A Volley from the Canon, #79, When Praying Becomes Prying, Part One

A Volley from the Canon, #79

WHEN PRAYING BECOMES PRYING, Part One

Most of our congregations have intercessory prayer groups, and all of them have intercessory prayer as part of the Prayers of the People. We rightly put great emphasis on diligence in prayer on behalf of others in need, at home and around the world. Additionally, many of our congregations have also rediscovered the power and pastoral responsiveness of the sacrament of unction, even in “regular” Sunday Eucharists and not just segregated into special “healing” services. Every celebration of Holy Communion ought to be an occasion for healing; and anointing and laying on of hands with prayer for healing certainly has a place there. But there’s a down-side to both of these opportunities for praying, and that is that they also present the temptation to pry into the lives and travails of our fellows.

This is a time when the medical community is required by law to observe strict privacy policies concerning patients’ private health and treatment information, and it’s about time: in the past, I’ve heard health professionals shouting details about people’s medical records and treatments across waiting rooms and pharmacies. We would be wise to adopt the more careful norms voluntarily. Most of the time, people request prayers for a particular purpose, and they are comfortable having their church community know about what they are going through. But we must be careful. The church, and particularly the clergy, ought not to be the source of unauthorized information-sharing about private health information. Let not the intercessory prayer team ever function as the Gossip Hot-line in any Episcopal congregation!

I strongly urge clergy and lay pastoral visitors who attend the sick at home or in hospital to ask this question sometime during their visit: “What would you like me to tell people who ask me about your condition?” Most of the time, the person will reply that it is fine to fill church members in on their illness and treatment—after all, they are usually speaking of it freely themselves. However, they need the opportunity to make that choice. If they respond, “Just say I had a minor illness and am recovering,” we must leave it at that.

I’ve experienced some church members being fairly pushy in asking me about other parishioners’ conditions. Sometimes it is necessary to say, “I really don’t know the details,” (which is generally true even if I know more than I’m saying), or “You need to talk to her (or the family) about that.” I wouldn’t mind at all having a church member complain to the sick person that their priest would not reveal what kind of surgery she had. I would mind terribly having it reported that I, or a lay pastoral visitor, gave out the whole story at Bible Study!

(to be continued)