Linacre Quarterly最新文献

As Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor observes, a hallmark of the secular age is its "immanent framework." Within this framework, value is placed solely on what is visible, measurable, and immediate. The human person's health is often reduced to physical wellbeing, leaving little room for the transcendent dimension of the person. In such a context, physicians are called not only to practice medicine but also to transform the secular world by reintroducing a Christian understanding of the human person. The Gospel offers a powerful lens for this transformation. Throughout his papacy, Pope Francis has provided profound insights on how to live and witness to the Gospel in a secular world. His themes - the gaze of Jesus, a culture of encounter, God's style, love for the poor, and the call to Christian witness-invite us to go beyond the purely immanent. Applied to medicine, these insights enable healthcare professionals to offer healing that encompasses both body and soul. By embodying these Gospel values, physicians can help their patients recognize that they are more than just bodies in need of repair they are persons with dignity and a transcendent destiny. This approach allows suffering to be seen not merely as a problem to be solved, but as a place where meaning and grace can be found. In doing so, the practice of medicine becomes a form of evangelization.

Video games are a popular form of recreation, especially among young men. According to Catholic theology, play is a good thing. Yet, this does not mean that every form of play is good or equally advisable. Some forms of play and entertainment pose certain risks. This paper will examine video games as a form of play according to St. Thomas Aquinas's account of eutrapelia and compare this with the DSM-5's description of Internet gaming disorder. While video games are intrinsically a licit form of play, they pose certain risks, which must be attended to and avoided. Chiefly, the nature of video games is such that it inclines one to play them for too long, longer than the virtue of eutrapelia would allow.

This article addresses the central moral challenge of twenty-first-century societies: identifying a core principle to guide the hierarchy of values in the context of environmental and human rights conflicts. It examines the ontological questions underlying these debates, such as the explanation of the world and the basis for action, emphasizing the human tendency to project values through either ecocentric or anthropocentric perspectives. This essay argues that resolving the tension between these two worldviews requires moving beyond their dichotomy by incorporating a third vertical axis inspired by the concept of summum bonum from classical philosophy. By revisiting this fundamental principle, this study proposes a framework for harmonizing humanity's relationship with its environment while respecting the dignity of all beings.

The present article examines the psychological repercussions and ethical challenges associated with the medical treatment of disfigurement, highlighting how such interventions, while essential for physical recovery, can have significant impacts on personal identity and the psychosocial wellbeing of patients. In particular, it discusses the psychological trauma stemming from the condition of disfigurement and the complex dynamics of stigmatization and discrimination that follow. The analysis also focuses on the tendency of modern medicine to promote esthetic normalization, emphasizing how such medical treatments, although often necessary for physical recovery, raise profound questions about self-determination, individual freedom, and respect for human diversity. Through a critical examination of contemporary medical practices, the text discusses how the pressure toward esthetic normalization can negatively influence personal identity and the social perception of individuals affected by disfigurement. It argues that the prevailing medical approach, focused on physical correction, may not only limit esthetic diversity but also perpetuate stereotypes and discrimination. It highlights how academic literature and artistic practices offer alternative paradigms that value the uniqueness and authenticity of the human body, proposing a more inclusive and less conformist vision of physical and psychological wellbeing. The work of artists like Laura Ferguson and Mark Gilbert, along with theorizations by philosophers like Michel Foucault, provides a critical perspective on dominant cultural norms and suggests new ways of thinking about and treating disfigurement, emphasizing the importance of an approach that respects individual freedom and celebrates bodily diversity.

The Divine Physician is a traditional title that the Church gives to Jesus Christ. This metaphor helps symbolize Jesus's mission to heal our souls of sin and its effects. In this paper, I consider this metaphor as a source for understanding the vocation of the Catholic physician. Understanding that the role of the laity is to communicate the divine law to the world, I argue that this title raises the human physician's dignity to the status of an image of Christ's saving activity in the clinic. This paper roots this dignity in the supernatural life of grace by giving both a philosophical and a theological exposition of the metaphor of the Divine Physician.

In a published report of suicidal ideation rates drawn from the Turnaway Study, the abortion advocacy group Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) asserted that their findings proved that abortion has no effect on suicidal ideation. Therefore, laws requiring notification of abortion's link to higher suicide rates were not based on good science. But how good is the science ANSIRH offers to displace the evidence of an abortion-suicide connection? The Turnaway Study upon which they rely is drawn from a non-random, non-representative convenience sample that suffered from a 68% refusal rate and a 50% attrition rate. No conclusions applicable to the general population of aborting women can be drawn from such a sample. Moreover, on closer examination, ANSIRH's suicidal ideation trajectory analysis is severely flawed and violates Strengthening the Reporting of Observational studies in Epidemiology (STROBE) guidelines. Basic and critical information is withheld, specifically the mean scores and number of women identified as having suicidal thoughts. Instead, readers are provided with only highly massaged results from a mixed-effects logistic regression employing thirteen covariates that appear to have been chosen precisely to water down the confidence intervals to such a high degree that virtually nothing was statistically significant. In addition, ANSIRH suggested that an attrition analysis of three of the covariates used strengthened the reliability of their finding. However, the fact that they chose not to report on attrition rates associated with the other ten covariates, much less the two outcome variables related to suicidal ideation, actually exposes the falsity of this reliability claim. Rather than proving that abortion has no effect on suicidal behaviors, ANSRIH's published analysis provides evidence of deliberate obfuscation and disinformation by a group funded and dedicated to the expansion of abortion rates around the world.

Primum non nocere or "first, do no harm" is perhaps the most well-known aphorism in the culture of medical education. While its application to patients is well known, the injunction can also be read with medical trainees in mind. Teaching physicians have an obligation to recognize their role as moral teachers and coaches, who must consider "first, do no harm" not only when considering their patients but also when weighing the moral formation of their trainees, especially in a season in which medical educators are attempting to clarify the "harms" of medical training. This multi-valent vision of "first, do no harm" offers an alternative way to frame the contemporary difficulties of medical education while inviting a more candid, nuanced discourse between teachers and learners about the experiences of medical training, in which it can be difficult to discern between that which is truly harm and that which is merely "hard." For those situations in which it is unclear-or indeed when harm is unavoidable-it may be through communal practices of reharmonization, reincorporation, and "reharm" that master educators might learn to tell the story of good medicine with their trainees anew, fostering moral articulacy for the trainees to whom they must also "first, do no harm."

Summary: Primum non nocere or "first, do no harm" is among the most well-known proverbs in medical education. While its application to patients is well known, the injunction can also be read with medical trainees in mind. Teaching physicians might consider "first, do no harm" not only when considering their patients but also when considering the moral formation of their trainees. In a season when medical educators are attempting to clarify the "harms" of medical training, this reading can invite a more candid, nuanced discourse between teachers and learners about the experiences of medical training.

This paper sets forth some philosophical foundations of the transhumanist project, drawing on its roots in philosophical positivism and its confidence in the liberating power of technology. Such confidence is interpreted within the sphere of hope, departing from transhumanism's negative presumptions regarding the human condition, and embracing its aspirations for a humanity without limits. However, it is the claim of this paper that such hope is deceptive. Since transhumanism is incapable of grasping the depths of the human person, limited by its own philosophical categories, it both underestimates the human capacity for interior transformation and misunderstands the real nature of hope. Thus, transhumanism is marked by a deeply rooted despair that wears the mask of an insufficient hope.

Hopelessness and demoralization following a terminal diagnosis can affect the capacity for self-governance. Such dispositions can increase the allostatic load-the cumulative burden of stress and anxiety-resulting in a neurophysiologic decline that can impair autonomy and influence the desire to end one's life deliberately. An allostatic overload is characterized by the inability to autoregulate stress and is associated with pathological changes to the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis and hippocampus. These changes raise concerns about the reliability of concepts of autonomy in extremis, potentially undermining arguments that are used to justify voluntary euthanasia and medically assisted death. Studies have associated depression and hopelessness with suicidal ideation in the general population. However, fewer studies have examined how patients without a history of depression or suicidal ideation may suddenly contemplate the act when facing a terminal prognosis. This paper will argue that an allostatic overload can help explain how the spectrum of physical and psychological comorbidities associated with the onset of a terminal illness can influence a decision to hasten death. Data show that patients with a terminal disease wishing to hasten death typically exhibit lower rates of clinical depression, higher rates of demoralization, and a greater likelihood of rational suicide. These differences indicate that suicidal ideation in the terminal disease patient population is different. Changes in autonomous decision-making secondary to pathological alterations in the brain may offer an explanation. Such changes have been shown to dysregulate executive control functions, specifically intentionality and voluntariness. Clinical evidence also indicates that spirituality and hopefulness can help manage the allostatic load during the palliative stages of a disease so that patients can better process end-of-life decisions. Based on these data, this paper will further argue that jurisdictions offering euthanasia are morally compelled to make mental and spiritual counseling available to patients seeking this course of action.

After being outlawed in 1970, psychedelics have reemerged in the consciousness of Western society in the form of the so-called psychedelic renaissance. This has led to widespread interest in psychedelic compounds being used for recreation, treatment of mental illness and addiction, and even the so-called "enhancement" of individuals and society. This renewed interest in psychedelics has resulted in seemingly endless publications in both the popular and the academic press, including authors from fields as diverse as philosophy, theology, pharmacology, neuroscience, and clinical medicine. A common thread in this developing literature is the claim that psychedelic compounds mediate their reported benefits by inducing the so-called psychedelic mystical experience (PME). The nature of PME is hotly debated, with some claiming that it is entirely psychological and others proposing that it involves contact with extramental reality. This raises a number of important questions for Catholics, especially whether PME should be considered properly "mystical," how PME compares with traditionally understood Catholic mysticism, and whether, and if so under what conditions, psychedelics could be licitly used by the Catholic faithful. This paper is an attempt to begin the process of reconciling empiric scientific data regarding psychedelics generally, and PME specifically, with Catholic philosophical and theological considerations, with the goal of both providing recommendations regarding the licitness of the use of psychedelic compounds and inviting conversation about this important and challenging topic.

Summary: Over the past 20 years, there has been a renewed interest in of psychedelics. Many articles have been published extoling the benefits of psychedelics, including for the treatment of mental illness and addiction, recreation, and "enhancement" of individuals and society. A common claim is that the benefits of psychedelics are a result of the psychedelic mystical experience (PME). This paper considers both the use of psychedelics and PME from the perspective of Catholic theology, provides recommendations about their use for the Catholic faithful, and invites further conversation about this important and challenging topic.

Short summary: This paper considers challenges posed by psychedelics, considers licitness of use, and calls for further discussion.