Bioethical Decision-making in the 21st Century
Bioethical Decision-making in the 21st Century
A. The Culture of Death vs. the Culture of Life: Recovering a Christian View of Freedom
What is freedom? Though the secular world tells us that freedom is “doing whatever we want—as long as we don’t hurt anyone else”, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that “the exercise of freedom does not imply a right to say or do everything” (CCC 1740). In this introductory talk, we’ll learn why unbridled freedom, also known as “radical autonomy”, leads not only to an erosion of freedom itself, but eventually to outright bondage. We’ll also discuss why the battle over the concept of freedom is foundational to winning the war with the culture of death and how the recovery of a Christian vision of freedom will help build an authentic culture of life.
B. The “Dictatorship of Relativism” vs. “The Truth that Sets Us Free”: Freedom and Truth Remarried
In 1991, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) warned that when “freedom (is) detached from any objective reference to a common truth, ” the very foundations of freedom are destroyed, leading to modern form of tyranny which he has more recently labeled “the dictatorship of relativism.” In this presentation, we’ll learn why the divorce of the concepts of freedom and truth have laid the foundation for the war on life we are experiencing today. We’ll also discover why the denial of objective truth inevitably leads to the abuse of power where “might makes right,” paving the road for abortion, euthanasia and the exploitation of the weakest members of society.
C. Utilitarianism vs. Personalism: “Use and Be Used” or “Love One Another!”?
It is no accident that we live in a culture that measures the worth of human beings by their usefulness to society. This worldview, which has gripped our thinking today, grew out of an 18th Century Enlightenment philosophy known as “utilitarianism.” This talk will explore the ways utilitarianism has taken hold of the American mindset, contrasting it with Pope John Paul II’s philosophy of the human person known as “personalism.” We will discover why utilitarianism can never adequately measure the value of human life and why a proper understanding of the human person, whose vocation is to love, offers the only real solution to protecting the dignity and rights of every human being.
D. Means vs. Ends: Up-ending “Ends Alone” Ethics
We’ve all heard the saying that “the ends don’t justify the means.” But in reality, we practice “ends alone” ethics more and more frequently in our society. In this final presentation, we’ll see how our culture tends to evaluate the morality of our actions by looking only at the good ends our actions achieve, regardless of the means used to get there. We’ll also analyze why this type of thinking leads to the justification of all sorts of evils, including in vitro-fertilization, embryonic stem cell research and human cloning. Using Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Veritatis Splendor, we’ll conclude by learning how to evaluate the morality of an act using the time tested tradition of the Catholic faith, reassessing the importance of understanding why we can’t do evil so that good can come from it.