Discussion #1

Hellenic College—Holy Cross School of Theology
50 Goddard Avenue
Brookline, MA  02146
Open to the Public.  Refreshments will be served.

Healing Spiritual and Physical Ills

Moderator: Cynthia Kostas

Drs. Peter Bistolarides, Manny Chris, and Dimitri Tagaropoulos

Questions for the Roundtable:

• How do you integrate your religious or faith based beliefs about healing with your medical practice?
• What do you believe to be the source of healing in your faith based practice? Does God’s healing power work through you as you practice the method that you have been trained in, or do you consider your trained method as being a talent from God that you developed?
• How do you personally stay in touch with God as you understand Him?
• Is your academic training ever in conflict with your religious beliefs? In such cases, how do you manage this?
• Are you professional rules of conduct ever in conflict with your religious beliefs? If such cases, how do you manage this?
• Do you believe that the healing you practice affects the soul? Is this an after-effect of having treated the body? Do you actively attempt to treat the soul as part of the body treatment? Is there a soul level that is touched or not touched by your method?
• Do you see your modality of healing as thoroughly transformational?
• Is faith based healing an excellent example of mind body medicine, in other words, a placebo affect, or is there an existential force at work?
• Are you open to non-academic modalities of healing, often referred to as “alternative” methods such as acupuncture, healing touch, bio energy movement such as qi gong? In your view, why are these effective, when they are effective?

Peter Bistolarides, M.D., M.Div., is a Diplomate of the American Board of Surgery, a Fellow of the American College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Surgeons of Canada, anda life member of the American College of Physician Executives.

The dialogos series will resume in the spring term, beginning in January