The website of an ethics program at Santa Clara University, a Jesuit institution, links to a pro-assisted suicide website as well as articles advocating positions contrary to Catholic moral teaching.
Under the banner “Bioethics,” the Jesuit institution’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics has a section called “End of Life Ethics,” in which it links to a pro-assisted suicide website called the Compassion in Dying Federation.
The Markkula Center describes the Federation site with clear awareness of its purpose: “Site provides information regarding end-of-life choices with advocacy for assisted death. Also includes a good list of site links.”
Elsewhere on the University’s website, Mike Meyer, then-chair of Santa Clara University’s philosophy department and a faculty member with the Markkula Center, is quoted saying:
…Suicide at the end of life might well be connected to a person’s sense of her dignity,while suicide at other times is altogether less likely to be a genuine issue of dignity.
The site also includes an essay by current philosophy professor Lawrence Nelson, who argues against the California Supreme Court’s ruling protecting the life of Robert Wendland from his wife, who sought to remove his feeding tube after an auto accident:
This group of judges got it wrong. Close family members should presumptively be the ones who decide when it is right to forgo treatment of their incompetent relative. As the New Jersey Supreme Court stated when strangers opposed a family’s decision to stop the tube feeding of their permanently unconscious relative, "Our common human experience informs us that family members…provide for the patient’s comfort, care, and best interests…, and [it is] they who treat the patient as a person, rather than a symbol of a cause."
Both Nelson and Meyer were exposed in a 2011 Crisis Magazine article by Cardinal Newman Society president Patrick Reilly. The article reads in part:
Fighting a challenge from the mother of Robert Wendland — who was severely disabled in a car accident in 1993 —Lawrence Nelson failed to convince the California Supreme Court to permit the removal of Wendland’s feeding tube. Wendland’s mother, Florence, presented evidence that Robert was not in a “persistent vegetative state” but could occasionally make limited movements, like writing the letter R. Nelson has since argued that “this was no life for Robert, no life he would ever want. The only experiences he seemed to have were negative.”
Not surprisingly, Nelson has also advocated the legalization of assisted suicide. In 1996, he joined an
amicus brief in
Vacco v. Quill and
Washington v. Glucksberg, arguing that “the right of competent, dying patients to physician-assisted suicide is a negative right to be free from state interference.”
At Santa Clara University, Nelson has continued to work on end-of-life issues. In a
Hastings Center Report
article this year with significant application to the assisted-suicide debate, Nelson and co-author Brendan Ashby argue that doctors should have the freedom to decide whether they wish to participate in lethal injections for criminals who are condemned to death — a practice opposed by leading medical associations because it violates the mandate to heal and do no harm.
Nelson also delves into other issues in opposition to Catholic teaching. In a
2005 article on embryonic stem cell research for
The American Journal of Bioethics, Nelson and fellow Santa Clara professor Michael Meyer argue for “the intermediate moral status of embryos” between the “extreme views” of full moral status and none at all. In 2003, the Markkula Center provided Nelson a grant to develop “a theory of constitutional personhood.” Perhaps resulting from that work, Nelson’s
2008 paper, “Of Persons and Prenatal Humans,” argues that the dubious personhood of “unborn humans”means that abortion must be protected by the U.S. Constitution:
Along with these links and articles that conflict with Catholic teaching, Santa Clara’s website also links to the Christian Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity as well as many articles explaining the Church’s view on such matters.
The website explains this contradiction: “The Markkula Center for Applied Ethics does not advocate particular positions but seeks to encourage dialogue on the ethical dimensions of current issues.” But for Catholics, these are fundamental moral issues on which Catholic teachings require assent.
Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a shock that the Markkula Center doesn’t put Catholic teaching foremost, as a number of people on the Center’s advisory board have long standing opposition to key Catholic teachings.
Carol Mayer Marshall is on the advisory board of the ethics center. According to her bio on the university’s website, Marshall served on the board of NARAL (Chair of Leadership Committee) and the Commonwealth Club Program Committee to local and State Planned Parenthood.
Charles Geschke, who is also on Markkula’s board, reportedly helped establish the “Silicon Valley Leaders Say No on Proposition 8” and purchased a full-page ad in the San Jose Mercury News opposing the 2008 California referendum to define marriage as between one man and one woman. Geschke reportedly donated $5,000 toward the ad and was described as honorary co-chair of the group.
And while addressing the U.S. bishops conference in 1998 on the topic of technology, Geschke reportedly veered wildly off topic to lecture his audience saying, “We as a religion have cut ourselves off from 50 percent of the population. I would never do that in running my business. As a Catholic, I want to say this to the hierarchy – make women much more essential in what you do. It will be essential as we enter the 21st century.” While the statement only hinted at Catholic teaching on women’s ordination, Geschke made his dissent clear and public during his subsequent interview with the National Catholic Reporter. Asked if he was speaking about female priests, Geschke reportedly said, “Absolutely. I think women should have a coequal status in the hierarchy of the Church with men.”
John Smedley, president of Online Sony Entertainment, is on the Markkula Center’s advisory board. Just last week he tweeted his support for the Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriage, saying, “good on you SCOTUS. Well 5 of you anyways. Equality for all. very happy.”
And just last month, the Markkula Center announced Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J., of Georgetown University’s Woodstock Theological Center as a “Distinguished Visiting Scholar.”
Reese, the former editor of America magazine, in recent years has reportedly said that the bishops should be open to Obamacare because “contraception is a lot cheaper than live births, especially if the live births are problematic.”
Originally published by Catholic Education Daily of the Cardinal Newman Society on July 3rd, 2013.
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