Editorial – Taking a Deeper View
Moral and ethical principles enable us to consider differing elements of complex issues. People have different understandings of what moral principles mean and consequently difficulties arise in their application. Other principles seem to be lost sight of in current ethical debates. Catholics in New Zealand need to contribute to the ethical debates that are currently happening in New Zealand using all the wisdom of Catholic social and bioethical teaching and taking a wider deeper view of the human person.
Moral and ethical principles enable us to consider differing elements of complex issues. People have different understandings of what moral principles mean and consequently difficulties arise in their application. Other principles seem to be lost sight of in current ethical debates. Catholics in New Zealand need to contribute to the ethical debates that are currently happening in New Zealand using all the wisdom of Catholic social and bioethical teaching and taking a wider deeper view of the human person.
Impact and Challenge: 25 Years of Bioethics
The feature article is an edited version of a speech given by Dr Ron Hamel, Senior Ethicist for the Catholic Health Association of United States of America. Dr Hamel looks at the impact and challenge of key developments in the field of Bioethics over the last 25 years. Bioethics involves answering the ethical questions: “What should we do?” “Who should we be?” and “How do or should we see?” Vision is critical, but most often neglected.
Dr Hamel highlights four challenges which bioethics poses to our societies and to our communities of faith: attitudes toward human life, an overemphasis on autonomy, an inability to accept finitude and limits, and a marginalisation of religion and theology.