Cath Bioethics Soc Praxis

3 Credits · Level: Graduate

The Catholic bioethics that first emerged in the early 20th century and then anew in the 1970s-1980s has been deeply shaped by the context of post-Flexner US medicine and the odd philosophical mélange of Kant, natural law, and neoliberalism with a dash of Vatican II personalism. But this is not the only option. This graduate seminar focuses on one central question: what might Catholic bioethics look like if done in conversation with the tradition of social medicine that emerged in the late 19th century alongside the Catholic social tradition, flourished in Latin America, and has begun to make in-roads into in the US? It will bring a close study of the history of social medicine into conversation with Latin American and African liberation theologies, Catholic social thought, practitioner witnesses, critical theorists such as Achille Mbembe, and the papacy of Francis to begin to reimagine Catholic bioethics as a theologically-robust social praxis. For interested students, we will also explore how such a lens provides a stronger framework for interfaith explorations in bioethics.