Fr Gianni, what does this publication represent for the scholar and for the priest?
I am carrying out a service on behalf of the academic community of St. Thomas, my students needed a complete manual (not my first) that would help them to grasp the main dimensions of all bioethics: medical, environmental, animal, social; above all to confront the plurality of settings, both traditional and liberal, know the most important public and international documents, the official teaching of Catholic Magisterium, the reasons for a dialogical approach. What is most important to me is to 'listen' to people with their diversity, trying to identify symphonic and convergent responses, giving answers of hope and future in areas such as health, ecology, love relationships, respect and affection for animals, and helping to identify that light which, also referring to faith, opens up new horizons.
What's new in this publication?
First of all in terms of content, because the field of bioethics evolves very quickly in terms of topics and ethical and legal regulatory responses. In the medical sector: genomics, new frontiers of genetic engineering, brain organoids, neurobioethics, artificial intelligence, aging, surgical treatments of gender dysphoria, admission criteria to trans sports competitions subjected to male hormones; and again genetically modified foods, cosmetic surgery, pathological gambling, ecology and the important environmental transformations underway, animals and their rights in various areas. However, the manual is also new for in its approach: each topic has excerpts that allow adequate knowledge of the different opinions and direct reference to specific bibliographic repertoires.
Bioethics is a multifaceted discipline, which opens up to endless forms of dialogue. Which of these forms does the universal Church prefer?
The dialogue in bioethics to be preferred is not merely one of ideas, or doctrinal, but between people, a warm, open, sincere relationship, respectful of paths taken by others. A dialogue without prejudice, without condemnation, which looks at the perennial message of Christ on human beings and the environment, a message that invites everyone - regardless of ideological views - not to raise fences.
What are the formative "advantages" deriving from the study of this discipline?
The study of bioethics allows us to have an open look at the dignity and value of life, ours, ecosystems, animals, human health, well-being and the promotion of the quality of life, and the future of humanity. It also opens up to placing oneself from the perspective of the other, to positive tolerance which is respect for diversity. Studying bioethics is to grasp what is given by nature and what can change, what conforms to human dignity and what is common to every living being, because every life (not only human) has an ethical status that must be respected.
Rachel Gerace
