Ethical and Religious Directives - Part Four

Do you remember several years ago an observer of the American scene—his name escapes me—became popular by explaining that we are what we were then? In vivid, verbal pictures he walked us back through the culture and experiences of earlier decades, suggesting how those events and times help explain differences in people’s attitudes and practices today, depending on their generation.

I’m reminded of all this in reflecting on Part Four of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Healthcare Services, and I wonder: In 20 years, what will we look back on as defining characteristics of the ten years we’ve just lived through? How will we refer to the era of the 1980s and 1990s?

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One possibility is that it will have to do with the deterioration of family life, society’s abandonment of children and a widespread narcissism in personal decision-making.

After all, haven’t we heard people lament the decline of family values for years now? And aren’t we continually horrified at contemporary statistics on the number of children living in poverty, the number without minimal health care, and the way whole communities of children are being written off in terms of an educational future?

Finally, don’t we encounter time and again, through the media, attitudes such as:

• If it feels good, I’ll do it. (drugs, sex, violence)

• If it’s possible to do, I’ll do it. (clone a frog, clone a dog, clone a child)

• If it causes a problem for the child, he/she’ll get over it. (surrogate mother, father, or womb)

• If there are too many, we’ll just reduce the number (fetal "reductions")

• If the child won’t be normally healthy, we’ll cut our losses and start over (elective abortion)

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I remember a number of years ago conversing with a young man who was a member of a "charismatic community" in Ann Arbor, Mich. He was quite involved in the community and spoke at length about the household he lived in, the daily practices he and his conferes observed and the rather strict obediences he embraced as a community member. When I asked why he had joined the community, he responded, "For a number of years prior to joining, I was so out of control, my life was so chaotic, that I needed a structure and way to understand life so that I could get reintegrated."

So where can a person go today to find a sane, integrated understanding and approach to life that will lead to personal cohesion? Where is there a vision of marriage, family and care of children that’s built on something better than narcissism?

Over the centuries the church has provided such an understanding for people. It has clarified a vision and provided principles to ground marriage and family life, a vision and principles set forth in broad strokes in Part Four of the Directives.

This vision, based on centuries of observing and reflecting on—with the aid of God’s Spirit—human nature, embraces these three convictions:

(1) The human person is made in God’s image; thus human life from its very beginning is sacred. For this reason the church defends human life from the moment of conception until death and prohibits behaviors or practices that put a direct, deliberate stop to life or are designed to lead to such actions.

(2) Marriage is a covenantal relationship two people enter into with God, and it is in this relationship that children are meant to be conceived and nurtured. For this reason the church continually reminds us of the dignity of marriage and of the marriage act by which human life is transmitted.

(3) The two-fold purpose of the marriage act—to strengthen the bonds of relationship through the expression of mutual love and to co-create new human life with God—are meant by God to be inseparably connected. Indeed, so important and intertwined are these purposes that the Church proscribes any efforts to artificially separate the two in order to, on the one hand, prevent conception or, on the other, to conceive children when normal intercourse proves ineffective.

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Anyone who’s an effective administrator, parent, or decision-maker knows that, "You have to keep the big picture in mind; missing the forest for the trees can lead to serious mistakes." As we’ve seen in this series on the Ethical and Religious Directives, the document paints a broad, rich vision for those of us engaged in the ministry of healthcare. Part Four of the Directives contributes to that vision in its support of marriage, family life and children and in an approach to life that counters the contemporary ethos of narcissism. In reading Part Four, it’s essential not to miss the beauty of the forest as we attend to the message of specific trees.