Pope Francis and the Transformation of Health Care Ethics

Todd A. Salzman is the Amelia and Emil Graff Professor of Catholic Theology at Creighton University. He is the author or coauthor of ten books, including The Church in the Modern World and What Are They Saying about Roman Catholic Ethical Method?

"In June 2018 the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) released the sixth edition of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERD). The ERD seeks to provide ethical guidelines, grounded in moral law, Church teaching, and canon law, to guide Catholic institutions in their provision of health care. This book presents a critical commentary on the revised ERD, arguing that the ERD is problematic in a number of ways. First, it continues to prioritize a rules-based, over a person-centered, approach, with an emphasis on absolute norms that proscribe particular acts. Second, the authors argue that the sex-abuse scandal and its cover-up has fundamentally undermined the Bishops' credibility, and yet the revised ERD omits this context and continues to emphasize the Bishop's authority over health care decisions. Third, the ERD does not take into account Pope Francis' transformative papacy - and plea for mutual understanding and dialog - in implementing health care and in collaboration between Catholic and non-Catholic health care providers. Following this critique, the authors propose new ways forward for US Catholic health care ethics. First, they suggest that the ERD should be grounded in the principle that human dignity is foundational to Catholic health care. As there is pluralism in Catholic definitions of human dignity, there must be pluralism in the norms or directives that facilitate realizing human dignity. Second, Pope Francis' emphasis on the virtue of care should transition the ERD from a focus on specific directives and absolute norms to a focus on principles to guide patients and health care professionals as decision-makers. Third, the authors argue that any future ERD must include consideration of climate change, race, refugees, poverty, and other social issues in its conception of health care ethics"