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The Consistent Ethic of Life: The Challenge and
the Witness of Catholic Health Care
Catholic Medical Center Jamaica, New York
Joseph Cardinal Bernardin
May 18, 1986
The very mention of "Bhopal" or "Chernobyl" sends shudders through people everywhere. While the tragic deaths and injuries caused by the Bhopal disaster were confined to a particular area, its repercussions are still being felt worldwide. The Chernobyl incident, however, affects the planet in a more direct way through the spread of radioactivity. Its destructive potential is even more worrisome.
These two disasters highlight an important fact which has enormous significance for the future of the world community: the growing interdependence of contemporary life—an interdependence which has been accelerated by the rapid development of science and technology—and the worldwide competition for limited natural resources. The problems and challenges of the human family today are enormously complex, increasingly global, and ominously threatening to human life and society. Each of them has moral and religious dimensions because they all impact human life.
It is crucial that we develop a method of moral analysis which will be comprehensive enough to recognize the linkages among the issues confronting us, while respecting the individual nature and uniqueness of each. During the past few years, I have addressed this task through the development of a comprehensive approach to the broad spectrum of life issues which I have called the "consistent ethic of life."
I am very grateful to the Catholic Medical Center and St. John's University for the invitation to address you this evening on "The Consistent Ethic of Life: The Challenge and the Witness of Catholic Health Care." As you may know, I applied the consistent ethic concept to health care systems last year in an address to the Foster McGaw Triennial Conference in Chicago. I wish to follow a similar format this evening, applying the concept, however, to different, but related, issues.
More specifically, I will first briefly describe the concept of a consistent ethic. Then I will explore the challenge it poses to health care systems both in terms of "classical" medical ethics questions and "contemporary" social justice issues.
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