Catholic Health Care Ethics: A Manual for Practitioners is the signature book
publication of The National Catholic Bioethics Center. Praised by Edmund Pelligrino as “a comprehensive, up-to-date compendium of Roman Catholic ethics and morals,” the work is far more than a guide to ethics committees – it is a description of the Catholic mind as it seeks to preserve and promote the good of human dignity through its wideranging Catholic health care system.

This second edition has been completely revised by Edward Furton, M.A., Ph.D.,
Director of Publications at The National Catholic Bioethics Center, and builds on the
very successful efforts of Rev. Albert Moraczewski, O.P., and Peter Cataldo, Ph.D., whose original volume is used as a vital reference work by ethics committees, classroom instructors, and all those who have moral questions connected to the practice of medicine.

The volume is divided into six broad sections: Foundational Principles, Process
Topics, Beginning-of-Life Issues, End-of-Life Issues, Selected Clinical Issues, and
Institutional Issues. The more than thirty authors tackle every subject that might confront a working ethics committee. These include such key areas of concern as natural law ordinary and extraordinary means, the principle of double effect; the formation, running, and educating of an ethics committee; the chief moral questions raised by abortion, cloning, stem cell research, contraception, reproductive technologies, induction of labor, and ectopic pregnancy; the determination of death; physician-assisted suicide; palliative care, nutrition and hydration; do-not-resuscitate orders, and advance directives; organ donation, vaccination refusals, genetic medicine, and religious freedom; managed care, issues in cooperation, state mandates, legal considerations, and organizational ethics. An appendix contains key selections or entire documents issued by the magisterium on neuralgic issues in medical ethics from the time of Pope Pius XII to the present day.