Dr. Collins and the Pope
William Blake, Ancient of Days
President Obama’s nomination of Dr. Francis Collins as the new head of the NIH should be unsurprising, given his extraordinary accomplishments in leading the sequencing of the human genome, and fighting for its general accessibility to facilitate research. Nonetheless, according to the New York Times some apparently object to his appointment due to his public religiosity — these critics demean the merits of his appointment by referring to it as a bone for the religious right. To the contrary, it should be affirming that the leader of the nation’s research agenda should so publicly value ethical decision-making, especially in a time when we possess the power to accomplish so much that is both extraordinary and potentially destructive of our intrinsic nature as humans. Whether a public intellectual’s ethical grounding is in religion or a secular philosophy should not become the basis of opposing his leadership; rather, we should celebrate the leader with a firm ethical grounding.
More specifically, religious perspective still has much to contribute to public debate, even when we disagree with that perspective. Pope Benedict XVI’s June 29, 2009 encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, advocates the Church’s social doctrine, which the Pope presents as being interdisciplinary:
It allows faith, theology, metaphysics and science to come together in a collaborative effort in the service of humanity. It is here above all that the Church’s social doctrine displays its dimension of wisdom. Paul VI had seen clearly that among the causes of underdevelopment there is a lack of wisdom and reflection, a lack of thinking capable of formulating a guiding synthesis, for which “a clear vision of all economic, social, cultural and spiritual aspects” is required. The excessive segmentation of knowledge, the rejection of metaphysics by the human sciences, the difficulties encountered by dialogue between science and theology are damaging not only to the development of knowledge, but also to the development of peoples, because these things make it harder to see the integral good of man in its various dimensions.
Erasmus, Hans Holbein the Younger, 1523
While the Church may not always advance solutions that precisely befit our culture and time, the over-arching philosophy is one that but might provide a useful template for emulation in our own society. This is particularly relevant as we contemplate whether to create a health care system that would provide universal access to health care in the United States.
Again, the guideposts demarked in Caritas in Veritate speak to the choices that confront us in this perennial public policy debate. While embracing the value of the market, the Pope suggests that economic activity cannot solve all social problems, thereby requiring that it act in concert with the political community, whose focus should be on achieving the common good. Driven by commitment to charity and justice, the Pope suggests that “Solidarity is first and foremost a sense of responsibility on the part of everyone with regard to everyone, and it cannot therefore be merely delegated to the State.” And so I suggest that religiously-grounded social teaching remains relevant to our contemporary debates. We must pursue a system in which each of us has access to health care, which necessarily requires that, in solidarity for our fellow being, those of greater fortune accept the responsibility for those who do not, giving the gift of an opportunity for the basic good of health.
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