I was recently invited to attend the first screening of a new documentary by an up-and-coming local film maker, Éanna Mac Cana in the QFT.

The film was a documentary about Dr. Denis Burkitt, the legacy of his work and the profound global significance it has today, affecting the lives of millions of people across the world.

In his lifetime, Dr. Burkitt was responsible for two major contributions to medical science; firstly, treatment for the condition now knows as Burkitt’s lymphoma, and secondly, the necessity for dietary fibre in reducing the risk of colon cancer.

Mac Cana has a unique perspective on this work as he was treated for Burkitt’s lymphoma in his youth, and in the documentary, among other themes he examines trauma and the ethics of medical work through an artistic lens and highlights the importance of creativity in dealing with these issues.

The reason I was invited to the screening was because of Dr. Burkitt’s Fermanagh, and specifically Trory connections, his devout faith, and St. Michael’s Trory being used as a filming location for some shots in the documentary.

Dr. Burkitt was educated in Portora, and his family attended Trory Parish Church. He also often wrote about the intersection of faith and medicine, and one of his daughters is a Church of England vicar.

After watching this documentary, and for other reasons, recently my mind has been wondering about some of the erosions of links between health and faith.

In another role I fulfil centrally for the Church of Ireland, I am on the editorial board of SEARCH, a Church of Ireland Journal.

SEARCH’s aim is to be an academically rigorous journal, but without complex, waffling words.

I am guest editing the Autumn edition, which has a theme of ‘health and faith’.

Reading some of the articles coming through, I am glad to see I am not the only one who recognises the link between health and faith has always been clear and is still essential today.

The church, when it functions correctly, is a place of solace, a place of healing, and a place to be restored and find hope. It is a place where we care for the person, body, mind and soul.

Christ simplifies the law we read in Matthew’s Gospel, ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, and love your neighbour as yourself’.

In John’s gospel, similarly we read, ‘I have come to give you life in all its fullness’.

When God created us, he did not create individual sections, a physical body, a logical mind, a spirit, a set of emotions.

Yet, today we have a health service with so many individual highly-skilled disciplines, and the system cannot treat a patient in an efficient manner, as it sees a compartmentalised person, something which we are not, and due to our nature, we can never be.

Another example of the eroding of the person into constituent parts that do not exist in isolation is how it is getting ever more difficult for a cleric to both know if a parishioner is in hospital, and then when we do know, to be allowed in to see them.

We are physical, intelligent, emotional and spiritual creatures. A visit from the cleric to a side ward where the patient has extremely limited contact with people taking to them, not talking through a clipboard, surely, even the atheist who would remove the spiritual dimension, can surely see that the emotional and mental stimulation benefit of a cleric visiting will help the healing process rather than hinder it?

And yet, with the current system, often we are no longer informed when one of our parishioners goes into hospital.

One addendum to this. I think nurses, doctors, carers and all branches of the healthcare profession work extremely hard. It is a broken system I comment on, not the individuals working in it.

In the Church of Ireland with our parish structure, we still try and care for the person as much as we can, but within systems which continually try to strangle our reach by being involved in the local community, in local schools, hospitals, and in the local fabric of life.

Although we became disestablished from the state in 1869, in rural communities we are still very much the centre of the community we are placed in.

There is an expectation that the minister will be able to take on various pastoral and leadership responsibilities.

I am certain the same can be said for other denominations too, with involvement in the community and care for the whole person.

The first medicines were developed by monks from the herbs and plants they grew in their gardens.

Likewise, genetic mapping which lead to oncology and various other branches of medicine which rely on understanding our genetics came from a Nineteenth Century Austrian monk, Gregor Mendel.

The pioneers of all forms of nursing and midwifery in western medicine almost without exception came from religious orders.

Even Florence Nightingale was a Liberal Anglican (Church of England) whose care for all stemmed from the biblical theme of radical social justice, and a belief from age 16 she was called to serve God in this way.

While ‘Call the Midwife’ is of course fiction, it is based on true events, real people, and a local health unit which all existed.

You do not have to go back too many years to remember when the nurse in charge of a ward was still called ‘sister’.

Interestingly, a lot of recent research into treating patients today is into treating the whole person, as if this is something new.

It is now suggesting there are four healths which need to be treated for us to get better; physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

With any common sense this research will reach hospitals and allow the patient to be treated as a whole, not just akin to a small circuit board or microchip which needs to be fixed or replaced independent of the mainframe.

A patient in a better frame of mind and being cared for spiritually and emotionally will of course heal faster than one who is seen as having a physical injury or scar only.

Whether it is Dr. Burkitt, the monks who laid the groundwork for all modern medicine, or Florence Nightingale and the Anglican and Catholic nuns who revolutionised nursing and midwifery, there is a wealth of background linking faith and health, which is sadly being eroded.

I hope and pray that we relearn and value the complexity of the human person in the church, in healthcare, and as society in general.

Rev. Mark is the Church of Ireland rector of Trory and Killadeas parishes.