Guest Editorial: Morality and Reality

Anne Dickinson
Issue 16, August 2005

In 1984 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger gave an address entitled "Bishops, Theologians and Morality" to the Annual Bishops Workshop run by the National Catholic Bioethics Centre in the United States.

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Christian Moral Argument and Natural Law "Faith and Reason" or "Faith vs. Reason"

 John Kleinsman
Issue 16, August 2005

In America, and now in New Zealand, an increasing number of strong and powerful "religious" voices are emerging in the political arena to debate the moral issues of our time. A number of these Christian voices employ an approach to morality that appeals strongly and at times exclusively to the authority of God in Scripture.

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Guest Editorial: Decisions, decisions...

 

Anne Dickinson

On an Intrepid Journey programme on television recently a group of Turkish carpet makers gave a mesmerizing demonstration of their craft. With incredible speed they pulled each tuft into the carpet, changing colour without hesitating as they created an intricate pattern.

The carpet makers provided a visual analogy with life. We make many small decisions every day, often without a lot of thought. These decisions are like tufts in the carpet, collectively creating a pattern in our lives. We would be hugely burdened if we were to pay too much attention to them, so we create routines to simplify our daily decision-making processes. Routine saves us from expending unnecessary energy on making minor decisions.

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Personhood and Human Dignity

 Michael McCabe
Issue 17, November 2005

"During the next 35 years, the traditional view of the sanctity of human life will collapse under pressure from scientific, technological, and demographic developments. By 2040, it may be that only a rump of hard core, know-nothing religious fundamentalists will defend the view that every human life, from conception to death, is sacrosanct."

--Peter Singer, 2005

In the September/October 2005 edition of the magazine, Foreign Policy Professor Peter Singer from Princeton University wrote an Op-Ed piece entitled The Sanctity of Life: Here Today, Gone Tomorrow. In it he argues that, because of significant scientific and technological developments, the belief that life is sacred from conception to death has become, in 2005, untenable. To support his argument Singer cites two examples one at the beginning of life, the other at the end of life.

Earlier this year scientists from South Korea successfully replaced the nucleus of an unfertilized human egg with the nucleus of a human cell. Such a development appears to confirm that any and every human cell contains the genetic information required to create a new and independent human being. The possibility of cloning from the nucleus of an ordinary cell, Singer argues, undermines the idea that embryos are precious because they have the potential to become human beings. For Singer while the life of a human organism begins at conception, the life of a person that is, at a minimum, a being with some level of self-awareness does not begin so early. Similarly, he argues that personhood can end long before an individual dies.

When patients have suffered such irreversible brain trauma from which they will not recover, then, Singer argues, a decision to remove a feeding tube will be less controversial, because it will be a decision to end the life of a human body, but not of a person. For Singer a patient in this condition has already ceased to be a person and only his or her body remains.

While Singer is right that the development of sophisticated technology will increase our ability to make sound judgments about the limits of curative treatment, the leap in judgment that patients who have lost even a minimum of or considerable self-awareness, are no longer persons is disturbing to say the least. While we argue that the unborn, infants and the cognitively impaired have an innate dignity and a profound moral connection to the community, it is clear from the above argument that not everyone agrees.

The implications of Singer's argument are disturbing, not least because such views are not uncommon in secular bioethics.

For example, in his book The Foundations of Bioethics, H. Tristram Engelhardt outlinea the philosophical basis for such an understanding of personhood in general secular morality and, by extension, in so-called secular bioethics. He lists four fundamental elements of personhood: the ability to be self-conscious; rational; have a minimal moral sense and be free. To the degree that a human being is conscious, able to make autonomous choices, and perform actions which benefit society, his or her life has value and the status of personhood. When these qualities are lacking, so is their personhood. Engelhardt states:

not all humans are persons. Not all humans are self-conscious, rational, and able to conceive of the possibility of blaming and praising. Fetuses, infants, dhe profoundly mentally retarded, and the hopelessly comatose provide examples of human nonpersons. They are members of the human species but do not in and of themselves have standing in the secular moral community. Such entities cannot blame or praise or be worthy of blame or praise; they cannot make promises, contracts, or agree to an understanding of beneficence. They are not prime participants in the secular moral endeavor. Only persons have that status. (Engelhardt, 1996, pp.138-139)

Engelhardt argues that such definitions highlight and reflect the tension between general secular morality and traditional Judeo-Christian morality and the bioethics that it, in turn, supports. Inevitably different philosophical starding points lead to a painful gulf between general secular and content-full morality. (1996, p.140)

The logical outcome of the current trends in secular bioethics regarding personhood is a society divided into persons and non-persons. Non-persons would include those who are cognitively disabled in some way, through genetics, accident, or disease. The requirement to exhibit certain cognitive capacities means that some bioethicists do not see newborns as being persons.

The human rights of those declared to be non-persons would be severely curtailed. Some bioethicists have already speculated as to whether they could be used as non-voluntary sources of organs.

From a Catholic perspective the intense philosophical debates about personhood occurring in secular bioethics give cause for considerable concern. Human dignity is the source of rights in Catholic thinking, not a slippery concept of personhood which can be defined and redefined so that some people are designated as non-persons. It is hard to escape the conclusion that in some cases this is being done for utilitarian purposes.

There is reason to be very afraid if this philosophy should make further inroads into public policy in New Zealand, as it is already doing in other parts of the world.

References:

H. Tristram Engelhardt. (1996). The foundations of bioethics. (2 nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press.

Singer, P. (September/October 2005). The sanctity of life: here today, gone tomorrow. Foreign Policy.

Smith, W.J. (2000, April 3). Is Bioethics Ethical? The Weekly Standard.

________________________

Rev Michael McCabe, PhD
Director
The Nathaniel Centre

©
2005

The Pursuit of Wisdom

Dr Anna Holmes
Issue 17, November 2005

There is in her a spirit that is intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, clear, unpolluted, distinct, invulnerable, loving the good, keen, irresistible, beneficent, humane, steadfast sure, free from anxiety, all-powerful, overseeing all, and penetrating through all spirits that are intelligent, pure and altogether subtle.

--Wisdom of Solomon 22-23

We live in a knowledge economy and access to information is power. Those who do not have access to information are disempowered. We live in a world that values scientific knowledge but pays scant attention to wisdom. Indeed it tends to discount any knowledge that cannot be measured and tested by scientific method. Knowledge gained through experience is also often ignored. This trend has been escalating in the past century as scientific understanding of the world has increased. It is almost as if the more we unravel about our physical being and world the less we really understand our real selves and relationships.

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From CD to MP3 for Free? The Principle of Moral Cooperation

John Kleinsman
Issue 17, November 2005

Having carefully saved his pocket money, my thirteen year old son recently purchased a new music CD. One of his friends immediately wanted to borrow the CD so that he could copy the songs - at no cost - onto his MP3 player, something that is a clear breach of copyright. "Heaps of people do it Dad, but I don't think it is right. What do you think?" I had to agree with him. "Could you tell him that he can borrow it to listen to, but that you don't want him to copy it," I ventured to suggest. "Yeah right, Dad. We both know that he will copy it anyway."

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Guest Editorial: Concerning Information, Knowledge and Wisdom

Bishop Peter Cullinane
Issue 19, August 2006

Familial relationships

When the Second Vatican Council spoke of "familial relationship" between the laity and the pastors" (LG 37), it was making the point that each learns something from the other when it comes to understanding, interpreting and applying the Church's teaching.

The practical implications of this were later spelled out in c.212, which emphasises both the rights of the laity and the respect due to the teaching ministry of pastors. But more than that, good collaboration in practising and presenting the Church's teaching is rooted in the relationships proper to a community of Jesus' disciples. Their learning from each is qualitatively affected by friendship between them.

A little learning

If before the Council it was the insights and the rights of the laity that were often neglected, perhaps today it is the ministry of the pastors that is being disrespected – not by careless Catholics, but by zealous Catholics, who seem to be very sure of themselves. Of whom was the poet speaking when he said: "a little learning is a dangerous thing"?

The harshness and sarcasm to which pastors are sometimes treated does not come from those family relationships the Council describes, and not from the Holy Spirit.

Adequately presenting the Church's teaching involves much more than just getting information, even from the best of sources. Information on its own is not knowledge. Much less is it wisdom. Someone has rightly asked: whatever happened to wisdom that it got buried in knowledge; whatever happened to knowledge that it got buried in information?

Information is only the raw material for knowledge. It needs to be processed through the methods proper to theology. In this way we see individual teachings in the light of each other and in the light of the whole. This involves years of study.

At the time the Catechism of the Catholic Church was issued, Cardinal Ratzinger emphasised the importance of "mediating" the Catechism. This is something more than merely drawing conclusions for local application, and it is more than merely repeating the text. It involves a process of internalising, interpreting and re-expressing the text in other ways. He even said the Catechism "is not and cannot be the only possible way, or even the best way, of giving a catechetical re-expression to the Christian message". It belongs to the ministry of bishops and bishops' conferences to oversee these processes of "mediation" and ensure faithfulness to the apostolic tradition.

In a private discussion with two of New Zealand's bishops during the 1989 Synod, Cardinal Ratzinger confirmed that bishops and bishops' conferences have a similar role in interpreting and applying Instructions issued by Roman Congregations for the Universal Church.

How did Cardinal Ratzinger get it so wrong, if it is sufficient just to repeat what can be read in the Catechism or in an Instruction?

What would be left of the charism and vocation of theologians if the ability to read the internet or the Catechism were all that is needed, without the need for years of theological study?

And what would be left of the teaching ministry of bishops if it were reduced to merely repeating what anyone could pick up from the media?

These are the kind of questions that must be faced by those who use information (albeit accurate information) in isolation from theological method and independently of the teaching ministry of bishops.

They might also notice that according to the Council, the factors which give rise to ongoing development and growth in the Church's understanding of its faith are rooted in the lived experience of the faith (DV n.8) – and therefore in the life of the Church at every local level.

The need for bishops to speak up

That is why the charism and responsibility for authenticating Catholic teaching belongs to the whole episcopate, including and especially the Bishop of Rome. Regional bishops would be acting in an un-Catholic way if they were not to assume their share of responsibility for how the Church's teaching continues to be clarified and expressed.

If the reaction of some Catholics to a recent explanation of the Church's teaching on contraception and avoiding the spread of infection proved anything, it proved the need to say what was said. Otherwise, people really will think that clarifications such as those recently offered by at least two Cardinals and a consultor to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith amount to a "change" in the Church's teaching. It was important to explain why this is not so.

It is also required of pastors that they hold the torch for those thinking Catholics and others who know instinctively that some of the Church's teachings have been inflated beyond what the Church actually teaches.

Wisdom

Beyond knowledge is wisdom. Knowledge is its raw material still being processed through prayer, reflection and life-experience. Of course, it is also a gift. Those who are least likely to feel the need for wisdom are those who are most sure of their own knowledge. Lots of information and easy access to it have become their power-base. (The power-base in society used to be with those who hold wisdom).

Some of those who rely heavily on information would probably find Cardinal Ratzinger's remarks on mediating and on the role of bishops' conferences bewildering – even if they are not so long out of the seminary.

The Catholic laity are entitled to pay more attention to those who have heard more confessions, visited more homes, worked with more addicts, failed more often, and experienced their own vulnerability over a longer period of time. They seem to know something that is not taken from the internet. (I used to feel scandalised by these priests – I had learned the books very well. I was yet to learn humility.)

An increasing need

Legislation on social, economic and industrial issues, and ethical questions arising from bio-technology, are just some obvious areas in which pastors and laity need each other for a proper understanding of how the Church's teachings apply. This will become more so, not less so. How shall we put in place the structures needed to facilitate friendship?

_________________

Bishop Peter J Cullinane is Bishop of Palmerston North Diocese and New Zealand Bishops' Conference Deputy for The Nathaniel Centre.

©
2006

Editorial - Taking a Deeper View

Michael McCabe
Issue 20, November 2006

In recent years the New Zealand Government has spoken often about one of its central goals, namely, the transformation of New Zealand into a knowledge-based economy and society. Towards that end it recently released a document entitled The New Zealand Curriculum: Draft for Consultation 2006 as part of a comprehensive review of the country's curriculum for primary and secondary schools. The draft curriculum document states that at Level 8, students will use relevant information to develop a coherent understanding of socio-scientific issues that concern them and to identify possible responses at both personal and societal levels.

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