Bishop Blair: "The Gospel of Life Revisited"

Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE my Bishop? Here's Bishop Blair in the March issue of the Catholic Chronicle (I'm quoting in full):

Last month I attended a very important workshop of more than 150 bishops from the United States, Canada and Latin America presented by the National Catholic Bioethics Center and made possible through a generous grant from the Knights of Columbus.

These workshops, held for bishops every two years, are always an eye-opener as to what is happening in bioethics, an area that has potential for tremendous good and for tremendous evil. The topic this year was “Catholic Health Care in Tension with Contemporary Culture.”

Health care as a ministry of the church can be traced to the beginnings of Christianity. Over the centuries religious orders of women and men played a huge role in providing medical care. This is certainly true in our country and in Toledo too. The result is that today Catholic health care is the largest provider of non-governmental non-profit health care in the United States.

It is no secret that the morality of western civilization which has governed health care is now at a crossroads. I say “western civilization,” because it is not just a matter of Judeo-Christian religious beliefs. It was the pagan Greek world that gave us the so-called “Oath of Hippocrates,” which, according to the American Medical Association’s Code of Medical Ethics (1996 ed.), “has remained in Western civilization as an expression of ideal conduct for the physician.” Today, most graduating medical-school students swear to some form of the oath, usually a modernized version.

One of the tenets of the original oath from ancient Greece read: “I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy.” However, as long ago as 1993 a survey found that of 150 U.S. and Canadian medical schools, only 14 percent of modern oaths prohibit euthanasia and 8 percent foreswear abortion. Clearly, we are witnessing a radical departure from age-old norms of ethical conduct.

When it comes to grave bio-medical threats to the human person the list is long and getting longer: abortion, infanticide (especially of unwanted girls in some parts of the world), contraception (including coerced contraception and sterilization), euthanasia, cloning, indiscriminate genetic engineering, reproductive interventions that create, manipulate, discard or sell human embryos, etc.

In 1995 Pope John Paul warned that “a new cultural climate is developing and taking hold, which gives crimes against life a new and — if possible — even more sinister character, giving rise to further grave concern: broad sectors of public opinion justify certain crimes against life in the name of the rights of individual freedom, and on this basis they claim not only exemption from punishment but even authorization by the State, so that these things can be done with total freedom and indeed with the free assistance of health-care systems” (Evangelium vitae, 4).

What is emerging is a militant secularism that affirms man’s absolute autonomy, cut off from any relationship with a transcendent authority. This mindset is determined not only to break away from the received morality of Western civilization, but also to coerce compliance by those who dare to oppose the “new morality.” This represents nothing less than an attempt to redefine the human person without reference to any God-given law or even to human nature as traditionally understood.

It has often been said that the Roman Catholic Church is the last great moral institution in the Western world to resist these forces in a principled, coherent and forceful manner. Combine that with what I mentioned earlier, that Catholic health care is the largest provider of non-governmental non-profit health care in the United States, and you will understand the reason for a workshop titled “Catholic Health Care in Tension with Contemporary Culture.”

There have already been legislative initiatives in 35 states, a number of which attempt to force Catholic health care providers to violate Catholic beliefs when it comes to issues such as abortion, contraception and same-sex partner benefits. Of significant concern is the redefinition, in statutes or through the courts, of what constitutes a religious employer. This is yet another example of an attempt to interpret the First Amendment not as a protection of the free exercise of religion, but as a way of imposing a public secularism which would exclude the religious beliefs of health care providers from their ministry of public health care.

Other issues covered by this year’s workshop for bishops included assisted reproductive technologies; stem cell research; a debate on adopting frozen embryos; artificial nutrition and hydration; brain death issues; vaccine controversies; ectopic pregnancies; early induction of labor; and the prevention of pregnancy after sexual assault.

Let me comment on just one of these areas, that is, stem cell research. There are loud public cries for embryonic stem cell research, which the Church opposes because the process involves the immoral destruction of human life. However, the Church approves and welcomes research using the other three categories of stem cells, including adult stem cells. To this day, not a single benefit to human patients has been derived from embryonic stem cell research, but 72 beneficial treatments have been derived from the adult stem cells that the Church approves for research.

More than ever, it is important not only for Catholics, but for all people who are concerned for the dignity and rights of the human person, to resist attempts to silence, isolate or banish from public life and service those individuals and institutions which refuse to redefine human life and the human person according to a growing secularist agenda.

During this season of Lent, please join me in fasting and praying in reparation for crimes against life, asking God to give each of us the courage and wisdom to bear witness to what Pope John Paul called the “Gospel of Life.”

+MOST REVEREND LEONARD P. BLAIR
BISHOP OF TOLEDO

(emphasis added)

My Comments:
Having moved my family to Ohio only after determining that we would be in Bishop Blair's diocese, I am scared to death that this man is destined for an archdiocese like Detroit or Cincinatti in the next few years. Please, can we keep him here in Toledo until my kids are grown?


Previous Pro Ecclesia posts on this subject:
Bishop Blair: "Building Your House on a Rock"

Meeting the Bishop - After Action Report

Bishop Blair Teaches: "And With Your Spirit"

Bishop Blair: "What God Joins Together"