Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 111: Of Proxies and POLSTs: The Good and the Bad in End of Life Planning

As a set of standing medical orders, the POLST approach is inflexible. Straightforwardly following orders created outside of a particular situation may be ill-advised, improper and even harmful to the patient.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 110: Is Artificial Insemination Wrong Even Among Married Couples?

The pregnancy itself would be brought about by a new and different set of causes, whereby the mechanical actions of a technician would substitute for, and thus violate, the intimate and exclusive bond of the marital act.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 109: Renegade Researchers and the Future of Biomedical Research

Respect for our own progeny, then, will have the obvious consequence that human embryos should not be generated in the laboratory for premeditated destruction, nor for cellular cannibalization by scientists.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 108: Clearing the Air Around Marijuana Use

Part of the unethical character of drug abuse flows from the fact that we are treating something good, namely our personal, conscious experience as if it were an evil to be avoided.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 107: Editing Our Own Genes?

The remarkable tools becoming available not only for genetic therapies but also for human enhancement projects and embryonic manipulation raise daunting ethical concerns about the subjugation of man to his own technology....

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 106: A Path of Renewal for the Catholic Sterilized Couple

Even though a reversal may not be feasible or obligatory, the repentant couple may nonetheless become aware of the need to order their sexual activity and appetites in the face of their original sterilization decision and its extended consequences.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 105: Discrimination and Human Genital Sexuality

It remains the better part of wisdom to discriminate, in the moral sense of the term, between disordered uses of human sexuality and the ordered engagement of human sexuality within marriage.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 104: Difficult Moral Decisions in Brain Death and Pregnancy

Wouldn’t a mother, carrying a child in her womb, and having expended so much effort to foster that new life, naturally want to offer her child this opportunity to live, even after her own death?

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 103: Violinist Violence

In reflecting on the specifics..we begin to appreciate the importance of never subjecting an innocent third party, whether a musician or an in utero child, to direct lethal harm simply because they find themselves in a state of radical dependence upon another human being.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationJanuary 30, 2014Abortion, Sexual Assault

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 102: Ethical Directives and the Care of Pregnant Women in Catholic Hospitals

The application of Catholic moral teaching to this issue is therefore directed toward two important and specific ends: first, the complete avoidance of directly killing the child, and, second, the preservation of the lives of both mother and child to the extent possible under the circumstances.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 101: Sex, Truth and the Illumination of Our Guilt

…no matter what our level of sophistication may be, we have all received the gift of conscience, and the gift of “good guilt” that is ordered to helping us confront ourselves and turn away from wrongdoing.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 100: The Ethics of Donating Money to Charitable Foundations

When foundations have a generally sound list of activities, but promote an intrinsically immoral activity as well (e.g. abortion, human embryonic stem cell research, contracep-tion, etc.), one must consider the serious matter of the fungibil-ity of donated funds.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 099: The Darkened Eye of Pornography

It warps and distorts the beautiful gift of human sexuality, so it no longer serves as an interpersonal force for bonding and building families, but instead devolves into an exploitative and isolating force in the lives of those who fall prey to it.

Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, PhD—Director of EducationSeptember 30, 2013Pornography, Human Sexuality

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 098: Universal Morality and the Natural Law

When functioning properly, this moral compass (a.k.a. our “conscience”), not only encourages us from within to “do good and avoid evil,” but also sets off internal alarm bells when we are tempted to carry out evil acts.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 097: Is It Wrong for Me Now to Buy Health Insurance?

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Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 096: Perversions and Purposes in Human Sexuality

The deep-seated sex instinct moves men and women to embrace great sacrifices, such as are required in marriage and procreation, for the fulfillment of this remarkable human drive.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 095: The Morality and Wisdom of Incremental Legislation

Many commentators have observed how dramatic progress has occurred in changing public opinion on abortion in the United States in recent years because of this incremental approach.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 094: Going Too Far with DNR?

These judgments are tricky to make, because the specifics of each case differ, and those specifics change with time and disease progression. DNR’s should be put in place only when the circumstances warrant it, that is to say, on a case-by-case, patient-specific basis.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 093: Facing the Downstream Effects of Same-Sex Parenting

A compassionate society seeks to help and assist orphaned children, but no reasonable society intentionally deprives those children of a mother or a father.

Making Sense of Bioethics: Column 092: Debating Birth Control in the Public Square

If it is true that contraception is often harmful to individuals and families, to marriage and to women’s health, then it clearly has broader public policy implications, and is, objectively speaking, not merely a “personal matter.”

“Making Sense of Bioethics” CMS