Gulf Pine Catholic

12 Gulf Pine Catholic • November 8, 2024 The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services ( ERDs ) are a set of authorita- tive ethical guidelines prepared by the US Confer- ence of Catholic Bishops for Catholic hospitals and health care facilities. As of 2024, there was no di- rective dealing explicitly with transgenderism in the ERD s. The bishops are poised to address this matter in upcoming editions of the ERD s, and have offered other definitive guidance through their March 2023 “Doctrinal Note on the Moral Limits to Technolog- ical Manipulation of the Human Body.” This latter document clarifies that gender reassignment inter- ventions are not licit, even as some Catholic hospi- tals may have continued to operate under the impres- sion that definitive guidance is not yet available. Catholic hospitals clearly must hold to a higher standard than that of their secular counterparts. Sec- ular hospitals may promote practices that violate hu- man dignity, by harming, mutilating, or even ending the lives of the those whose health they are supposed to be serving and protecting. Catholic hospitals may never condone or par- ticipate in these unethical practices, whether they be vasectomies, tubal ligations, direct abortions or physician-assisted suicides, nor may they condone or participate in the range of practices coming un- der the heading of “gender transition.” This is espe- cially important when these involve offering puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, “top surgeries” and “bottom surgeries” to children and young people. Our sex is a fixed reality of our being, given by God, not a personally-negotiable or otherwise malleable quantity, even if we may face significant struggles in accepting and fully integrating this re- markable gift. To treat our human maleness or femaleness as “re-assignable” is to invite serious harm into the lives of those who may be dealing with genuine and deep-seated psychological challenges regarding their own “gender identity.” Catholic health care fa- cilities serve the best interests of their patients with gender confusion by directing them towards sup- portive psychotherapy that works to address the un- derlying psychiatric issues prompting them to seek gender-transition. By holding firmly to the impermissibility of im- moral procedures and safeguarding their patients’ dignity in the practice of medicine, Catholic health care leaders serve the Lord’s restorative designs and assure that medical practice remains an authentically healing art. Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D. earned his doc- torate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doc- toral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the diocese of Fall River, MA, and serves as Senior Ethicist at The National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia. See www.ncbcenter.org and www.fathertad.com . Making Sense of Bioethics From page 8 Pope Encyclical From page 1 However, he wrote, “when we witness the out- break of new wars, with the complicity, tolerance or indifference of other countries, or petty power strug- gles over partisan interests, we may be tempted to conclude that our world is losing its heart.” “It is heartbreaking,” he wrote, to see elderly women, who should be enjoying their golden years, experiencing the anguish, fear and outrage of war. “To see these elderly women weep, and not feel that this is something intolerable, is a sign of a world that has grown heartless.” “The most decisive question we can ask is, ‘Do I have a heart?’” the pope wrote. The human being is more than an instrument, a material body and a carrier of intelligence and rea- son, the pope wrote. The human person also embodies spiritual, emo- tional, creative and affective dimensions that are often undervalued, neglected or squelched in today’s world, he wrote. It is the heart that integrates all these dimensions that are so often fragmented or neglected. The most precious treasures that animate and dwell in the human heart are often the simple and poignant moments in life: “How we first used a fork to seal the edges of the pies that we helped our moth- ers or grandmothers to make at home;” “a smile we elicited by telling a joke;” “the worms we collected in a shoebox;” and “a wish we made in plucking a daisy.” “All these little things, ordinary in themselves yet extraordinary for us, can never be captured by algorithms” and artificial intelligence, he wrote, and, in fact, “poetry and love are necessary to save our humanity,” not just reason and technology. At a Vatican news conference presenting the encyclical Oct. 24, Archbishop Bruno Forte of Chieti-Vasto, Italy, said the document is a “compen- dium” and the “key” to understanding Pope Francis’ pontificate. Some commentators criticize the pope for focus- ing too narrowly on “social” issues, the archbishop said. This encyclical explicitly presents the spiritual and theological foundation underlying the pope’s message to the church and the world for the past 12 years -- that everything “springs from Christ and His love for all humanity.” Many saints and religious congregations have a special devotion to the Sacred Heart, including St. Ignatius of Loyola and the Society of Jesus, the reli- gious order the saint co-founded and to which Pope Francis belonged. St. Ignatius’ spiritual exercises encourage people to “enter into the heart of Christ” to “enlarge our own hearts” and train them to “sense and savor” the Gospel message and “converse about it with the Lord,” the pope wrote. Christ’s heart is aflame with infinite love, and Christ desires to be loved and consoled in return, the pope said, especially by loving and serving one’s neighbors and those who are most marginalized. Jesus associated with “the lowest ranks of soci- ety,” he wrote, introducing the “great novelty of recognizing the dignity of every person, especially those who were considered ‘unworthy.’” “In union with Christ, amid the ruins we have left in this world by our sins, we are called to build a new civilization of love,” the pope wrote. “That is what it means to make reparation as the heart of Christ would have us do.” “Amid the devastation wrought by evil, the heart of Christ desires that we cooperate with Him in restoring goodness and beauty to our world,” Pope Francis wrote. The encyclical was published as members of the Synod of Bishops were wrapping up a multi-year process focused on fostering “a synodal Church: communion, participation and mission.” In his encyclical, the pope emphasized how only a deep and abiding love in the Lord can inspire and fuel Catholics to share the Gospel and God’s love with the world. Mission requires missionaries who are “enthralled by Christ” and are “impatient when time is wasted discussing secondary questions or concentrating on truths and rules because their greatest concern is to share what they have experienced,” he wrote. “They want others to perceive the goodness and beauty of the Beloved through their efforts, however inadequate they may be,” he wrote. The heart of Christ also frees Catholics from the problem of communities and pastors who are “exces- sively caught up in external activities, structural reforms that have little to do with the Gospel, obses- sive reorganization plans, worldly projects, secular ways of thinking and mandatory programs,” he wrote. “The result is often a Christianity stripped of the tender consolations of faith, the joy of serving oth- ers, the fervor of personal commitment to mission, the beauty of knowing Christ and the profound grat- itude born of the friendship he offers and the ulti- mate meaning he gives to our lives,” he added. Pope Francis invited Catholics to rediscover or strengthen their devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the practices connected with it, particular- ly Eucharistic adoration and receiving the Eucharist on the first Friday of each month. This practice once served to remind the faithful that Communion was not a reward for the perfect, he wrote, but to renew people’s confidence in the “mer- ciful and ever-present love” of Christ in the Eucharist and his invitation “to union with him.” Today the First Fridays devotion, he wrote, can help counter “the frenetic pace of today’s world and our obsession with free time, consumption and diversion, cell phones and social media (and) we forget to nourish our lives with the strength of the Eucharist.”