Last Sunday this newspaper published an interview with medical doctor and bioethicist Professor Pierre Mallia on the current euthanasia debate in Malta. One particular point drew my attention.

Mallia is on record to have claimed that there is no place for religion in the debate and that the Church ought to refrain from “interfering” in these issues. One wonders why this fear.

Many people would have come across the work of Jürgen Habermas, considered to be the “most prominent social and political theorist of our age”. For those who are not familiar with this German philosopher, despite being a non-believer himself (he famously describes himself as “tone-deaf to religion”), he is nonetheless a strong believer in the important contribution that religion offers to the public sphere.

For Habermas, religious citizens have a duty to sound their views while accepting that the state is neutral. They must concede, therefore, that only non-religious reasons can be considered for policies in the state.

In so doing, all views are taken seriously by citizens, religious and non-religious alike, because the possibility of truth, whatever its source, can never be denied from the outset.

As one author rightly puts it, people who put forward the charge that there is no place for religion in bioethical issues want to try and convince us that religion is concerned only with “status of life” issues. Religion, however, brings much more than this to the table. In its teaching, the Catholic Church has a lot to say about such important issues that intersect with bioethics as the economics of development, social solidarity and protection of the vulnerable.

Silencing these issues would severely impoverish public discourse.

If the past is anything to go by, an embarrassing litany of events can be invoked for which religion has been responsible throughout the history of humanity. Nonetheless, one cannot overlook the fact that Christianity has also been a fearless promoter of social justice and human rights as the past 50 years or so clearly indicate.

I shall leave the last word to Lisa Cahill, a Catholic feminist and ethicist working in the US. “No politician, philosopher or ‘humanist’” she affirms, “marches into the contest armed only with the sharp sword of reason stripped naked of the existence of any moral culture however he or she might wish that clothing to be.”

I sincerely hope for a richer and broader debate in which all voices are heard.

 

Rev. Dr Carlo Calleja is a lecturer with the Department of Moral Theology, University of Malta