For more than two hours, students waited patiently in line to speak with Dr. Ashley Fernandes after his presentation at the SEEK26 conference in Columbus.
Many of them were medical school students or aspiring health professional students who wanted to understand from a Catholic physician’s perspective about balancing their faith with the secular worldview of life that some professors expect them to embrace.
“A lot of the students were asking about the conflict in navigating being a faithful Catholic and learning with excellence in a hostile environment,” said Ashley Fernandes, MD, Ph.D., a Columbus pediatrician, the associate director of the Center for Bioethics at The Ohio State University College of Medicine, and an associate professor of pediatrics at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, who also holds a doctorate in philosophy from Georgetown University.
Dr. Fernandes had just given a talk on Friday, Jan. 2 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center titled “Secularist Medicine and Bioethics Think You’re Not Special: Why You Need to Remember You Are,” to thousands of students during an afternoon session at the 16th annual, five-day event that brought more than 16,000 attendees to Columbus.
He estimated that he talked with more than 100 people afterward and said he was “happy to do it. That’s why I couldn’t turn away and go right after my talk. It was heartwarming to see their passion for medicine and the Church”
“I told many of them three things,” he said. “One was to be excellent at your craft, because that is one way to immunize yourself against criticism. And, number two, is to just be kind in every encounter because that’s how you really convey the love of Jesus to other people. You don’t have to say the word “Jesus” to let people know that Jesus is present.
“And then the third thing I told them is be likable. Be likable, because vulnerable people don’t need you to be an angry Catholic. Don’t be someone who’s defensive all the time. Don’t be someone who’s exclusionary. You have to be inclusionary, and if you do those three things, you can have a very successful career. Once you’re a true Catholic doctor, there’s so much good you can do for ‘the least of these.’”
Dr. Fernandes’ talk to the large crowd contrasted the beauty, dignity and transcendence of the human person with secular humanism and materialism.
He emphasized the importance of the question that Christ asked the Apostles in John 1:38: “What do you seek?” while noting that SEEK is the name of the conference — this is a “profound question” that “should reverberate for all of you throughout your whole lives.”
Dr. Fernandes then added that while we are called to seek God, the most revolutionary part of Christianity is actually that God actively seeks out us as well, no matter how imperfect one’s live might be.
“Over and over again, the writers of the gospels and scripture are trying to tell us God is looking for you—and there are no accidents in Scripture,” he said.
He pointed out that the word courage is mentioned several times in the scriptures – and that it’s important for everyone to sometimes come out of comfort zones to be disciples of Christ in the world.
“As a physician, I see every single day the face of Christ in the suffering,” said Dr. Fernandes, an older brother of Columbus Bishop Earl Fernandes. “And this is something we should not hide from because there are competing views of what constitutes a person.
“In medical education today, we are not taught about the transcendence of a human person at all … In medical schools today, what many are taught is that the human person is a random collection of atoms and that when we die we basically become worm food,” he said. “That’s it. Nothing happens beyond what the physical body dictates. …
“Religion becomes this ‘funny hat’ you can and should take on and off whenever you go to do your job. They’re actually told in medical education that when you’re a doctor you take off your religion when you put on your white coat — and many feel compelled to believe it.”
But he stressed that Catholics must uphold the dignity of the human person no matter how difficult that might be in a world that believes an individual’s value is “dependent on what I think my own value is.”
That view leads to radical individualism and a society in which humans seek to fulfill only individual desires.
Alternatively, he said the Catholic Church has a long tradition of upholding the dignity of the human person. St. Pope St. John Paul II articulated a vison known as Christian personalism in which “choosing the good is what fulfills you as a human person … and that means there’s something truthful and good that transcends your own choices that you can’t change by your own choice,” Dr. Fernandes said.
“But when you do that, when you choose truth, you are truly free,” he continued. “So, it is not choosing that makes you free. It’s choosing the truth that make you free.”
He went on to explain that Pope John Paul II said human beings were created to live in solidarity.
“A critical difference between the materialist premise and Christian personalism is we believe that we actually must be our brother’s keeper, and the poor and the vulnerable—these are the people that are part of our communion of persons. …
“It might even include people that you might not otherwise approach because they believe in things that are radically different than us. But they are also all part of this community of persons that we are called to lift up. The vulnerable, suffering, transcendent, mysterious, ineffable person is the central unit of value of existence, and that’s so incredibly important if you’re going into any healthcare profession.”
Dr. Fernandes used examples of a baby with Trisomy 21 (Down syndrome), whose condition often results in abortion and a man in Columbus who was homeless from age seven to 65 to illustrate the value of every soul that God has created.
“This man continued to believe in God no matter how much he was hurt,” Dr. Fernandes said. “He was almost killed several times, living on the streets for that long. No matter how much he at times wanted to die – and he almost died – he believed in God, and his quote was, ‘That’s why I know he [God] is real. He wouldn’t let me go.’ That is an unbelievable testament of faith.”
Keeping the sacredness of human life in mind, Dr. Fernandes told his listeners that “not all of you are going to be doctors or nurses, but whatever you do, seize that opportunity to elevate human life.”
He reminded the audience that Pope St. John Paul II encouraged all people to be renewed in Christ.
Pope John Paul II said, “The new evangelization, of which you must be protagonists, begins in oneself, in the conversion of Jesus Christ. Live in intimacy with him. Discover the riches of this person and his mystery in prayer. Turn to him more in need of the grace of forgiveness.
“Seek him in the Eucharist, the source of life. Serve him in the poor. … Do not be satisfied with mediocrity. … The kingdom of heaven is for those who are determined to enter it.” Dr Fernandes stated that to do that “takes intention, that takes will. We need you. We need you to cast out into the deep and go further beyond. …
“We must never, ever give in to the idea that we are not special, or a brother or sister who suffers is not special. And if we can do that, we can become the transcendent, dignified persons that we are all called to be.”
Dr. Fernandes wishes to clarify that his views represent his own personal views and do not represent those of his employer(s).