Catholic Medical Ethics: Respect for the Sanctity of Life

A beautiful and inspiring compendium of medical ethics and a call to greatly honor health care via the Gospel of Life, the Vatican’s Charter for Health Care Workers was a powerful response to the 1990s’ growing culture of death.

In what could have been easily lost amidst health care’s pressing needs, staggering costs, and bureaucracies, we were reminded that health care is a noble call from God to work with Him in bringing healing and companionship to His suffering people and their families – to be Good Samaritans always witnessing to the sanctity of each and every human life from the very first moment of fertilization/ conception (or if the culture of death manages an ungodly end run and human life starts some other way (e.g., cloning)) till natural death!

A 2017 update to that masterpiece charter of the JPII era, the New Charter for Health Care Workers includes materials not available for the original charter (cf, Vatican Radio, 6/2/17):

• John Paul II, Encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae(1995)
• John Paul II, Discourse to Participants in the International Congress on Transplants(2000)
• Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi on Christian Hope(2007)
• Benedict XVI, Encyclical Letter Caritas in Veritate(2009)
• Benedict XVI, Discourse to Participants in the International Congress on Organ Donation(2008)
• Pope Francis, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium(2013)
• Pope Francis, Message to the Pontifical Academy for Life on its 20^th Anniversary(2014)
• Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Responses to Certain Questions of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Concerning Artificial Nutrition and Hydration(2007)
• Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Dignitas Personae(2008)
• Pontifical Academy for Life, Prospects for Xenotransplantation – Scientific Aspects and Ethical Considerations(2001)
• Pontifical Academy for Life, Moral Reflections on Vaccines Prepared from Cells Derived from Aborted Human Foetuses(2005)

Between its introduction and its conclusion, the New Charter follows the format of the original charter with sections on procreation, living, and dying.

Procreating

• This section covers/critiques the topics of:
• Fertility regulation
• Medical responses to marital infertility
• Prenatal and preimplantation diagnosis
• Freezing embryos and oocytes
• New attempts at human generation and procreation

The New Charter reminds us that “The inseparable bond between conjugal love and human generation, imprinted on the nature of the human person, is a law by which everyone must be guided and to which everyone is held” (# 11).   Each new human being has the right to originate in the loving embrace of her (or his) mother and father, who are married to each other.  Yet no matter how the young person came to be, the sanctity of her (or his) life is owed absolute/uncompromising respect from the very first moment till natural death.

Living

• This vast section covers/critiques the topics of:
• Human life inviolable and “indisposable”
• Abortion and the destruction of nascent life
• Embryo reduction
• Interception and contragestation
• Ectopic pregnancies
• Anencephalic fetuses
• Conscientious objection
• Defending the right to life
  Prevention
• Prevention and vaccines
• Medical prevention and society
  Sickness
  Diagnosis
  Interventions on the genome
• Gene therapy
• Regenerative therapy
  Treatment and rehabilitation;
• Prescription and appropriate use of pharmaceuticals
• Access to available medications and technologies
• Sustainable health, pharmaceutical companies, rare or neglected diseases
• Pain relief treatments
  Informed consent of the patient
• Biomedical research and experimentation
• Organ and tissue donation and transplantation
• Determination of death
• The removal of organs from pediatric donors
• Xenotransplants
• Transplantation and personal identity
• Abuses in transplantation
  Forms of dependence
• Drug dependence
• Alcoholism
• Tobacco dependence
• Psychotropic drugs
• Psychology and psychotherapy
• Pastoral care and the sacrament of the Annointing of the Sick
  Ethics committees and clinical ethics counseling
• Health care policies and the right to preservation of health

Comments

With regard to Directive # 36 of the USCCB’s Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, Chris Kahlenborn, M.D. and others maintain that hormonal contraception is likely working in an abortifacient manner in the treatment of rape victims and call for protocol changes in Catholic hospitals (cf, Statement on Emergency Contraception in Cases of Rape, Catholic Medical Association, 8/19/2015).  Dr. Kahlenborn clearly presents the issues in a video for non-medical audiences.  Unlike the ERDs, the New Charter offers NO guidelines for any supposed “moral” use of an interceptive or contragestative. (cf, Dignitas Personae, # 23).

With regard to reference #167 of the New Charter, we should recall that section 30 of  Dignitas Personae appeared to preclude the use of “Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells.”

While there may be a perception that the Church has unequivocally accepted so-called brain death criteria for the determination of death, that is not the case.  Father Mitch Pacwa’s 8/4/2021 interview with Dr. Joseph Eble, features uncomfortable and disturbing facts.  The New Charter includes this powerful caution from the Pope Emeritus:

In an area such as this, in fact, there cannot be the slightest suspicion of arbitrariness, and where certainty has not been attained, the principle of precaution must prevail. This is why it is useful to promote research and interdisciplinary reflection to place public opinion before the most transparent truth on the anthropological, social, ethical, and juridical implications of the practice of transplantation (cf, Benedict XVI, Discourse to Participants in the International Congress on Organ Donation (2008)).

Dying

 This section covers/critiques the topics of:

• Dying with Dignity
• Civil laws and conscientious objection
• Nutrition and hydration
• The use of analgesics in the terminal stage
• Telling the truth to the dying person
• Religious care of the dying person
• Destroying life
• Euthanasia

Recent words from the Holy Father are quite apropos:

we are victims of a throwaway culture….perhaps it will help us to ask ourselves a double question: is it fair to eliminate, to take a human life to solve a problem? Is it fair to hire a hitman to solve a problem? This is abortion. And then, on the other hand, the elders: the older ones are also a bit ‘discard material’, because they are useless… But they are wisdom, they are the roots of the wisdom of our civilization, and this civilization discards them. Yes, even in many places there is the law of ‘covert’ euthanasia, as I call it: it is the law of ‘medicines are expensive, only half is given’, and this means shortening the lives of the elderly. With this we deny hope: the hope of the children who bring us the life that makes us get ahead, and the hope that is in the roots that the elders give us. We rule out both (Pope Francis to the Pontifical Academy for Life, 9/27/21).

Final Thoughts

Judging by there being only two customer reviews thus far on Amazon (one of which was my own), the New Charter does not seem to be receiving much attention.  Catholics and non-Catholics need to know the liberating beauty of Catholic medical ethics.  Absolute respect for the sanctity of human life and the sanctity of the transmission of human life MUST be at the center of anything we dare call “health care.”  This is a call to which we must continually and continuously return.