Description
Faithful at once to the tradition of Catholic social teachings and to the biblical mandate of liberation, Lisa Cahill brings the 'preferential option for the poor' to bear on public discourse about bioethics. The resulting book enriches reflection about bioethics by its attentiveness to global issues of justice, to the social conditions which form and limit decisions, and to the dominant cultural narratives of liberal individualism, scientific progress, and the market. Cahill helps her readers, moreover, not only to think in new ways about some of the issues in bioethics but also to act more compassionately. If more of us who are interested in theological bioethics were to follow her call to engagement and to justice, there might really be change. -- Allen Verhey, professor of Christian Ethics, The Divinity School, Duke University Lisa Sowle Cahill has given us a first-class text on bioethics that proposes an engagement of theology in public bioethics. For anyone who wants a comprehensive social analysis of bioethical issues that combines the theological and the ethical, this is certainly the book to read. It will make an excellent text for scholars and the classroom. -- James J. Walter, Austin and Ann O'Malley Professor of Bioethics and chair, the Bioethics Institute, Loyola Marymount University Cahill promises-and delivers, Theological Bioethics, a new social and engaged ethics. Not every reader will agree that theological bioethics must move beyond critical reflection, normative judgments, and theoretical accounts to 'taking part in a global social network of mobilization for change.' But no thoughtful reader will be allowed to rest comfortably in the status quo. This carefully researched text issues a serious challenge to use theological bioethics to alleviate the social conditions that create these problems. -- Carol Taylor, director of the Center for Clinical Bioethics, Georgetown University In Theological Bioethics, Lisa Sowle Cahill gives us an excellent, essential book in which she demonstrates compellingly the vital role of an authentic progressive theological voice in contemporary bioethics. With solid theoretical grounding and a rich panoply of practical applications for enduring controversies, Cahill convincingly argues for a participatory theology that keeps social justice, the common good, and the 'achingly latent' transcendent aspects of biomedicine at the fore. -- Margaret E. Mohrmann, MD, PhD, associate professor of pediatrics and religious studies, University of Virginia
About the Author
Lisa Sowle Cahill is the J. Donald Monan Professor of Theology at Boston College. A former president of the Society of Christian Ethics and the Catholic Theological Society of America, she is the author of Sex, Gender, and Christian Ethics; Family: A Christian Social Perspective; 'Love Your Enemies': Discipleship, Pacifism, and Just War Theory, and other books.
Reviews
Cahill is to be commended for seeing the critical need for theological bioethics. Her argument, in its substance and its scope, makes eminent sense. America Covers considerable ground and includes theoretical and practical positions sure to engage readers who operate from diverse disciplines and vantage points. Cahill writes with the care and clarity so characteristic of her work, offering substantive scholarship in accessible prose. The volume justly will become a standard text in graduate and seminary classrooms, and portions may be used in upper-level and undergraduate courses. Journal of Religion Offers a vision and a voice that enriches the field of bioethics and invites the reader to take specific practical steps: actions that will eventually become true democratic activism, both locally and globally. The Way A comprehensive and forceful vision of theological bioethics that goes beyond, without discrediting, traditional approaches to standard beginning and end-of-life issues that often characterize theological engagement with bioethics. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly
Awards
Winner of Catholic Press Association Book Award for Theology and Catholic Press Association, Theology (United States) and Catholic Press Association, Theology 6 (United States) and Catholic Press Association Book Award for Theology 6 (United States).
Book Information
ISBN 9781589010758
Author Lisa Sowle Cahill
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint Georgetown University Press
Publisher Georgetown University Press
Weight(grams) 454g