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Searching in the truth
As
a profane in this subject, I think that a university faculty of
Medicines1 has a double task: the up-dated
transmission of knowledge in the diverse disciplines, through teaching
and publications, and the research for the acquisition of ever newer
realities, methodologies and techniques useful to go on improving the
service that the patients expect from the doctor.
It is with great joy and
stupor that today we witness the extraordinary progress of medicine in
all its fields. I am not going to list the countless benefits of the
medical research during the latest decenniums. All of us have a positive
experience of it We are thankful to the scientists for their
extra-ordinary fatigue carried on with perseverance, patience and love
in favour of knowledge and the human person.
Furnished with this
technological baggage, the doctor imitates a typical gesture of Jesus,
who passed through the villages healing every sort of infirmity and
sufferings. The doctor Evangelist, St. Luke, (see Col. 4, 14), says that
the fame of Jesus spread more and more, “large crowds would gather to
hear him and to have their illnesses cured” (Luke: 5,15). Rightly
Jesus is, therefore, called ‘doctor of souls and of bodies’.
We soon ask ourselves:
how must this research be done so that it may be truly human? Every
research, just as every human action, must be ethically correct. Just as
we cannot separate politics from ethics, similarly we cannot separate
the medical research from ethics. If the research is an act of opening
us to the truth, the research ethically correct is an act of opening
ourselves to and welcoming not only what is true, but also what is good.
Whatever is ethically true is also good, just as the authentic good is
also true.
In the research, today
more than ever, we need this ethically correct approach, above all in
the field of biotechnology. We cannot deny how -in the so called
post-modern technology- we mistrust the truth. They say that there is
no truth, but only equally valid opinions, even if they are unhooked
from the truth and the good, as well as reciprocally contradictory. It
follows that there would no longer exist a given nature to be respected,
but only genetic material, which can be manipulated at will. Thus, the
human being, reduced to a biologic product, is no longer inviolable, no
longer a mystery to be respected in its transcendence
The task of the Church
Magisterium is that of offering a picture of veritable reference to
promote the research of what is good for man, without allowing it to be
shipwrecked into falsity and inhumanity.
However, there is a
difficulty: that of distinguishing what is natural from what is
cultural. To this regard there are two integrative, antagonistic
categories: the Christian one about the sacredness of life and the
post-modern one about its availability.
In the perspective of
the sacredness of life the absolute imperative is the defence of life,
considered always and anyhow not available.
In the perspective of
availability, instead, the fundamental norm would be the so called
defence of the “quality” of life. The absolute bioethics would be the
quality of life, not life in itself. The said quality, however, would
not depend on ethical references, but on the individual free will and,
above all, on the bio-technology, which claims the right-duty of
furnishing the measure to evaluate the identity. The defence of the
human identity is, therefore, the very heart of the bio-ethic problem:
<<«In fact, what the new technical possibilities of the bio-medicines
reach to investigate, before the sacredness and dignity of life, is the
identity itself of being man, first as biological and organic identity,
and then as an anthropological identity. Should it fall, namely should
our identity fall, every further possibility of creating ethical
problems would fall. The fundamental norm of bio-ethics is, therefore,
the defence of the identity. Only by starting from the defence of
identity it is possible to defend the dignity of life».2
The bio-ethics
guarantees the defence of identity through the general tutelage of the
physical nature, and the right of a non manipulated genetic patrimony,
as well as through the imposition of specific duties, first among which
the non alteration of the identity of other living subjects, through
marketing of organs, as well as the future ones through the prohibition
of clonation. The principle of the defence of identity works also in
numerous more relevant plans from the bioethical viewpoint, «It is the
case of voluntary abortion which is to be considered not permissible, as
of a priori denying the human identity of the unborn baby; the case of
pre-natal diagnoses, when they are finalised to favour selective
abortions».3
Regarding this, I want
to quote the very good article of Prof. Giovanni Neri and Angelo Serra,
on the pre-natal diagnosis, published by the magazine “La Civiltà
Cattolica”.4 Rightly the authors indicate a
paradox of the pre-implantation diagnosis, quoting the molecular
biologist Craig Venter, who announced of having completed the analysis
of his own “genome”, namely of the entire sequence of his own DNA. He
has not hesitated to recognise that in the sequence there is the
presence of numerous variables associated to the risk of alcoholism,
antisocial behaviour, nicotinism, abuses of substances, infarction,
Alzheimer: «the least conclusion –the authors rightly say- is that if
these genetic variables were met in a pre-implantation diagnosis, the
great scientist Venter would never have been born».5
The
bio-technological man
Here we open the
important chapter of man passing from man as a creature of God to a
biotechnological man. In the context of post-modernity, which has
dethroned the idea of nature, the bio-technologies have assumed a
particular importance, «In their more or less limited possibilities of
re-building and re-inventing the body, shifting the DNA among different
species , erasing the genetic past and pre-planning the genetic future,
the new geneticists give a new proteiform spirit to the biology of life.
Life, long thought of as work of God , and recently seen as a casual
process guided by the invisible hand of natural selection, is now
thought of and imagined again as an artistic instrument with limitless
possibilities ».6
It is the matter of a
significant change of man’s identity: namely, a passage from a
creationist mentality to a techno-efficient mentality determined by the
bio-technological revolution, with the result of considering man no
longer as a creature of God or as a result of the natural evolution, but
as a product of bio-technology.
The bio-technological
revolution has disclosed the possibility to modify man’s nature itself.
Once decoded, the genetic test, the DNA, lead unavoidably to overcome
the limits imposed on us by nature. Galilee deciphered the language used
by God in creating the world, today they are deciphering the language
used by God to create life.
Some biologist and
philosophers have already announced the leave from God and from his
presence in the world in the name of technique, who seems to have taken
away from the word the divine revelation. In this way they reduce faith
and theology to a ghetto and to state the absolute role of science and
technology.
Man would thus be
reduced to the unique synaptic connections, for which the transmissions
of impulses from a neuron to the other would allow the emergence of the
sense of continuity, which is necessary for the constitution of the
personal identity. To sum up, whatever happens in man would be only
expressions of neuronal circuits , generators of phenomena such as
reason, emotions, imaginations and spirituality. In other words
conscience and free will would be zeroed. Even the new-Darwinist theory
–which predominate in the so called scientific transmissions, strongly
ideologized by the mass-media- conceive the human beings as evolved
animals. All this leads to the denial of freedom and love, namely the
most specific attitudes of man.
The neuron-philosophy
presumes, then, to explain the sphere of sentiments through chemistry;
the moral and personal qualities through neurology: and the spiritual
reality through physics. The thesis according to which chemistry and
physics would explain the spiritual processes has pushed the American
micro-biologist Dean Hamer to admit that the sense of divine has its
basis in the genetic patrimony and that spirituality for the adults is
nothing else but a biological instinct, just as the suckling of the
babies. 7
A further statement of
the techno-efficient mentality holds that it would be possible to
humanise the artificial mechanisms as well as to robotise the
sensitivity and knowledge of man; “ «The bio-technological revolution is
changing the technology of our body, while the robotic one will finish
by producing beings that are robots, not only, but also artificial
living beings. It follows that the distinction between us and the robot
would disappear; machines will be like the human beings and the human
beings like machines».8
We have reached the
trans-humanism of Kevin Warwick, professor of cybernetics in the English
university of Reading, which believes in the transformation of the human
race into many a cyborg According to the trans-humanism, man is not the
final product of evolution, but only the beginning, emphasising the
enormous potentialities of man’s becoming. It is the matter of a
technological re-projecting of humanity, finalised to the elimination of
the process of ageing, of the limitations of the human intellect and of
suffering in general.
Another problematic
derives from the so-called “man on-line”, which has dilated in a
unimaginable way the quantitative capacity of elaboration, of
transmission and conservation of information, reducing at the same time
the capacity of evaluation; from man as “chimera” , that is man-animal
biological crossing: a man as photocopy through a bio-technological
process of clonation, openly repudiated by a declaration of the General
Assembly of the United Nations, on 8th March 2005.
The
ethical feedback
Evidently, these
bio-technological innovations imply ineludibly an ethical question, seen
that its applications are such as nature is no longer considered to be
immutable in itself, liable of being manipulated and modified by a
technical intervention. We observe the passage of the technique as an
instrument to a technique as subject of history, with its absolute power
on man and nature.
Before this, the ethical
reminder is not only useful, but also necessary. Ethics is not a
prohibition of researches, man being always open to the deepest
understanding of the truth. It is rather a support for the reason, not
to humiliate humanity for being man and for not eliminating the
judgements of the moral conscience in pursuing the existential goodness
of life. In other words, man is greater than any technical conquest,
which can never catch and exhaust the entire spiritual and moral
dynamism of man’s freedom and conscience. It is, therefore, a matter of
establishing the limits deriving from a reason illumined by faith.
Before facing this ample
and complex theme, it is necessary to delimit its contours. In fact, we
are not called to offer an intervention about the single scientific
problems, which is the competence of experts; it is not the matter of
presenting a moral evaluation of the single bio-medical techniques,
which constitutes the specific field of Christian scientists and
moralist theologians; ee intend, instead, to present some fundamental
principles of bioethics, starting from the Magisterium of the Church,
precisely from Vatican II (Constitution Gaudium et spes), by John
Paul II “Catechism of the Catholic Church, encyclical Letter
Evangelium vitae), by Benedict XVI (encyclical letters Deus
caritas est and Spe salvi) and the Congregation of the Doctrine of
faith (Instruction Donum vitae), to the end of answering some
diffused criticism in the contemporary society, delineating at the same
time the positive contribution that the doctrine of faith, also at human
level and at natural law level, offers to the scientific community
committed to the new frontiers of bio-medical sciences.
Here I offer a space to
some recurring objections about the relation between the Church and the
scientific research.
The
morality and announcement of Jesus Christ
The Magisterium of the
Church, according to the judgement of many, speaks too much of moral
law, often with an authoritarian language and with proposals difficult
to be followed.
Before this objection we
must first of all observe that the heart o Christianity, and therefore
also of the proclamation of the Good News, is not the moral law, but the
person of Jesus Christ, just as recently has been remembered by Benedict
XVI in his first Encyclical Letter, «At the beginning of being Christian
there is no ethical decision or a great idea, but the encounter with an
event, with a Person, who gives a new horizon to life and with it a
decisive orientation to it» (Deus caritas est, 1).
In fact, Christ reveals
fully to man his mystery and his vocation, “In reality the mystery of
man with his vocation finds its light only in the mystery of the
incarnated Word. Adam, the first man, was a figure of the future man,
namely of Christ the Lord, who is the new Adam and, just in revealing
the mystery of the Father and his love, he reveals fully also man to
himself, manifesting to him his very high vocation» (Gaudium et spes,
22). Consequently, our communion with the Lord –in faith, in the
sacraments and in prayer- implies also a new way of thinking, a choice
of life according to the Gospel. Therefore, the Church announces Jesus
Christ and, within this Cristo-logical and anthropological context, she
presents the moral law, which flows from the encounter with the Lord.
Morality
and science
Often they criticise the
Magisterium of the Church accusing it to oppose the progress and to
interfere in the autonomy of science. This would risk a contra-position
between faith and reason. To this regard, we must state that the Church
has always been and will always be favourable to the progress of
science. This is proved also by the fact that the universities were born
in the very womb of the Church, that has committed herself over the
centuries to the field of formation and research, managing university
Centres all over the world, as this very prodigious Institution is.
Convinced that there is no contra-position between faith and reason,
being they the wings to fly towards the truth, the Church acknowledges
the autonomy of science, but reiterates the importance of respecting the
ethical norms that flow from the human nature.
The words of Vatican II
keep their actuality when in the Apostolic Constitution Gaudium et
spes (n. 36) they state, «If by autonomy of earthly things we mean
that the created things and the societies themselves have their own laws
and values, which man has to discover gradually, to use and to ordain,
then it is the matter of the exigency of a legitimate autonomy: it is
re-vindicated not only by men of our time, but also conform with the
will of our Creator…If, instead, by the expression “autonomy of temporal
realities” we intend to say that the created things do not depend on God
and that man can use them without any reference to the Creator, then no
one who believes in God can deny the falsity of these opinions. In fact,
the creature without his creator vanishes» (n. 36).
The Church states the
importance of the scientific and technical formation, accompanied by an
ethical dimension to guarantee that the progress does not destroy man,
but favours his well-being. In the interview before his journey to
Germany (5/8/2006), Benedict XVI said, «The progress can be a true
progress only if it is useful for the human person and if the human
being grows…I think that the true problem of our historical situation is
the unbalance between the incredibly rapid growth of our technical
power and that of our moral capacity, which has not grown
proportionally. Therefore, the formation of the human being is the true
recipe, the key of everything, I would say, and this is also our way…We
need two dimensions: formation of the heart –if I can express myself
like this- by which the human person acquires some references, thus
learning also the correct use of the technique, which is equally
required».
The second principle
followed by the Church is the recognition of the right autonomy of
sciences and techniques, holding, however, that to be at the service of
a person, they must follow fundamental criteria of morality.
The
dignity of the human being
This principle often
clashes with criticism according to which in the bio-ethics field the
Magisterium says too many “no”, declaring that too many interventions
are not permissible, those interventions which are technically possible
and partly also promising. In assuming this position, instead, the
Church is guided to defend the dignity of every human life, «The human
life is sacred because from its very beginning it implies the creative
action of God and remains always in a special relation with the Creator,
with a unique end. God alone is the Lord of life from the beginning to
the end: nobody, in no circumstance can claim the right of destroying
directly an innocent human being.» (Donum vitae,
Introduction, n. 5).
This is valid also for
the human embryo, «The fruit of the human generation from the first
moment of its existence, that starts with the constitution of the
zygote, demands an unconditional respect, which is morally due to the
human being in its corporal and spiritual totality. The human being is
to be respected and treated as a person from its conception and, from
that very moment we must recognise the rights of the person, among
which, first of all, the inviolable right to life of every innocent
human being» (Donum vitae, I, 1). This position has a solid
scientific and philosophic foundation: in fact, they are the conclusions
of sciences on the human embryo to give «a precious indication to
discern rationally a personal presence from the first appearing of a
human life: how is a human individual not a human person?». Therefore,
it is morally acceptable every intervention finalised to healing, to the
improvement of health conditions or individual survival (for instance:
the pre-natal diagnosis if it does not risk an eventual abortion;
intervention with therapeutic finality, etc.)
On the contrary, it is
morally illicit every intervention which does not respect the life and
integrity of the embryo (for instance: pre-natal diagnosis risking an
eventual abortion; abortion pill of the following day, etc.), produces
it with a selective intention (for instance according to sex) or
exploits it as a “biological material” (for instance: creation of
embryos to obtain an embryo with the consequent destruction of the
embryos; even if the intention is good, the principle “the end does not
justify the means” is still valid; it is necessary to continue the
research of the adult stamina cell, which after all is more promising).
John Paul II, in his
Encyclical Letter Evangelium vitae stated, «The human life, a
precious gift from God, is sacred and inviolable, therefore, in
particular abortion and euthanasia are absolutely not acceptable; man’s
life must never be suppressed, rather it must be protected with every
loving attention; life finds its sense in received and donated love,
from whose horizon sexuality and human procreation fetch the full truth;
in this love every suffering and death itself have a sense and, despite
the mystery that enwraps them, they can become events of salvation;
respect for life demands that science and technique be always ordained
to man and to his integral development; the society must respect, defend
and promote the dignity of every human person, in every moment and
condition of life» (n. 81).
In this sense we
understand also the third principle, according to which the “no” of the
Church to certain practices are in reality a big “yes” to the dignity of
every human being, above all of those who have no voice, whom nobody
defends.
The
value of matrimony and conjugal love
In this horizon we see
also the criticism according to which the Magisterium of the Church,
being contrary to fecundation in vitrio, does not have any compassion
for the sterile couples or other not married persons who desire to have
a son and could have him through the techniques of fecundation in
vitrio…
In the name of safeguard
and of promotion of the intangible dignity of every human being,
instead, the Church nourishes compassion for the sterile couples and
encourages the researches finalised to the reduction of human sterility,
«they can show their generosity by adopting abandoned children or by
fulfilling meaningful services in favour of their neighbours» (CCC,
2379).
Therefore, the Church
holds permissible every medical intervention, which does not substitute
the marital act, but assumes a form «such as a facilitation and help to
reach its natural end» (Donum vitae, II, 6).
Consequently, she
contrasts the techniques which provoke a dissociation of the parents,
with the intervention of a person alien to the couple (gift of sperm or
ovocyte, loan of the uterus). The techniques of heterogeneous
fecundation offend the right of a son to be born to a father and mother
known to him and bound by matrimony. They betray the exclusive right of
the couple to become father and mother only by one through the other.
The “no” of the Church to heterogonous fecundation, therefore, is a
“yes” to matrimony and family, the cell of society.
Equally, the Church is
contrary also to homologous artificial fecundation that, besides being
linked to the destruction of many embryos, dissociates the sexual act
from the procreating act. The act founding the existence of the son is
no longer an act by which two person donate themselves to each other
reciprocally, but an act that entrusts “the life and identity of the
embryo to the power of doctors and biologists, causing the instauration
the dominion of the technique over the origin and destiny of the human
person. This type of dominion is in itself contrary to the dignity and
equality that must be common for parents and children» (Donum vitae,
II, 5). The “no” of the Church to artificial homologous
fecundation, therefore, is in reality a “yes” to marital love. According
to the will of God, the son must be the fruit of an act of love, not of
a technical procedure. In fact, the son has the right of being «the end
and the fruit of a marital act in which the couple may be the
co-operators of God in the gift of life to a new person» (Donum vitae,
II, 5).
The artificial
production of embryos, on the other hand, has created a series of
further and very serious ethical problems: for instance the freezing of
human embryos, of their destruction in many Countries after few years,
of their instrumentalisation for commercial or research purposes…The
ethical dilemma about the destiny of the frozen embryos shows the
serious problematic of the artificial production of embryos. In this
horizon of problems difficult to be solved the “no” of the Church to the
different techniques of artificial fecundation are in reality a big
“yes” to the dignity of matrimony and marital love, which cannot be
substituted by technical methods.
The
Church at the service of society
Through these
fundamental principles we see how the Church, in the Name of Christ,
puts herself at the service of the human society. Therefore, the first
task of the pastor is that of announcing the Gospel of Jesus Christ and,
therefore, also the Gospel of life (the dignity and the rights of every
human being) and the Gospel of love (the value and rights of matrimony
and of the family). The second, but not less binding task, is
constituted by the commitment, according to the possibility of a
democratic society and above all through the laity committed to the
political life, for the promulgation of right laws or the abrogation of
unjust laws.
The following
fundamental principle is valid with this regard, «It is the task of the
civil law to ensure the common good of persons through the recognition
and defence of the fundamental rights, the promotion of peace and of the
public morality. In no area of life can the civil law substitute the
conscience or dictate norms on what is alien to its competence ; in view
of the public order, at times, it has to tolerate what it cannot forbid
without causing a more serious evil. However, the inalienable rights of
the person must always be recognised and respected on behalf of the
civil society and the political authority, because these rights of man
do not depend on single individuals or on the parents. They do not
represent a connection of the society and the State, «they belong to the
human nature and are inherent to the person due to the original creative
act». We must remember that among these fundamental rights there are: 1.
the right of life and its physical integrity of every human being from
conception to death; 2. the rights of family and matrimony as
institution and, in this area, the right of the son to be conceived, be
born and educated by his parents» (Donum vitae, III).
In committing herself to
this sense, the Church does not impose a “Catholic” morality to society,
but offers a precious service to humanity and defends those intelligible
values which can be shared by all men of good will. Besides proclaiming
the Good News, through democratic instruments and committed lay persons,
the Church tries to promote right legislations in the field of
bioethics. This commitment is a great “yes” to a true humanism. It seems
very important today to reiterate strongly that behind every “no” of the
ecclesial magisterium in the field of bio-ethics, in the fatigue of
discernment between good and evil, there is a big “yes” to the dignity
of every single human being and to the irreplaceable value between man
and woman; a “yes” which can be recognised not only by the believers,
but also by all those who seek the truth with their reason.
Angelo Amato
Secretary in the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith
Piazza Città
Leonina, 1 - 00193 Roma
NOTE
1. A
conversation with the students of the faculty in medicine, in the
Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Rome, on 10th April
2008. They are very much discussed and actual problems to which the
consecrated persons are also called to give a contribution of knowledge
and testimony.
2. I. SANNA,
L’identità aperta, Queriniana, Brescia 2006, 161.
3. Ibidem,
161.
4. G. NERI-A. SERRA,
<<La diagnosi prenatale oggi>>, in
La Civiltà Cattolica,
158 (2007) IV, 453-463.
5. Ibidem,
459.
6. I. SANNA,
L’identità aperta, 164.
7.Ibidem,
170.
8.
Ibidem, 171.
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