Author Archive for Fr. Christopher M. Saliga, O.P. R.N.

Nutritional Support and Human Dignity within the End-of-Life Context
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Nutritional Support and Human Dignity within the End-of-Life Context

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by on May 26, 2011 in Catholic Bioethics, Featured
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The Problem “Quality of life” and “death with dignity” have more than a few folks erroneously asserting that the range of legally-acceptable end-of-life options should include “voluntary euthanasia,” and/or “physician-assisted suicide” also known as “physician aid in dying.” [1]  In a recent commentary entitled Human Dignity and the End of Life, Cardinal Rigali and Bishop […]

Building a Catholic Bioethics Knowledge Base Amidst a Busy Life
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Building a Catholic Bioethics Knowledge Base Amidst a Busy Life

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by on May 11, 2011 in Catholic Bioethics, Featured
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Many people today are very busy, sometimes wondering “who’s got time to read?”  And yet, given the rapid and varied scientific breakthroughs which render contemporary research and healthcare contexts evermore complex and morally confusing, relevant reading is arguably imperative given our responsibility to the common good as voters, donors to charities, and investors in corporations […]

What Role Does Virtue Play in Catholic Bioethics?
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What Role Does Virtue Play in Catholic Bioethics?

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by on May 02, 2011 in Catholic Bioethics, Featured
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Virtues empower folks to reliably, freely, and happily engage in truly noble acts by which they become even more virtuous than they already are.  Like a surgeon who has progressed into a surgical virtuoso — a fully flourishing surgical artist whose patients rightly trust with their lives and their limbs — clinicians of various stripes […]

Anointing of the Sick: A Healing Intervention at the Bedside
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Anointing of the Sick: A Healing Intervention at the Bedside

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by on Apr 26, 2011 in Catholic Bioethics, Featured
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A Response to a Problem Within clinical practice, I frequently encounter well-intentioned people who erroneously confuse “healing” with cure, people such as fellow health care professionals, Catholic patients and their family members, health care proxy decision makers, among others. Following upon this confusion, they misunderstand the place of the “healing sacraments” such as the Eucharist, […]

CL26 - hbratton notxt
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Freedom and Voluntary Death

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by on Feb 13, 2011 in Euthanasia & Assisted Suicide
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Arguments for or against voluntary suicide and/or voluntary euthanasia (hereafter referred to as voluntary death) usually presuppose reductionist understandings of human attributes such as freedom.  For example, folks sometimes ask: what is so terribly wrong with a person coming to a substantially-autonomous decision to die?  In more personal terms, why should “you” be able to […]