The "International Guidelines" ultimately calls for complete sexual freedom: "Criminal law prohibiting sexual acts (including adultery, sodomy, fornication and commercial sexual encounters) between consenting adults in private should be reviewed, with the aim of repeal." It suggests that contraceptives should be available everywhere and that abortion on demand should be legal for every woman. The document also calls for the international legalization of homosexual marriage as well as a kind of universal hate-crimes law for anyone who might oppose homosexuality: "These measures should include providing penalties for vilification of people who engage in same-sex relationships." From all of this, it is clear that the leaders of the international AIDS community have considered the disease a profound threat to the ideology of the sexual revolution, and have at times put both the protection and promotion of this ideology ahead of public health.
Date posted: 2008-12-17
The live birth thirty years ago of Louise Brown, the world's first in vitro fertilization (IVF) baby, was a watershed moment in the dawning era of artificial reproductive technologies (ART). Over these years, a Pandora's box of increasingly unrestrained assays at creative baby-making techniques has made the notion of child-as-commodity ubiquitous in Western culture. Designer babies, wombs for rent, the manufacturing of children in vitro from multiple "parents," lawsuits over the ownership of frozen embryos: the unregulated and ethically unrestrained pursuit of ART continues today to create a moral morass with devastating consequences for the moral fabric of Western culture.
Date posted: 2008-11-14
OK, maybe you are not thinking about donating your eggs. But chances are you are just one degree of separation away from someone who is. Do you attend college or know any college-age women? Are you a mother, father, grandmother, or grandfather? Do you have a sister or a girlfriend? If so, then this issue affects you. You may know someone who has considered donating her eggs or has already done this. Do you know a couple who has used in vitro fertilization (IVF) technologies to have their family? Chances are they may have used an egg donor to assist them. Are you involved in any activities related to the embryonic stem cell or human cloning debates? Then you may be aware of the arguments for using "surplus" embryos for research, many of which have been created from donated eggs. Perhaps you have read how the cloning researchers now want to be able to pay women for their eggs. So while you may not be considering this question for yourself, you are almost surely very closely connected to the potentially life-threatening enterprise called egg donation. And women around the world are being put into harm's way as they are heavily recruited to donate their eggs.
Date posted: 2008-11-11
40 years ago last week (July 25), Pope Paul VI issued the famous encyclical Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life). This encyclical "dropped like a bomb" on a world that was fully expecting the Catholic Church to change its teaching on birth control.Yet 40 years later the predictions that Paul VI made have clearly come to light. Here we provide some excellent resources for further study and review:
Date posted: 2008-08-02
Ethics & Medics enjoys a broad circulation to bishops, parish priests, and others engaged in pastoral ministry. It is our intent to provide occasional practical inserts that you will find useful in preparing homilies and ministering to individuals in clinical and pastoral settings. "Preaching Points on Nutrition and Hydration," prepared by the NCBC Ethicists, is the second of these.
Date posted: 2008-01-16
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has formulated responses to questions presented by His Excellency The Most Reverend William S. Skylstad, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in a letter of July 11, 2005, regarding the nutrition and hydration of patients in the condition commonly called a "vegetative state." The object of the questions was whether the nutrition and hydration of such patients, especially if provided by artificial means, would constitute an excessively heavy burden for the patients, for their relatives, or for the health care system, to the point where it could be considered, also in the light of the moral teaching of the Church, a means that is extraordinary or disproportionate and therefore not morally obligatory.
Date posted: 2007-11-21
There are three available options for all women facing unwanted pregnancies: 1) carrying a pregnancy to term with the intention of keeping the child, 2) placing the child for adoption, 3) aborting the child. We believe that many women choose abortion as the quick-fix solution to unwanted pregnancy, without investigating the other alternatives in depth.
Date posted: 2007-06-27
In perhaps the most famous scene in the movie A Few Good Men, the characters portrayed by Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise slug it out in the courtroom: "I want the truth," screams Cruise; Nicholson howls back: "You can't handle the truth." Can we handle the truth? In health care, the answer we give can literally be a matter of life or death.
Date posted: 2007-06-18
On May 13, 2004, Ellen Goodman, in a column in the Boston Globe entitled "Just the Schmacks, Ma'am," stated that the research linking breast cancer to abortion "keeps reappearing no matter how many scientists drive a stake through its heart." She reported that even though the government web site at the National Cancer Institute had "expunged" the abortion-breast cancer (ABC) link, the information continues to appear on pro-life web sites. Goodman's column illustrates the reason there is such widespread misinformation about the ABC link. She claims that the link is merely a pro-life "care tactic." It is not. It has a proven scientific basis.
Date posted: 2006-05-24
Crosses are the instruments by which horrendous pain and ultimately death are inflicted on one member of the human species by other members. There is nothing holy or salvific or worthwhile in being executed by crucifixion. It is the total, absolute, final defeat of the person. It is evil increasing itself in the human situation under the deception that it is being decreased by destroying the supposed evil one. Therefore, without Jesus, the cross is a symbol of the brutal, the ugly, the murderous, the satanic in human life. Without Jesus it is a paradigmatic symbol of pain, powerlessness, defeat and death in the human psyche.
Date posted: 2006-01-28
A British-based Filipina mother who found out she had cancer after becoming pregnant sacrificed her life for her unborn baby by refusing an abortion and chemotherapy, a British newspaper said Friday.
Date posted: 2005-12-15
Sarah is a blessing, a joy, and a gift from God in our lives. Sarah is happy almost all the time. She never feels sorry for herself. She has taught me more about faith, courage, hope, purpose, and priorities than any talking, walking person whose path has ever crossed mine. To say it's been easy would be a lie. To say that there is no bad days would be a lie. It is not all milk and honey and peaches and cream every day. There is a lot of work to do. There is a lot of worry to fight off. But nothing I have ever done in my life has ever made me feel so useful or given me so much meaning as taking care of my totally dependent daughter.
Date posted: 2005-11-13
Each human being, in fact, from his conception is a unity of body and soul, and possesses in himself the vital principle that will lead him to develop his potentialities, which are not only of a biological character but are also anthropological.
Date posted: 2005-09-13
The First International Congress of the Histopathology of the Nervous System took place in Rome in 1952. The ethical questions to which the clinical experimentation of those years gave rise were a cause of grave concern to many doctors, to the point that the organizers asked the Pope to make a pronouncement on the moral limits of biomedical research.
Date posted: 2005-09-13
The life of older people helps to cast light on the scale of human values; to reveal the continuity of the generations and wonderfully to demonstrate the interdependence of the People of God.
Date posted: 2005-06-06
The following homily was given by Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde at the Mass for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time on Jan. 23 at the Cathedral of St. Thomas More in Arlington.
Date posted: 2005-01-29
I often tell people that Natural Family Planning (NFP) is the pre-text for the context. Marital chastity is the context we are aiming for, but many will only get there through the practice of NFP. I believe that one reason why many couples are not familiar with "what'' NFP is, "why" use it, and "how" to use it, is that NFP is a foreign phrase in their lives. Therefore, it is always a good thing to find more and better ways to get the NFP message out to the public in many and varied ways.
Date posted: 2004-07-05
Modern men and women may not be moved by long-standing Church teachings or the natural law, but an appeal to their experience and ways to improve their lives will always have an impact.
Date posted: 2004-07-05
This is a conversion story. My wife and I are converts from an offshoot of Catholic Christianity called Fuddledom. NFP surely did not sound like the path for us. In addition, "What right does the Church have to tell us how to run our sex life?"
Date posted: 2004-07-05
There is a desperate need of an apologetics of NFP in our culture and in the Church. We must develop an effective way for faithful Catholics to evangelize and catechize on the truth and beauty of human sexuality.
Date posted: 2004-07-05
When we realize that fewer than 5% of Catholic couples are practicing NFP and that the rates of sterilization, abortion, and contraception are the same among Catholics as the general population, practices the Catechism of the Catholic Church describe as "intrinsically evil," a lot of work needs to be done.
Date posted: 2004-07-05
The ban on this procedure became federal law in the United States last November. Immediately Planned Parenthood, the National Abortion Federation, and the American Civil Liberties Union filed lawsuits in three federal courts claiming the ban takes away a fundamental constitutional right. Abortion doctors have taken the witness stand to describe how they abort children in the fifth and sixth months of pregnancy. Below some extracts from their testimony.
Date posted: 2004-06-04
For those interested, here is a letter and a list of the "Catholic" Members of the US Congress who signed the letter to Cardinal McCarrick letting him know that they think it would "be counter-productive and bring great harm to the Church" if the Catholic hierarchy would withhold Holy Communion from Pro-Abortion Catholic Politicians.
Date posted: 2004-06-04
One day all of us will have to stand before the judgment seat of God. Our God will not be interested if we were a Republican, an independent, or a Democrat. He will not even be interested in what occupation we had in life. What He will be most interested in is our faithfulness to Him.
Date posted: 2004-05-13
If Jesus were to testify up on Beacon Hill before our legislators about the meaning of marriage, I think he could use the very same words that he used in St. Matthew's Gospel. Listen to him with fresh ears: "Have you not read that in the beginning God 'made them male and female,' and said, 'for this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate."
Date posted: 2004-01-25
It was necessary to resort to intravenous feedings. After several weeks. she showed no improvement and additional tests revealed further brain deterioration. The physicians concluded that her condition would not improve but would continually worsen.
Date posted: 2003-06-17
The bottom line of this distinction is precisely what radically separates these sorts of decisions from the Siren song of euthanasia: a decision to forego extraordinary means rests on a recognition that the means of preserving life or restoring health are being foregone because they are no longer beneficial, are no longer useful or are too burdensome. It is not a decision that the life of the patient is no longer one worthy of being lived.
Date posted: 2003-06-08
A time of serious sickness is naturally distressing for the one who is ill and for the family and friends of the one who is stricken. Making sound moral decisions in the face of such circumstances may be especially difficult when we consider the emotional strains that are natural when someone we love undergoes great suffering.
Date posted: 2003-06-04
Modern medical technology seems to confront us with many questions not faced even a decade ago. Corresponding changes in medical practice have benefited many, but have also prompted fears by some that they will be aggressively treated against their will or denied the kind of care that is their due as human persons with inherent dignity. Current debates about life-sustaining treatment suggest that our society's moral reflection is having difficulty keeping pace with its technological progress.
Date posted: 2003-04-15
African leaders' efforts throughout 2002 demonstrated a commitment to peace and stability but sent ambiguous messages as to the primacy of human rights.
Date posted: 2003-01-27
Roe v. Wade cannot stand as the law of this great nation, a nation founded on the self-evident truth that all people are created with an inalienable right to life. We are committed, no matter how long it may take, no matter the sacrifices required, to bringing about a reversal of this tragic Supreme Court decision. We will speak out on behalf of the sanctity of each and every human life wherever it is threatened, from conception to natural death. Roe v. Wade must be reversed.
Date posted: 2003-01-26
It's a mess here. Babies. Children. Old people. There are thousands of them. There's no dignity inside this (NFA) warehouse. My heart begins to cry again.
Date posted: 2003-01-16
BABI is the incredibly facetious acronym for blastomere analysis before implantation, the latest and most lethal prenatal diagnosis package for eugenic ends. The blastomere is the structure of cells resulting from the very earliest division of a fertilized egg or zygote.
Date posted: 2002-11-24
For some time now the Archdiocese has been supporting an apostolate that ministers to men and women who find themselves attracted to persons of the same sex. COURAGE is a spiritual support group for Catholic men and women who wish to live chaste lives in accordance with the Churchs teaching on homosexuality. Their goals include: living chaste lives in accordance with Church teaching; dedication to Christ through service of others; spiritual direction; frequent attendance at Mass; frequent reception of the sacraments of Reconciliation and the Holy Eucharist; support of others who deal with issues of same-sex attraction through prayer and discussion and periodic meetings.
Date posted: 2002-11-23
This paper is neither an official statement of the Committee on Marriage and Family nor of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. It does not offer formal recommendations for action. It is intended as a resource paper, offering a compilation of resources and a reflection of the present "state of the question" regarding certain issues of cohabitation.
Date posted: 2002-11-02
To have this abundant life, we must constantly examine our current situation with truth and humility. If there is behavior which is not in conformance with His commandments, we can be sure that such behavior will, to at least some degree, choke out abundant life.
Date posted: 2002-10-19
A Theologians' Brief On the place of the human embryo within the Christian tradition; the theological principles for evaluating its moral status.
Date posted: 2002-10-08
What, then, are our duties as patients, or potential patients, with regard to the preservation of life? What are the corresponding duties of doctors and other health professionals? Answers to these questions are often phrased in terms of a contrast between what are called 'ordinary' and 'extraordinary' means or measures of prolonging life.
Date posted: 2002-10-07