The Human Person, the Physician, and the Physician's Ethics
My invitation to address you was very specific. Dr. Murrell said that the truth about the human person was to be the unifying theme ofthis conference. Within that context, he asked me to address the question of how the truth of the human person defines the physician's vocation. I approach this assignment with a sense of diffidence for several reasons: First, the topic is complex and not easily reduced to the dimensions of a luncheon talk. Second, you have already heard from Fr. Benedict Groeschel and Sister Prudence Allen who have explored the theological and philosophical reaches of this subject. Finally, the other speakers will have shown how central the idea of personhood is to our understanding of the family, marriage, and child development. At the risk of repeating what has been said, and with less eloquence, I shall try to connect some selected aspects of the Catholic Christian notion of person to the vocation and ethics of the physician, to the relationship with patients, and the moral choices physicians are called upon to make in the relationship. I apologize particularly for the necessarily sketchy and inadequate rendition I shall give of Christian anthropology and personalism, especially its philosophically subtle construal in the work of His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, which I take to be especially significant for my topic. In these days of high technology, it is ever more difficult to remember that medicine is essentially a relationship of persons. Yet, this is what makes it a moral enterprise. This is why medical ethics is unavoidably grounded in some concept of personhood. Ultimately, both the ethics of the patient-physician relationship and the making of ethical decisions depend on our conception of the human