Thu 25 Sep, 2008
I just returned from the medical ethics conference. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. The first half of the conference was a rather good dialogue about ethics counseling. It was an eye-opener about how difficult health care decisions can be, especially when the health care provider and the family have different medical goals for an incapacitated loved one. While the principle of ordinary and extraordinary means of treatment were not mentioned (except almost dismissively in one of the case study scenarios as “traditional Church teaching”), it was strongly applied by the presenter and the participants. My only qualm about this part of the day was a brief discussion about “quality of life values.”
The afternoon presentation by John Hardt was on conscience. He began with a scenario in which a doctor refuses to give Viagra to a patient because the patient was not married. Despite the doctor’s compassionate, gentle manner of explaining his position, the conference participants were outraged at the doctor’s apparent “judgmental” attitude. Dr. Hardt led us through views of conscience and then argued in favor of the Catholic tradition of defining conscience as a moral reasoning process. He defined a valid judgment of conscience as one that can be reasoned, explained and debated. Not bad.
Mr. Hardt did a nice job, both presenting and being true to Catholic tradition. There was one rather glaring omission in his presentation, however. He did not connect the conscience to objective moral truth. As a result, his definition of conscience came across much closer to consensus morality (something is right or wrong because we have argued and discussed and come to a reasonable consensus that it is right or wrong).
What was more bothersome was the blatant and widespread modernism among the participants. Mr. Hardt seemed like an obsessed conservative in comparison to these “judge not” medical professionals. When you consider that modernism is usually practiced as the intolerance of tolerance, it becomes very scary to consider that it has become the dominant philosophy within the medical community. Many were even arguing that the patient had a right to freedom of conscience, but the medical professional did not. For example, a nurse in Oregon who opposed euthanasia had no right to excuse herself from the moment of death by assisted suicide of his or her patient, even though the nurse’s absence would in no way affect the patient’s ability to be killed.
Dr. Hardt tried to conquer the dominant trend by using the purpose and goals of medical care as the guiding principle of what a medical professional should be required to provide and what should be optional. If a requested treatment heals, it should be required (so a doctor may not refuse to treat an AIDS patient just because that patient is homosexual or a criminal). If a requested treatment is recreational, convenient, or cosmetic (abortion, birth control, plastic surgery) it should be optional for a professional to deny based on his or her judgment of conscience. This is a valid line of natural law thinking. It was also the point most strenuously opposed by the conference participants. Dr. Hardt was getting at something I strongly believe. The medical profession is becoming a market economy rather than a professional service.
Christ has called us to teach the truth in love. This command embraces the objective truth of morality, the free exercise of conscience, and the use of compassion when dealing with patients who make bad choices of conscience. If Dr. Hardt would have included in his definition of conscience that it is rooted in objective moral truth, this conference would have beautifully encompassed the entirety of Catholic truth. However, perhaps the presenters at this conference gave their audience all the truth they could handle.
Check out these books in the From the Abbey bookstore:
Thinker’s Guide to Understanding the Foundations of Ethical Reasoning Differentiating between egocentric thinking that leads to pseudo-ethics and fair-minded critical thinking that leads to rational ethical thought, this guide applies elements of critical thinking and informal reasoning to ethical decision making. It discusses clarifying the issue and applying natural and universal ethical standards (natural law). It then presents a plan for becoming an ethical thinker. $5.69
Veritatis SplendorThe flagship document of fromtheabbey.com, this document lays out the renewal of moral theology recommended by the Second Vatican Council. Pope John Paul II exposes errors in moral thought and guides us toward the path of authentic moral living by participating in God’s plan for our lives. $6.64
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Jeffrey S. Arrowood, MTS says:
@Mike -
Thanks, Mike! I have not yet emailed Dr. Hardt. Thanks for his email.