A Must Read for Healthcare Professionals: The Catholic Bishops’ Updated Directives
Tim Millea, M.D.
As we start a new year, and the issues we continue to face in the medical field continue to cause confusion and anxiety, we have the wisdom and guidance of the Church to help us discern the path forward. Thankfully, this past November, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) approved and published the seventh edition of the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (ERDs). We wish to ensure all our members and allied health care professionals are aware of the important updates covered in the latest edition and encourage you to read the ERDs.
Understanding the dramatic changes taking place in health care, the Bishops’ newest edition reaffirms “the ethical standards of behavior in health care that flow from the Church’s teaching about the dignity of the human person” and “provide authoritative guidance on certain moral issues that face Catholic health care today.”
Of particular importance in the new ERDs is the clear statement that sex reassignment interventions are not consistent with Catholic teaching and prohibit any methods that ignore the biological facts of a person’s existence, a stance CMA has been promoting for some time now. In addition, this new edition discusses many topics of current relevance, including the freezing of human embryos, the importance of palliative care, and the hastening of death with the voluntary cessation of eating and drinking.
This new document’s citations of Dignitas Infinita (Declaration on Human Dignity), released by the Vatican in 2024, emphasize the importance of Catholic principles, which prioritizes the inherent dignity of the individual as a child of God.
The Bishops, as well as their staff and invited experts in moral and ethical health care, worked with prayerful commitment and thoughtfulness over more than two years to produce this exceptionally important document for today’s medical environment. The updates in this new edition are critically important given the technological, cultural, and social challenges we currently face.
Because the CMA is committed to providing Christ-centered care to all persons we encounter, regardless of their race, religion, politics, sexual orientation, or any other factor, this new edition of the ERDs will serve as additional support and encouragement in our efforts. Every patient we see is a child of God that deserves respect and compassion from those of us who care for them and these directs serve as a guide to fulfill our mission to imitate Jesus Christ in the practice of medicine.
Dr. Timothy Millea is the chairman of the Health Care Policy Committee. He is also a CMA (USA) board member-at-large, Iowa state director, and president of the St. Thomas Aquinas Guild of the Quad Cities.
