Pope Francis and the Transformation of Health Care Ethics

Since its first edition in 1948, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops' Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERD) has guided Catholic institutions in the provision of health care that reflects both the healing ministry of Jesus and the Church's understanding of human dignity. However, while the papacy of Pope Francis and the clerical sex-abuse scandal both profoundly impacted the Catholic Church, the latest

edition of the ERD does not address or reflect these transformations.

In Pope Francis and the Transformation of Health Care Ethics, Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler argue that the 2018 ERD continues to prioritize a rule-based ethical method over a personalist one, with an emphasis on absolute norms that proscribe specific medical acts. Further, it does not consider Pope Francis's transforming ecclesiological, methodological, and anthropological visions. Finally, the revised ERD provides no evidence that the bishops grasp how the clerical sex-abuse scandal and its cover-up have fundamentally undermined episcopal authority and credibility.

Salzman and Lawler propose new ways forward for US Catholic health care ethics that prioritize human dignity as the guiding principle. Pope Francis's emphasis on mercy and care should move the ERD from a focus on absolute norms in medical ethics to one on virtues and principles to guide both patients and health care professionals in their discerned conscientious health care decisions.