Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 081: Federal Mandates and the Crushing of Religious Freedom

Critics of every persuasion quickly condemned the HHS mandate as a particularly egregious violation both of religious freedom and the rights of conscience.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 080: Nickels, Dimes and Family Size

At times, then, our justifications for avoiding a pregnancy may merit further reflection and scrutiny on our part.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 079: The Premarital Sex “Test Drive”

A sexual ‘test drive’ mentality is essentially exploitative in nature, reducing a potential spouse to someone who is easily replaced by a ‘better’ model. When we take a car for a test drive, and don't like it, we can just return the keys and move on to the next model. But people are not cars that we can just exploit and cast aside.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 078: Unconditional Parental Love

A husband and wife are called to give themselves to each other completely and unreservedly, and to accept each other unconditionally in the marital embrace. Every child of theirs, whether entering the world with a handicap or not, is an expression and fruit of themselves and their acceptance of each other.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 077: Vaccinating Our Children for Sexually Transmitted Diseases?

Because the recommendations of the committee relate to important aspects of human behavior and sexuality at formative ages for children and adolescents, parents need to look at the psychological and social messages they might be conveying by choosing to vaccinate their children against HPV.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 076: "To Give or Not to Give" – That is the Marital Question

She wondered whether it would still be allowable for her to engage in marital relations with her husband after the vasectomy. When one spouse is involved in this so-called ‘abuse of matrimony,’ the other is placed in an awkward situation

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 075: Human Stockpiling

Not much reflection is needed to realize the serious injustice involved in forcefully ‘crystallizing’ another human being. The freezing and thawing process itself subjects embryonic humans to significant risk, and up to fifty percent of embryos do not survive the process.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationSeptember 30, 2011Embryos, Frozen Embryos

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 074: Bringing Christ to the Clinic

The physician's boldness and unflagging concern for his patient played an important role in bringing Christ into a situation where His healing graces were needed, where even the priest alone probably could not have succeeded.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 073: “Gay Genes,” Sexual Attractions, and the Call to Chastity

Even if we have genes that predispose us towards certain behaviors, we still have a space of freedom within ourselves, and do not have to engage in those behaviors. Our genes may impel us strongly in certain behavioral directions, but they can't compel us.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 072: Does the Catholic Church Have Doubts About Brain Death?

The fact remains that the Catholic Church to date has expressed no official doubts about brain death, emphasizing instead that a health care worker can use neurological criteria as the basis for arriving at ‘moral certainty’ that death has occurred.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationJune 30, 2011Brain Death

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 071: NFP and the Telos of Sex

In natural family planning, on the other hand, they are not directing any countermeasures towards the fertility of a specific conjugal act; the natural order and telos of the act is respected.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 070: The Courage to Refuse to Cooperate in Evil

Some helpful ‘principles of cooperation’ have been developed over the centuries in the Catholic moral tradition as a way of discerning how properly to avoid, limit, or distance ourselves from evil, especially intrinsically evil actions.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 069: "Drastic Measures" and Cancer Decisions

The real costs of this kind of surgery remind us of the importance of making a right and ethical decision for our circumstances. Although there is a heightened probability of disease, there is never any guarantee that a particular woman with the BRCA mutation will develop cancer.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 068: Working Through a Hard Death

…suffering can make us bitter or it can make us better, depending upon how we respond to it and use it to enter into deeper union with the Lord who suffered and died a hard death for us.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 067: Clear Ethical Thinking and The “Tyranny of Relativism”

Making up our own morality as we go along has a certain appeal, of course, because it allows us to circumnavigate some of the hard ethical answers that might require us to change our own behavior or outlook.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 066: Humans in "Frozen Orphanages"

…either one discards the embryos or one destroys them in the laboratory to obtain miraculous cures for diseases. An important third option is often not even mentioned: namely, that we continue to store the embryos in their current, frozen state as part of our moral duty to care for our own offspring.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationDecember 30, 2010Embryos, Frozen Embryos

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 065: Facing Terminal Illnesses Realistically

…approaching our own mortality with a greater dose of realism helps us make better decisions about when to roll back the medical interventions and focus our energies on preparing for death.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 064: Defending the Dignity of Those with Dementia

When our ability to think rationally or choose freely becomes clouded or even eliminated by dementia, we still remain at root the kind of creature who is rational and free, and the bearer of inalienable human dignity.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 063: Spinning Stem Cell Fairy Tales

In a way, then, embryonic stem cells have become a great modern secular fairy-tale, even a kind of surrogate for our yearning for immortality.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationSeptember 30, 2010Stem Cell Research

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 062: When the Kids Grow Up and Find Out About the Test Tubes

…subtle psychological burdens may be placed upon children born from donor sperm as they subjectively struggle with broken or absent relationships, and experience a sense of being a “commodity” or an “object” because of how they were created.

“Making Sense of Bioethics” CMS