Every human life is uniquely precious, of inestimable dignity, and worthy of being valued and protected. That truth, and the ways in which it is both affirmed and denied in our Western culture, has recently been clarified for me in four different ways that I wish briefly to recount. The Read more…
The Catholic Church opposes euthanasia, understood as the deliberate killing of a person in order to end his or her suffering. We profess that all human life in endowed with dignity and value, whether healthy or sick, productive or disabled. Life is God’s gift to us and is ours to Read more…
Saint Dominic is the Holy Founder of the Order of Preachers (the “Dominican” Order) that serves the parish community of St. Vincent Ferrer and St. Catherine of Siena on New York City’s Upper East Side and offers particular service to the health care community in that area and beyond through Read more…
In one of their “Sunday Review” sections, The New York Times published an article titled “Why Doctors Need Stories.” It was written by Peter D. Kramer, a professor of psychiatry at Brown University, whose focus in the article is on the advantages of including stories about the treatment of particular patients in Read more…
We are once again considering the wrongfulness of direct abortion and, more generally, the deliberate killing of human beings in the early stages of their development. We will recall that the term “abortion” refers to the death of an unborn child in the womb of his or her mother and Read more…
A direct abortion is an abortion that is deliberately chosen and is always morally wrong. It is morally wrong because it is a kind of murder, an instance of deliberately killing an innocent human being. Since it is an instance of murder, direct abortion is in violation of the natural Read more…
Human life is a precious gift from Godwho made man and woman in His own image and likeness. The human being has the dignity of being a person, not just a something but a someone, by virtue of possessing a rational and spiritual soul. Human life, which begins the moment Read more…
Human life is a precious gift from God. In its very first chapter, the Bible tells us, “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them” (Gen 1:27). Human beings are made in God’s image, which accounts for the surpassing dignity and value of human Read more…
I have set before you life and death . . . Choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19). With these words, Moses exhorts God’s people to follow God’s law and thereby receive His life-giving blessings. We might, however, take the liberty of reapplying these words in our consideration of health care ethics, where they Read more…
Human life is a precious gift from god. In its very first chapter, the Bible tells us, “God created mankind in his image; in the image of God he created them” (Genesis 1:27). Human beings are made in God’s image, which accounts for the surpassing dignity and value of human Read more…
“For me, it has always been clear: life is worth it only if you want it.” Thus states Carlos Framb in a short, autobiographical story about assisted suicide as told to Camila Segura. His story was published by The New York Times Magazine on October 18, 2015, under the title, Read more…
Most, if not all, of the ethical problems in the world of health care come from a failure to grasp that health care as an interaction between human persons. Health care, as the name suggests, is the act of one person (or persons) caring for the health of another person Read more…
Preservation of bodily life is among the most basic goals of health care. The means that are used to accomplish this goal can include a wide scope of medical acts, depending on the illness or injury that the patient presents. In addition to various medical means, however, preserving bodily life Read more…
Everybody wants to be home for Christmas. Everybody wants to spend Christmas with family. But some people can’t be home or don’t have family. Some people are homeless or feel homeless, especially at Christmas time. Some people are sick and estranged from home at a hospital or nursing care facility. Read more…
Like all human beings, patients receiving medical care can be identified with Jesus Christ by virtue of the Incarnation, the mystery of God becoming man.. This mystery is expressed by the angel Gabriel’s words to the Blessed Virgin Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of Read more…
The patients I encounter in my health care ministry are not, for the most part, runners. Many of them can walk, others have hopes of walking or even running again, and some, sadly, must accept that their ambulatory days are behind them. For all these people, however, and for every Read more…
We often use the word “patient” when speaking of men and women who are receiving medical care without giving much thought to what that word means. That is not necessarily a problem. The word “patient” is a helpful signifier in the context of health care. Everyone knows who is being Read more…
We are accustomed to evaluating people according to professional standards. “She’s a good doctor.” “He’s a good accountant.” “Their second baseman is terrible!” These kinds of statements are familiar to us. We understand what they mean because we understand that there are particular sets of standards to which people doing Read more…
That illnesses can now be diagnosed and treated when a child is still in the womb represents a significant advance in modern medicine. Some diagnoses can be achieved by testing the genetic make-up of an unborn child either in utero (in the womb) or in vitro (in a test tube). Read more…
Conscience, according to Saint Thomas Aquinas, is the act of the human intellect by which “we judge that something should be done or not done.”1 This judgment is to be based on our knowledge of what is right and wrong for us to do, knowledge that we acquire both from Read more…
One of the saddest experiences I have as a hospital chaplain is ministering to patients who die alone. Thankfully, that is unusual. In the great majority of cases, the dying person is surrounded by family. Friends are often there too, but mostly family: the people who have been with that Read more…
Saint Thomas Aquinas, in his great Summa Theologica, begins his treatment of ethics with the Christian understanding that human beings are created in the image of God. Following Saint John Damascene, he observes that human beings image God most especially through having intelligence and free will. Saint Thomas teaches that Read more…