Papal envoy highlights “new paradigm” challenge for bioethics

Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers President Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragán has warned that a “new paradigm” is being imposed on debate on bioethics.

In Lourdes for the World Day of the Sick yesterday, he spoke of a “new concept of ethics closed to transcendence, for which human life has no absolute character”.

He suggested these revised patterns of thought would continue to justify the elimination of human beings in certain circumstances.

The cardinal described the new “global ethics” as a “secularist religion”.

He said: “This ethic might accept the divinity, but it is a poetic and aesthetic god that each one makes up for himself.”

Interesting article, and quite consistent with much of the bioethics we are seeing coming out of the more secular universities. It is worthwhile mentioning that Catholic universities and scholars are leading the charge for responsible bioethics as opposed to other denominations if for no other reason than Catholicism is the best and most able defender of a truly ethical response to the problems we face today.