Archbishop Henry J. Mansell, left, and Very Rev. Douglas Mosey coungratulate Msgr. David Q. Liptak after the announcement.
CROMWELL – Early last spring, Deacon Tom Davis had an inspiration. The once Christian-based field of bioethics was being hijacked and repurposed by secular interests. It was time to reclaim it, and so he set out to create an Internet-based resource library of bioethics materials.
The Bioethics Resources Library, based at Holy Apostles College and Seminary in Cromwell, was launched Jan. 20. Archbishop Henry J. Mansell thanked God for "the special gift, which is Msgr. David Q. Liptak," for whom the project is dedicated.
Msgr. Liptak, D. Min., is the last living co-founder of the Pope John Paul II Bioethics Center at Holy Apostles, where he teaches. The other founders were Father Francis J. Lescoe, Ph.D.; and Leo Thomas Duffy, M.D. Msgr. Liptak is also the executive editor of The Catholic Transcript.
Deacon Davis serves at St. Ann Melkite Church in Danbury and is an adjunct professor at Holy Apostles. An attorney, he is also a former legal consultant for the Pope John Paul II Bioethics Center. The Bioethics Resources Library may be found at http://www.holyapostles.edu/link.php?action=expand&ID=115. Major parts of it will also soon be available on The Catholic Transcript’s Web site.
Deacon Davis said he saw the need for the resource center early last spring. That is when Bridgeport Bishop William E. Lori invited Dr. Edmund Pellegrino, former chairman of the President’s Council on Bioethics, to speak at a luncheon after a Mass for health care providers. "Dr. Pellegrino said that health care was entering a new phase," Deacon Davis said. "Bioethics originally flowed out of Christian teaching, but a takeover by secular forces gave it what he called a ‘radical autonomy,’ which stated that it would be unethical not to provide abortion services," he added.
"Dr. Pellegrino has had it said to him, at the highest levels of bioethics, that Catholics should really not be allowed to go to medical school because anybody in medical school should be required to participate in abortion," Deacon Davis said.
After learning that, Deacon Davis approached Holy Apostles’ president and rector, Father Douglas L. Mosey, and suggested that serious researchers needed an easily accessible guide to resources explaining the Catholic viewpoint on bioethics.
The result is a library that includes not merely links to other sites, but also the publication of Holy Apostles’ Pope John Paul II lecture series that ran from the early 1980s to the end of the 1990s. Lecturers in that series included William May, Germain Grisez, Donald DeMarco, Father Ronald D. Lawler, Raymond Dennehy, Ralph McInerny and Msgr. Liptak.
Deacon Davis said the lectures discussed assisted reproductive technology, the ethics of suicide, the ethics of limiting medical care, the integration of pro-life encyclicals into seminary teaching and other topics.
Father Mosey announced at the dedication that the lecture series will resume later this year. He also praised both Msgr. Liptak and Deacon Davis, calling them "the heart of the John Paul II Bioethics Center." Father Mosey said the founders of the center and those who continue it "had the foresight and the vision to know that these issues of bioethics are going to be so important in order to communicate our Catholic faith and for the defense of life at all stages."
Links on the library include stem cell research, embryo and fetal research, gene therapy, abortion, contraception, cloning, emergency contraception and rape, brain death, euthanasia, assisted nutrition and hydration, advance medical directives, family and marriage issues, same-sex attraction, conscience protection for health care workers, nanotechnology and more.
The new resource also makes it easy to download advance medical directives, including health care instructions, appointment of a health care representative and optional election concerning anatomical gifts. Deacon Davis said, "These advance directives are fully in accord with Catholic teaching on ordinary and extraordinary care and offer assurance that life-affirming choices will be made in medical care where treatment offers a reasonable hope of benefit without excessive burden."
At the dedication ceremony, Msgr. Liptak said that bioethics is "one of the key distinguishing aspects of the Catholic faith." He said that secularism is growing increasingly hostile toward religion. "The only areas into which the secular world allows religion – and the minister of religion – to enter today is that of the extreme limits of human existence – conception, birth and death," Msgr. Liptak said.
He closed his talk with a call to work hard and to have the courage of one’s convictions. He quoted "The Second Coming," by William Butler Yeats: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold … The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity."
Archbishop Mansell, before the closing prayer, said of Msgr. Liptak, "It’s true that the centre cannot hold, but there are certain people who continue to be the center and continue to be so reliable and so dependable."
