Ethics & Medics

A theological and historical background is needed for understanding the terms ordinary and extraordinary regarding the care required for one seriously ill. This background is theological, since one’s care is directed to our life on earth and our ultimate happiness that comes from God. So, one needs the knowledge given by God in revelation and in natural law written in our hearts. Besides our own powers of acting, we need the help of others as well as of God, through his grace and sacraments. The historical view is given because situations change, and so our judgment must change. In God’s law, one must eat to live but not if it becomes a torture. Domingo de Soto gave the name ordinary for the former and extraordinary for the latter. With the arrival of anesthesia and antiseptics, the pain and terrible outcomes, which made amputation an extraordinary means, no longer did so.

Conscience rights and public health often come into conflict. Both Catholic social teaching and the natural moral law give primacy to conscience and religious freedom. Those who put public health on a par with conscience and religious freedom, or who imply an equivalence among them, as if they were comparable elements of public policy, are misguided, however well intentioned. Ironically, the common good that is the foundation of the right to public health is harmed by violating conscience and religious freedom. The principle should be clear: all of society, not solely the state, should promote the common good through public health and safety measures insofar as doing so does not violate the dignity of the human person, especially in matters of conscience and religious freedom.