https://doi.org/10.4081/mem.2004.644
Bioethics and theology: which link?
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Authors
The Author faces with the fundamental topic of the relationship between bioethics - that it is particularly interested to determine the moral character of the human actions regarding the generation, development and care of life and health of the human person - and theology, that is the orderly study of God and of all the other beings in their relationship with God. The approach to the matter moves from the recognition that the topic of the meaning of the human person is crucial.
To a solistic theological and Roman Catholic position, the contemporary bioethics often opposes a crucial dualistic conception of the human body considered like an instrument rather than an intrinsic good of the person. The Author proposes a criticism of this last formulation.
The second part of the article is devoted to the morality of the human actions. This is a topic once more developed beginning from the comparison between the position of Roman Catholic theology and that of big part of the contemporary bioethics. This is not prepared toward the absolute moral and the intrinsically bad actions and it theorises an individualistic ethical consequentialism. Really, the risk of arbitrariness is the object of criticism of a similar conception, incapable to open to the real meaning of human freedom.
How to Cite
PAGEPress has chosen to apply the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0) to all manuscripts to be published.
An Open Access Publication is one that meets the following two conditions:
- the author(s) and copyright holder(s) grant(s) to all users a free, irrevocable, worldwide, perpetual right of access to, and a license to copy, use, distribute, transmit and display the work publicly and to make and distribute derivative works, in any digital medium for any responsible purpose, subject to proper attribution of authorship, as well as the right to make small numbers of printed copies for their personal use.
- a complete version of the work and all supplemental materials, including a copy of the permission as stated above, in a suitable standard electronic format is deposited immediately upon initial publication in at least one online repository that is supported by an academic institution, scholarly society, government agency, or other well-established organization that seeks to enable open access, unrestricted distribution, interoperability, and long-term archiving.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.