Following on the heels of groundbreaking research in 2022, perhaps the most notable of which involved a genetically-altered pig heart being transplanted into a severely ill patient, a xenotransplant phase I clinical trial has been registered in the United States. While the hope is that xenotransplantation will save human lives, the research requires the genetic alteration and subsequent death of animals. In this paper, I respond to criticism of the ethical defensibility of xenotransplant research from within Catholic moral teaching. I (...) present three necessary conditions set forth by Catholic moral teaching for ethical animal research and argue that xenotransplant research satisfies each condition. I respond to the concern that xenotransplant research is grounded in a non-theologically tenable paradigm and argue that it is ethically defensible. (shrink)

The appearance of chronic brain dead patients who can undergo puberty and gestate pregnancies has shaken the confidence that brain death determination once enjoyed. Based on the bio-philosophical concept of loss of integration, whole brain death became the accepted standard with the widespread implementation of the Uniform Determination of Death Act. Unfortunately, the clinical criteria do not actually test the whole brain. Retrospective data shows that roughly half of these chronic brain dead patients have persistent hypothalamic functioning and are therefore (...) not whole brain dead. The Uniform Law Commission sought to change the determination of brain death to align with the current clinical criteria. Rather than gerrymandering death determination, the criteria for brain death should be strengthened. Such a change could respect the intrinsic human dignity of the patient and promote prudential certitude. (shrink)

The Ethical and Religious Directives (ERDs) do not currently address brain death (BD) or medical, professional, and conscience objections. Accordingly, Catholic practitioners, patients, and their families are continually caught in the controversies and confusion surrounding BD and the organ procurement process. Therefore, this essay petitions the US bishops to include a new directive in the next edition of the ERDs that (1) recognizes the moral uncertainty and dubious medical practice surrounding BD and (2) allows families and surrogates and practitioners to (...) object—based on conscience, on medical or professional grounds, and via informed refusal— to the BD tests or (at least) the BD organ procurement process. This essay provides justification for such a directive, proposes potential language, and explores how it could look in practice. (shrink)

In response to the spread of COVID-19 in March 2020, Roman Catholic Dioceses throughout the United States suspended the public celebration of the Mass. Bishops made these decisions as the government was asking nonessential activities to cease and people to avoid public crowds. This paper shows that the Mass is an essential activity and evaluates the adaptations used when the public celebration of the Mass resumed to show that Catholics could have prudentially discerned to attend Mass in March 2020. Since (...) the Mass is essential and these adaptations made it possible to publicly celebrate the Mass safely, this paper sets forth a moral argument that the public celebration of the Mass should not be suspended in future COVID-19-like pandemics. (shrink)

In this paper, I will argue that heterologous embryo transfer (HET) is malum in se because it involves a disordered use of a woman’s gestative faculty. Against most HET opponents, I will argue for and defend the distinction between the generative faculty or procreation and the gestative faculty or gestation, grounded in St. Thomas Aquinas’s explanation for how faculties are distinguished. Against the advocates of HET, I will argue that a thorough analysis of the gestative faculty and its natural object (...) will help us to demonstrate why HET constitutes a disordered (and therefore illicit) use of a woman’s gestative faculty. (shrink)

The Second Vatican Council called for moral theology to be more firmly rooted in scripture, yet bioethical reflection on alcohol use and addiction often fails to provide a rigorous scriptural analysis of these problems. Themes related to alcohol use, abuse, and addiction recur throughout scripture. This article begins by examining these themes in the Old and New Testaments. Some synthetic comments related to alcohol use and eschatological themes are then offered. The article concludes that the Bible does not condemn moderate (...) alcohol use, but it frequently condemns drunkenness as a source of harm, part of the dominion of sin, and unsuitable for God’s people. Practical applications related to catechesis, priestly formation, and recovery are offered. (shrink)

Theology offers an account of how a person grows in the love of God or fails to do so; this account is needed for understanding the role of mental health treatments. An overview of the elements of character formation is given, including moral and theological virtues, vices, emotions, reason, commandments, and the influence of family and the community. The diagnosis of mental disorders and illnesses is reviewed, along with the basic kinds of psychotherapist and methods of therapy. A few principles (...) regarding human dignity are highlighted, and the similarities of and differences between the counselor and the confessor are explained. (shrink)

A sound philosophy of the human person is key to any application of modern clinical psychology. Psychological disorder and vice go hand in hand, indicating the need to embrace virtue theory in clinical psychology. Borrowed from the Catholic intellectual tradition, this approach to mental health encourages good habits of the soul as the antidote to psychological struggles. This article aims to demonstrate how the Catholic understanding of the human person aligns well with modern psychology.

The practice of clinical mental health counseling benefits from the integration of a Catholic Christian meta-model of the person. This paper will briefly define and describe a paradigm that guides the practice of clinical mental health counseling. It will then demonstrate how a Catholic Christian view of the person aligns with and extends the dimensions of the practice paradigm resulting in a deeper understanding for the conceptualization of both presenting clinical concerns and their respective treatment. After describing an integrated model (...) for professional practice, two brief case studies will illustrate its application. Finally, implications for clinical practice and recommendations for research are discussed. (shrink)

I discuss varieties of depth psychology that both emphasize the unconscious in particular ways and simultaneously accentuate human freedom and the underdetermination of the future. They recognize the soul as vital to the work of psychotherapy. Some even speak of a “mythopoetic” imagination. The soulful depth psychologists to be considered here include Frederic Myers, Theodore Flournoy, Carl G. Jung, Vera von der Heydt, Victor White, Otto Rank, Evangelos Christou, Richard Schwartz, and James Hillman. I will contend that these approaches align (...) with a Catholic anthropology. (shrink)

This article explains a philosophy of mental health in the light of human dignity and flourishing from the perspective of a Catholic Christian meta-model of the person (meta-model). It conceptualizes healing as the search to attain wholeness of health, flourishing, and holiness through integrated practices at biophysical, emotional, mental, moral, social, and spiritual levels. Healing attains positive change consistent with human nature and flourishing through intra- and interpersonal sources. The paper uses the meta-model as a framework for integration and makes (...) explicit the presuppositions of a philosophical anthropology and ethics that synthesize insights from psychology, philosophy, and theology. It compares the metamodel to contemporary human sciences and ethics, such as that of positive psychology and confirms a value-, virtue-, and vocation-based approach to understand a Catholic philosophy of mental health and bioethics. (shrink)

Sterilizations sponsored and coerced by the state occurred at the Laconia State School in New Hampshire for decades as part of the American eugenics movement in the early twentieth century. The context of that movement is summarized, the case of the Laconia State School is presented, and arguments are offered to explain the immorality of the affair.

Death by neurological criteria has been at the center of ethical debates. I argue that brain death is a valid determination of death. This follows from an understanding that the brain is the effective integrator of the body and that following the death of the brain the body stops functioning as an integrated whole. Questions regarding this certainty have been reignited, however, by a study out of Yale that demonstrated synthetic perfusates, such as the compounds dubbed BrainEx and OrganEx, could (...) restore cellular and even organ function in a porcine body and brain after death. Through analyzing medical, scientific, and theological literature I argue that even in the face of developing scientific technology moral certitude in brain death determinations is secure. (shrink)

Since its publication in the year 2000, M. Cathleen Kaveny’s article “Appropriation of Evil: Cooperation’s Mirror Image” has had a notable influence upon several scholars who appear to agree with its central argument— namely, that the theory of cooperation with evil needs to be supplemented by a concept that Kaveny calls “appropriation.” The main point of the present article is that Kaveny misrepresents the traditional theory regarding cooperation with evil and that appropriation, as she understands it, is therefore not the (...) mirror image of cooperation, although it is granted that Kaveny mentions cases that the traditional theory of cooperation with evil is unsuited to deal with—and that they need to be dealt with. (shrink)

Evolutionary debunking arguments attempt to show from the fact of evolution either that there are no evaluative truths existing independently of our evaluative judgments or that we lack knowledge of such truths. In this paper, I consider whether Sharon Street’s influential evolutionary debunking argument threatens natural law theory. I argue that new natural law theory is vulnerable to her argument but that derivationist versions of natural law theory (sometimes referred to as “traditional” or “old” natural law) have the resources to (...) mount a defense. I show that new natural law theory’s account of how we know the precepts of natural law leaves the theory open to Street’s attack. I also show that derivationist natural law theory’s account—on which the precepts of natural law can be derived from facts about human nature and human fulfillment—gives deriviationists what they need for a defense. (shrink)

The Declaration on Euthanasia (1980) defined euthanasia as “an action or an omission which of itself or by intention causes death, in order that all suffering may in this way be eliminated.” In Evangelium vitae (1995) Pope St. John Paul II defined “euthanasia in the strict sense” using exactly the same words, except that where the declaration has “of itself or [vel] by intention” the encyclical reads “of itself and [et] by intention.” This paper explores the significance of this change, (...) which has been largely ignored and has not been adopted by the Catechism or by the Ethical and Religious Directives. I argue for the superiority of the definition in the declaration. (shrink)

A book review of “Bioethical Challenges at the End of Life: An Ethical Guide in Catholic Perspective” by Ralph Weimann.

This paper explores the question of whether clinical ethicists should engage in prayer with patients to establish a deeper connection and gain a better understanding of their perspectives. By examining the ethical considerations, potential benefits, and limitations associated with prayer in clinical settings, this paper aims to contribute to the ongoing discourse surrounding the role of spirituality in health care.