Britain and the United States are likely to be among the countries that will be implicitly criticised in a soon-to-be-released Vatican document on bioethics. The document will address such controversial bioethical issues as embryonic stem-cell research and human cloning.
The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) said it would unveil its new instruction – “Dignitatis Personae: on some bioethical questions” – at a press conference on Friday. It is anticipated that the new text will unequivocally oppose principles such as those contained in Britain’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act (HFE) and those that lie behind undertakings by US President-elect Barack Obama to fund federally embryonic stem-cell research.
The new CDF text, which has been under elaboration for a number of years, will be the first Vatican document to address bioethical issues since Pope John Paul II’s 1995 encyclical, Evangelium Vitae. Archbishop Angelo Amato, who served as CDF secretary until July, had already indicated nearly two years ago that the new document was being prepared and was intended to update a similar CDF instruction on bioethical themes, “Donum Vitae”, published in 1987.
Itr’s about time some church spoke up. The Anglican church has paid no attention to the troubles re: bioethics that are coming at us hell for leather. We really need to wake up. Larry
I fear CS Lewis was eerily prescient with his depiction of N.I.C.E. in “That Hideous Strength.”
The Anglican church has been missing in action on these issues for decades–partly because, with no central magisterium or clear moral theology, it has nothing coherent to say. And of course, TEC and many other liberal parts of the communion support or condone contraception, abortion, homosexuality, therapeutic cloning, and euthanasia. I don’t know what ‘waking up’ would mean, except accepting the teaching of the Catholic church–and that, of course, leads to the question of why one accepts papal authority in these issues and not others.