This introduction provides a comprehensive overview of the development of Catholic ethics in the wake of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), an event widely considered crucial to the reconciliation of the Catholic Church and the modern world. Andrew Kim investigates Catholic responses to questions of moral theology in all four principal areas: Catholic social teaching, natural law, virtue ethics, and bioethics. In addition to discussing contemporary controversies surrounding abortion, contraception, labor rights, exploitation of the poor, and just war theory, he explores the historical sources of the Catholic worldview. Beginning with the moral vision revealed through the person of Jesus Christ and continuing with elaborations on this vision from figures such as Augustine and Aquinas, this volume elucidates the continuity of the Catholic moral tradition. Its balance of complexity and accessibility makes it an ideal resource for both students of theology and general readers.

Can the Hippocratic and Judeo-Christian traditions be synthesized with contemporary thought about practical reason, virtue and community to provide real-life answers to the dilemmas of healthcare today? Bishop Anthony Fisher discusses conscience, relationships and law in relation to the modern-day controversies surrounding stem cell research, abortion, transplants, artificial feeding and euthanasia, using case studies to offer insight and illumination. What emerges is a reason-based bioethics for the twenty-first century; a bioethics that treats faith and reason with equal seriousness, that shows the relevance of ancient wisdom to the complexities of modern healthcare scenarios and that offers new suggestions for social policy and regulation. Philosophical argument is complemented by Catholic theology and analysis of social and biomedical trends, to make this an auspicious example of a new generation of Catholic bioethical writing which has relevance for people of all faiths and none.

Product Description: Includes index and appendices. The discipline of "bioethics" has developed in response to unprecedented advances made during the past three decades in the area of biomedical technology. Many of those advances have an extraordinary potential for good; nevertheless, much of the new technology has placed us on a dramatic slide down the "slippery slope," from partial-birth abortions to physician-assisted suicide, from surrogate gestation to the cloning of human embryos...read more

Product Description: Bioethics, Law, and Human Life Issues: A Catholic Perspective on Marriage, Family, Contraception, Abortion, Reproductive Technology, and Death and Dying draws on the Magisterial teaching of the Catholic Church to outline a Catholic response to a host of controversial issues related to human life...read more

Product Description: A practical guide for Catholics through the controversial field of bioethics Lay people today need to be as educated as possible in catholic teaching in bioethics due to their huge civic responsibilities related to the burning issues of our time such as euthanasia, prenatal genetic diagnosis, and so forth...read more

Product Description: The pressure for Catholic medical institutions and healthcare workers is mounting at an alarming rate as individuals struggle to uphold their faith in an industry that is confronting new bioethical dilemmas in a political and cultural environment that is increasingly hostile to traditional Catholic teachings...read more

Product Description: What, exactly, does it mean to be human? It is an age-old question, one for which theology, philosophy, science, and medicine have all provided different answers. But though a unified response to the question can no longer be taken for granted, how we answer it frames the wide range of different norms, principles, values, and intuitions that characterize today's bioethical discussions...read more

Product Description: Contemporary Issues in Bioethics: A Catholic Perspective applies the best of the Roman Catholic theological and ethical tradition to some of the most controversial and complex bioethical topics that confront contemporary society. Authors James Walter and Thomas Shannon offer a fresh analysis from the Catholic tradition and show how a specifically Catholic perspective might inform public discussion on these issues...read more

Product Description: Any list of the most influential figures of the second half of the twentieth century would arguably have to begin with the name of Pope John Paul II. From 1978, when he was inaugurated, to the present, over a quarter of a century later, the Pope has been a dominant force in the world, both within the Catholic and Christian Church, and in the larger international community...read more

Product Description: The purpose of this valuable book is to consider recent cultural trends in bioethics from a Catholic perspective. The first section describes modern cultural notions of health and human suffering. It examines the meaning of suffering in the contemporary world and relates this discussion to the ethical issues surrounding abortion, euthanasia, and the competing conceptions of health...read more

Product Description: For centuries the Roman Catholic Church has been concerned with the moral implications of medical practice. Indeed, until two decades ago, Catholic moral theologians were the major source of moral guidance, scholarly reflection and teaching on a variety of medical-moral topics, particularly those bearing on human life...read more