| Summary: | Today, bioethical themes are no longer the exclusive patrimony of university classrooms. Everyone is talking about them; "secular" and "catholics" alike. Catholics are often accused of imposing a "confessional" point of view. This article wishes to clarify this point given its importance in themes regarding the life and death of man, such as: artificial fecundation, abortion, cloning, brain death, organ transplants, and euthanasia. The article is based on a philosophical reflection starting with anthropological considerations. The extensive number of themes does not allow taking all of them into consideration. Thus the article adheres to the following outline: 1. Establish the epistemological bases for a rational discourse based on universal premises, with particular reference to artificial fecundation and the nature of human sexuality. 2. Analize the "human nature" condition of the embryo, of the physically and mentally disabled, of the terminally ill, and their status as "human persons"; this discourse is founded on the ontological status of the human body. 3. Present the value of the human body as a psycho-biological unity, which constitutes man's substantial unity. 4. We call this psycho-biological unity "person": "corpore et anima unus"; an individual subject with a rational nature, with its own singularity and oneness. The person has an absolute value, therefore cloning, even for "therapeutic reasons", is contrary to its ontological status. 5. From the consideration that a "person is", while a "personality becomes", we can explain how the person develops and matures his biological and spiritual capacities, without incurring changes in his ontological status. 6. The psycho-biological unity of the human person (corpore et anima unus) is at the basis of death in man, a unique reality. In analysing "human death" we should avoid two reductions: a biological reduction which curtails death to physical-biological processes and events (medical diagnosis of brain death), and a spiritual reduction which insists on man's spirituality and doesn't consider his incarnate reality. In this context the problems of brain death, organ transplants and euthanasia manifest this human drama and the delicacy of ethical judgement.
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