Gerard Magill

Theology in business ethics: Appealing to the religious imagination

By appealing to the religious imagination Theology can make a distinctive contribution to business ethics. In the first part of the essay I examine what is entailed by appealing to the imagination to reason in ethics: through converging arguments the imagination enables us rationally to interpret reality and to infer obligations. In the following sections I consider the relevance of the religious imagination for business ethics. In the second part I explain the imaginations use of religious metaphor to establish its theological distinctiveness in ethical inquiry. Then in the final part I illustrate Theologys contribution to business ethics by studying the imaginations use of religious metaphor with regard to profit and to third world debt.

Ontological and ethical implications of direct nuclear reprogramming.

Scientific breakthroughs rarely yield the potential to engage a foundational ethical question. Recent studies on direct reprogramming of human skin cells reported by the Yamanaka lab in Japan and the Thomson lab in Wisconsin suggest that scientists may have crossed both a scientific and an ethical threshold. The fascinating science of direct nuclear reprogramming highlights empirical data that may clarify the ontological status of cellular activity in the early stages of what could become a human fetus and justify ethical options for research in this controversial field. The ontological and ethical implications that accrue here are connected with the biological or natural potentiality of these cells.

Threat of Imminent Death in Pregnancy: A Role for Double-Effect Reasoning

In the Phoenix case, pulmonary hypertension threatened the life of an eleven-week pregnant mother. Removal of the placenta as the organ threatening the mothers life necessarily included extracting the amniotic membranes containing the fetus. The author proposes this argument: the principle of double effect clarifies that causing the death of the fetus (destined to die, whatever transpired) while avoiding a direct physical assault on it constitutes an indirect and unintended (albeit foreseen) side effect, thereby justifying the intervention.

Quality in ethics consultations

There is an increasing need for quality in ethics consultations, though there have been significant achievements in the United States and Europe. However, fundamental concerns that place the profession in jeopardy are discussed from the perspective of the U.S. in a manner that will be helpful for other countries. The descriptive component of the essay (the first two points) explains the achievements in ethics quality (illustrated by the IntegratedEthics program of the Veterans Health Administration) and the progress on standards and competencies for ethics consultations (represented by the Core Competencies of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities). Based on these achievements, the analytical component of the essay (the final three points) identifies and seeks to resolve three fundamental concerns (with increasing levels of importance) that compromise quality in ethics consultations: standards of quality; professionalism; and credentialing. The analysis argues for clearer standards of quality in ethics consultation and urges further professionalism by explaining the need for the following: interpreting the ASBH core competencies in a normative manner, developing a Code of Ethics, and clarifying the meaning of best practices. However, the most serious concern that threatens quality in ethics consultations is the lack of a credentialing process. This concern can be resolved effectively by developing an independent Ethics Consultation Accreditation Council to accredit and standardize graduate degree programs, fellowship experiences, and qualifying examinations. This credentialing process is indispensable if we are to strategically enhance quality in ethics consultations.

Interpreting Moral Doctrine: Newman on Conscience and Law

The religious epistemology of John Henry Newman offers an avenue, unexplored by scholars, for interpreting moral doctrine today. Although he did not write any work on moral theology, a systematic account of the interaction between conscience and moral law in his writings can illumine foundational concerns about personal morality and episcopal authority in the Roman Catholic Church. In reaction to the rationalism of the Enlightenment Newman had remarkable confidence in the capabilities and trustworthiness of the personal, historical reasoning of individuals and ecclesial communities alike—a type of reasoning that he recognized as the driving force for the genesis and the application of moral law. Not surprisingly, his concern for historical moral consciousness, with its emphasis upon subjectivity, generated a significant shift from abstractness to concreteness in theological method, a shift that would later influence the thought of Bernard Lonergan. To illustrate the contemporary relevance of Newmans commitment to personal reasoning in theology, his explanation of the legitimate authority of conscience and doctrine provides the basis for an instructive critique of the document On the Interpretation of Dogmas (1989) from the International Theological Commission.

Board Oversight of Community Benefit: An Ethical Imperative

Board oversight of community benefit responsibility in tax-exempt organizations in the nonprofit health care sector is attracting considerable attention. Scrutiny by the IRS and other official bodies has led to stricter measures of compliance with the community benefit standard. But stricter compliance does not sufficiently engage the underlying ethical imperative for boards to provide effective oversight—an imperative that recent research suggests has not been sufficiently honored. This analysis considers why there is a distinctively ethical imperative for board oversight, the organizational nature of the imperative involved, and practical ways to fulfill its obligations. We adopt an organizational ethics paradigm to illuminate the constituent components of the ethical imperative and to clarify emerging benchmarks as flexible guidelines. As these emerging benchmarks enhance board oversight of community benefit they also can shed light on what it means to be a virtuous organization.

Complicity of Catholic Healthcare Institutions with Immoral Laws

The Catholic Church is no stranger to complicity having engaged a pluralistic world over centuries. The principle of cooperation has helped the Church to avoid complicity with immoral laws in a wide variety of controversies, surprisingly including the permissibility of Catholic legislators to vote for laws that permit abortion. The analysis applies the principle of cooperation to evaluate the complicity of Catholic healthcare institutions with immoral laws. First, a discussion of the principle of cooperation and its related issues helps to understand the complex conditions that need to be in place for the application of the principle in the Catholic tradition. Second, the principle will be used to explain the accommodation with abortion that appears in both Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium vitae in 1995 and the stance of the U. S. Bishops regarding the Affordable Care Act in 2010. Finally, the principle is used to scrutinize the legal appeal of U.S. Bishops against the government mandate to provide access to contraception via health insurance policies provided by Catholic organizations.

Hermeneutics of the Imagination

The interpretative process in Newman’s religious epistemology (construed as his hermeneutics) relies upon the imagination not only for the assent of certitude but also for actions that arise from it. This integration of the imagination with his hermeneutics is described as his hermeneutics of the imagination, providing another foundation of religious morality in his works. The imagination is the mental capacity to focus converging inferences upon the assent of certitude. This means that the imagination (working with reason) involves a interpretative function (helping to interpret when there is a convergence of inferences) and an assertive function (facilitating the assent of certitude) – hence it is called an imaginative assent. The interpretative function is connected with the creativity of the imagination. The assertive function of the imagination reflects the intensity of its images that tend to inspire action. This connection between certitude and action constitutes his moral rhetoric in the sense that imaginative assent can stimulate behavior. When applied to theology, his hermeneutics of the imagination can be referred to as his theological hermeneutics. Here he combined the processes of abstract and concrete reasoning in notional and real (imaginative) assent to ensure that theology is especially attentive to historical consciousness – illustrated in his arguments on the via media, the development of doctrine, and the principle of economy. This hermeneutical process provides another theoretical foundation of religious morality, connecting historical consciousness with the need for accompanying moral action.

Reason and Belief

Newman’s religious epistemology provides a theoretical foundation of religious morality in his writings. His religious epistemology uses the concrete reasoning of informal inference in an interpretative process that justifies assent in matters of belief and morality. This interpretative process can be construed as his hermeneutics. The mental faculty in this process is called the Illative Sense. Informal inference is a concrete mode of reasoning that recognizes when there is a convergence of probabilities (or sufficient reasoning) to justify a conclusion. When this occurs the conclusion can be held as true in its own right in the assent of certitude – the conclusion that arises conditionally from the inferences can be held unconditionally in certitude. The subtlety here is that the subjective process of informal inference is used to justify the assertion of an objective truth in the assent of certitude: there is no subject-free objectivity in matters of religious belief and morality. The convergence of probabilities that constitutes sufficient reasoning represents a moral demonstration to justify moral certitude – this differs from practical certainty where a conclusion is merely reliable to act upon. Many analogies are used to illustrate this complex theory, such as comparing converging probabilities to the strands of a cable that make it sufficiently strong to bear weight (as inference can be sufficient to justify a conclusion). In this process, judgments in religious morality can be held as objectively true in the assent certitude.

Truth and Holiness

Newman’s commitment to truth and holiness constitutes a bedrock foundation for his understanding of religious morality. He was a vigorous controversialist who engaged disputes as they arose throughout his life to advance his ideas and defend religious belief. From his many conflicted endeavors there emerged two substantive concerns that guided his religious quest from the beginning. His conversion in 1845 brought these concerns to the surface: his concern with doctrine led him away from Anglicanism to Catholicism as the champion of orthodoxy; and his concern with his own salvation led him to a sense of urgency to convert. However, he did not resort to faith to deal with these. Rather, he relied on reason to address matters of truth and on conscience to address matters of holiness. His deliberative process towards conversion illustrates his use of the principle of economy that clarified how truth and holiness progress over time. He expressed this progression in his own life as a constant battle against religious liberalism that he perceived to be a form of rationalism. Yet his opposition to liberalism did not prevent him from supporting a new movement of Liberal Catholics that defended a robust role for the faithful as well as for theologians in the Church. His commitment to truth and holiness that inspired his view of the faithful and theology became a leitmotif for his approach to religious morality.