Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 061: Difficult Pregnancies, Precarious Choices, and the Absolute Value of Innocent Lives

By always repudiating the direct killing of the innocent, and acknowledging that this represents an exceptionless norm, we set in place the framework to safeguard human dignity at its root.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationJuly 30, 2010Abortion, Universal Morality, Pregnancy Complications

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 060: Overselling the Synthetic Cell

Living beings, with all their structure and complexity, should never cease to impress us and inspire us with a certain awe, so that ...we might avoid reducing life itself to a mere commodity to be conquered by our biotechnical prowess.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationJune 30, 2010Artificial Organisms-Synthetic Cells

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 059: Procuring Organs “Over My Dead Body?”

State-facilitated salvaging of organs in the absence of explicit consent undercuts the essential character of organ donations as a gift.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationMay 30, 2010Informed Consent, Law and Ethics, Organ Donation

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 058: Towards “Passive Euthanasia”

Recognizing that dehydration is a painful way to die serves as a helpful starting point to assist family members in addressing the nutrition and hydration needs of their loved ones who may find themselves in compromised states or approaching the end of life.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationApril 30, 2010Persistent Vegetative State (PVS), Proportionate and Disproportionate Means, Suffering, Death and Dying, Dementia, Artificial Nutrition and Hydration, End-of-Life Issues, Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 057: Facing Death in Solidarity and Hope

Fostering a humanly enriching environment for those facing death often means giving explicit attention to human presence and human contact, even in the midst of a plethora of technology that may surround a patient.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationMarch 30, 2010Suffering, Caring for the Elderly and Infirm, Death and Dying, Artificial Nutrition and Hydration, Medical Profession — Ethics and Pastoral-Spiritual, End-of-Life Issues, Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 056: How Men Are Harmed by Abortion

What is not widely acknowledged is that men oftentimes suffer emotionally and spiritually from their loss. It seems fair to say that men are not generally encouraged to acknowledge their emotions around this issue – whether relief, grief, anger, or resentment.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationFebruary 28, 2010Abortion, Parenting

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 055: Medicine and the True Cost of Being in Denial

The danger of breast cancer from induced abortion constitutes a serious health risk, and women deserve to be fully and properly informed about it. The failure to inform them on the part of the medical establishment and on the part of various cancer watchdog groups is noteworthy and troubling.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationJanuary 30, 2010Abortion, Medical Profession — Ethics and Pastoral-Spiritual, Catholic Health Care

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 054: Stem Cell Ethics and the Things We Refuse to Do…

We cannot choose evil that good might come, nor can we ever afford to sell our souls by ignoring the sacrosanct humanity of the embryo, that tiny creature that each of us once was ourselves.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationDecember 30, 2009Stem Cell Research, Embryos, Conscience

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 053: Euthanasia – Broken Memories, Broken Bonds

…euthanasia and assisted suicide are little more than ways of short-circuiting our human interrelatedness & interconnectedness, acts of violence on a basic level that cause great harm and disruption.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationNovember 30, 2009Pain Management-Palliative Care and Hospice, Suffering, Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 052: When Pregnancy Goes Awry

Yet the difference in how the baby dies is, in fact, critical. There is always a difference between killing someone directly and allowing someone to die of indirect causes.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationOctober 30, 2009Ectopic Pregnancy, Pregnancy Complications

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 051: The Ethics Of “Correcting” Mitochondrial Disease

We are not actually ‘repairing’ a defective egg, but constructing a new, alternative, and clearly different egg out of the contributions from two separate women. The final egg produced really belongs to neither woman...

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationSeptember 30, 2009In Vitro Fertilization, Mitochondrial Diseases

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 050: The Authentic Transformation of “Useless” Human Suffering

God permits our sufferings, offered up, to make an indelible mark in His work of Salvation. This transformation of the ‘uselessness’ of our suffering into something profoundly meaningful serves as a source of spiritual joy to those who enter into it.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationAugust 30, 2009Suffering, Pain Management-Palliative Care and Hospice, Physician-Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 049: The Twisted Logic Underlying Abortion

...this stands as probably the single greatest tragedy of our time, that the unordered and inordinate sexual desires of men and women have been allowed to twist the most rudimentary moral logic to the point of death for so many of our children.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationJuly 30, 2009Abortion, Human Sexuality

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 048: What Should We Do with the Frozen Embryos?

In fact, however, the decision to continue cryopreserving an embryo in liquid nitrogen is not likely an instance of using extraordinary means, since the burden and costs associated with taking care of embryonic children in this way are actually minimal.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationJune 30, 2009Embryos, Frozen Embryos

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 047: Thinking About Moral Absolutes

Many people’s moral lives are crashing and burning because they fail to respect the objective moral roadmap guiding our human journey. They’ve slipped into thinking that they can make up their own rules as they go along.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationMay 30, 2009Natural Law, Universal Morality

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 046: The Obama Stem Cell Darkness

Sadly, the President’s stem cell decision encourages this kind of unethical behavior by an emotional appeal to patient desperation.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationApril 30, 2009Stem Cell Research

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 045: Parental Desires, Children and IVF

Marital acts are a way of ‘petitioning the Giver for his gifts.’ By insisting on or demanding the gift (through in vitro fertilization), the child is no longer that ‘gift’ but a kind of entitlement or project to be realized.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationMarch 30, 2009Infertility, In Vitro Fertilization, Parenting

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 044: Verbal Engineering and the Swaying of Public Conscience

...sophisticated verbal engineering was necessary, since nobody could reasonably expect the abortion ethic to advance by saying, ‘Let’s kill the kids.’ Many things simply cannot be achieved when it is clear to everyone what is going on; obfuscation is essential.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationFebruary 28, 2009Law and Ethics, Natural Law, Universal Morality, Abortion, Birth Control and Contraception, Conscience

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 043: “A Future Pregnancy Would Be Too Risky…”

...refusing to compromise our sexual faculties through vasectomies or tubal ligations, promotes important personal virtues within marriage and properly respects the God-given and life-giving designs of our own bodies.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationJanuary 30, 2009Birth Control and Contraception, Sterilization, Human Sexuality, Natural Family Planning (NFP), Pregnancy Complications

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 042: Germany and Italy Have Done It — Shouldn’t We?

In the United States today, we urgently need Embryo Protection Laws.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationDecember 30, 2008Infertility, In Vitro Fertilization, Law and Ethics, Embryos, Frozen Embryos

“Making Sense of Bioethics” CMS