Todd A. Salzman

Ethical dilemma of mandated contraception in pharmaceutical research at catholic medical institutions.

The Catholic Church proscribes methods of birth control other than sexual abstinence. Although the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recognizes abstinence as an acceptable method of birth control in research studies, some pharmaceutical companies mandate the use of artificial contraceptive techniques to avoid pregnancy as a condition for participation in their studies. These requirements are unacceptable at Catholic health care institutions, leading to conflicts among institutional review boards, clinical investigators, and sponsors. Subjects may feel coerced by such mandates to adopt contraceptive techniques inconsistent with their personal situation and beliefs; women committed to celibacy or who engage exclusively in non-heterosexual activities are negatively impacted. We propose principles to insure informed consent to safeguard the rights of research subjects at Catholic institutions while mitigating this ethical conflict. At the same time, our proposal respects the interests of pharmaceutical research agencies and Catholic moral precepts, and fully abides by regulatory guidance.

Therapeutic, Prophylactic, Untoward, and Contraceptive Effects of Combined Oral Contraceptives: Catholic Teaching, Natural Law, and the Principle of Double Effect When Deciding to Prescribe and Use

Combined oral contraceptives (COC) have been demonstrated to have significant benefits for the treatment and prevention of disease. These medications also are associated with untoward health effects, and they may be directly contraceptive. Prescribers and users must compare and weigh the intended beneficial health effects against foreseeable but unintended possible adverse effects in their decisions to prescribe and use. Additionally, those who intend to abide by Catholic teachings must consider prohibitions against contraception. Ethical judgments concerning both health benefits and contraception are approached in this essay through an overview of the therapeutic, prophylactic, untoward, and contraceptive effects of COC and discussion of magisterial and traditional Catholic teachings from natural law. Discerning through the principle of double effect, proportionate reason, and evidence gathered from the sciences, medical and moral conclusions are drawn that we believe to be fully compliant with good medicine and Catholic teaching.

Quaestio Disputata Catholic Sexual Ethics: Complementarity and the Truly Human

This disputatio is an inquiry into the nature of the truly human sexual act. The authors first present and critique the types of complementarity—heterogenital, reproductive, communion, affective, and parental—that the magisterium finds in a truly human sexual act. They then suggest that heterosexual or homosexual orientation as part of a persons sexual constitution requires adding orientation complementarity to the equation. This addition yields the conclusion that holistic complementarity—an integration of orientation, personal, and biological complementarities—is a more adequate sine qua non of truly human sexual acts.

Virtue Ethics: Natural and Christian

The article seeks to give an account of Christian virtue ethics. To this end, it first examines virtue and natural virtue ethics deriving from the Aristotelian tradition and its contemporary incarnation. It then considers Christian virtue ethics deriving from the following of Jesus the Christ, and compares and contrasts this virtue ethics with natural virtue ethics. It concludes by offering an account of virtues necessary to human flourishing in the contemporary world.

Method and Catholic Theological Ethics in the Twenty-First Century

The article proposes a Catholic ethical method for the 21st century. To that end, the authors first address the magisteriums concerns with relativism and distinguish relativism from Bernard Lonergans perspectivism. After proposing perspectivism as an epistemological tool that accounts for a plurality of Catholic ethical methods, the authors explore virtue ethics, virtue epistemology, and a Christian stance that contribute to a reconstructed Catholic ethical method. The article concludes with a definition of chastity from two methodological perspectives that have different anthropological and normative implications.

Conscience and Experience: Choosing the True and the Good:

This essay examines the practical judgment called conscience that binds a person to do or not to do a particular action. Drawing from the Wesleyan Quadrilateral, scripture, tradition, reason/science, and human experience, it focuses on the connection between communal human experience and conscience. It concludes that the teaching that no one is to be forced to act contrary to her or his conscience and that no one is to be restrained from acting according to her or his conscience is a long-standing Catholic moral tradition.

The Mystery of Sexuality

Abstract Mystery is a term that permeates and energizes the Catholic tradition. In its strictest terms, it refers to the infinite incomprehensibility of God, but the USCCB speaks also of “the great mystery” of human sexuality. In this essay, only to establish the meanings of mystery as we use the word, we consider, first and briefly, the mystery of God and the oikonomia established by God and, then and more extendedly, the mystery of human sexuality. We offer a meditation on this mystery, leading to a theological understanding of it as a lower-case sacrament of the presence of the incomprehensible God in human history. This analysis leads us to conclude that human sexuality demands ongoing analysis to be better understood physically, psychologically and spiritually in order to be better understood theologically as a lower-case sacrament revelatory of the presence of God.

Human experience and Catholic moral theology

Catholic moral theology is based on a quadrilateral of sources: scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. This article focuses specifically on the correlations between moral theology and experience. It examines the ecclesial experience embedded in the concepts of sensus fidei, reception, and non-reception; the experience analyzed by liberationist and feminist theologians; and the experimental experience of the sciences. Since all believers, laity, theologians, and bishops alike, and their theologies are inevitably influenced by the societies in which they live, the article also inquires into the science of sociology and the light it can shine on the actual experience and, therefore, the actual theologies of all those believers. It concludes, with the Second Vatican Council, that by making use of the sciences, and experience in general, all the faithful ‘will be brought to a purer and more mature living of the faith.’

TRULY HUMAN SEXUAL ACTS : A RESPONSE TO PATRICK LEE AND ROBERT GEORGE

The authors argue that Lee and George (hereafter, L/G) use a reductionist anthropology and ethical method to defend a classicist approach to absolute sexual norms. After describing Lonergans understanding of scotosis, which can distort ones insight into ethical theory and ethical issues, the article demonstrates this distortion in L/Gs sexual anthropology. It further argues that, in formulating their sexual anthropology, L/G fail to address the significance of sexual orientation, and that their method inadequately integrates human experience and reason as sources of moral knowledge.

Amoris Laetitia: Towards a Methodological and Anthropological Integration of Catholic Social and Sexual Ethics

There is a long-noted anthropological and methodological divide between Catholic social and sexual ethics. We argue in three cumulative sections that Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia moves towards an anthropological and methodological integration of Catholic social teaching and Catholic sexual teaching. First, we explore Amoris Laetitia’s anthropological integration of Catholic social and Catholic sexual teaching; second, we explore its methodological integration of Catholic social and sexual teaching; finally, we demonstrate how the anthropological and methodological insights of Amoris Laetitia might provide a more integrated and credible response to a contemporary ethical issue.