"If Catholic and Protestant ethicians were asked to name a single theologian who was qualified to write a comprehensive overview of the historical divergences of Catholic and Protestant positions on ethical questions, the bases for those divergences in fundamentally different philosophical and theological perspectives, and the possibilities for future convergences of the traditions, my guess is that James Gustafson would be the one.... This brilliant and tightly argued book... will be the most important book on moral theology to (...) appear this year."—John Coleman, National Catholic Reporter. (shrink)

. . . This brilliant and tightly argued book . . . will be the most important book on moral theology to appear this year."—John Coleman, National Catholic Reporter.

Plastination is a relatively novel technique wherein human tissue is dehydrated and the water is replaced with a plastic-like substance. The process is valuable to educational institutions, because it preserves the body for a long period of time, allowing for prolonged anatomical study. However, a number of ethical issues have been raised regarding the process, particularly related to the procurement of human specimens and the act of displaying these bodies, even for educational purposes. This article explores both the process itself (...) and the associated ethical pitfalls, particularly from a Catholic perspective. (shrink)

Series of talks comparing and contrasting moral codes of two facets of christianity.

During the summer of 2006, over four hundred Catholic ethicists from around the world gathered for four days in Padua, Italy. About sixty of the conference papers have become available in two edited collections, Catholic Theological Ethics in the World Church: The Plenary Papers from the First Cross-cultural Conference on Catholic Theological Ethics, and Applied Ethics in a World Church: The Padua Conference. As the conference was marked by a distinctive and creative tension—between the (...) diversity which characterized the nationalities and cultural identities of the participants, on the one hand, and the commonness of their religious heritage, on the other—these essays can tell us much about contemporary Catholic ethics in its response to global pluralism. The following develops four reflections. First, the conference papers pursue a style of scholarship that is at once critically creative and ecclesially rooted. Second, the conference raises new concerns about the importance that Christian formation must have in a pluralist world. Third, the participants affirm and defend the ultimate universality of moral goods while also arguing that these goods are expressed and embodied in unavoidably particular ways. Finally, the most important contribution that Catholic ethics can make to public conversations about issues of common concern is through its articulation and defense of key human values. (shrink)

This introduction provides a comprehensive overview of the development of Catholic ethics in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, an event widely considered crucial to the reconciliation of the Catholic Church and the modern world. Andrew Kim investigates Catholic responses to questions of moral theology in all four principal areas: Catholic social teaching, natural law, virtue ethics, and bioethics. In addition to discussing contemporary controversies surrounding abortion, contraception, labor rights, exploitation of the poor, (...) and just war theory, he explores the historical sources of the Catholic worldview. Beginning with the moral vision revealed through the person of Jesus Christ and continuing with elaborations on this vision from figures such as Augustine and Aquinas, this volume elucidates the continuity of the Catholic moral tradition. Its balance of complexity and accessibility makes it an ideal resource for both students of theology and general readers. (shrink)

The Vatican recently published directives regarding “beginning of life” issues that explain the Catholic Church's position regarding new technologies in this area. We think that it is important to develop a response that presents the traditional Orthodox Jewish position on these same issues in order to present an alternative, parallel system. There are many points of commonality between the Vatican document and traditional Jewish thought as well as several important issues where there is a divergence of opinion. The latter (...) include the status of the zygote as produced during in vitro fertilization, the acceptable of procreation in a method other than through the conjugal act, and the permissibility of deriving benefit from the products of an illicit act. These points of agreement and disagreement are discussed in detail in this article. (shrink)

Theological basis -- Religion and health care -- The dignity of human life -- The integrity of the human person -- Implications for health care -- Theological principles in health care ethics -- Method -- The levels and questions of ethics -- Freedom and the moral agent -- Right and wrong -- Metaethics -- Method in Catholic bioethics -- Catholic method and birth control -- The principle of double effect -- Application -- Forgoing treatment, pillar one: (...) ordinary and extraordinary means -- Forgoing treatment, pillar two: killing and allowing to die -- Forgoing treatment, pillar three: decisions by competent patients -- Forgoing treatment, pillar three: decisions for incompetent patients -- Forgoing treatment, pillar three: advance directives -- Hydration and nutrition -- Physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia -- Medical futility -- Pain and pain management -- Ethics committees -- Embryonic stem cells and the beginning of human personhood -- Genetic engineering -- Allocating health care resources -- The use and misuse of the allocation argument. (shrink)

Reference to theology, and in particular to theological ethics, in health policy in contemporary Romania may seem outdated. Some positions have been defended that tend to marginalize the contribution of theology to health policy ethics or ever to rule out any contribution of theology to the implementation of health policies. The questions I aim to answer in this paper are the following: (1) Why has the role of theology (theological ethics) decreased in establishing health policies? (2) Which (...) are the major problems for health policy from the perspective of theological ethics? (3) What is the original contribution that Catholic theological ethics can bring to health policy? In the concluding section of this paper I will present a case study that highlights the analogy (in terms of both usefulness and limitations) between the concept of "therapeutic alliance" and the theological concept of "alliance" (covenant). . (shrink)

Jesus embodies for the Christian the model of true service, which should be discernibly distinct from secular service. Even for non-Christian services, the Church offers relevant models and teaching. Contemporary service structures often lose sight of the dignity of served and server, and have grown dependent upon technology and technique, straying outside the realm of relationality. An example of this within certain service fields is reliance on physical and mechanical restraints to restrict movement, causing harm to recipients and to the (...) relationship between server and served. Such techniques overshadow the nature of Christian service, which is personal, relational, and communal. Catholic social doctrine, and many personalist frameworks, build on the pillars of dignity, responsibility, and subsidiarity. Rules alone will not be protective against service-mediated harm; however, principled servers can protect vulnerable people, particularly when guided by a concern for the common good, fraternity and solidarity. (shrink)

Essays honoring the work of Catholic ethicist James F. Keenan.

Roman Catholic bioethics seems to be caught in a paradox. One the one hand it is committed to the natural law tradition and the power of reason to understand the structures of creation and the moral law. On the other hand there is a greater and greater appeal to Scripture and revelation. The tradition maintains that reason is capable of understanding the rational structures of reality and that ethics is properly built on metaphysics. In this way ethics, (...) bioethics, is non-sectarian. However, the tradition also recognizes the effects of Original Sin on the will and intellect and the broad cultural changes that have affected our understanding of metaphysics. The appeal to Revelation is a corrective to many contemporary trends in ethics and bioethics. This article will examine the interplay of reason and revelation in the Church's teaching on sexuality, (particularly contraception and in vitro fertilization), suffering, and death. Catholic bioethics is in the end prophetic and ecumenical and not gnostic and non-ecumenical. (shrink)

How ought Christians to approach moral problems? This is a question of method in moral theology. It is also a question of who is in authority to speak on matters of morality. In this essay, the moral methodology of Richard McCormick, S.J., one of the most powerful voices in contemporary Roman Catholic theology, is explored in depth. Attention is focused on its critical details, its development over time, and in particular McCormick's use of authorities in Roman Catholicism. It is (...) argued that his ethical theory is built around one central insight: that the human person in all its facets and dimensions is the criterion of the rightness and wrongness of human actions. (shrink)

This article focuses on the troubling effects of the secular values of individual freedom and autonomy and their impact on laws regarding suicide and euthanasia. The author argues that in an increasingly secularized culture, death and dying are losing their meaning and are not thought of within a moral framework. The debate regarding the provision of artificial nutrition and hydration is critically considered in light of the history of Catholic morality as well as within the modern healthcare context, and (...) finally with new insight from the recent statements made by the late pope. Drane argues that the pope's insistence on providing artificial nutrition and hydration despite irreversible persistent vegetatitive states is unconvincing. (shrink)

Protestant and Roman Catholic Ethics: Prospects for Rapprochment. By James Gustafson. Ethics at the Edge of Life: Medical and Legal Intersections. By Paul Ramsey. The Moral Choice. By Daniel Maguire.

This study examines from an ethical framework the circumstances of workers who are engaged in non-professional services that are offered through corporations that are organized to serve high volume of costumers. Drawing on the relevant ethical teachings of the Catholic social tradition (CST), it explores some practices, strategies, and policies that could address the problems experienced by many service providers in the United States today. CST refers to a wide variety of documents of the magisterium of the Catholic (...) Church which respond to the changing social and economic challenges of the modern world. The study argues that the primacy of the person, love and subsidiarity, sense of community, and respect for worker’s rights and unionism in CST are not only moral principles that uphold intrinsic human goods, they are likewise instrumental to operational effectivity because they promote job satisfaction, smooth interpersonal relationship, and long-term commitment with the company. They enable service providers to work efficiently, deliver exceptional service, and act as conduit between the customers and the business establishment, rather than simply being caught between their conflicting demands. (shrink)

: Stem cell research that requires the destruction of human embryos is incompatible with Catholic moral principles, and with any ethic that gives serious weight to the moral status of the human embryo. Moreover, because there are promising and morally acceptable alternative approaches to the repair and regeneration of human tissues, and because treatments that rely on destruction of human embryos would be morally offensive to many patients, embryonic stem cell research may play a far less significant role in (...) medical progress than proponents believe. (shrink)

Taking Catholic sexual ethics and liberal feminist ethics as points of departure, this essay argues that both frameworks are ill-prepared to deal with the moral problems raised by sex trafficking: while Catholic sexual ethics is grounded in a normative understanding of sexuality, liberal feminist ethics argues for women's sexual autonomy, resting upon freedom of action and consent. From a perspective that attends both to the phenomenological interpretation of embodied selves and the Kantian normative interpretation (...) of dignity, it becomes possible to critique both the Catholic and the liberal feminist frameworks of ethics. I argue that Catholic sexual ethics requires a reconceptualization as social ethics in order to meet the challenges of our present time, but that the shift is possible without giving up the moral imperatives of both Catholic and feminist ethics to protect human dignity and women's rights. (shrink)

Catholic Social Teaching aspires to an economy that serves needs, upholds justice, and inculcates subsidiarity. But it suffers from a significant omission—it fails to look “inside” the business organisations that comprise the fundamental building blocks of the economic system. It is therefore ill-equipped to suggest how businesses could be reformed to meet these aspirations. MacIntyre’s Thomistic Aristotelian account of the relationships between goods, virtues, practices and institutions provides resources that could enable CST to overcome this lacuna. This paper describes (...) the MacIntyrean account and compares it with CST’s existing categories. It then analyses the case of the Lloyds Banking Group. This allows not only diagnosis, but potentially a prescriptive account of how virtue may be “crowded-in” to business organisations. The paper concludes by suggesting that this approach might make a distinctive contribution to CST, and hence enable CST to make an even more significant contribution to business ethics. (shrink)

In a single convenient resource, this book organizes and presents clearly the documents of the Catholic church pertaining to medical ethics.

Catholic Social Teaching aspires to an economy that serves needs, upholds justice, and inculcates subsidiarity. But it suffers from a significant omission—it fails to look “inside” the business organisations that comprise the fundamental building blocks of the economic system. It is therefore ill-equipped to suggest how businesses could be reformed to meet these aspirations. MacIntyre’s Thomistic Aristotelian account of the relationships between goods, virtues, practices and institutions provides resources that could enable CST to overcome this lacuna. This paper describes (...) the MacIntyrean account and compares it with CST’s existing categories. It then analyses the case of the Lloyds Banking Group. This allows not only diagnosis, but potentially a prescriptive account of how virtue may be “crowded-in” to business organisations. The paper concludes by suggesting that this approach might make a distinctive contribution to CST, and hence enable CST to make an even more significant contribution to business ethics. (shrink)

Catholic Social Teaching aspires to an economy that serves needs, upholds justice, and inculcates subsidiarity. But it suffers from a significant omission—it fails to look “inside” the business organisations that comprise the fundamental building blocks of the economic system. It is therefore ill-equipped to suggest how businesses could be reformed to meet these aspirations. MacIntyre’s Thomistic Aristotelian account of the relationships between goods, virtues, practices and institutions provides resources that could enable CST to overcome this lacuna. This paper describes (...) the MacIntyrean account and compares it with CST’s existing categories. It then analyses the case of the Lloyds Banking Group. This allows not only diagnosis, but potentially a prescriptive account of how virtue may be “crowded-in” to business organisations. The paper concludes by suggesting that this approach might make a distinctive contribution to CST, and hence enable CST to make an even more significant contribution to business ethics. (shrink)

Completely updated and revised, the third edition of Catholic Health Care Ethics: A Manual for Practitioners sets the standard for Catholic bioethicists, physicians, nurses, and other health care workers. In thirty-nine chapters (many with subchapters), leading authors in their fields discuss a wide range of topics relevant to medicine and health care. The book has six parts covering foundational principles, health care ethics services, beginning-of-life issues, end-of-life issues, selected clinical issues, and institutional issues. Some highlights from (...) the third edition include new entries on the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, certitude in moral decision-making, the principle of double effect, clinical ethics consultation, natural family planning, prenatal testing and diagnosis, care of fetal remains, challenges to neurological criteria, the use of ventilators, POLST, alkaline hydrolysis, opportunistic salpingectomy, so-called lethal prenatal diagnoses, transgenderism, and new age medicine. The volume continues to provide insightful information on the topics previously covered in the second edition, but with significant updates throughout. (shrink)

The Second Vatican Council called for a fundamental renewal of Catholic theological ethics. That project, however, has not been realized primarily because of the strong defence of a normative, act-centred understanding of morality defended by Pope Paul VI and his successor, Pope John Paul II. Reframing Theological Ethics aims to overcome that impasse by arguing for a change in the method of ethical reasoning, emphasizing the replacement of the norm of natural law with that of the human (...) person, integrally and adequately considered, and elaborating an innovative theory of virtue. The paradigm of complementary virtues presented in this book is developed for the first time and allows the ethicist to flesh out the meaning and contours of the ends or goals of ethical living and decision-making. The study concludes with suggestions about how this approach may converge with the insights of normative ethics and achieve the renewal called for fifty years ago. (shrink)

This article describes Catholic natural law tradition by examining its origins in the medieval penitentials, the papal decretals, the writings of Thomas Aquinas, and seventeenth-century casuistry. Catholic natural law emerges as a flexible ethic that conceives of human nature as rational and as oriented to certain basic goods that ought to be pursued and whose pursuit is made possible by the virtues. Four approaches to natural law that have evolved within the United States during the twentieth century are (...) then identified, including the traditionalist, proportionalist, right reason, and historicist approaches. The normative implications of these approaches are discussed in relation to ethical issues in the tobacco industry, ITT under Geneen, the marketing of pharmaceuticals, affirmative action, and bribery. It is argued that Alasdair MacIntyre is correct in claiming that the natural law tradition issuperior to the liberal ethics of modern deontology and utilitarianism. (shrink)

This volume provides a new account of business ethics from the perspective of Catholic social thought. Focusing on the sense of agency of the business person and the interests of business firms, this volume addresses business from both "the outside" (with questions about economic life in Catholic social thought) and "the inside" (with attention to the internal dynamics of business firms). The result is a creative account of fundamental issues confronting the moral business leader and any firm (...) committed to responsible business practice. This volume is unique in the depth of the questions from Catholic social thought that it brings to bear on business. It begins with interviews of three CEOs to ensure a grounding in experience and a consideration of the intellectual history of business issues in Christianity. Most importantly, it deals with fundamental moral concerns: the character of agency, autonomy, practical wisdom, and the technocratic paradigm, along with other elements of Catholic social thought. The book then applies these concepts to assess management science, the motivations of business leaders, the role of luck in personal success, the traditional moral justifications of business, and more. (shrink)

A Christian analysis of the moral conflicts that exist among physicians and health care institutions requires a detailed treatment of the ethical issues in managed care. To be viable, managed care, as with any system of health care, must be economically sound and morally defensible. While managed care is per se a morally neutral concept, as it is currently practiced in the United States, it is morally dubious at best, and in many instances is antithetical to a Catholic Christian (...) ethics of health care. The moral status of any system of managed care ought to be judged with respect to its congruence with Gospel teachings about the care of the sick, Papal Encyclicals, and the documents of the Second Vatican Council. In this essay, I look at the important conceptual or definitional issues of managed care, assess these concerns over against the source and content of a Catholic ethic of health care, and outline the necessary moral requirements of any licit system of health care. (shrink)

The importance of having ethical oversight in research that is carried out on humans is well established. Research ethics, which is mainly influenced by a biomedical ethical framework, aims to ensure that the well-being and the rights of research participants are upheld and that any potential risks and harms are reduced. However, research is also considered to be a social activity with social effects. Therefore the principles of Catholic Social Teaching as a framework for research ethics may (...) be significant. This paper outlines those principles and demonstrates how these principles may be used for: reflecting ethically on research , judging a research ethics proposal and providing guidelines for action in research. (shrink)

The Catholic moral tradition has a rich foundation that applies broadly to encompass all areas of human experience. Yet, there is comparatively little in Catholic thought on the ethics of the collection and use of data, especially in healthcare. We provide here a brief overview of terminology, concepts, and applications of data in the context of healthcare, summarize relevant theological principles and themes (including the Vatican’s Rome Call for AI Ethics), and offer key questions for ethicists (...) and data managers to consider as they analyze ethical implications pertinent to data governance and data management. (shrink)

Solidarity belongs to the basic principles of Catholic Social Teaching (CST) and is part of the ethical repertoire of European moral traditions and European healthcare systems. This paper discusses how leaders of Catholic healthcare organizations (HCOs) can understand their institutional moral responsibility with regard to the preservation of solidarity. In dealing with this question, we make use of Taylor's philosophy of modern culture. We first argue that, just as all HCOs, Catholic ones also can embody and strengthen (...) solidarity by just doing their quintessential job, that is, to care for people with ill health. Second, we focus on the Catholic identity of these organizations and argue that this characteristic can empower a radical commitment to solidarity. Finally, we argue that CST provides a critical ethical framework for approaching solidarity from the perspective of the common good. (shrink)

Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, EarlyView.

The Catholic Church proscribes methods of birth control other than sexual abstinence. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recognizes abstinence as an acceptable method of birth control in research studies, some pharmaceutical companies mandate the use of artificial contraceptive techniques to avoid pregnancy as a condition for participation in their studies. These requirements are unacceptable at Catholic health care institutions, leading to conflicts among institutional review boards, clinical investigators, and sponsors. Subjects may feel coerced by such (...) mandates to adopt contraceptive techniques inconsistent with their personal situation and beliefs; women committed to celibacy or who engage exclusively in non-heterosexual activities are negatively impacted. We propose principles to insure informed consent to safeguard the rights of research subjects at Catholic institutions while mitigating this ethical conflict. At the same time, our proposal respects the interests of pharmaceutical research agencies and Catholic moral precepts, and fully abides by regulatory guidance. (shrink)