The development and nature of the ordinary/extraordinary means distinction in the Roman Catholic tradition.

Conjoined twins and Catholic moral analysis: extraordinary means and casuistical consistency.

eThis article draws upon the Roman Catholic distinction between "ordinary" and "extraordinary" means of medical treatment to analyze the case of "Jodie" and "Mary," the Maltese conjoined twins whose surgical separation was ordered by the English courts over the objection of their Roman Catholic parents and Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, the Roman Catholic Cardinal Archbishop of Westminister. It attemp...

Debate: extraordinary means and the sanctity of life.

Ms Kuhse argues against the doctrine of 'the sanctity of life', against the application of acts and omissions doctrine in medical practice, and against the common assumption that there is a crucial moral difference between intentionally discontinuing ordinary medical treatment and intentionally discontinuing extra-ordinary medical treatment. Intentional acts or omissions which shorten life are ...

The development of the doctrine of ordinary and extraordinary means of preserving life in Catholic moral theology before the Karen Quinlan case.

The moral status of the human embryo: a tradition recalled.

An Anglican theologian contends that the claim to absolute protection for the human embryo from the moment of conception is a recent one in the Roman Catholic moral tradition. Citing pre-classical, classical, biblical, and post-biblical Roman Catholic sources, Dunstan argues that these traditions attempted to grade the protection provided to the nascent human being according to the stages of i...

An Aesthetics of Nature Consequences of Merleau-Ponty’s embodied ontology

In his courses on Nature, the French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty clearly does not agree with Kant's antropocentrism. In particular the Kantian notion of the disinterestedness of aesthetic perception is untenable in an aesthetics of nature which is inspired by Merleau-Ponty's thought. Nature and human embodiment are seen as separated in this Kantian tradition. In Merleau-Ponty’s pheno...