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Sarah Masters reviews the audio CD series

Mere Christianity

Mere Christianity, read by Geoffrey Howard, is adapted from C.S. Lewis’s BBC radio chats, which were broadcast midway through World War II while he was a literary professor at Oxford.

Eventually, the BBC broadcast transcripts appeared in book form and became what many consider to be the most popular of Lewis’s nonfiction works. In this audio series, the man considered by many to be the most influential Christian writer of his day sets out to “explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times.”

Mere Christianity in particular is well-suited to an audio format because the text was originally written in conversational style for radio. The title Mere Christianity indicates the intention of Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), an Anglican, to describe common ground among Christians of different denominations and, at the beginning of the series, Lewis describes as well the common ground of all religions, instructive for chaplains ministering to individuals of different faiths.

C.S. Lewis’s major contributions to literary criticism, children’s literature, fantasy literature and popular theology include more than thirty books, among them The Chronicles of Narnia series, Out of the Silent Planet, The Four Loves, and The Screwtape Letters.

Completed: 1952
Running Time: 6 Hours/5 CDs
Distributor: Harper Audio

If you are interested in purchasing this 5-CD set, you can do so at www.hartleyfoundation.org. Just click on “Sages of Our Age” on the homepage for more information. The cost of the audio series is $29.95 for 5 CDs.

Sarah Masters is the Managing Director of the Hartley Film Foundation, a non-profit foundation dedicated to cultivation, support, production and distribution of the best documentaries and audio meditations on world religions, spirituality, ethics and well-being.

Book Review

Chaplain Jane Mather reviews

Contemporary Catholic Health Care Ethics

Not only does this volume provide a thorough study of current Roman Catholic healthcare ethics, it does so in contrast to secular ethics, highlighting their similarities, differences and interrelationship. An easy read, Kelly’s text provides examples necessary to grasp the highly theoretical and nuanced layers of meaning-laden and overlapping principles used in ethics and ethical decision making. Readers will gain an overall grasp of ethical principles and their application to ethical decision making and the theological (and, by contrast, philosophical and secular) basis for both. It is a must read for anyone providing patient care. While intended to have special relevance for Catholic ethical issues, this work explicates ethics so thoroughly as to provide general relevance.

Ethics, Kelly points out, is both theoretical and applied. He has divided his work into three parts: 1) the theological and theoretical bases for ethics, 2) the various methods used to arrive at ethical decisions and 3) the application of ethics in real time to contemporary healthcare issues. All of these are famed in terms of Catholic moral teaching and secular practice. The three parts build on one another, but each chapter in each section can be taken as an independent resource. This relationship of the parts to the whole makes the book a great desktop resource for chaplains, social workers, physicians and ethicists serving in acute or long term healthcare, either as members of an ethics committee (there’s a whole chapter dealing with the role of ethics committees) or compassionate, well-informed healthcare decision facilitators.

Kelly’s mission is stated in the introduction as “…hoping that this book might serve as a textbook for students and a resource for practitioners.” Building on history and tradition, Kelly takes the reader – neophyte or veteran – on a journey from early teachings on Catholic moral theology through the Judeo-Christian traditions regarding care of the sick past philosophical theories regarding choice and morality right up into today’s healthcare with all of its ambiguities, contradictions and differences with and exceptions to the religious roots from which it sprung. In an effort to put ethics as principle and practice into context for every reader and practitioner, Mr. Kelly has done a masterful job of separating and subsequently reweaving the strands of history, theology, technology and practice that currently comprise the fabric of our healthcare environment.

The word Catholic in the title rightly predicts Mr. Kelly’s especial attention to those moral and religious issues unique to the Roman Catholic tradition. He gives careful explication to the foundation for and application to ethical practice with regard to stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, birth control, withholding and withdrawing life support, artificial nutrition and hydration and related subjects frequently debated and just as frequently misunderstood or misappropriated. Kelly’s application of foundational Catholic moral teachings to contemporary health care topics comes across as both ethically principled and hermeneutically sound.

Contemporary Catholic Health Care Ethics is successful as both textbook and resource, and will prove faithful to its users, whether as “pickup” guide, refresher course or first introduction to the subject of health care ethics in today’s medical arena. The title may well have read catholic with a small “c” – and maybe that’s what was intended.

Kelly, David F. Contemporary Catholic Health Care Ethics, Georgetown University Press (November 30, 2004) pp 336.

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