CATHOLIC MEDICAL SCHOOLS AND TRAINING ACCORDING TO CONSCIENCE
+Msgr Giuseppe Pittau, SJ, Secretary of the Congregation for Catholic Education

Professor Gian Luigi Gigli, President of the World Federation of Catholic Medical Associations, Distinguished Members of the International Meeting of Catholic Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

It is a great pleasure and honour to have been invited to address this audience on “The Fundamental Human Right to Practice and be Trained according to Conscience”.

On behalf of the Congregation for Catholic Education and in my personal name I would like to thank and congratulate the organizers for having convened such an important international conference on the right of professional formation and practice according to conscience for obstetricians and gynaecologists. The Congregation for Catholic Education is deeply concerned for and actively involved in defending the freedom of education. Especially in the case of the professional formation and training of obstetricians and gynaecologists this freedom is of vital importance, because this right is directly connected with the right to respect and defend the fundamental value of life of all human beings from the moment of conception.

While the world has made extraordinary progress in the field of medical science and tecnology, with great sadness we must also acknowledge that such progress has often been used not to save and strengthen life, but to destroy it from the first beginning, against the fundamental oath of the medical profession.

As Pope John Paul II has often stated, today a culture of death has imposed its principles. Such a culture is based on an antilife philosophy which denies the rights of the weakest and most defenceless human beings.

What can we do? I work at the Congregation for Catholic Education, I will therefore restrict my remarks to some aspects of the formation process. First of all, the seminarians and the students of Catholic schools and universities should receive in their studies of philosophy and theology courses of prolife orientation, preparing them to explain in an understandable and attractive way the prolife arguments. Also the young people preparing themselves for marriage should receive a sound Christian instruction on the meaning and value of life and the consequences of abortion.

But it is especially through the Catholic Faculties of medicine that we can render an important service in forming a “culture of life” and change the prevailing orientations.

There are in the world some forty Catholic Medical Schools : nine in North America, fifteen in Latin America, eight in Europe and eight in Asia. The faculties of medicine of Leuven and of Louvain-la-Neuve go back to 1425 and they are the oldest Catholic Universities and medical schools which since their foundation have been Catholic and they still remain Catholic.

I firmly believe that these forty Catholic schools should be at the same time outstanding medical schools where research, teaching and practice reach the highest academic level and at the same time the Catholic identity is faithfully preserved, strengthened and made public and visible. For Catholic universities and this is also true for Catholic Medical Faculties the governing orientations and norms are found in the Apostolic Constitution Ex Corde Ecclesiae of August 15, 1990. In this Constitution the fundamental principles of the relationship between the Church and the higher education institutions are clearly stated and declared. In the special case of Catholic Medical Schools also the encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae should become the magna charta to guide research, practice, teaching, training, hiring and the various services we render in a medical school and a university hospital.

I would recommend that a network of Catholic Medical Schools should be formed to exchange research results and information about new practices according to the Church’s Magisterium, and to offer avenues for solid Catholic formation in training and practice. The social pressure to conform one’s way of thinking and practicing is enormous. There is ostracism in scholarly circles. One is accused of bigotry and of being out of touch with advanced research. If one is faithful to one’s own conscience, he or she will have to suffer also economically. It is part of our mission, part of the fundamental charter of our Christian community. This charter is found in the Beatitudes “Blessed are those who suffer in the name of Justice”.