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 This helpful book could be called “Catholic Bioethics for Everyone.” Dividing their material into an introduction and seven chapters subdivided into 57 questions, Smith and Kaczor offer a broad view of major life issues in easy-to-understand language. One of their major goals is to help fellow Catholics and others to understand the reasons behind Church teaching on crucial issues concerning human life; they also hope that their presentation of fundamental principles will guide readers in making their own choices on disputed questions on which the Church has not taken a firm stance (pp. xiii-xix).
They clearly articulate fundamental moral principles; in particular
they show that certain kinds of human acts, such as intentionally
killing innocent persons—including the unborn, the severely
handicapped, those suffering from painful maladies—are always gravely
immoral. They likewise explain clearly the role of conscience rightly
understood: to make us aware of moral truths and to apply such truths
to specific issues confronting us, and they also help readers
understand the principle of double effect so relevant to choosing acts
with both good and bad effects. (see chapter 1).
They apply
these fundamental principles in the chapters to follow: beginning-of-
life issues; reproductive technologies; contraception, sterilization,
and natural family planning; end-of-life issues; and cooperation with
evil. In discussing beginning-of-life and end-of-life issues they show
that human bodily life as a great good intrinsic to the being of human
persons, and in so doing they oppose those in our culture who
distinguish between being a living human body and thus a member of the
human species from “persons,” i.e., consciously experiencing subjects
capable of relating meaningfully to other such subjects, and they show
how this widely accepted view leads to the justification of abortion,
infanticide, the “mercy killing” of many. Their treatment of the issue
regarding care of persons in the so-called ‘vegetative state’ is
excellent and integrates John Paul II’s teaching on this matter.
In
their treatment of new reproductive technologies—in vitro
fertilization, artificial insemination, cloning—they provide an
explanation and defense of the Church’s teaching that the only morally
right way to generate human life is in and through the conjugal act;
the basic problem with the “reproductive technologies” is that they
transform “procreation” into “reproduction” and treat the baby as a
“product” inferior to its producers and subject to quality controls.
They
show clearly the moral difference between contraception, which is
opposed both to the unitive and procreative meanings of the conjugal
act, and natural family planning or, as I prefer to call it, “fertility
awareness.” They likewise give very good reasons to show why married
couples ought not engage in condomistic sex as a way of avoiding the
transmission of HIV/AIDS.
The chapter devoted to issues
involving cooperation with evil takes up many very difficult questions,
such as the problem facing Catholic pharmacists in filling
prescriptions for birth control pills or that facing parents and
doctors in using vaccines obtained from aborted unborn children. Their
advice on questions of this kind is sound and helpful.
A final chapter provides a helpful set of “Ten Commandments for Health Care Professionals and Patients.”
This
is a very useful and well written book. My own major problem with it
concerns their advice to readers regarding questions such as the
“rescue” or “adoption” of “surplus” human embryos cryopreserved
(frozen) in what Jerome Lejeune rightly called “concentration cans.”
They suggest that readers are free to follow “probable opinions” of
various theologians/philosophers. I think this smacks of an older
legalistic approach. I always tell my students, “believe the Church,
but never believe theologians or philosophers; rather look at the
evidence and arguments they advance to determine which views are better
and which theologians/philosophers have done their homework.”
William E. May
Emeritus Michael J. McGivney Professor of Moral Theology at
The Catholic University of America and
Senior Fellow, Culture of Life Foundation
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