Christian Medical & Dental Associations

All of these flagrantly violate Catholic teaching.

And so we've been honored to have now representing us, We are bringing in the Illinois Catholic Health Association, the Catholic Medical Association, the Christian Medical and Dental Association, Catholic Nurses, Catholic Psychotherapy Association.

So a whole group, an ecumenical group of health care providers, institutions that just say, no, we don't want to be a part of this.

What does the addition of these new plaintiffs mean for the legal challenge to Illinois' assisted suicide law?

We've got now pretty much you would have nearly 100 percent of the Catholic entities.

You've got Christian entities.

And then having that Christian Medical and Dental Association means you're going to get a whole group of very dedicated health care providers who are evangelical or mainline Protestant.

So we're bringing in a lot of people.

Whereas, traditionally, that, that was not a thing at all in medicine, and yet here is Kaiser starting to talk about all of this kind of thing.

And it, you know, with that, I think, as, as our worldview is shifting in the West, and we're becoming open to the possibility that maybe everything isn't just hard science, there are some people who are people of faith, or maybe who are inquiring but not yet people of faith, they are starting to wonder about, "Hmm, maybe these stories of Jesus healing makes sense." And for a while, I, I used to speak to the Christian Medical and Dental Association chapter in New York City, uh, once or twice a year, and we had an entire group of people, whether they were physicians, whether they were dentists, whether they were, maybe they were still in medicine, but not exactly what you would think of as a mainline physician.

Maybe they were radiologists or- ... people like that.

But also, we had people who were psychiatrists and psychologists coming.

So they were all part of s- CMDA, Christian Medical and Dental Association.

So they're all part of CMDA, and many of them got healed in the meetings I would lead.

In fact, one guy left his medical practice because his dislocated shoulder was healed, and he joined my staff.

Secondly, value of employees.

Our most, and we told our staff at CMDA, our most important asset walks through the door every morning.

It's our staff.

It's not how much money you have, how big the building is, the value of employees.

I got off the phone and thought, wow, I have never had somebody treat me like that on the phone.

and being so concerned about my problem and make sure to get it solved, and they are known for their customer service there, and being action-oriented and highly motivated staff.

If you do that in your mission, in your church, in your CMDA group on campus, wherever you are, these type of things really make things rock and a lot gets accomplished.

Motivation is the key to getting people to do their job superbly and to get people to change their behaviors.

But I will definitely share this.

I do remember as I graduated medical school, as I am now preparing myself to start a journey of becoming a surgeon, I was at a commissioning ceremony led by Christian Medical Dental Association.

And being the good Baptist boy that I am, and at the invitation of president of CMDA at the time, Dr. David Stevens, Like I went to the front, I knelt down and I dedicated my career as a surgeon to Jesus.

And something really, something happened, which I will never forget.

In my class, I would say a little over 100.

And then we had a – CMDA is a national organization, Christian Medical and Dental Association.

We had a chapter of it in my medical school at Texas A&M where there was – I would say – In my class, 6 to 10.

The organization made up multiple classes, but yeah, so we could roughly call about 10%.