The pope urged them to speak up publicly
So it seems like more bishops are doing just that. During his US papal visit, Pope Benedict XVI told the US bishops to be actively engaged in public debates over issues of the day with their morally informed voices.
As preachers of the Gospel and leaders of the Catholic community, you are also called to participate in the exchange of ideas in the public square, helping to shape cultural attitudes. In a context where free speech is valued, and where vigorous and honest debate is encouraged, yours is a respected voice that has much to offer to the discussion of the pressing social and moral questions of the day.
Benedict said “much remains to be done” to open hearts and minds in this culture to moral truth.
While it is true that this country is marked by a genuinely religious spirit, the subtle influence of secularism can nevertheless color the way people allow their faith to influence their behavior…
In an age that is saturated with information, the importance of providing sound formation in the faith cannot be overstated.
Especially when ethically challenged information is spread by some Catholic journals or other media. Which is all the more confusing when it’s about bioethics and the public is already grappling with distorted language used by the ‘culture of death’ to deny life, or life-sustaining treatments.
Benedict covered that, too, in his address.
It is easy to be entranced by the almost unlimited possibilities that science and technology place before us; it is easy to make the mistake of thinking we can obtain by our own efforts the fulfillment of our deepest needs. This is an illusion…
At a time when advances in medical science bring new hope to many, they also give rise to previously unimagined ethical challenges.
Like that posed by the case of Terry Schiavo, and scores of others like her, when giving someone food and water is re-defined as ‘extraordinary’ or ‘artificial’ health care. That makes it easier to deny the treatment.
Two bishops have engaged this issue to refute the writings of a bioethics professor and a professor of religion and social ethics, both of which appeared in the Catholic journal America.
Cardinal Justin Rigali, Archbishop of Philadelphia and chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., chairman of the USCCB Committee on Doctrine, raise their concerns in the August 4 issue of the Jesuits’ America magazine.
The bishops write that two previous America articles by John Hardt, assistant professor of bioethics at Loyola University of Chicago’s Stritch School of Medicine, and Thomas Shannon, emeritus professor of religion and social ethics at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, “appear to misunderstand and subsequently misrepresent the substance of Church teaching on these difficult but important ethical questions” about “our moral obligations to patients who exist in what has come to be called a ‘persistent vegetative state.'”
Both professors argue for exceptions to Church teaching, thereby allowing the removal of a feeding tube and hydration from such patients.
Precisely the problem Benedict warned about in that address.
And another example of what ‘America’s Lifeline’ addresses weekly, and why it was launched as another way to provide media content with a solid moral foundation.
This week, it covers ‘another Terri Schiavo’ (there are more of them all the time) and what a family can be up against to save their daughter’s life. By giving her food and water.
