A Culture of Collaboration
Dr. Janet E. Smith, Chair of Life Ethics, Professor of Moral Theology
MOSAIC, Fall 2006

The Church has been involved in health care, virtually from its beginning. Catholic health care institutions, many with missionary outreaches, provide excellent medical care, much of it charitable care for the poor. Catholics also have a comprehensive set of principles and teachings about bioethical issues. For both reasons, many who are not Catholics are very willing to enter into dialogue with Catholics about health care. Our witness and our intellectual tradition have earned us a respectful hearing.

Many of the teachings of the Catholic Church on bioethics are based on principles derived from divine revelation. When dialoguing about bioethics with fellow Christians and members of others religions that may accept Scripture to some extent, we can certainly draw upon the truths of Scripture, especially those truths that confirm the sacredness of human life. All Christians and some from other religious traditions believe that God is the Lord of Life, that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God and that we have an eternal destiny. We believe that immoral behavior, rejection of God and his laws, separates us rom God (not God from us). We emphatically believe we should never directly kill innocent human life, and we should lovingly care for those who are ill and attempt to heal them and reduce their suffering.

Yet, shared belief in revelation does not translate necessarily into a consensus about what is moral and immoral in the bioethical realm. Many non-Catholic Christian denominations and non-Christian religions accept abortion and euthanasia in some instances. They also approve of such practices as contraception, in vitro fertilization and embryonic stem cell research. Here, even with fellow Christians, the dialogue is not so much about what Scripture says, since explicit teaching about such issues is not present in Scripture. Rather, here we find many disagreements about philosophical principles and the implications of scientific fact.

Whereas Catholicism maintains there are objective truths of both a factual and philosophic kind, many other religious groups have embraced philosophical principles based on skepticism and subjectivism that lead to relativism. (The encyclical Evangelium Vitae hows how these principles have led to what Pope John Paul II calls a "culture of death.") Thus, dialogue with other believers often requires knowledge of some of the trends in philosophy and an ability to show their incompatibility with belief in a universe created by a loving God. It also requires keeping up to date on the latest scientific findings. For instance, science is a great ally in showing that personhood begins at conception, and developments in adult stem cell research take some of the steam out of the push for embryonic stem cell research.

There have been instances when various religious groups working together have achieved great things. At United Nations conferences on population, various forces have been attempting to have abortion recognized as a fundamental human right. Christians, Jews and Muslims, with a great deal of guidance by the Vatican, successfully opposed those efforts.

The pro-life movement is another magnificent example of the cooperation of Christians and other believers. The fruits of this cooperation are many.Through the pro-life movement, Evangelicals have come to abandon much of their suspicion of Catholics, and many have even come to understand the Church's condemnation of contraception. Many Catholics have come to have a deep respect for the Evangelical radical commitment to the Lord, and have even begun tithing!

One of the deepest desires of Christ's heart was that all believers would be one in our devotion to the truth.

Many believers are working hard at achieving that in realms of health care, bioethics and in opposition to the culture of death.

Dr. Janet E. Smith is the Fr. Michael McGivney Chair of Life Ethics. She is an internationally recognized writer and lecturer on bioethics.