ethics and the global market
I was impressed by this article which I was alerted to via Kingdom Come. This is an article by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, Archbishop of Westminster in relation to questions of ethics in new technology. He says in part:
What does this say about the sanctity of human life, and its transmission? When are we going to take seriously our responsibility to understand what is happening to our world, and call into question the decisions that are made on our behalf, not only in this country, but also elsewhere?
In a globalised market-place what, for legal or ethical reasons, you cannot buy here, you can usually buy somewhere else. And if not somewhere else, then why not on the internet? Euthanasia, or so-called mercy-killing, is today’s example. Abortion was yesterday’s. Tomorrow it may be foetal ova. We cannot sit back and allow our ethics to be decided for us by a global market in medical experimentation
I encourage you to read the whole article, not just because it is thoughtful, interesting and challenging, but because it is a great example of one of the characteristics that I wrote about recently in how the church should speak to society.
That is, this is clearly a Christian response, but in speaking to a broader audience it doesn’t rely on simply Christian justifications, but rather cogent and well thought out concerns which all can share and respect, even if they don’t share the writer’s christianity.
July 10th, 2003 at 2:16 pm
Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, now there is a name for a cardinal. No chance he is Irish I suppose?
July 10th, 2003 at 3:56 pm
An irish catholic? Who would have thunk it.