The Moral Theology Workshop held on Tuesday 19 July at the Curepe Parish Hall was a timely and worthwhile exercise for the priests, religious, lay persons and the two bishops who attended. It was of special value to many of the participants who were actively engaged in caring for the sick and dying.

The workshop was planned by the Antilles Episcopal Conference (AEC) to enable the four English speaking Provinces of the AEC to be updated on the Catholic Church's moral thinking, and it was the Province of Port of Spain (comprising the archdiocese of Port of Spain and the dioceses of Georgetown , Paramaribo , Bridgetown and Curacao) that benefitted from this particular workshop.

The workshop expertly addressed some moral issues and dilemmas that are seriously challenging the Church today, especially in the medical field of biotechnology relating to the unusual or extreme prolonging of human life.

A basic question emerging for Catholic moral theology was: in what circumstances and at what point can a person be allowed to die with the dignity befitting someone made in the image of God and loved by God, and destined for eternal life?

The two competent presenters and facilitators were Redemptorist priests Fr Mark Miller of St. Thomas More College , Canada , and Fr Stephen Rehreaur of the Alphonsian Academy , the Lateran College , Rome .

Fr Steve, as he is called, was once a student of Archbishop Gilbert as a seminarian. The workshop, originally planned to last two days, had to be packed into one day since Frs Mark and Steve were unfortunately stranded in Jamaica by hurricane Emily and arrived in Trinidad a day late.

As it turned out, the workshop gave helpful guidelines for making conscientious practical moral decisions, since many Catholics are now living in a secularized and even hostile post-modern world that rejects the clear moral principles of the past.

Far from being a dull academic exercise, it was a lively and thought-provoking experience that might even be called “a drama of life and death” since it confronted squarely the double challenge of both living and dying with dignity in what Pope John Paul II called a “culture of death”.

For example, there were poignant questions arising from true stories: Should a nurse allow an abandoned, sickly and seriously deformed baby to die when the doctor orders it? Can a permanently brain-damaged person be starved to death?

What care should be given to a permanently and completely paralyzed elderly person who is dying slowly and unable to eat normally or speak? If a man trapped in a burning truck begs someone to kill him mercifully by shooting him, should it be done, and with what legal consequences?

Answers are to be found in compassion and dialogue, making every effort to communicate with the patient, discussing every aspect of circumstances with family members and others, and having ethics committees consisting of people with much experience who would provide collective wisdom.

Sometimes caregiving would require us to use the “palliative” or “hospice” system, rather than a highly technological, mechanical but impersonal life-support system, which can make life more burdensome and intolerable for the suffering patient and others.

Questions from the floor included the question with roots in St Thomas Aquinas about someone being allowed to “steal” food to overcome life-threatening hunger (invoking the principle of the common good), and the question of selecting persons to live or die when there is a serious shortage of life-support machines in a hospital (invoking the principle of “triage”, where clear priorities have to be established for making choices).

What came across clearly was that what may be accepted or condoned legally may nevertheless be seriously wrong morally, according to Catholic tradition, with its understanding of respect for human life and dignity.

The reality today of having a variety of ethical systems, based often on the relativism that Pope Benedict XVI speaks about, was therefore also examined in the workshop. Is something right simply because it is right for me at a particular time? Is the majority always right?

Fr Mark began the workshop by giving theological foundations for Catholic morality, in other words, starting with the God who created us with dignity (creation), who entered the human race by becoming man (incarnation), to redeem us and make us aware that we are loved profoundly by God (redemption), so that we can take responsibility to live out of love, to the end, when God's love will be fully revealed finally (final judgment, eschatology).

Fr Steve then gave a broad historical survey of how today's secularized world of moral relativism and indifference has moved away, down through the ages, from the early “classic age” of morality.

That “classic age” was expressed especially by St Thomas Aquinas as the reality of faith and reason shedding light on a moral order established by God, with roots in ancient Greek philosophy. That moral synthesis began to fall apart in the Age of Discovery which found new worlds with different moral systems.

Then reason came to be linked with empirical science where absolute certainty is found only in what is proved and is evident to the senses, with no room for moral good or evil.

A scientific law can therefore have no exceptions, including laws governing human nature, and this led to efforts to form an ideal state of things, a utopia, whether through communism, by changing how things work and making people conform to a system, or, alternatively, capitalism, or democracy, where the will of the majority is considered right. Modernism sets in, and what is right is now defined as what brings the right results, or utilitarianism. We do what works.

Breakdown of the moral order continued, with two world wars in succession, the Jewish holocaust, and the escalation of violence, combined with blind obedience to authority - “we were doing what we were told”, and the recent technological revolution.

Then there is the breakdown of trust, so I trust only myself and my subjectivity, what is right for me, or, “If it feels good, do it”, what Pope Benedict XVI calls “runaway subjectivism”.

A solution is found in exploring the question: What does it mean to be a person? The Catholic tradition affirms that a human being is relational, made in the image of God, the Trinity of Persons.

Fr Mark then considered “issues at the end of life” and “proper care for the ageing”, noting that when a patient becomes totally helpless with no hope of recovery, and even lapses into unconsciousness, care-givers and family alike need to respect the person's right to die, and to die with dignity.

Extreme and undue prolonging of life is not necessary, but one must not take direct, positive steps to hasten death, to “get it over with”. Family members benefit when they spend time with their dying relative. They can grow in peaceful acceptance.

Fr Steve continued to explore the basis for moral acts as rooted in love of God and neighbour, and that the person is an individual joined to others in a community of relationships. Human acts must have the good as their object, and the ends to that object also have to be good, taking into consideration the various circumstances involved.

One has to do deliberately what is right, even though there may be an unavoidable evil consequence, but one cannot do something that is deliberately evil for good to come of it. If a fetus inevitably gets destroyed in an operation to save a mother's life, the deliberate good act is the saving of the mother's life.

The death of the fetus is a negative consequence (‘double-effect'), and not a deliberately willed act of destruction.

In concluding the workshop, Fr Mark outlined the wider context of flawed systems, whether medical or legal, within which caregiving may occur. As one works within the flawed system, one can use personal initiatives and be proactive in bringing about good results.

This has been the approach of a number of religious orders who saw a social problem and became involved, through their ministry, in correcting it. Fr Mark ended by sharing insights with regard to Jesus as one who taught through stories or parables, and through acts of compassion (words and deeds).

Fr Mark demonstrated this method by telling of his own dramatic stories from real life situations, showing how people responded to critical situations, as a labour of love. These stories were referred to earlier on.

The lesson is that people involved in making critical or ambiguous moral decisions do so, not arbitrarily or through expediency, but by exercising choices which take into consideration all circumstances, including difficult double-effects, weighing consequences based on moral values and principles which safeguard the dignity of the human person, and taking pains to communicate as much as possible with the patient and all concerned.

This is to love as Christ loved, and is the essence of Christian moral living. – Fr Michael Cockburn