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To Whom Is the Institutional Chaplain Beholden? Reconciling the Christian Chaplain’s Tension of Identity With a Theology of Calling Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2023-12-25 Michael Guthrie
Professional chaplains have the unique opportunity to provide spiritual care within institutional settings where other types of pastoral care may not exist. Serving within these institutions presents special challenges, including tension between multiple identities and responsibilities. This tension can create conflict within the Christian chaplain, and confusion as to whom they are ultimately beholden
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The Numinous Presence That Binds: How the Chaplain Navigates Disparate Commitments Through the Lens of Hospital Baptism Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Madeleine Rebouché
This article explores the often-disparate commitments the chaplain has made to both the institutional church as well as the hospital system through the lens of the baptismal rite. As baptism is primarily a religious act meant to initiate new members into the Christian faith and a specific community, the chaplain must grapple with the meaning of baptism in the hospital system, a place of crisis and
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The Triple Beholdenness of Polish Hospital Chaplains: How to Avoid Confusion? Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Jarosław L Mikuczewski
Polish hospital chaplaincy, because of the unique political and sociological context in which it finds itself, presents a sort of triple beholdenness. It carries particular loyalties to the state, to Catholic doctrine, and above all, it is called to be faithful to the unique suffering person. In this article, I argue that the biggest challenge for Polish chaplaincy resides within the domain of loyalty
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Serve Somebody: Musings of a Pastoral Care Practitioner on the Covenant of Care Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2023-11-15 Hal Morse
In this article, I explore what it means to “serve somebody,” drawing from my own experience as a full-time chaplain. Chaplains must serve many different parties, but are ultimately called to care for their patients via a covenental relationship of care.
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Responding Faithfully to Women’s Pain: Practicing the Stations of the Cross Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2023-07-11 Sarah Jean Barton
This essay explores the contemporary experiences of women who live with pain, given the complex responses they encounter within Western medical systems, including pervasive stigma, bias, clinician disbelief, and poor health outcomes. In response to these realities, as highlighted within recent literature and exemplified in a first-person account provided by the paper’s author, this essay explores the
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Reclaiming Broken Bodies (or, This Is Gonna Hurt Some): Pain, Healing, and the Opioid Crisis Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2023-07-02 Joel James Shuman
I argue here that the ways we experience, think about, and treat pain are bound up with sociocultural and technological phenomena that shape our desires and expectations. I propose a way of imagining caring for and offering healing to those who suffer pain informed by the Christian theological tradition. This way does not aspire to replace the care and healing made possible by modern medicine, but
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Protecting Life or Managing Risk? Suicide Prevention and the Lure of Medicalized Control Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2023-06-08 Warren Kinghorn
Suicide is a leading cause of death in the United States and in many other parts of the world. As such, suicide is frequently framed as a medical and public health problem for which solutions are best recommended by medical and public health authorities. While, medicalized suicide prevention strategies often resonate with traditional Christian commitments to preserve life and to discourage suicide
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Health Care in Service of Life: Preventative Medicine in Light of the Analogia Entis Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2023-06-02 Mary Hirschfeld
The medicalization of risk rests on foundational assumptions shared by economics and public health. Economists, however, think in terms of pursuing an array of goods, and hence, they offer useful critiques of the irrationality involved in trying to subordinate all goods to one narrow good, like avoiding death from a particular disease. Many of our approaches to health do not appear to be fully rational
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The Tree of Life, Health, and Risk Through the Lens of Biblical Wisdom Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2023-05-22 Bradley C Gregory
As a way forward in assessing how the Old Testament wisdom tradition might speak to decisions in a modern medical context, in this paper, I propose exploring the iconographic function of the “tree of life” in the Old Testament, which is consistently associated with both wisdom as well as life and health, in order to tease out two-related issues that can help in providing a Christian theological framework
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Sin as Intellectual Evil: Refusal of Insight in the Contemporary Debate on the Ends of Marriage Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2023-04-28 Margaret Monahan Hogan
This paper focuses on the possibility of sin as intellectual evil as operative in the contemporaneous culture in the debate over the essential nature of marriage and the accomplishment of the ends of marriage. It presents an account of theology as a science and the application of this understanding and its canons of operation to the issues presented in two recent documents—the Statement of the Wijngaards
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Sources for Christian Bioethics: The Orthodox Discourse on Sin Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2023-04-13 Roman Tarabrin, Tatiana Tarabrina
The article discusses ways of developing bioethical guidance in the Orthodox Christian discourse. Here, “ethical” refers to what contributes to holiness, “un-ethical” refers to sin as what hinders man’s foundational calling to holiness. To explore the development of guidance for emerging bioethical issues, we use the “therapeutic” understanding of treatment for sin in two senses. (1) It refers to the
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A Reexamination of In Vitro Fertilization Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Michael G Muñoz
For the sake of consistency with settled principles from other theological and ethical questions, there is a need for a Christian reexamination of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Both Old and New Testaments demonstrate that human personal life begins at conception or fertilization. Additionally, the Bible teaches that human beings are persons in the image of God from the very beginning of their existence
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Personal Identity, Sexual Difference, and the Metaphysics of Gender Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Jeremy W Skrzypek
Issues pertaining to sex and gender continue to be some of the most hotly debated topics of our time. While many of the most heated disputes occur at the level of politics and public policy, metaphysics, too, has a crucial role to play in these debates. In this essay, I explore several key metaphysical debates concerning sex and gender through the lenses of two important areas in contemporary metaphysics:
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Why Biblical Arguments for Abortion Fail Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Calum Miller
While the traditional Christian teaching opposing abortion has been relatively unanimous until the twentieth century, it has been claimed in more recent decades that certain Biblical passages support the view that the fetus, or unborn child, has a lesser moral status than a born child, in a way that might support the permissibility of abortion. In this paper, I address the foremost three texts used
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Foundations of Christian Bioethics: Metaphysical, Conceptual, and Biblical Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Mark J Cherry
How can we definitively determine which biomedical choices are morally correct and which engage in seriously wrongful acts? Depending on whom one asks, one is informed that choices such as abortion, euthanasia, and significant body modification involve real moral harm (either as forms of murder or as denying the goodness of the body that God has provided), or that disallowing such “medical care” violates
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Finding the Way Towards a Better Medicine: A Review of: Curlin and Tollefsen. 2021. The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. ISBN-10: 0268200866. Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2023-04-04 Joshua Briscoe
In writing The Way of Medicine: Ethics and the Healing Profession, Farr Curlin and Christopher Tollefsen have provided a helpful, accessible resource for clinicians seeking to conscientiously practice medicine in pursuit of health. These authors identify a major threat to such a practice, which they call the provider of services model (PSM), and compare it to a historic way of practicing that they
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Highway to Cocytus or Ascent into Paradise: Apatheia and Moral Bioenhancement Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2022-10-13 Benjamin N Parks
With the godlike powers of modern technology, just one bad actor can unleash hell on Earth. In the face of this threat posed by technology, some have proposed moral bioenhancement as a solution. Although moral bioenhancement may at first seem like something Christian should support, it is my contention in this paper that there is at least one significant reason for Christians to be cautious in their
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Techne and Teleios: A Christian Perspective on the Incarnation and Human Enhancement Technology Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2022-08-18 Ron Cole-Turner
Does the idea of human enhancement presuppose a goal or an ideal to direct technological modifications? In the absence of such an agreed ideal in today’s culture, can Christian theology help clarify the goal or the meaning of “perfection” when applied to human beings? A theological perspective rooted in scripture and in the writings of theologians such as Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Gregory of Nyssa
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Transhumanism, Motion, and Human Perfection Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2022-08-08 Jordan Mason
Transhumanism’s ideology is marked by a commitment to the “progress” or “perfection” of the human species through technological means. What transhumanists are after is not just therapeutic intervention or optimization of current human capabilities, but an ontological change from human to posthuman. In this article, I critique transhumanist ideology on the grounds that it fundamentally misunderstands
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How to Spot a Usurper: Clinical Ethics Consultation and (True) Moral Authority Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2022-08-04 Kelly Kate Evans, Nicholas Colgrove
Clinical ethics consultants (CECs) are not moral authorities. Standardization of CECs’ professional role does not confer upon them moral authority. Certification of particular CECs does not confer upon them moral authority (nor does it reflect such authority). Or, so we will argue. This article offers a distinctly Orthodox Christian response to those who claim that CECs—or any other academically trained
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Guest Editor Introduction to Special Issue “(Ir)Religion in Clinical Ethics Consultation Methodology and Competencies” Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2022-08-04 Jordan Mason, Jeffrey Bishop
The push by some bioethicists to excise religion from the clinical ethics consultative process has received institutional support from the American Society for Bioethics and the Humanities (ASBH). Their certification program, Healthcare Ethics Consultant-Certified (HEC-C), is intended to identify and assess “a national standard for the professional practice of clinical healthcare ethics consulting”
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Malek’s Programmatic Secularism? A Dissent Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2022-08-04 Ashley Moyse
Programmatic secularism aims to secure public reason from rival rationalities, notably those from religious experience and education. The gathering of knowledge in clinical ethics into a concrete array of consensus claims and consensus-derived principles are thought by Janet Malek to secure such public reason—an essential tool for clinical ethics consultants to execute their professional role. The
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Policing the Sublime: The Metaphysical Harms of Irreligious Clinical Ethics Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2022-07-07 Kimbell Kornu
Janet Malek has recently argued that the religious worldview of the clinical ethics consultant should play no normative role in clinical ethics consultation. What are the theological implications of a normatively secular clinical ethics? I argue that Malek’s proposal constitutes an irreligious clinical ethics, which commits multiple metaphysical harms. First, I summarize Malek’s key claims for a secular
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Severing Clinical Ethics Consultation from the Ethical Commitments and Preferences of Clinical Ethics Consultants Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2022-07-07 Ana S Iltis
Recent work calls for excluding clinical ethics consultants’ religious ethical commitments from formulating recommendations about particular cases and communicating those recommendations. I demonstrate that three arguments that call for excluding religious ethical commitments from this work logically imply that consultants may not use their secular ethical commitments in their work. The call to sever
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There is Room for Encouraging Conversion in the Scope of Bioethics Expertise Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2022-07-06 Nathaniel J Brown
The American Society for Bioethics and Humanities has developed a curriculum leading to a certificate in health care ethics consultation. A certification in ethics consultation initially seems to fit nicely into the biomedical model of clinical expertise espoused by modern biomedicine, but examining what exactly constitutes moral expertise, particularly for traditional Christians, reveals a significant
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What Does it Mean to be Contrary to Nature? Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2022-06-01 David Bradshaw
St. Paul says that same-sex sexual acts are “contrary to nature.” Plainly this is intended as a condemnation, but beyond that its meaning is obscure. In particular, we are given no general account of what it means to be contrary to nature, including what other acts might fit this description. This article attempts to provide such an account. It relies for this purpose on the biblical and classical
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(Re)-Emerging Challenges in Christian Bioethics: Leading Voices in Christian Bioethics Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2022-03-18 Ana Iltis
Abstract This is the third installment in a Christian Bioethics series that gathers leading voices in Christian bioethics to examine the themes and issues they find most pressing. The papers address fundamental theoretical questions about the nature of Christian bioethics itself, long-standing ethical issues that remain significant today, including physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, the definition
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Brain Death, the Soul, and Material Dispositions Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2022-03-18 Patrick Lee
Abstract I defend the position argued previously by Germain Grisez and me that total brain death is a valid criterion of death on the grounds that a human being is essentially a rational animal, and a brain-dead body lacks the radical capacity for rational actions. I reply to Josef Seifert’s objection that our positions rest on a reductionist view of the human person, and to other objections concerning
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Tragic Choices, Revisited: COVID-19 and the Hidden Ethics of Rationing. Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2022-03-18 Maura A Ryan
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, concern that there could be a shortage of ventilators raised the possibility of rationing care. Denying patients life-saving care captures our moral imagination, prompting the demand for a defensible framework of ethical principles for determining who will live and who will die. Behind the moral dilemma posed by the shortage of a particular medical
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Christian Bioethics would like to thank the following guest reviewers for their help during the past year Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-12-08
Christian Bioethics would like to thank the following guest reviewers for their help during the past year:
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Enhancing the Imago Dei: Can a Christian Be a Transhumanist? Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2022-01-14 Jason T Eberl
Transhumanism is an ideology that embraces the use of various forms of biotechnology to enhance human beings toward the emergence of a “posthuman” kind. In this article, I contrast some of the foundational tenets of Transhumanism with those of Christianity, primarily focusing on their respective anthropologies—that is, their diverse understandings of whether there is an essential nature shared by all
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Understanding the Voices of Disability Advocates in Physician-Assisted Suicide Debates Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-12-09 Devan Stahl
Christians have an obligation to attend to the voices of persons who are crying out that their dignity and very lives are in jeopardy when physician-assisted suicide (PAS) becomes legalized. The following essay begins with an account of the concept of “disability moral psychology,” which elucidates the unique ways persons with disabilities perceive the world, based on their phenomenological experience
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Dying under a Description? Physician-Assisted Suicide, Persons, and Solidarity Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-12-09 Darlene Fozard Weaver
Debates over physician-assisted suicide (PAS) comprise a small portion of broader culture wars. Their role in the culture wars obscures an under-acknowledged consensus between those who support PAS and those who oppose it. Drawing insights from personalism, this essay situates PAS within larger moral obligations of solidarity with the dying and their caregivers. The contributions of Roman Catholic
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Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia: Theological and Ethical Responses Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-12-09 Daniel P Sulmasy
Euthanasia and rational suicide were acceptable practices in some quarters in antiquity. These practices all but disappeared as Hippocratic, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim beliefs took hold in Europe and the Near East. By the late nineteenth century, however, a political movement to legalize euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) began in Europe and the United States. Initially, the path to
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Physician Assistance in Dying: An Option for Christians? Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-12-09 Lloyd Steffen
Opposition to physician-assisted suicide is widespread in Christian ethics. However, on a topic as controversial as physician-assisted suicide, no one can reasonably speak for “the Christian” perspective. Natural-law and, specifically, just-war thinking are claimed in the Christian tradition, yet the natural-law contribution to a Christian ethical analysis of physician-assisted suicide requires explanation
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Medicine against Suicide: Sustaining Solidarity with Those Diminished by Illness and Debility Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-12-09 Farr A Curlin, Christopher Tollefsen
The medical profession’s increasing acceptance of “physician aid-in-dying” indicates the ascendancy of what we call the provider-of-services model for medicine, in which medical “providers” offer services to help patients maximize their “well-being” according to the wishes of the patient. This model contrasts with and contradicts what we call the Way of Medicine, in which medicine is a moral practice
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Killing and Allowing to Die: Insights from Augustine Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-11-18 Daniel P Sulmasy
One major argument against prohibiting euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (PAS) is that there is no rational basis for distinguishing between killing and allowing to die: if we permit patients to die by forgoing life-sustaining treatments, then we also ought to permit euthanasia and PAS. In this paper, the author argues, contra this claim, that it is in fact coherent to differentiate between
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Incarnation, Posthumanism and Performative Anthropology: The Body of Technology and the Body of Christ Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-07-14 Michael S Burdett
This essay argues that a Christian incarnational response to posthumanism must recognize that what is at stake isn't just whether belief systems align. It seeks to relocate the interaction between the church and posthumanism to how the practices of posthumanism and Christianity perform the bodies, affections and dispositions of each. Posthuman practices seeks to habituate: (1) A preference for informational
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Indexing Burdens and Benefits of Treatment to Age: Revisiting Paul Ramsey’s “Medical Indications” Policy Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-07-05 Matthew Lee Anderson
This essay reconsiders Paul Ramsey’s “medical indications” policy and argues that his reconstruction of the case of Joseph Saikewicz demonstrates that there is more room for caretakers to decline treatments for “voiceless dependents” than his interlocutors have sometimes thought. It furthermore draws on Ramsey’s earlier work to propose ways that Ramsey might have improved his policy, and argues that
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Christian Bioethics and the Partisan Commitments of Secular Bioethicists: Epistemic Injustice, Moral Distress, Civil Disobedience Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-07-05 Mark J Cherry
Secular bioethicists do not speak from a place of distinction, but from within particular culturally, socially, and historically conditioned standpoints. As partisans of moral and ideological agendas, they bring their own biases, prejudices, and worldviews to their roles as ethical consultants, social advocates, and academics, attempting rhetorically to sway others and shift policy to a preferred point
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Deontic Fallacies and the Arguments against Conscientious Objections Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-07-05 Stephen Napier
The respect for one’s conscience is rooted in a broader respect for the human person. The conscience represents a person’s ability to identify the values and goods that inform her moral identity. Ignoring or overriding a person’s conscience can lead to significant moral and emotional distress. Refusals to respect a person’s conscientious objection to cases of killing are a source of incisive distress
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Is Pregnancy Really a Good Samaritan Act? Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-07-05 Bruce P Blackshaw
One of the most influential philosophical arguments in favor of the permissibility of abortion is Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist analogy, presented in “A Defense of Abortion.” Its appeal for prochoice advocates lies in Thomson’s granting that the fetus is a person with equivalent moral status to any other human being, and yet demonstrating—to those who accept her reasoning—that abortion is still
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Confessional Approach to Disclosure of Medical Error Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-06-08 Jordan Mason
Recent literature on the ethics of medical error disclosure acknowledges the feelings of injustice, confusion, and grief patients and their families experience as a result of medical error. Substantially less literature acknowledges the emotional and relational discomfort of the physicians responsible or suggests a meaningful way forward. To address these concerns more fully, I propose a model of medical
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Opposing Vitalism and Embracing Hospice: How a Theology of the Sabbath Can Inform End-of-Life Care Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-05-29 Sarah K Sawicki
Medicine often views hospice care as “giving up,” which results in a reduced quality of end-of-life care for many patients. By integrating a theology of the Sabbath with modern medicine, hospice becomes a sacred and valuable way to honor the dying patient in a comprehensive and holistic way. A theology of Sabbath as “Sacredness in Time” can provide the foundation for a shift in understanding hospice
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Christian Bioethics: Reflections on a Quarter-Century with the Journal Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-05-29 B Andrew Lustig
This essay reflects on 25 years since Christian Bioethics began publication and, in somewhat autobiographical fashion, engages two core concerns. First, although “non-ecumenism” may often appear a pretext for contention and division, I suggest that a respectful non-ecumenism may provide the opportunity for dialogue and the occasion for employing certain tools from religious studies. Second, although
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Desmond Tutu, George Carey and the Legalization of Euthanasia: A Response Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-05-26 John Keown
When two Christian prelates as internationally prominent as Desmond Tutu and George Carey call for the legalization of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, their arguments merit close consideration. This article sets out and evaluates their arguments. It concludes that the prelates rehearse the superficial case regularly advanced by euthanasia campaigners and fail adequately to engage with the
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The Doctor–Patient Relationship: Does Christianity Make a Difference? Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-03-13 James J Delaney
The nature of the doctor–patient relationship is central to the practice of medicine and thus to bioethics. The American Medical Association (in AMA principles of medical ethics, available at: https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/ethics/patient-physician-relationships, 2016) states, “The practice of medicine, and its embodiment in the clinical encounter between a patient and a physician, is fundamentally
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Solidarity, Trust, and Christian Faith in the Doctor–Patient Relationship Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-03-13 Christopher Tollefsen, Farr A Curlin
In this article, we first give a normative account of the doctor–patient relationship as: oriented to the good of the patient’s health; motivated by a vocational commitment; and characterized by solidarity and trust. We then look at the difference that Christianity can, and we believe, should, make to that relationship, so understood. In doing so, we consolidate and expand upon some claims we have
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Physicians, Assisted Suicide, and Christian Virtues Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-03-13 Philip A Reed
The debate about physician-assisted suicide has long been entwined with the nature of the doctor–patient relationship. Opponents of physician-assisted suicide insist that the traditional goals of medicine do not and should not include intentionally bringing about or hastening a patient’s death, whereas proponents of physician-assisted suicide argue that this practice is an appropriate tool for doctors
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The Catholic Moral Tradition, Conscience, and the Practice of Medicine Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-02-18 Patrick Tully
One contested moral commitment shared by the American Medical Association (AMA) and American Nurses Association (ANA) has to do with the place of conscience in the practice of medicine. These organizations, each in their own way, urge their respective members to engage in careful moral discernment regarding their professional life, and they assert the existence of an obligation on the part of others
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Conscientious Objection or an Internal Morality of Medicine? Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-02-08 David Hershenov
Doctors, nurses, and pharmacists who refuse on grounds of conscience to participate in certain legal, expected, and standard practices have been accused of unprofessionally introducing their personal views into medicine. My first response is that they often are not engaging in conscientious objection because that involves invoking convictions external to those of the medical community. I contend that
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Visions of the Common Good: Engelhardt’s Engagement with Catholic Social Teaching Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-02-08 Jason T Eberl
In this paper, I confront Engelhardt’s views—conceptualized as a cohesive moral perspective grounded in a combination of secular and Christian moral requirements—on two fronts. First, I critique his view of the moral demands of justice within a secular pluralistic society by showing how Thomistic natural law theory provides a content-full theory of human flourishing that is rationally articulable and
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Christian Humility and the Goods of Perinatal Hospice Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2021-01-21 Aaron D Cobb
Perinatal palliative and hospice care (hereafter, perinatal hospice) is a novel approach to addressing a family’s varied needs following an adverse in utero diagnosis. Christian defenses of perinatal hospice tend to focus on its role as an ethical alternative to abortion. Although these analyses are important, they do not provide adequate grounds to characterize the wide range of goods realized through
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By Whose Authority? Sexual Ethics, Postmodernism, and Orthodox Christianity Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2020-09-19 Mary S Ford
Abstract The traditional Christian teaching is that engaging in sexual activity, whether heterosexual or homosexual, outside the marriage of one man and one woman is sinful (as distinct from having thoughts about illicit sexual desire, which need not be sinful as long as they are not meditated and/or acted upon—in the same way that the Church teaches about any “logismoi”). In direct contrast, there
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A Wojtyłian Reading of Performativity and the Self in Judith Butler Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2020-09-17 Angela Franks
AbstractDrawing on Hegel, Judith Butler argues that the subject is the product of its desire for subject-ion. The subject, its gender, and even the sexed body itself come into being through reiterating or parodying preexisting norms and discourses of power (“performativity”). Butler rejects the realities of substance and a fixed human nature that would limit the possibilities of performativity. I summarize
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Totalitarian Transhumanism versus Christian Theosis: From Russian Orthodoxy with Love Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2020-09-17 Alfred Kentigern Siewers
AbstractTechnological change and the growth of technocratic approaches to government have gone hand-in-hand with the development of secular transhumanism in the West. The result is a perfect storm for the onset of cultural or “soft” totalitarianism in what during the Cold War was known as the “Free World.” Accelerating political opposition to traditional and biological definitions of sex, and to traditional
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When the Starting Place Is Lived Experience: The Pastoral and Therapeutic Implications of John Paul II’s Account of the Person Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2020-09-17 Deborah Savage
Abstract The aim of this article1 is to provide insight into the anthropological framework that could inform the pastoral and therapeutic care of those we encounter, professionally or in our personal lives, who experience same-sex attraction (SSA). Our question here is not whether or not persons are free to ignore the natural order but to consider how to minister to those who wish to engage in the
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Social and Medical Gender Transition and Acceptance of Biological Sex Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2020-09-17 Helen Watt
Abstract Biological sex should be “acknowledged” and “accepted”—but which responses to gender dysphoria might this preclude? Trans-identified people may factually acknowledge their biological sex and regard transition as purely palliative. While generally some level of self-deception and even a high level of nonlying deception of others are sometimes justified, biological sex is important, and there
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Christian Bioethics: Immanent Goals or a Transcendent Orientation? Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2020-05-26 Mark J Cherry
AbstractThis issue of Christian Bioethics explores foundational debates regarding the orientation and application of Christian bioethics. Should Christian bioethics be approached as essentially a human activity, grounded in scholarly study of theological arguments and religious virtues, oriented toward practical social ends, or should Christian bioethics be recognized as the result of properly oriented
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Risk, Health, and Physical Enhancement: The Dangers of Health Care as Risk Reduction for Christian Bioethics Christian Bioethics Pub Date : 2020-05-21 Paul Scherz
AbstractMedicine increasingly envisions health promotion in terms of reducing risk as determined by quantitative risk factors, such as blood pressure, blood lipids, or genetic variants. This essay argues that this vision of health care as risk reduction is dangerous for Christian bioethics, since risk can be infinitely reduced leading to a self-defeating spiral of iatrogenic effects. Moreover, it endangers