My wife grew up in a very “Catholic” family.
That doesn’t mean what you might think it does: old-fashioned clothes, candles everywhere, too many children, and the girls brought up to be doormats.
Okay, granted: my wife is the second of seven kids. But I can’t think of one of the other six who’s redundant.
Then there’s the matter of how my in-laws brought up their children. Take, for example, the time someone from the high school called my father-in-law with an grave concern regarding my wife’s younger sister.
The conversation went like this:
Concerned educator: “Do you know that your daughter wants to take SHOP?!“
My father-in-law: “So? Let her!”
And so, she took shop class. A bit later, one of my brothers-in-law took home ec. Partly, I suspect, because so many girls were taking the class. But, as my wife pointed out, he enjoys food preparation and is good at it.
Time passed. My wife’s older sister became a doctor. My wife earned a degree in computer science. I didn’t, but that’s when I met her. Her other siblings ended up doing things that fit their goals and abilities.
Like I said: a very Catholic family.
My sister-in-law the doctor came closest to following a family tradition. My wife’s mother’s mother’s mother was a midwife: who never lost a baby or a mother.
Another of my wife’s ancestors was accused of practicing witchcraft. Why, I don’t know, and the charges didn’t stick.
My guess is that the alleged “witch” was too good at helping neighbors stay healthy.1 That, over the last few centuries, could have triggered panicked responses.
My wife’s knack for acquiring knowledge of health, nutrition, and helpful herbal products suggests to me that healing has been a family tradition of sorts.
Health, Medicine, Being Catholic, and Using My Brain
Considering what’s happened in the last half-millennium, I’d better talk about being Catholic, science, medicine, and using my brain.
Very briefly: being healthy is okay, being sick is okay; getting well, and helping others get well, is a good idea. Scientific research is okay, too: and ethics matter, same as with everything else we do. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1410, 1500-1510, 2292-2296)
Some things aren’t okay, like divination and trying to get random spirits to do us favors. That’s a really bad idea and we shouldn’t do it, which is where rules about using “traditional cures” come from. (Catechism, 2115-2117)
Folks who paid attention to how our bodies and the rest of the world work, using that knowledge to help us stay well, might have been called herbalists, healers — or, when Europeans and Euro-Americans were going bonkers, starting around 1500 — witches. These days, we call them “doctors”.
And I am very glad that my native culture has started accepting the idea that women can use healing arts and not be a threat to civilization.
One of these days I may talk about doctors of the church like Saints Hildegard of Bingen, Thomas Aquinas, Teresa of Ávila, and Augustine of Hippo; but not today.
That kind of “doctor” isn’t the medical kind, although St. Hildegard of Bingen contributed, in the 12th century, to what we call medical science:
“…Hildegard’s medicinal and scientific writings, although thematically complementary to her ideas about nature expressed in her visionary works, are different in focus and scope. Neither claim to be rooted in her visionary experience and its divine authority. Rather, they spring from her experience helping in and then leading the monastery’s herbal garden and infirmary, as well as the theoretical information she likely gained through her wide-ranging reading in the monastery’s library….”
(Hildegard of Bingen, Scientific and medicinal writings, Wikipedia)
The notion that religious people don’t like either modern or traditional medicine, and that religion and science get along like mongoose and cobra, is fairly new.
I’ve talked about this before:
- “Called to Holiness, Not Stupidity” (June 7, 2025)
- “Liberal? Conservative? Republican? Democrat? No: Catholic” (July 27, 2024)
- “Science, Religion, and Saying Goodbye to the 19th Century” (May 25, 2024)
- “Medieval Monkish Medicine: Scientific Before Science was a Thing” (November 14, 2023)
- “A Star by Any Other Name, and a Galilean Interlude” (November 13, 2021)
1 This was several generations back. My wife says the ancestor was accused of being a witch, but I remembered the story as involving a warlock. It’s not a high-priority bit of family lore, and so isn’t something I’m inclined to investigate. Either way, the charges didn’t stick.
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