Argumentative Essay On Bioenhancements

A famous Catholic televangelist, Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, once said that “there are millions of people who hate what they wrongly to believe to be the Catholic Church,” and in in a world where bioenhancements are becoming a promising aspect of science and technology due to the rapid improvements of technology within the last decade, I believe bioenhancements will soon be an ethical issue in society and that the Catholic Church teaching of bioenhancements should be addressed and clarified. In themselves, bioenhancements combine our human biology with technology, creating a human machine, and some people may disagree with this integration of technology and our human nature. Human nature is a topic often discussed in bioethics, often in a religious
point of view as that is one view debated highly among the general public. When previous bioethical debates in history led to societal discord, the Catholic Church had to support its beliefs through teachings. The public and its leaders began then to draw conclusions about the Church’s teaching, and were taken aback when the teaching was countercultural. However, these views that society holds for Church teaching are often misconstrued; people simply either do not fully understand Church teaching or falsely believe the Church believes in one thing and not another.
I find it only right for society and the Church to formulate a teaching on bioenhancements before the technology comes to full fruition and to assist people in articulating why the Church believes it. Previous teachings of the Church can be used in the formation of this Church doctrine, such as the instructions on the dignity of human life, humans being made in the image and likeness of God and ones concerning human fallenness and finitude. With this in mind, I argue in this essay that the Catholic Church would generally be against bioenhancements in its teaching, which would concern the dignity of the human person, human finitude and fallenness, and humans being created in the image and likeness of God (imago dei). It is arguable, however, in the subject of bioethics that dignity is crucial to Catholic teaching. An important addition in this argument is to note the contrast between therapy and enhancements through defining and explaining each in terms of Church teaching. Bioenhancements attempt to reject the Catholic beliefs of dignity in the imago dei, and our finitude and fallenness, and for this reason bioenhancement technologies would be generally unacceptable in the Church except for the possibilities of the technology being used in the future to benefit
Catholic spirituality and the mission of the Church while having technological limitations in order to maintain and flourish peace in society. The teaching of the dignity of life is rooted in the first chapter of Genesis, the first chapter of the Bible, verse twenty-seven, which says that God created mankind in His image and likeness, otherwise known in the Church as imago dei (Genesis 1:27 in the New American Standard Bible). Now, being made in the image and likeness of God does not mean that we are made to look like Him in our physical attributes. Rather, it means that we are created uniquely, capable of reasoning and thinking whereas animals are only capable of acting on instinct, which gives us a worthiness of existence and purpose. As explained by Cardinal William Levada in his Instruction Dignitas Personae on Certain Bioethical Questions, the human nature is “received and respected by faith…purified, elevated and perfected…[and through] the mystery of the Incarnation, the Son of God confirmed the dignity of the body and soul which constitute the human being. Christ did not disdain human bodiless, but instead fully disclosed its meaning and value [by becoming human]” (par. 16). Not to mention, the Catholic Church humans also have free will to aim knowing, loving and serving God through our actions and thoughts. Other creation was made subject to humans, and humans were made for God. Our dominion of reason over all creation is mainly focused on responsibility to cultivate, create, and protect life, both the lives of creation and of our human selves. In acting with dominion over creation, humans are the image of God and sovereignty over the earth.