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I. The Consistent Ethic of Life
The "consistent ethic of life" has become part of our ethical vocabulary in the past three years. No doubt you are already familiar with it—at least, to some extent. However, there are many misconceptions about it. That is why I want to ensure at the outset that the basic concept is correctly understood.
Although the consistent ethic needs to be finely tuned and carefully structured on the basis of values, principles, rules and applications to specific cases, this is not my task this evening. I will simply highlight some of its fundamental components so that I can devote more attention to its application to health care systems and several of the issues they face today.
Catholic social teaching is based on two truths about the human person: human life is both sacred and social. Because God's gift of life is sacred, we have a duty to protect and foster it at all stages of development, from conception to natural death, and in all circumstances. Because we acknowledge that human life is also social, society must protect and preserve its sanctity.
Precisely because life is sacred, the taking of even one human life is a momentous event. Traditional Catholic teaching has allowed the taking of human life in particular situations by way of exception, as, for example, in self-defense and capital punishment. In recent decades, however, the presumptions against taking human life have been strengthened and the exceptions made ever more restrictive.
Fundamental to these shifts in emphasis is a more acute perception of the many ways in which life is threatened today. Obviously such questions as war, aggression and capital punishment are not new; they have been with us for centuries. Life has always been threatened, but today there is a new context which we must take into consideration. And this new context shapes the content of our ethic of life.
The principal factor responsible for this new context is modern technology. Technology induces a sharper awareness of the fragility of human life. Speaking in Ravenna last Sunday, Pope John Paul II acknowledged that technical progress makes it possible to transform the desert, to overcome drought and hunger, to lighten the burden of work, to resolve problems of underdevelopment, and to render a more just distribution of resources among people of the world. But he also warned that the same technology has brought us to see "the land uninhabitable, the sea unserviceable, the air dangerous and the sky something to fear."
The discovery of nuclear energy, for example, is one of the most important scientific developments of this century. Despite its benefits to the human family, however, we have become painfully aware of its potential to destroy life on a scale previously unimaginable. Likewise, while modern medical technology opens new opportunities for care, it also poses new threats to life, both immediate and potential. The extraordinary technological development of this century has brought with it a qualitatively new range of moral problems.
My basic thesis is this: Technology must not be allowed to hold human beings as hostages. The essential questions we face are these: In an age when we can do almost anything, how do we decide what we should do? In a time when we can do almost anything technologically, how do we decide morally what we should not do?
Asking these questions along the whole spectrum of life from conception to natural death creates the need for a consistent ethic, for the spectrum cuts across such issues as genetics, abortion, capital punishment, modem warfare, and the care of the terminally ill. Admittedly these are all distinct, enormously complex problems, and they deserve individual treatment. No single answer and no simple response will solve them all. But they are linked. Moreover, we face new challenges in each of these areas. This combination of challenges is what cries out for a consistent ethic of life.
We desperately need an attitude or climate in society which will sustain a comprehensive, consistent defense and promotion of life. When human life is considered "cheap" or easily expendable in one area, eventually nothing is held as sacred and all lives are in jeopardy. The purpose of proposing the need for a consistent ethic of life is to argue that success on any one of the life-threatening issues is directly related to the attitude society has generally toward life. Attitude is the place to root an ethic of life, because, ultimately, it is society's attitude—whether of respect or non-respect—that determines its policies and practices.
At the same time, I hasten to add that ethics concerns itself with principles which are supposed to guide the actions of individuals and institutions. That is why I have demonstrated, in a number of recent addresses, that there is also an inner relationship—a linkage—among the several issues at the more specific level of moral principle. It is not my intention to repeat these arguments this evening.
Nevertheless, I would like to examine briefly the relationship between "right to life" and "quality of life" issues. If one contends, as we do, that the right of every unborn child should be protected by civil law and supported by civil consensus, then our moral, political and economic responsibilities do not stop at the moment of birth! We must defend the right to life of the weakest among us: we must also be supportive of the quality of life of the powerless among us: the old and the young, the hungry and the homeless, working mothers and single parents, the sick, the disabled and the dying. The viability and credibility of the "consistent ethic" principle depend primarily upon the consistency of its application.
Such a quality-of-life posture translates into specific political and economic positions—for example, on tax policy, generation of employment, welfare policy, nutrition and feeding programs, and health care. Consistency means we cannot have it both ways: we cannot urge a compassionate society and vigorous public and private policy to protect the rights of the unborn and then argue that compassion and significant public and private programs on behalf of the needy undermine the moral fiber of society or that they are beyond the proper scope of governmental responsibility or that of the private sector. Neither can we do the opposite!
As I acknowledged earlier, the inner relationship among the various life issues is far more intricate than I can sketch here this evening. I fully acknowledge this. My intention is merely to bring that basic linkage into focus so I can apply it to some of the issues facing health care systems today.
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