Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Vatican City (Fides Service) - ‘Quality of life and ethics of health’ is the theme chosen for the annual general assembly of the Pontifical Academy for Life in the Vatican 21-23 February 2005 at the New Synod Hall, presented yesterday morning at the Holy See Press Room.
The assembly was presented by Archbishop Elio Sgreccia, for the first time as acting President of the Pontifical Academy for Life, PAV and three Academy members Dr. Manfred Lütz, psychiatrist, Prof. Father Maurizio Faggioni, theologian, moralist and Dr. Jean-Marie Le Mené, magistrate.
The intervention was opened by Archbishop Sgreccia who recalled the aims of the Conference: “to discuss the concepts of ‘quality of life’ ‘quality of health’, highly topical and pregnant concepts today. “The exact meaning ‘quality of life’ is still unclear”, said the President of PAV. It is not always clear whether the parameters are medical-health, socio-economic or ecological. Consequently the term ‘quality of life’ assumes a character opposite to that of the ‘sacredness of life’: in substance the quality is made absolute and the sacredness relative. Health is an important resource for man and although the ultimate good of the person it is a most important good which demands the moral duty to protect, sustain and recuperate it”.
Dr Lutz insisted on the concept “religion of health”, the new vision today according to which “not God but health, individual health, is the unquestioned ‘maximum good. Salvation and redemption are no longer expected in ‘the next world’, but here and now. Health, the psychiatrist declared, is seen today as a product which can be produced, but health techniques must never be considered techniques of salvation. This new religion, Lutz concluded, leads man to lose himself in the battle against death.”
Franciscan theologian Father Maurizio Faggioni concluded the presentation underlining the fact that “if it is true that health is harmony and integration of physical, psychic and spiritual energies, then to promote the health of an individual means to help the person to live life in the best possible manner starting from psychic-physical conditions. The right to health is a right which is native to the person and it demands neither fruition of standardised life qualities nor the possibility to achieve them. Every person needs help to achieve harmony and balance in their own particular existential situation because the right the health is not limited to those who enjoy set living standards, but it derives from the right to life, a right rooted in every human person as the subject of a life”. (AP) (18/2/2005 Agenzia Fides; Righe:38 Parole:494)
