The Catholic Standard and Times

National Catholic Bioethics Center dedicates library to founder

By Susan Brinkmann
CS&T Correspondent

“We’ve got a big job to do, and I ask you from the heart to really to get out and work. What’s at stake here is nothing less than the truth of the human person.”

Those impassioned words were spoken by Robert C. Morlino, Bishop of Madison, Wis., at the Nov. 30 dedication of the library of the National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC) on Drexel Road in Philadelphia.

As chairman of the board of the NCBC, the Bishop was on hand to honor its founder, Father Albert Moraczewski, O.P., after whom the library has been named.

Bishop Morlino praised Father Moraczewski, and the work the Center has been doing to promote the truths the Church teaches.

“The whole point of our future in the United States is to address our culture on issues of human life, on the dignity of human life, the dignity of the human person,” Bishop Morlino said, “and to address our culture on the importance of the dignity of marriage, and about the truth of the natural law.”

Cardinal Justin Rigali, who is a member of the NCBC, echoed those sentiments when he asked Catholics to “do everything you possibly can to promote the cause of human life — human dignity — of the human person.”
The Cardinal’s remarks were followed by a prayer of dedication, which was joined by members of the Center’s staff, supporters, and both current and past board members, including Bishop Donald W. Wuerl of Pittsburgh and Monsignor James T. McDonough, Regional Vicar of Chester County.

Father Moraczewski, 85, was present for the ceremonies; he remains fully engaged in the Center he founded 35 years ago, which was then known as the Pope John XXIII Medical Moral Research and Education Center, in St. Louis, Mo.

A former pharmacology professor at Baylor Medical School, Father Moraczewski opened the Center with a grant from the Catholic Hospital Association. His aim was to develop a think-tank of scholars who would reflect on the ethical implications of new developments in science and medicine, and form responses from the moral tradition of the Catholic Church.

“Father Albert has received the highest distinction and honor from the Dominican Order in being named a master of theology,” said NCBC president John Haas. “From an order that invokes St. Thomas Aquinas, to be named a master of theology is a remarkable achievement.”

Haas presented Father Moraczewski with a leather-bound book containing the signatures of each person who contributed financially to founding the library — names that include scholars and bishops from throughout the country.
Haas also read aloud a personal letter written for the occasion by the master general of the Dominicans, Father Carlos Azpiroz Costa, who described the Center as “a fruit of the genial intuition, of the untiring service and devotion, of Father Moraczewski.”

Father Moraczewski, who now lives in Houston, attends NCBC ethicist meetings by phone.

“He told me he thinks he has to retire from full, active involvement in the Center,” Haas said. But then he cautioned the crowd not to get the mistaken idea that Father Moraczewski wants to slow down: “It’s because he wants to write a book.”

Standing beneath a life-sized portrait of him that was painted by James Seigler, a fellow parishioner at Holy Rosary Parish in Houston, Father Moraczewski acknowledged a lifelong passion for books.

“I love books,” he said. “Books have been an integral part of life, almost since I was born. I was told I was born with a book in my hand, but that was a problem for my mother.”

Reflecting on the honor of having the library named for him, he said: “There’s something about books that cannot be matched by the Internet, or publications that can be downloaded. They don’t have the same feeling, the same texture, the same touch, as handling a book.”

But most important, Father Moraczewski said, is the fact that behind every book there is a human being — a man or a woman who invested much time and effort into producing something for public consumption.

“When I see the books on the shelf, I don’t just see books. I see the people behind them,” he said. “And I pray that everyone who uses this library, who picks up one of these books to read, will be blessed by God and given a deeper understanding, a true wisdom, and a great peace of knowing the truth.”

The library that now bears his name is one that any book-lover would be proud of. The NCBC collection is one of the most extensive Catholic bioethics libraries in the country, if not the world.

“Everything published in bioethics we try to get onto these shelves,” said Edward J. Furton, Director of Publications at the Center and the editor of the NCBC’s National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly.

“But our library not only has books in favor of Christianity. The other side is also present here,” Furton said. “We have many books that are antithetical to the Catholic position, but we feel it’s important to have [them] because we need to know what people are saying from all perspectives.”

The main library has several thousand volumes, and an annex contains every major periodical in bioethics that is published in the world today. U.S. publications include the American Journal of Law and Medicine, the Linacre Quarterly, the New England Journal of Medicine, Zygon, and Christian Bioethics. European titles include Bishop Ellio Sgreccia’s Medicina e Morale, and the German periodical Imago Hominis, among many others.

The Center’s library is available for use by any serious student, Dr. Furton said.

The work done within the stately, Drexel Road mansion is disseminated to every corner of the globe. In addition to offering seminars, conferences, congresses and speakers for outside engagements, the Center has also hosted for the last 30 years an annual bishops meeting, when the prelates reflect on bioethical issues. The conference also draws bishops from Canada, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

More recently, the Center began a certification program in bioethics for health care professionals — a yearlong, Web-based program that teaches how to follow the Catholic moral tradition in health care.

The Center’s scholars include the well-known Peter Cataldo as its director of research, and Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk as director of education; a neuroscientist, he has given 100 lectures in the last year.

“Pope Benedict XVI, as Cardinal Ratzinger, called upon the Pope John Center some years back for a survey of theologians in the United States, to offer their comments on nutrition and hydration,” said Monsignor McDonough, who is a former board member. “We were able to send that over to then-Cardinal Ratzinger. My personal thought was that this was quite an honor — to receive that kind of attention from Cardinal Ratzinger.”

Catholic bioethics is not religion disguised as science. It’s the real thing.

“Very often, the Catholic Church is presented as being behind the times,” Haas said. “But the truth of the matter is that, more often than not, the Catholic Church is at the cutting edge.”

For more information about the work and publications of the NCBC, visit its Web site at www.ncbcenter.org

Contact Susan Brinkmann at fiat723@aol.com or (215) 965-4615