The Joy of the Truth

Catholic voters who chose Barak Obama as president must really be kicking themselves (one would hope). While the president has done some good things so far, the death toll continues to mount. This morning President Obama overturned President Bush’s ban on using federal funding for research into embryonic stem cell research.

Once again, the great orator couches his decision in terms that make the opposition unreasonable and self-serving, stating… Continue reading

The March, 2008, issue of First Things ran an excellent opinion piece by Gilbert Meilaender called The Giving and Taking of Organs. Meilaender quotes Paul Ramsey, whose The Patient as Person explored the moral ramifications of organ donation when the technology was still young. Ramsey (and Meilaender) explored three possible modes of receiving donated organs:

1. Voluntary organ donation (opt-in)
2. Automatic organ donation with an opt-out option

Bill Steigerwald is urging Barak Obama to legalize the international sale of human organs. In his arguments, he claims that medical ethicists live in ivory towers, out of touch with real-world suffering. The reality is that utilitarians who devalue transcendent goods and embrace only tangible goods live in a fantasy world and ignore the devastation that their derision of human dignity brings to our culture. Continue reading

Has in vitro fertilization contributed to our callousness toward newly conceived human babies? These advertisements in professional medical journals leave little doubt. The medical community has become cold-hearted toward the creation of new life and our culture is feeling the effects. Continue reading

The naturalist and utilitarian philosophies creeping into the medical profession often keep unresponsive patients from getting therapies that could help them or the care they deserve as human persons. Our culture must make the choice to treat unresponsive patients as people to be loved in their time of need. Continue reading