Visit the Sick Blogger
Some time ago one of the priests at our church mentioned from the pulpit that people were complaining that while in the local hospitals they were not visited by anyone from the church. This, it was declared, was because the persons had not registered or identified themselves as Catholics with the hospital, at the time of admission, I gathered. So, when I entered one of the hospitals last week I made it a point to ask the doctor examining me to see to it that I would be visited as a Catholic. He assured me that he would see to it. He saw me again and again, and gave no indication that anything was amiss.
Days passed with no visits. Then a nice lady came to my bed and identified herself as the hospital “religion person” or some such title, and I again conveyed my wishes, which she stated she would attend to by faxing something to the church alerting them to my presence in the hospital. Still no visit, up to my release after a week’s stay.
I suppose there are incontrovertible bureaucratic explanations for all this, along the lines of slowness of processing, missed deadlines, peculiarities of the case, failure to follow the correct notification regimen, or misspelling of the name. I hope the entrance into Heaven is less fraught with hazard!
