Wuerl was not informed about McCarrick settlements, DC letter claims

New York City, N.Y., Mar 16, 2020 / 12:01 pm (CNA).-  
As there are concerns over the ability of the healthcare system to manage the coronavirus pandemic, discussions are being had over what criteria should be used if healthcare must be rationed.

Globally, there are 153,517 confirmed cases of Covid-19, and 5,735 deaths.

In Italy, where the virus has hit particularly hard, some doctors have said they have had to overlook older patients to focus on younger ones who are more likely to survive.

And in the UK some doctors have said they may have to prioritize care for those patients with better chances of surviving.

As these conversations are being had, CNA spoke via email with Charlie Camosy, an associate professor of theology at Fordham University, about what principles should be used as doctors might face such choices.

Among Camosy’s research interests are bioethics and distributive justice. Among his works are Too Expensive to Treat? Finitude, Tragedy and the Neonatal ICU and Resisting Throwaway Culture: How a Consisten Life Ethic Can Unite a Fractured People.

What principles should be used in deciding how to distribute limited treatment for coronavirus?

The first thing to say is that there are virtually no universally agreed-upon principles to do this–excepting, perhaps, the idea that health care providers, first-responders, law enforcement, and others primarily responsible for the day-to-day functioning of the polity should get priority.

Beyond that, there is tremendous disagreement – at least in the culture at large. What one believes about this largely come from their first principles related to what they believe in their hearts and souls about the good, true, and beautiful.

Catholics, of course, have these principles…and they differ especially from the utilitarian mindset that dominates so much of secular ethics and medicine today. We serve the most vulnerable first. Those people are Christ to us in a special way and we will be judged according to how we treat them. We don’t think about, say, how long they might stay on a ventilator vs. how long someone we might encounter next week might stay on a ventilator. We also don’t think about how long they might have to live if the treatment is successful vs. how long other someone we might encounter next week might live if their treatment is successful.

It makes sense, especially in a triage situation, to treat those first who are most likely to benefit from the treatment. And there many be a disproportionate number of younger people in the former category. But that is not the same as deciding that we ought to prefer to the young to the old because they have longer to live. Some of the ways very public figures have downplayed the threat by talking about it it mostly affecting the old have been disturbing. As soon as a Catholic hears that we should be outraged and leap to the defense of this already marginalized population which bears the faith of Christ in a special way.

You said in a recent Twitter thread that many providers are ‘uncritically utilitarian’ in rationing. How exactly? By using the Quality-Adjusted Life Year model?

Well, I think the QALY model reinforces something that was already there. Scientists and medics, in addition to being disproportionately secular, have absorbed a utilitarian mindset in which probably ultimately come down to solving an equation. While that might feel better than living in the uncertainty and messiness of Christian ethics, the decision about how to handle what is coming our way are too complex to think about this way.

Do you believe that “help those who can likely benefit from treatment first” is a good principle?

I do.

Could you address what Catholics should do in their daily lives amid coronavirus to practice the Church’s social teaching?

The Church has been at its finest in plagues and pandemics. We need to live our our principles now more than ever.

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Our Lady of Lourdes grotto, Lourdes, France. / Credit: Elise Harris/CNA

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Oct 31, 2024 / 17:45 pm (CNA).
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman threw his support behind a Park Hills Catholic church that is … […]

South Bend, Ind., Feb 9, 2018 / 02:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After the University of Notre Dame announced it would fund  “simple contraceptives” in its insurance plan, one Notre Dame professor has criticized the move, calling it “a giant leap into immorality.”

“Now the University [of Notre Dame] is to be sole funder and proprietor of a contraception giveaway,” wrote Notre Dame law professor Gerard V. Bradley in an essay published Thursday at Public Discourse.

“What is solemnly declared for years to be morally impossible is, suddenly, the substance of Notre Dame’s free choice,” Bradley wrote.

In a Feb. 7 statement, Notre Dame’s president Rev. John I. Jenkins, CSC, announced that while the insurance plan at the university will not provide abortifacients, the school will fund the use of “simple contraceptives,” which apparently include drugs that prevent conception.

In the statement, Jenkins noted that contraception is indeed “contrary to Catholic teaching,” while explaining that offering contraception to the school was a way to “respect” other religious traditions and conscientious decisions – particularly decisions made by those in the university’s community who rely on access to contraception through the insurance plan.

This step came as a surprise to many, since the university was one of the institutions which sued the United States over the 2012 Obamacare contraception mandate.

“In its lawsuit, Notre Dame cited chapter and verse of Church teaching,” Bradley recalled.

“The University said, basically, that, to remain faithful to its beliefs, it could not be involved in any way whatsoever with a process designed to provide contraceptives to its employees, its students, or their dependents,” he continued.  

Bradley noted that “Notre Dame’s practice until just a few years ago exhibited all the ‘respect’ possibly due to those who want to contracept.”

The university “rightly did nothing,” he said, to make contraception available or cheaper, while at the same time, it “did not discriminate in the workplace against those who chose to contracept.”

While Bradley said the allowance for contraception will cause incalculable harm to “so many persons’ minds, bodies and souls,” he also noted that “Fr. Jenkins supplied a primer about how Catholics should make all sorts of morally important decisions that is not only mistaken, but catastrophic for the moral life.”

“Our moral duty to respect others’ choices does not have anything to do with giving them the means to do evil,” Bradley said, adding that “one should not respect another’s specific immoral choice at all.”

“Everyone’s immoral choices should be regretted, and their repetition discouraged, and their occurrences criticized appropriately,” he continued.

Bradley said he believes that Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, the diocese where Notre Dame is located, will speak out against the decision, noting that he will “have no choice but to publicly do so” in order to “protect all the faithful in his care from this grave scandal.”

Bradley said that the rationalization behind Jenkin’s most recent allowance for contraception is a “crucial mistake” which violates the sexual and moral teachings of the Catholic Church, as delineated in Pope Paul VI’s encyclical, “Humanae Vitae.”

“God does not want us to weigh up pros and cons of adhering to the moral truth,” Bradley said.

“And the greatest respect we can show others is to bear faithful witness to the truth.”

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