Catholic bioethics are activities that the Catholic Church carries out that involves species of the science of ethics that majors on how life begins and ends and the morality in the medical procedures performed on a person. Examples of these rights include the right not to have one’s life taken from them. Catholic bioethics aims to achieve goals and have different sources and norms that help attain the primary goal. Catholic bioethics also has importance to the human person as it contains human acts that contribute to the importance of catholic bioethics to a person.
The main goal of catholic bioethics is to make sure that ethics is part of the provision of proper healthcare. The goal ensures that there is social justice in the serving of human beings by medical personnel. It also ensures that every person has the right to the proper healthcare in any case. Lysaught and Micheal (2018) stated that when receiving healthcare, bioethics has a goal to ensure that the life of a person receiving healthcare has their life on good care to ensure their issues are handled with care. In receiving healthcare, bioethics ensures that there are limits to how a person’s life is handled by medical practitioners to ensure that they are safe. Catholic bioethics also helps to uphold fundamental rights such as the right to end-of-life decisions and the reproduction process.
The primary source of catholic bioethics is the national catholic bioethics center. The NCBC helps in the research, publication, education, and publication of all materials that catholic bioethics requires. Catholic bioethics source helps promote the dignity of human beings in life science and healthcare, and the NCBC gets its information and teachings from the Catholic Church. The NCBC center, a research center, helps in providing resources for the smooth running of bioethics. Catholic bioethics has its norms which include autonomy, nonmaleficence, justice, and beneficence.
The principle of autonomy argues that the decisions that concern a person’s life should be respected by other people (Lysaught &Micheal, 2018). Nonmaleficence is the principle that holds that a physician should cause no harm to a patient, justice. On the other hand, in all decisions made in the medical field, there should be fairness. Beneficence is a principle that gives medical personnel the responsibility of acting in ways that best fit the interests of a patient. The norms of catholic bioethics help people know their different opinions in important decisions that need to be taken. These norms are applied in a different situation; hence each norm fits a specific activity.
Catholic bioethics is very important to a person. They help in the medical and health issues of a person. According to Drane (2010), medical and health issues involve the essential medical decisions that are to be made by a person. Patients require that their religious beliefs and faith will be respected when receiving medical care from health practitioners. Catholic bioethics, therefore, help patients to have the assurance that clinicians uphold their religious beliefs and practices. The ethics also helps ensure that patients understand that they cannot force medical practitioners into activities that the practitioners regard as inappropriate or activities against moral standards. Catholic bioethics also ensures that the rights of a person in the decision-making process of a medical issue are maintained and that a person is not forced to do a specific action that they do not seem fit to carry out. Catholic bioethics also helps to ensure that a person receives the best medical services and that a medical practitioner does not harm them in the process of receiving treatment. A human person is essential as they are a moral agent in carrying out the catholic bioethics. As moral agents, the human person must differentiate right and wrong, and they are held responsible for their actions (Eberl, 2017). The human person is expected not to cause harm, and if they do, they are held accountable. Therefore, the human person, in particular, helps in decision-making, which is the main objective of catholic bioethics. However, not everyone is a human person. Only those in their right state of mind and adults are given the term human person.
Human acts are actions that are preceded by deliberation from a human being. It is comprised of the human will to make free and intellectual decisions. Human acts maybe be good or bad, which depends on whether they hold the morals of norms. Human acts can also be valid and invalid as they uphold the rules of the Church of law. According to Kang (2016), a person carries out human acts with their knowledge and freedom. Human acts are done out of the type of circumstances they face and the decision they need to make (Kang,2016). For a human act to go through, there is the intention, object, and circumstance that lead to a human act. Human acts contribute to a person’s decision-making and, therefore, help in the understanding and acting of catholic bioethics. Human acts help connect a person to the decision they make for them to be carried responsible for their actions, whether the decision is good or bad.
Works Cited
Drane, James F. A Liberal Catholic Bioethics. LIT Verlag Münster, 2010.
Eberl, Jason T. Contemporary Controversies in Catholic Bioethics. Springer, 2017.
Kang, Han. Human Acts. Portobello Books, 2016.
Lysaught, M. T., and Michael McCarthy. Catholic Bioethics and Social Justice: The Praxis of US Health Care in a Globalized World. Liturgical P, 2018.
