There were two recent articles in Catholic Outlook on the role of technology, especially artificial intelligence (AI) in modern life, and in healthcare in particular. In response, I am offering the perspective of General Practice on these issues.
The first article, by Bertrand Hériard-Dubreuil SJ and Dominique Bourg, entitled “Technology and the Social Doctrine of the Church: What Relationship?” and published on 10 July 2026, traces the historical development of the role of technology, making the point that “there is no humanity without craftsmanship and, more specifically, without tools.” To this point, I would also add that there is no humanity without human relationships.
In fact, we usually discover our humanity through human relationships. This begins with our relationships with our parents at birth and continues throughout our lives until the moment of our natural death. We can only express our humanity in a human way through our relationships. In this sense, we are social beings, called to be part of a human community such as family and friends. This then translates into our communities at work and Church. In fact, our social context often interacts with our healthcare, as well as the technology we use in healthcare.
Technology cannot replace the relationship between doctor and patient. Image: Shutterstock
Before continuing, I would like to point out that the word technology comes from the Greek word “techne” meaning skill or tool, and “logos”, meaning word. Taken together, technology expresses the skills needed to perform a task in a competent and expert manner. What these tasks may be, whether they are ethical or not, whether they serve the public good or not, are dependent on the ethics and virtues of the person(s) using the technology. For example, a knife can be used as a tool to prepare a meal, but it can also be used as a weapon to harm ourselves and others.
This means that the healthcare relationship with the sick and the dying is intrinsically relational in a human sense, since healthcare is fundamentally one person caring for another, especially in a primary care setting such as General Practice. It is this fact that healthcare is someone caring for another that sets the context for the appropriate use of technology in caring for the needs of the person who seeks care. In this regard, we must not confuse the technology used in caring for the other person with the technology itself.
Another point is that healthcare applies to both the private sphere of family life as well as the public sphere of professional healthcare. We need to understand that the boundary between the public and the private sphere of healthcare does not mean that our faith belongs to the private sphere while our professional work is in the public
sphere of care. This way of thinking runs the risk of regarding our faith as something private, in contrast to our public role, which becomes just a job instead of the expression of our call to missionary discipleship in following Jesus, the healer.
It is the love of Jesus that animates, informs and calls us to care for the sick – either in the internal focus of one’s family, or the external focus of public ministry and professional life.
From this perspective, the priest administering the Sacrament of the Sick, the hospital chaplain or pastoral associate accompanying the patient in a hospital or a professional caring for patients are all involved in the healthcare ministry of the Church. In this way, the sacramental, pastoral and professional dimensions of Catholic healthcare walk together synodally in ministering the love of Jesus for the sick and the dying in today’s world.
The primacy of the relationship of care as being at the heart of healthcare, then leads to the question raised in the second article, by Julia Trimboli, entitled “Beyond Efficiency: Why Catholic healthcare needs Morin, Pope Leo XIV and Pellegrino in the age of AI”. In it she asks: “What kind of Catholic Healthcare System are we becoming?” In response, she points out that a technological focus reduces healthcare to a matter of diagnoses and effective ways to ‘fix’ the diagnostic problems rather than respond to the patient’s problems with “the practical wisdom, compassion, courage, justice, and prudence that characterize good healers.”
We need to recover an understanding of the human relationships that matter at the heart of healthcare. This then allows technology to be the means to an end of healthcare, grounded in a practice of allowing the God who walks with us to care for the sick and the dying in today’s world.
Deacon Michael Tan is a member of the Permanent Diaconate in the Diocese of Parramatta and a former GP with 30 years of clinical experience. He is also on the Western Sydney Local Health District Human Research Ethics Committee.
