The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly

Mercy is a central idea of the Christian moral tradition, and Pope Francis’s papacy has only raised its profile in our collective moral consciousness. However, the concept of mercy is traditionally located at the individual level. This creates a challenge when studying moral questions related to public policy because one must either develop policy without its being informed by mercy or inelegantly apply what is primarily an individual-level concept to organizations and policies. To begin remedying this challenge, this article considers the question of mercy’s role in public policy by exploring public health policy as a starting point.

Reducing disparities in health for racial and ethnic minorities has been a focus for US public health since the Heckler Report. Yet, a majority of racial and ethnic minorities in the US continue to have lower life expectancies and are more susceptible to poorer health outcomes compared to their white counterparts. Improvements in public health have been thwarted by ideological differences and structural restraints that necessitate an alternative method aimed at reorienting ethical discourse and guiding the public health as an institution. Informed by a neo-Aristotelian concept of justice and the good life explicated through the Catholic social tradition, a new framework will enable public health to more wholly achieve its aim in the service of the populations that continue to be marginalized.

The Catholic moral tradition has a rich foundation that applies broadly to encompass all areas of human experience. Yet, there is comparatively little in Catholic thought on the ethics of the collection and use of data, especially in healthcare. We provide here a brief overview of terminology, concepts, and applications of data in the context of healthcare, summarize relevant theological principles and themes (including the Vatican’s Rome Call for AI Ethics), and offer key questions for ethicists and data managers to consider as they analyze ethical implications pertinent to data governance and data management.

Many Catholics have expressed hesitancy or resistance to being vaccinated for COVID-19, with magisterial authorities and influential Catholic organizations advocating divergent views regarding the moral liceity of the vaccines, the justification of vaccination mandates, and whether such mandates should include religious exemptions. We address each of these disputed points and argue that vaccination for COVID-19 falls within the definition of being an ordinary—and thereby morally obligatory—treatment. To that end, we offer a brief overview of the Catholic moral tradition regarding the development of the distinction between ordinary and extraordinary treatment, show how the Church morally evaluates vaccination as a good act, and underline the importance of positive witnessing in supporting vaccination.

On its release, the Instruction on Respect for Human Life was accused of obstructing the technological enhancement of human life by using slippery slope arguments to impose the Magisterium’s opinion that accepting certain new technologies, like homologous artificial fertilization, would weaken resistance to practices the Church traditionally has opposed. To the contrary, the instruction calls attention to the fact that by using these technologies, we have in principle accepted all sorts of thigs, with or without technology, which are destructive of human life.

Although conflated in the public mind, science and technology are separate though overlapping enterprises. While technological progress is advancing rapidly, the more philosophically oriented scientific fields are experiencing an epistemological crisis. In the following text, we examine the origins of this epistemological crisis. Although the crisis is multifactorial in origin, with the factors interacting in a nonlinear fashion, several distinct contributors can be identified. These include a decline in confidence in Western culture and a concomitant rise in exaggerated self-criticism, diminution of cause-and-effect relationships, the rise of relative truth, and a transition from an agnostic to an atheistic stance among scientists.

The aim of this essay is to demonstrate three main points: (1) that many of the widespread appeals made to conscience in the time of COVID display little understanding of conscience’s fundamental nature; (2) that they assume for conscience a sacrosanct status it does not possess; and (3) that because of the first two points, conversation regarding conscience and COVID has generated considerable confusion. In support of these points, this paper (1) shows what conscience is, (2) employs St. John of the Cross’s examination of attachments to suggest that possession of a well-formed conscience is frequently a most difficult achievement, and (3) examines various expressions associated with the COVID debate to illustrate how much of the conversation has stemmed from or resulted in little real understanding.

In vitro gametogenesis is the process of deriving gametes from embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells. While not as well-known as in vitro fertilization, IVG could lead to more moral issues that would require corresponding responses from the Magisterium. Because IVG remains at the experimental stage, mainly using mice, the Magisterium has not issued any such responses in a document along the lines of Donum vitae and Dignitas personae. This essay situates IVG within Catholic moral teachings for those who are unfamiliar with the teachings of the Church but who are interested in forming their consciences and those of others on what is undoubtedly a peculiar medical technique with many moral ramifications.