Bioethics and theology: which link?

Abstract

The Author faces with the fundamental topic of the relationship between bioethics - that it is particularly interested to determine the moral character of the human actions regarding the generation, development and care of life and health of the human person - and theology, that is the orderly study of God and of all the other beings in their relationship with God. The approach to the matter moves from the recognition that the topic of the meaning of the human person is crucial.

To a solistic theological and Roman Catholic position, the contemporary bioethics often opposes a crucial dualistic conception of the human body considered like an instrument rather than an intrinsic good of the person. The Author proposes a criticism of this last formulation.

The second part of the article is devoted to the morality of the human actions. This is a topic once more developed beginning from the comparison between the position of Roman Catholic theology and that of big part of the contemporary bioethics. This is not prepared toward the absolute moral and the intrinsically bad actions and it theorises an individualistic ethical consequentialism. Really, the risk of arbitrariness is the object of criticism of a similar conception, incapable to open to the real meaning of human freedom.