminates how the sick serve as a locus sacramentum, such that across Christian traditions, the practice of chaplaincy or accompanying the sick—marked by the contemplative gaze and the countercultural activity of ‘remaining’—is a practice wherein those who attend the sick simultaneously bring Christ near to them while also being encountered anew by the Christ who meets them there. This must be the theological starting point for any assessment of the contemporary multi-faith practice of clinical chaplaincy—and for any analysis of the relationship between spirituality and (theological) bioethics.