Bennett, J. (2016) - Life and Death. Oxford Handbooks Online

Life and Death
Oxford Handbooks Online

Life and Death
Jana Bennett
The Oxford Handbook of Catholic Theology
Edited by Lewis Ayres and Medi Ann Volpe
Subject: Religion, Roman Catholic Christianity Online Publication Date: Apr 2016
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199566273.013.38
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter places Catholic teaching on questions of life and death against the
background of a Catholic vision of salvation history, emphasizing that Catholics see no
necessary opposition between Christian faith and progress in scientific understanding of
the creation. The chapter then considers questions concerning abortion, contraception,
and techniques for artificial reproduction. The second half of the chapter focuses on
questions concerning death. Catholic teaching views human life in this world as finite,
and thus sees death as intrinsic to the current human condition. After considering
Catholic teaching on euthanasia, the chapter considers Catholic discussion of war, the
death penalty, and care for the environment.
Keywords: life, death, abortion, contraception, euthanasia, war, death penalty, environment
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Life and Death
Life and death questions, at best, come across as perplexing, and at worst, seem punitive
and unloving. How can the Church ask a single teenage woman who has been raped to
carry her child full term? Why should a family whose loved one has been murdered suffer
with the knowledge that the killer remains alive, behind bars? Why doesn’t the Church
approve of in-vitro fertilization, when it helps infertile couples achieve pregnancy? After
all, doesn’t the Church want people to have children? Such questions come to the
forefront of discussions about life and death, hitting people exactly at raw, vulnerable,
and painful junctures that can create barriers for peoples’ full participation in the life of
the Church.
In addition, people tend to perceive life and death issues as a cause for division in the
Church. Life-and-death issues, typically seen as relating to abortion, contraception, and
stem-cell research, alongside euthanasia and end-of-life questions, seem opposed to what
are commonly known as social-justice issues such as fair wages, and seeking alleviation of
poverty. Many Western Catholics find themselves supporting the Church’s teaching about
social-justice issues, but not life-and-death issues, often because its stance on social
justice seems loving, while its stance on life-and-death questions seems distinctly
unloving (see e.g. Woodhead 2013). Those Catholics who see themselves primarily as pro-
life Catholics often see themselves at odds with social-justice Catholics, and both groups
can end up being dismissive of each other. Christian views on life and death can seem
unloving because they also seem unrealistic, not taking into account the particularities of
peoples’ lives. By contrast, the Church’s views on fair wages and ending poverty appear
quite realistic in the sense that at least Christians are responding directly to peoples’
complex needs, even if poverty itself is never wholly eradicated.
I used to see Catholic teaching about life-and-death questions as unrealistic. I grew up in

a pro-choice family, where the catchphrase was: ‘I wouldn’t have an abortion, but I
wouldn’t want to impose that choice on someone else’. It was that focus on enabling
peoples’ choices about difficult situations that made it seem more realistic, more
attentive to peoples’ needs. My views began to change when, as a teenager, I read a
newspaper story of a baby who had died because she was suffocated with a plastic bag.
She had been about twenty-eight weeks’ gestation. The journalist suggested that the baby
would have died anyway, because twenty-eight weeks was usually too small to survive
outside the womb; still the mother (also a teenager) would be charged with murder,
despite the fact that had she aborted the baby only a few days earlier, it would not have
been murder but perfectly legal in that area of the United States.
My questions were not simply due to the incongruency: how easy a shift it was between
legality and murder in the space of just a few days, especially when there were not clear
distinctions between the motivations involved in the suffocation case and the motivations
women describe in having late-term abortions. My questions were also directly related to
my own life, for I was born at twenty-seven and a half weeks’ gestation, just under one
kilo at birth. Some of the reasons women consider abortion to begin with—such as
disabilities and hospitalizations and special education among them—were all present at
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Life and Death
my own birth and in the early years of life. I have a profound hearing loss as a result of
that birth, among other things, and had years of speech therapy and medical tests.
It was reflection on both my own story and the wider cultural context surrounding
abortion and other life/death issues that caused me to begin questioning the view I had
learned growing up. It was also thus that I began thinking about the ways we perceive a
line between social-justice issues and life issues. To what extent were these quite so
distinct? Social justice for women and their children and other vulnerable people such as
those who are disabled seemed quite in line with teachings about life issues.
Numerous theologians and bishops have pointed out that there can be no true divide.
Some include the death penalty, war, and questions about animal cruelty and
environmental care among the range of life-and-death issues, though all of these might be
considered as social-justice issues too. Indeed, John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical Evangelium
Vitae (Gospel of Life) discusses some of the numerous ways human life is threatened:
And how can we fail to consider the violence against life done to millions of human
beings, especially children, who are forced into poverty, malnutrition and hunger
because of an unjust distribution of resources between peoples and between social
classes? And what of the violence inherent not only in wars as such but in the
scandalous arms trade, which spawns the many armed conflicts which stain our
world with blood? What of the spreading of death caused by reckless tampering
with the world’s ecological balance, by the criminal spread of drugs, or by the
promotion of certain kinds of sexual activity which, besides being morally
unacceptable, also involve grave risks to life? (Evangelium Vitae 10).
While the encyclical goes on primarily to discuss the beginning (abortion) and end of
human life (euthanasia) and the ways in which our ‘culture of death’ promotes a vision of
human beings that makes abortion and euthanasia acceptable, John Paul II also sees
these questions as only one part of the Church’s teachings on human life (see Evangelium
Vitae 27).
This chapter on life and death therefore discusses questions about the beginnings and
endings of life in conjunction with questions about war, the death penalty, and concern for
the environment. In order to show how all of these questions are related in what Joseph
Cardinal Bernardin named the ‘seamless garment’ (Bernardin 1983), I first discuss why
life is so important in Catholic thought. Then I discuss each of the main issues in turn, at
each point addressing one or two of the tough questions that make Catholic teaching on
life and death issues seem so unrealistic and at times cruel or anti-human. By the
chapter’s end, I hope to have shown that Church teaching about poverty and other social
justice questions cannot be separated from teaching about abortion and other life-and-
death questions and to have made a case for why Catholic teaching isn’t meant to be
cruel, especially when it is understood in relation to these social justice issues.
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Life and Death
The Importance of Salvation History

To speak about salvation history is to speak about God’s creation of the universe and all
that is in it, the world’s redemption through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and
parousia, which names the end of time when God will be all in all. If we do not meditate
on creation, redemption, and parousia, as understood in Scripture, then it is impossible to
understand Church teaching about life-and-death issues such as abortion, the death
penalty, and euthanasia.
Science, Religion, and Creation
In Western culture, discussion of salvation history and especially creation can seem
disjointed, even mythical, compared to the scientific truths that most of our contemporary
discourse presumes. Life-and-death issues are caught up, inevitably, in contemporary
debates about science and religion because of their link to contemporary medical practice
and the ways medicine is linked to scientific and technological discovery.
Catholics do not see the problems with reflecting on both creation and evolution because
both scientific inquiry and reflection on Scripture are part of the same human thirst and
quest for knowledge. The particular debate about creation versus evolution has pitted
creation stories in Scripture (which seem mythical and unrealistic) against scientific
accounts (which seem evidential from our experience and environment). Popularly, people
have sided with scientific accounts over religion. This has been detrimental to
understanding and appreciating the gift of human life from a Catholic point of view,
particularly since for Catholics there is no true war between science and religion.
Scientific inquiry involves humans’ plumbing the depths of the mysteries that exist in our
world; those mysteries do not contradict who God is nor the unique and loving
relationship that exists between God and humanity.
Accordingly, theologians and scientists alike have protested against this popularized war
between science and religion. Theologians such as Herbert McCabe have noted that
science and religion speak about utterly distinctive things. Science examines the stuff of
our universe; God, on the other hand, as Christians have traditionally understood God, is
not part of the stuff of the universe since God is not an object within our universe
(McCabe 1987, ch. 1 and 2). Scientists such as biologist David Sloan Wilson (a self-
proclaimed atheist) argue likewise against the too-simplistic view that religion is the evil
and unscientific entity that Richard Dawkins and similarly minded New Atheists proclaim
(Wilson 2003). Science is imprecise and like religion, it continually seeks answers.
Catholic tradition is not ultimately afraid of genuine seeking after truth, because we
believe that a search for truth is ultimately a search for God.
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Life and Death
Catholics also read and understand Scripture more broadly than popular discussion of
Scripture in the science/religion debates often indicates. Christianity has a long tradition
of reading Scripture in terms of its literal meaning (that is, the way the words go), as well
as in allegorical and figurative meanings. Because God is not one of the many created
objects in our universe, we always find ourselves running up against the
incomprehensible whenever we discuss history in relation to God. So, we can understand
creation as true while not needing to make scriptural history historically factual and
verifiable from human understanding, since the earth is not created on the basis of our
mere human understanding. The creation accounts in Genesis therefore tell us something
about ourselves that we would not otherwise know if we were only looking to ourselves
and to the natural world to understand the origins of the universe.
A Catholic vision of creation is grounded in several texts from the Book of Genesis. In the
first chapter, we read:
Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness;
and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air,
and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creeps upon the earth’.
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the
earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds
of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth’ (Gen. 1:26–28).
From this account of creation, we learn that humans have the particular gift of being
created in God’s image, that humans are blessed, and that we have certain
responsibilities in relation to God’s gift of the earth. All of life is a gracious and enormous
gift given to us by God, and moreover, we humans bear the particularity of being created
in God’s own image. No one of us is alive without encountering these gifts (1 Cor. 15:28).
What does it mean to be made in the image of God? Some have said that it is our reason
that makes us in the image of God; some say it is our freedom and our ability to have
choices. Some suggest it is our bodies—male and female—and their incumbent sexuality,
that make us in God’s own image. The arguments about what it means to be made in the
image of God lead us to remember that ultimately, this point is a mystery, and we do not
know fully what it means to be made in God’s image, any more than we really understand
God.
That mystery, however, is part of what makes Catholics most concerned to protect all
human life. Questions that non-Christians might ask about a person’s potential enjoyment
of life, especially based on whether or not the person has rational thought, is not a key
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part of Catholic arguments. That is, aborting a foetus with apparent brain damage or
physical disability is still to abort someone who is made in the image of God.
Fall, Redemption, and Parousia
The events of the fall, redemption, and parousia teach us that we are unconditionally
loved, despite and even because of physical, mental, or other impairments. Such a view of
humanity comes not only from being made in the image of God, but also from our
awareness of our own sinfulness, which is what the fall of Adam and Eve suggests to us.
What God offers to us in the redemption of Jesus Christ, despite our sin, is the recognition
that we are loved, really loved, despite all of our evil and good deeds. The teachings about
not aborting children, or about just war, or the death penalty, are teachings that seek
above all to be formed in this way of unconditional love—to presume, always, that God
seeks a loving relationship with us and has offered us the gift of life. We are free to
respond to that gift of life or not, but Catholic teaching presupposes that Christians will
always opt for giving the benefit of the doubt to life and love as we understand life and
love to be revealed in Jesus Christ.
More than that, as the Apostle Paul names in his letter to the Ephesians, Jesus Christ is
‘our peace’ who makes us one (Eph. 2:14). The peace that Jesus offers to us is part of why
his coming into the world is our redemption. Catholic teaching on life-and-death issues is
a witness to Christ’s peace; it asks us to take stock of myriad ways in which we might be
acting violently—not only on prominent issues such as abortion and euthanasia, but also
in relation to war and even everyday things such as the kind of food we eat.
Even in very dark moments in history, Christians have witnessed to a belief that death is
not the end, and that what appears as darkness will be made as bright as day. Jesus is like
daylight: unstoppable. The event of Jesus’ return, when God will be all in all. is named the
“parousia.” This belief that Jesus is unstoppable no matter what we do means that while
we value life, we do not worship life, but rather God who gives us that life. Death is
therefore not to be avoided at all costs.
In relation to Catholic teaching about life and death, we embrace the goodness of human
life by saying decisively that we cannot seek to destroy human life at its beginning or its
end. Yet we also do not seek to prolong it or engineer it to the point that desire for life
overtakes desire for God. These doctrinal points help illuminate specific questions and
issues related to life-and-death questions that I discuss below.
Beginning of Life Questions
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Life and Death
Abortion
One of the most-discussed life/death questions, abortion is likely to be a person’s first

encounter with the moral questions surrounding life and death. Church teaching in
relation to abortion is actually strikingly simple: do not do anything that would directly
kill a child in the womb. Christians have long held a strong position about the need to
protect unborn life; both abortion and infanticide are prohibited in one of the earliest
Church catechisms, The Didache, which admonishes: ‘[Y]ou shall not murder a child by
abortion nor kill that which is born’ (Didache 2).
Arguments about abortion have tended along two main strands. One is the question of
what counts as human life, and another is the question of how we are to understand the
meaning and quality of that life at its beginnings. Yet, as I shall show below, how we react
to life’s beginnings affects how we think about life’s middle and end as well.
We can partially understand the first question, what counts as human life, by turning to
the work of one famous pro-choice advocate, Judith Jarvis Thomson. She argues that the
foetus is merely a parasite on its mother, making use of a woman’s circulatory and
pulmonary systems as its own (Thomson 1971; The terminology of ‘parasite’ is introduced
in Meilaender 1987). The mother should therefore have a choice for whether to get rid of
the parasite or not, since having a parasite is not a normal part of being human. Thomson
provides a good example of a dominant, non-Catholic strand of thinking about life, which
is that what it means to be alive and have a good life is to be an individual who has the
freedom to pursue his or her desires without any coercion from others, including
parasites.
The second question, about the quality of life at its beginnings, is seen in a recent essay.
Judy Nicastro, writing for the New York Times, suggests: ‘I believe that parenthood
begins before conception, at the moment you decide you want a child and are ready and
able to create a safe and loving home for him or her’ (Nicastro 2013). Nicastro finds
herself pregnant with twins, but then describes the heart-wrenching reality of learning
that one of the twins she is carrying has a heart defect. She and her husband had decided
that they wanted to do whatever they could for the baby, if it was ‘fixable’ and if the baby
could have a good quality of life. Most parents would recognize their sentiments in these
words: they, too, want to ‘fix’ their childrens’ problems, to give their children a good
quality of life, to offer a safe and loving home.
In both of these views, we choose those parts of history that we find most meaningful for
us, just as we choose only those things that are most meaningful for us. We decide when
our own beginnings and endings are, without reference to the other people who have
helped us to live to the point when we exist, and we decide when others’ beginnings and
endings are as well, based on our own sense of well-being.
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By contrast, Catholic teaching about life and death is utterly realistic in the sense that the
Church sees that even things such as a good quality of life, and a safe and loving home
cannot finally be guaranteed. The Church’s view of the beginning and end of life are
seamlessly connected to its view about the middle of life, too. A Catholic pro-life position
presumes only that life is a gift, not that life won’t be difficult to bear at times. As one
commenter on the Nicastro article notes:
We cannot foresee or manage every outcome. The healthy baby is hit by a car and
becomes the brain-damaged child. The child with leukemia is healed. Some of it is
in our power to affect; most of it is not. Children fall into the deep end. What looks
like a cold becomes fatal meningitis. The ‘desperately wanted’ child grows up to
be an alcoholic or a meth addict or a murderer. The quality of life, promising at
the start, turns bitter and life-denying. And all children, desperately wanted or
wanted not at all, will die. Just like every adult; just like every human being. We all
have problems that will turn out not to be ‘fixable’. So it’s that ‘if’ that breaks your
heart
(Musick 2013).
In a world of doubts and in the face of mystery, Catholic teaching errs on the side of
offering life and love despite all those doubts, and even because of those doubts.
Still, how is a person to reconcile the injunction against abortion with concerns for
women who raise those babies? At a lecture I once delivered, a woman asked: ‘So if all of
this is about love, I have difficulty reconciling the Church’s teachings against abortion,
contraception, and in-vitro fertilization with loving others’. She could see that we love
embryos, but where was justice for the women whose lives would be disrupted, who
might find themselves unable to hold a job, because they now had a baby to care for?
Where was the Church in the midst of these women’s struggles?
She was exactly right to ask that question, for it highlights both where the Church often
fails in teaching about abortion and also why many Catholics perceive a divide between
political/economic issues, and life-and-death issues. It looks like women and babies have
to be pitted against each other. Yet, really to uphold Catholic teaching on life and death
means also to uphold Catholic teaching on economic and political justice. Women’s lives
should be viewed as much as a gift as that of an unborn baby, and promoting and
protecting women’s abilities to care for their children are integral to a full account of life-
and-death issues. Enabling completion of education, just wages for women, and good
parental leave policies become just a few of the concerns Catholics need take up in
relation to abortion. Some Catholics have advocated on behalf of these issues, as well as
sponsored crisis pregnancy centres aimed at providing pregnant women with baby
clothes and diapers, aids for finding jobs and childcare, and monetary assistance.
Women’s health also arises as a chief question when thinking about abortion. It is
important to understand that for all that ‘do not commit abortion’ seems to be the
Church’s simple command, the Church’s teachings about abortion contain an important
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distinction. Moral theologian Therese Lysaught observes: ‘Not all interventions that
result in the death of the fetus qualify as abortions’ (Lysaught 2010). She uses Pope Pius
XII’s ‘Address to Associations of Large Families’ to show this:
The reason is that if, for example, the safety of the future mother, independently of
her state of pregnancy, might call for an urgent surgical operation, or any other
therapeutic application, which would have as an accessory consequence, in no
way desired or intended, but inevitable, the death of the fetus, such an act could
not be called a direct attempt on the innocent life. In these conditions the
operations can be lawful, as can other similar medical interventions, provided that
it be a matter of great importance, such as life, and that it is not possible to
postpone it till the birth of the child, or to have recourse to any other efficacious
remedy
(Rhonheimer 2009: 38).
One of the most common examples of this kind of situation in healthcare is treatment of
ectopic pregnancies, where an embryo has implanted in the fallopian tubes (or sometimes
in other locations) and not in the uterus. When this occurs, the fallopian tube becomes
abnormal and damaged, likely to lead to internal rupture and death for the woman. Most
theologians agree that removal of the portion of the abnormal fallopian tube, even though
it contains the embryo as well, is not a directly intended abortion because the intent is to
remove a damaged part of the woman’s body that causes death, rather than to kill the
embryo itself. The good (a woman’s life is saved even though the baby’s is not) is at least
equivalent to the evil of the alternative (both mother and baby die). This is an instance
where many theologians make use of the principle of double effect. (Cases where the
mother’s and baby’s lives are at stake are complicated and require much more attention
to detail than can be discussed here (see Ashley, deBlois, and O’Rourke 2006).
The Church’s teaching against abortion thus needs to be seen alongside the Church’s
concerns about a wide range of other issues, including economic justice and providing
good healthcare.
Contraception
Contraception is a life-and-death issue for Catholics insofar as the teaching about

contraception hinges on the sense that using artificial contraception explicitly acts
against the gift of life. That gift of life is celebrated through lovemaking in at least two
ways: one is the unity that the couple experiences, and the other is the new life that can
but may not necessarily occur. And thus this teaching on contraception is inseparable
from a Catholic vision of marriage. Pope Paul VI’s 1968 document on contraception,
Humanae Vitae, states: the fundamental nature of the marriage act, while uniting
husband and wife in the closest intimacy, also renders them capable of generating new
life’ (Humanae Vitae 9 and 11) At the heart of the teaching is the belief that the new life
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children bring is to be welcomed, however they come to us, especially because at its best,
sex represents great love.
That said, Catholic teaching does not advocate that parents welcome as many children as
possible. Rather it advocates that a couple be prudent in having children, through the use
of natural family-planning methods. Humanae Vitae notes:
With regard to physical, economic, psychological, and social conditions,

responsible parenthood is exercised by those who prudently and generously
decide to have more children, and by those who, for serious reasons and with due
respect to moral precepts, decide not to have additional children for either a
certain or an indefinite period of time (Humanae Vitae 10).
Physical and psychological health and financial need would be considered among the
reasons a couple might limit or space their children.
Perhaps the main question about the teaching against artificial contraception is why the
Church sees it as so distinctive from natural family planning, given that the outcomes of
both actions are the same: a baby isn’t conceived. Some name the difference between
artificial contraception and natural family planning in terms of means and ends: though
the ends (purposes) in using artificial contraception and natural family planning seem
similar (to prevent conception of a child), the ways we achieve those purposes matters as
much as the end itself (see e.g. Wilson 2002).
There are two other key differences from the Church’s point of view. One is that natural
family-planning methods require both members of a couple to assent to their use, because
natural family planning requires abstinence from sex at certain times. Most forms of
artificial contraception, by contrast, can be managed by only one person (usually the
woman) in a couple. From the Church’s point of view, this aspect of artificial
contraception is unhealthy because it enables the objectification of women. This is
perhaps part of the intent in Pope Paul VI’s statement:
Another effect that gives cause for alarm is that a man who grows accustomed to
the use of contraceptive methods may forget the reverence due to a woman, and,
disregarding her physical and emotional equilibrium, reduce her to being a mere
instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires, no longer considering her as his
partner whom he should surround with care and affection (Humanae Vitae 17).
A few feminists have found themselves agreeing with the Church here: because the
woman is deemed primarily responsible for sexual protection, the woman is also the one
who is blamed if or when pregnancy occurs (Farquar 1996). This means that men have
the ability to have sex without consequences, despite the fact that any method of family
planning carries risks. Yet it is the woman who bears the weight of contraceptive failure.
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A second difference is that natural family planning enables a couple to practise the virtue
of chastity—a virtue all Christians are called to practise. Virtue has often been overlooked
in discussions about contraception, since most arguments have been made in relation to
natural law. ‘Natural’ is a tricky word to use, however; sometimes we take ‘natural’ to
mean that it comes ‘easily’ to us. Yet in Catholic thought, saying something is ‘natural’
does not necessarily mean it is easy, just as trying to live in a good (virtuous) way is not
necessarily easy. Humanae Vitae argues that using natural methods of spacing birth may
be difficult but that ultimately these methods are better for our bodies, our families, and
our society (Humanae Vitae 19 and 20). This is partly why theologian Martin Rhonheimer
discusses natural family planning as part of trying to live out a virtue of chastity. The
virtue of chastity, difficult as it is to practise, emphasizes that sex is a weighty matter and
it can hurt people. The Church cares about the ways in which we use our bodies sexually
precisely because sex can be used well or very badly (as we’ve seen with the sex abuse
scandals). On Rhonheimer’s view, natural family planning enables more ability for couples
to reason about when and why to have children, and more flexibility for the couple to
choose good times to have sexual relations. These kinds of reflections help develop
peoples’ practical wisdom even in matters other than sex, that is their ability to discern
the right thing to do, at the right time, and in the right way (Rhonheimer 1999: 94–145).
In the days when Humanae Vitae was written, natural family planning looked much
different than it does now, but just as artificial contraceptive methods have advanced
since then, so have natural family-planning methods. Most new methods are extremely
accurate (with efficacy ratings as high as that of the various birth control pills) with
correct use. Some are very technologically based, using hormone fertility monitors, while
others make use of human observations of body temperature and other biological
symptoms (descriptions and efficacy rates are to be found at <http://iusenfp.com/home/
>). There are still no artificial contraceptive methods that the Church would consider to
be supporting both unity and openness to new life.
As one final note: it is important to note that the Church does not necessarily prohibit the
Pill, for example, when it is used to treat medical conditions such as polycystic ovarian
syndrome or endometriosis. Turning again to Humanae Vitae, 15: ‘On the other hand, the
Church does not consider at all illicit the use of those therapeutic means necessary to
cure bodily diseases, even if a foreseeable impediment to procreation should result there
from—provided such impediment is not directly intended for any motive whatsoever’.
That said, some doctors have developed successful non-contraceptive methods of treating
endometriosis, polycystic ovarian syndrome, and other such diseases. At the end of the
next section of the paper I return to these methods.
Artificial Reproduction Techniques
‘Artificial reproduction techniques’ (ART) is an umbrella term used to describe a variety

of techniques medical science employees to help couples achieve pregnancy. The Church
finds that some of these techniques are acceptable for couples hoping to conceive.
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Acceptable ARTs include the use of commonly prescribed drugs: Clomid, which helps
stimulate egg follicles; and metformin, which can help with hormone imbalances for
certain conditions. These methods are acceptable because they directly heal specific
medical conditions.
Two other well-known ARTs are not acceptable, however, because they attempt to bypass
or substitute human sexual relationships with an aim towards conceiving children.
Artificial insemination and in-vitro fertilization (most commonly referred to as IVF) is a
way of helping infertile couples get pregnant. It involves fertilizing a human egg in a petri
dish (which is why it is called ‘in vitro’) and then attempting to implant the resulting
zygote within a woman’s uterus. In Western secular culture, artificial insemination and in-
vitro fertilization are considered good medicine, good interventions that help women
achieve pregnancy despite infertility.
Many find the Church’s prohibition of these ARTs perplexing, since they offer a chance at
childbearing for people who otherwise can’t have children. Doesn’t the Church want
people to have children? Indeed, isn’t childbearing supposed to be the main point of
Christian marriage? As we saw in the earlier section on contraception, however, the
Church does not teach that childbearing is the main point of Christian marriage, nor that
we should have as many children as possible. As David Cloutier mentions in his chapter
within this volume, sacramental marriage has more than one purpose: unity, faithfulness,
and procreation. Openness to children is important, but the ‘openness’ is the operative
word since the Church, along with everyone else, knows that children are only sometimes
a result of their lovemaking. The reasons why some couples become pregnant quickly and
others do not is still largely a mystery. Infertile couples and couples who marry after
childbearing years are over are still considered to have valid sacramental marriages.
Yet for the Church, both methods traverse too far in the Church’s estimation towards
desiring life at all costs, more than desiring God and God’s purposes for life. These
methods break up the components of lovemaking into the simple elements of egg, sperm,
uterus, without attention to whole people and whole relationships. In breaking down sex
into elemental parts, eggs and sperm become mere instruments and sex becomes merely
a tool for having children. These methods objectify couples and their sexual lives, thereby
removing some of the other reasons for good sex.
Many Catholic physicians are aware of the fact that IVF and artificial insemination are
often used in instances where women have been unable to conceive due to serious
conditions such as polycystic ovarian syndrome and endometriosis. As mentioned earlier,
some Catholic physicians have therefore developed NaPro Technology to heal these
conditions and enable women to conceive without the use of impermissible ARTs (see
naprotechnology.com).
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Life and Death
Death as Part of Life

While we understand life is a gift from God, we also recognize that we are not immortal
and ultimately we are not in control of our lives. We do not love life because it is life, but
we love life because it is a gift from God. That is, we worship the Giver of life, not life
itself.
This is an important distinction because it is crucial to recognize that much as

Catholicism loves and privileges life, the Church is not in favour of prolonging life
indefinitely. To do so is to assume that we have more control or knowledge than we think
we do over life. Yet while life itself is not controllable, we also believe that we can and
should make use of our reason and other God-given talents to improve people’s lives and
promote healing and justice.
Catholic teaching about care of people at the end of life therefore attempts a great
balancing act between the desire to make life better and the knowledge that we are not in
control. Palliative care, euthanasia, and physician-assisted suicide are particular actions
that lead to consideration of when we’re making life better for the seriously ill, and when
we are merely prolonging life in unhelpful and even inhuman ways.
Euthanasia is sometimes referred to as ‘death with dignity’ and is a way of physicians or

other caregivers directly bringing about a person’s death, often through an overdose of
pain medication. Physician-assisted suicide involves the patient inducing his or her own
death after having obtained the necessary drugs from a doctor. Additionally, it is
important to recognize the distinction between palliative care and euthanasia. Palliative
care involves pain management, enabling people to die as comfortably as contemporary
medicine allows without administering so much medicine that the patient dies because of
the overdose.
The distinctions between these three kinds of action at the end of life become
increasingly critical, especially in a time when medical researchers are discovering that
people living in a so-called ‘vegetative state’ have much more awareness of their lives
than we previously thought. In some cases people in deep comas have been roused
temporarily and asked questions about pain and awareness (see Chennu et al. 2013; for a
reader-friendly summary of the report see Tate 2013).
In his 2009 encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI writes that ultimately the
difficulty with euthanasia is that it is a ‘damaging assertion of control over life that under
certain circumstances is deemed no longer worth living’ (Caritas 29). John Paul II puts it
more strongly in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae:
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Life and Death
As well as for reasons of a misguided pity at the sight of the patient’s suffering,
euthanasia is sometimes justified by the utilitarian motive of avoiding costs which
bring no return and which weigh heavily on society. Thus it is proposed to
eliminate malformed babies, the severely handicapped, the disabled, the elderly,
especially when they are not self-sufficient, and the terminally ill. Nor can we
remain silent in the face of other more furtive, but no less serious and real, forms
of euthanasia (Evangelium 15).
The concern is not only that a person is killing himself or another human being, and thus
disregarding life, but that such killings enable us to consider a wide range of people as
unworthy of living, especially those who are most vulnerable. Here, again, is a point
where life-and-death issues remain crucially inseparable from social justice issues. Just as
working for just wages aims at caring for the poor and vulnerable among us, so Scripture
reminds us again and again that we are commanded to care for the widows, the orphans,
the sick, the oppressed, and the strangers. To learn how to love truly is not to love the
strongest, most normal-looking people; to learn how to love means learning to love the
least of these and recognizing that we are no better or worse than they.
Questions about euthanasia and removing life support follow from the same overarching
vision of human life: we are utterly loved. We are loved in spite of and even because of
illness, pain, and suffering. Many theologians have commented on the great mystery that
God is with us in illness and suffering. Nicholas Wolterstorff writes about mourning the
death of his son:
I know now about helplessness—of what to do when there is nothing to do. I have
learned coping … To the ‘why’ of suffering we get no firm answer. Of course some
suffering is easily seen to be the result of our sin: war, assault, poverty amidst
plenty, the hurtful word
(Wolterstorff 1987: 72–74).
Yet not all suffering is the result of sin, and Wolterstorff remarks: ‘Suffering is down at
the center of things, deep down where the meaning is. Suffering is the meaning of our
world. For Love is the meaning. And Love suffers. The tears of God are the meaning of
history’ (Wolterstorff 1987: 90). Such a view of pain and suffering requires a response on
the part of those who would see themselves as not in pain and not suffering, which is to
be present to those who do suffer.
The Church’s teachings against euthanasia, much like the Church’s teachings against
abortion, is accompanied by a call to all people, and especially laypeople, to be present to
those who might be tempted by such actions, and to work to alleviate conditions that
push people towards that temptation. For ordinary laypeople, such presence might
involve visits to those who are ill to reduce loneliness.
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Life and Death
For those more specifically involved in medical decisions at the end of life, it is important
to recognize the distinctions between what are known as ‘ordinary means’ and
‘extraordinary means’ of giving care. One medical ethics textbook states: ‘there is general
agreement that ordinary means must be used to prolong life when fatal or terminal illness
threatens, and extraordinary means may be forgone in the same circumstances’ (Ashley,
deBlois, and O’Rourke 2006: 184). ‘Ordinary means’ often indicates care we would
usually offer to others, such as food and water, while extraordinary means might include
various life-support machines, including kidney dialysis machines, and ventilators.
In the past, such a distinction between ordinary and extraordinary means seemed clearer
than it does today, with the increasing technologies available to doctors and their
patients. What is more important is to consider the specifics involving each patient: their
diagnosis and the potential outcomes of medical intervention.
For example, my grandmother, who was diagnosed with slowly developing kidney failure
at the age of ninety-five, lived on her own about a half hour’s drive from the nearest
dialysis centre. While her doctor promoted kidney dialysis as the obvious step to take, she
ended up decided that dialysis was, for her, extraordinary intervention, given her age, as
well as the fact that driving to and from the dialysis centre and undergoing treatment
were likely to create more hardship and health difficulty than undergoing dialysis. For a
young adult acquaintance of mine with a disorder that affected her kidneys, who could
use a portable dialysis machine, and who had the prospect of finding a kidney donor and
full restoration to participation in her life, dialysis represented an ‘ordinary means’ of
care.
Catholic Teaching on War and the Death

Penalty
I remember the first time I confronted the question of whether being pro-choice for
abortion but anti-choice when it came to other forms of violence-related deaths made
sense, just after the start of the first Iraq War in the 1990s. I noticed a car with three
stickers: one said ‘Every Child a Wanted Child: Pro-Child Pro-Woman Pro-Choice’, the
second vehemently opposed the war in Iraq, and the third proclaimed, ‘Choose Life Over
Death and Kindness Over Killing: Go Vegetarian’. The juxtaposition of these three topics
highlighted the question of what needs to be counted when it comes to responding to life.
In the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries, the teachings of the Church have tended to
be holistic and wide-ranging in response to life, including its understanding of the death
penalty and war. Some Catholics consider war and the death penalty to be of a different
order than abortion and euthanasia in terms of life-and-death issues because both war
and the death penalty seem to have more leeway in Church teaching. While abortion and
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Life and Death
euthanasia are considered always and everywhere wrong, war and the death penalty
seem to pose exceptions.
The latter two are sometimes discussed in relation to ‘prudential judgement’. In this line
of thinking, prudential judgement involves the virtue of prudence, which is the ability to
act in the right way at the right time, for the right reasons. The people who are able to
make a decision ‘in the right way and at the right time’ are those closest to the case at
hand. Thus, only a head of state directly involved in judging whether his or her nation is
in danger should make a decision about whether to go to war, and only a judge and jury
can appropriately make a prudential judgement in relation to the death penalty.
For the sake of God’s gift of life, however, we should worry about putting too much at
stake in the idea of prudential judgement when it comes to the death penalty and war.
Very often, the concept of ‘prudential judgement’ is used to suggest that no one, including
Church authorities may really question a political leader’s judgement about going to war,
or a judge and jury’s committal of a prisoner to death. Yet in these cases, if an innocent
life has been taken, it is akin to murder; even in cases where soldiers or guilty criminals
are killed, the Church asks us to take care that we are respecting life well. Relegating
these decisions to prudential judgement often gives more favour to the person making a
judgement—regardless of that person’s overall concern for the gift of life—rather than to
the people whose lives will be taken, even and especially when those are the people with
little power.
Pacifism and Non-Violence
The Church’s teachings against war and the concept of ‘just war’ follow similar contours
as in beginning and end of life issues towards privileging God’s gifts of life and love.
Because going to war involves the potential of killing, especially the potential of killing
innocent people, we must always avoid war if possible.
Indeed, a strong strand in Catholic tradition is that Catholics should seek peace over
seeking any form of violence. Some of the earliest Christians prohibited the newly
baptized from being soldiers; if a soldier wished to become a Christian that person
needed to find another profession. The second-century Christian thinker Origen writes:
Thus, the Apostle [Paul], being aware that physical wars are no longer to be
waged by us but that our struggles are to be only battles of the soul against
spiritual adversaries, gives orders to the soldiers of Christ like a military
commander when he says (Eph. 6:11), ‘Put on the armour of God so as to be able
to hold your ground against the wiles of the devil’
(Origen 1983).
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Life and Death
Contemporary groups such as the Catholic Peace Fellowship and Pax Christi advocate
against participation in war and other forms of violence. Theological reasons for seeking
peace instead of going to war include that Jesus is our Prince of Peace and the final
sacrifice, which has already been made on our behalf. Jesus calls us to be people of
peace, people who turn the other cheek, and who respond even to enemies with love.
One concern many have regarding taking a non-violent stance against war is that it can
seem to do nothing in the face of grave evil. Pacifism seems passive, disinterested in truly
seeking justice. Yet since Catholics believe in seeking justice, we cannot stand by and ‘do
nothing’ especially when the least among us are threatened. Thus, many Catholics who
espouse a position against all war would name themselves not a pacifists, but as non-
violentists. Non-violentists seek alternate ways to work for justice, including other forms
of political activism and making attempts to live peacefully in their daily lives, believing
that the peace we express in our households fosters peace in other areas of life.
Just War Theory
Just war theorists and pacifists/non-violentists share certain commitments in common,

especially a desire that innocent people not be killed. Because Christians believe that the
fullness of justice cannot be had here on earth, but is only in God’s hands, war must be
understand as a very limited way of achieving a very limited kind of peace. Accordingly,
the just war tradition, which dates to pre-Christian times, has developed in particularly
Christian ways as a means of guiding Christians about whether or not to participate in
war.
There are three ways in which wars are judged to be ‘just’ or not. The first way is known
as ‘jus ad bellum’, or whether we have just reasons for going to war. Among these criteria
include the stipulation that the nation declaring war can never be the instigators of that
war. We must also be seeking to go to war for reasons of justice, particularly defence of
the helpless. The ones who declare war must have lawful authority to declare war.
The second way a war is judged on the basis of justice is called ‘jus in bello’, or, ‘justice in
war’. The way we go about warring with another nation or people has to be just as well.
The criteria here tend to relate to questions about whether we’re killing innocent people
or not. For example, if it is determined that a siege might be a good way to win a battle,
we must take care that the people whose town is affected by siege, and who are not
themselves soldiers, have ample warning of the siege and time to leave before effecting
the siege. We cannot kill indiscriminately. One of the chief reasons some just war
theorists believe that most contemporary wars are unjust is the fact that we use drones
and similar technologies that are not capable of distinguishing between combatants and
non-combatants, which means that the non-combatants are being murdered.
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Life and Death
The final way wars are judged is ‘jus post bellum’; that is, whether justice is enacted after
a war is over. We cannot be so punitive in demanding war reparations that people in the
affected country do not have the means to eat, find shelter, and obtain good work.
Death Penalty
Opposition to the death penalty stems from Catholic belief that life is God’s gift and that
all people are bearers of the image of God. In the contemporary era, the Church deems
the death penalty to be something to be used sparingly and only in locations where
lifelong imprisonment is not feasible due to civil unrest or lack of a strong government
(CCC 2267). Many nations have not found the death penalty at all necessary and have
abolished its use.
In nations where the death penalty still persists, pro-death-penalty advocates often
express concern for whether true justice can be done. From the Church’s standpoint,
however, the death penalty raises questions about what kind of justice we seek, and
whether it is justice focused on God’s gifts of love and life. Because we all sin and all fall
far short of witnessing to the love that God offers but we receive God’s grace regardless,
we also recognize that other people, even those who commit very grave evils, need
opportunities to respond to God’s gifts of life and love. Indeed, it may be those very
people who commit acts that seem so devoid of life and love that most need chances to
experience and witness life and love themselves.
In addition, many Catholics are concerned with the several cases where innocent people
have been put to death. Just as with abortion, where innocent life is spared, so too not
practising the death penalty is seen as a way of ensuring that innocent life is spared.
Advocates against the death penalty, such as Sister Helen Prejean, have further written
about the racial and economic inequalities surrounding the death penalty: that it is
precisely those people who are the ‘least among us’ who are executed at rates far higher
than in privileged white classes (see Prejean 1994: ch. 3 and 10). Yet again, life-and-death
issues cannot be separated from social-justice issues about race and economic class.
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Life and Death
Concern for Animal Rights and the

Environment
I once visited a parish community in El Salvador in a dangerous neighbourhood, filled
with poor refugees of the civil war there who had had little choice but to build homes on
an industrial rubbish heap when they returned from exile. The doctors at their local
medical clinic treated many environmentally caused diseases that led to needless
suffering and death, especially of children in the area. Treatment of the environment
became, for them, just one more way in which powerful people waged war on those
deemed to have less valuable lives. The parishioners started the only organic farm in the
region as a means of protesting this loss of life as well as cultivating hope in their war-
torn country, a clear statement of the importance of considering the environment as a life
and death concern. Pope Benedict XVI expressed a similar connection in his 2010
address, ‘If You Want to Cultivate Peace, Protect Creation’, in which he argues that the
pollution and destruction of the environment leads to political unrest, economic havoc,
and loss of jobs, health, and life (Benedict XVI 2010: 5 and 7).
Theologically, Catholics have concern for the environment because it, too, is understood
as God’s gift of love and life. In Genesis, God commands that we be stewards of all that
God has created. Pope Benedict suggests that in caring for the environment, we are being
‘“stewards” of God himself’ (Benedict XVI 2010: 6). We are co-creators with God,
entrusted with loving all of God’s gifts.
Pope Francis’s 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’ makes clear the connection between Catholics’
respect for life and environmental concerns. He juxtaposes concern for the environment
with more traditionally understood life issues:
concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of
abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other
vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to
protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates
difficulties?(Laudato Si’ 120).
Francis therefore calls Catholics and all people of goodwill to be attentive to those times
and places when we are dismissive of other people, or of animals, or of the earth because
it is ‘troublesome’ or ‘inconvenient’. The pope calls for Westerners especially to embody
concern for the poor by being much more careful of, among many things, our water use,
overfishing and use of oceans, the way agriculture is practised, and the kinds of foods we
eat. For example, water use affects the whole of the earth, but particularly affects the
poor who have lack of access to clean water (Laudato Si’ 29). Factory farming, with its
focus on industrial crops and mass butchering of animals, goes against life in several
ways. One is the way in which animals are not themselves respected as creatures created
by God. They are made to do things that God did not create them to do: cows have
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Life and Death
stomachs best suited to eating grass, for example, but in industrial farming, cows are
made to eat corn and other grains. This loss of appropriate food for cattle leads to
infection and the overuse of antibiotics (for an excellent discussion of contemporary food
issues see Grummet and Muers 2010). As medical science has begun to demonstrate, our
current farming and eating practices appear to be harming us as well as the animals we
use, in the form of increased obesity, diabetes, cancers, and other debilitating conditions
(Pollan 2006). We shall have to seek other ways of feeding the hungry while not killing
ourselves in the process.
Conclusions
Catholics cannot intelligibly separate social-justice questions relating to the environment
from life-and-death issues, just as with any of the other issues discussed in this chapter.
At every point where questions are raised about life and death, the Church advocates
celebrating life but not idolizing life, and working especially on behalf of the most
vulnerable among us. If the Church’s stance on life and death seems unrealistic, it is
incumbent on us to respond. As I’ve suggested in this chapter, those of us who are
baptized are therefore given a constant charge: to love peoples’ lives so much that we are
willing to be present in real ways to those who suffer, and to campaign against injustices
that prevent us from seeing and loving God’s gift of life to us.
Suggested Reading
Bernardin, Joseph (2008). The Seamless Garment: Writings on the Consistent Ethic of
Life, T. Nairn (ed.) (New York: Orbis Books). This collection of Cardinal Bernardin’s
speeches discusses a wide variety of topics on life and death. Each speech makes the
crucial connection that being in favor of life necessitates concern about a whole range of
social issues.
Pope Francis (2015). Laudato Si’. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/

encyclicals/documents/papa-francesco_20150524_enciclica-laudato-si.html>
accessed 25 January 2016. This Vatican document has sparked much discussion
regarding human relationships to the environment.
Holmes, Arthur (2005). War and Christian Ethics: Classic and Contemporary Readings on
the Morality of War (Chicago: Baker Academic). This book provides an excellent historical
overview of Christian debates about war and non-violence.
John Paul II. Evangelium Vitae. <http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/

encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_25031995_evangelium-vitae_en.html>
accessed 25 January 2016. This Vatican document has been vitally important in
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Life and Death
contemporary discussions of life and death and is especially focused on abortion and
euthanasia, but discusses a host of other questions as well.
Prejean, H. (1994). Dead Man Walking: An Eyewitness Account of the Death Penalty in
the United States (New York: Random House). This book remains an eye-opening
discussion of the death penalty in a country that still utilizes it.
Winwright, T. (ed.) (2011). Green Discipleship: Catholic Theological Ethics and the
Environment. (Winona, MN: Anselm Academic). This book contains essays from several
Catholic theologians, giving a broad overview of environmental concerns.
Bibliography
Ashley, B., deBlois, J., and O’Rourke, K. (eds) (2006). Health Care Ethics: A Catholic
Theological Analysis, 5th ed. (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press).
Benedict XVI (2010). Message for 2010 World Day of Peace. <http://w2.vatican.va/
content/benedict-xvi/en/messages/peace/documents/hf_ben-
xvi_mes_20091208_xliii-world-day-peace.html> accessed 25 January 2016.
Bernardin, J. (1983). ‘A Consistent Ethic of Life: An American-Catholic Dialogue’, <http://

www.hnp.org/publications/hnpfocus/BConsistentEthic1983.pdf>.
Chennu, S., et al. (2013). ‘Dissocial Endogenous and Exogenous Attention in Disorders of
Consciousness’, Neuroimage: Clinical 3: 450–461.
The Didache: The Lord’s Teaching through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations, Roberts-
Donaldson (trans.), available at Early Christian Writings, <http://
www.earlychristianwritings.com/didache.html> accessed 25 January 2016.
Farquar, D. (1996). The Other Machine: Discourse and Reproductive Technologies (New
York: Routledge).
Grummet, D. and Muers, R. (2010). Theology on the Menu: Asceticism, Meat and
Christian Diet (New York: Routledge).
Lysaught, T. (2010). ‘Moral Analysis of an Intervention Performed at Saint Joseph’s

Hospital and Medical Center,’ <http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/sites/default/
files/wordpress/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/St.-Josephs-Hospital-
Analysis.pdf> accessed 25 January 2016.
McCabe, H. (1987). God Matters (London: Mowbray).
Meilaender, G. (1987). ‘The Fetus as Parasite and Mushroom’ in S. E. Lammers and A.

Verhey (eds), On Moral Medicine, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), 612–617.
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Musick, M. (2013). ‘A Response to Judy Nicastro’, The Catholic Catalogue (24 June)
<http://thecatholiccatalogue.com/a-response-to-judy-nicastro/> accessed 14 July
2015.
Nicastro, J. (2013). ‘My Abortion at 23 Weeks’, The New York Times online (20 June)
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/21/opinion/my-abortion-at-23-weeks.html?
_r=0> accessed 14 July 2015.
Origen, Homilies on Joshua (1983), cited in L. J. Swift, The Early Fathers on War and
Military Service (Wilmingon, DE: Michael Glazier), 59.
Rhonheimer, M. (2009). Vital Conflicts in Medical Ethics: A Virtue Approach to

Craniotomy and Tubal Pregnancies (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America
Press).
Rhonheimer, M. (1999). Natural Law and Practical Reason: A Thomist View of Moral
Autonomy, Gerald Malsbary (trans.) (New York: Fordham University Press).
Tate, N. (2013). ‘Patients in Vegetative States Aware, Attentive: Study’, Newsmax Health
(2013: 1 November), <http://www.newsmaxhealth.com/Health-News/vegetative-
state-aware-attention/2013/11/01/id/534396> accessed 25 January 2016.
Pollan, M. (2006). The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals (New York:
Penguin Books).
Thomson, J. J. (1971). ‘A Defense of Abortion’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1: 47–66.
Wilson, D. S. (2003). Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
Wilson, M. A. (2002). ‘The Practice of Natural Family Planning Versus the Use of Artificial
Birth Control: Family, Sexual, and Moral Issues’, Catholic Social Science Review 7: 185–
211.
Wolterstorff, N. (1987). Lament for a Son (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans).
Woodhead, L. (2013). ‘Endangered Species’, The Tablet 14 November 2013 <http://

www.thetablet.co.uk/features/2/826/endangered-species> accessed 25 August 2015.
Jana Bennett
Jana Bennett is Assistant Professor of Theology at Hampden-Sydney College in

Hampden-Sydney, Virginia.
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Abstract and Keywords

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

I used to see Catholic teaching about life-and-death questions as unrealistic. I grew up in

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

The Importance of Salvation History

Science, Religion, and Creation

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

Fall, Redemption, and Parousia

Beginning of Life Questions

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

One of the most-discussed life/death questions, abortion is likely to be a person’s first

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

(Rhonheimer 2009: 38).

Contraception is a life-and-death issue for Catholics insofar as the teaching about

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

With regard to physical, economic, psychological, and social conditions,

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

Artificial Reproduction Techniques

‘Artificial reproduction techniques’ (ART) is an umbrella term used to describe a variety

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

Death as Part of Life

This is an important distinction because it is crucial to recognize that much as

Euthanasia is sometimes referred to as ‘death with dignity’ and is a way of physicians or

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

(Wolterstorff 1987: 72–74).

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

Catholic Teaching on War and the Death

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

Pacifism and Non-Violence

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

Just War Theory

Just war theorists and pacifists/non-violentists share certain commitments in common,

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

Concern for Animal Rights and the

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

Pope Francis (2015). Laudato Si’. http://w2.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/

John Paul II. Evangelium Vitae. <http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

Bernardin, J. (1983). ‘A Consistent Ethic of Life: An American-Catholic Dialogue’, <http://

Lysaught, T. (2010). ‘Moral Analysis of an Intervention Performed at Saint Joseph’s

McCabe, H. (1987). God Matters (London: Mowbray).

Meilaender, G. (1987). ‘The Fetus as Parasite and Mushroom’ in S. E. Lammers and A.

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

Rhonheimer, M. (2009). Vital Conflicts in Medical Ethics: A Virtue Approach to

Thomson, J. J. (1971). ‘A Defense of Abortion’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 1: 47–66.

Wolterstorff, N. (1987). Lament for a Son (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans).

Woodhead, L. (2013). ‘Endangered Species’, The Tablet 14 November 2013 <http://

Jana Bennett is Assistant Professor of Theology at Hampden-Sydney College in

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

Subscriber: Columbia University; date: 02 December 2018

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