Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli, Pope Pius XII from 1939 to 1958, formulated in a series of addresses to representatives of the medical professions — especially to anesthesiologists and physicians — fundamental positions that decisively shaped the development of Catholic bioethics in the twentieth century. For the book and the underlying personalist ontology, one address is central.
Key Contribution: The Determination of Death as a Medical Task within Moral Limits
In the address to international representatives of anesthesiology of 24 November 1957 (at the request of Dr. Bruno Haid, head of anesthesia at the University Hospital of Innsbruck), Pius XII answers three moral questions concerning resuscitation and the moment of death. His core idea:
- Death must be determined before organ removal.
- The definition of the moment of death is not a matter for the Magisterium but for medicine.
- But the medical determination must take place within the limits of natural morality.
In addition, Pius XII distinguishes between ordinary and extraordinary means of preserving life — a distinction that continues to operate to this day in the medical ethics of the withdrawal of treatment (cf. phases of dying):
“Normally one is held to use only ordinary means — according to circumstances of persons, places, times, and culture — that is to say, means that do not involve any grave burden for oneself or another.”
Significance for the Ontology
Pius XII provides the historical and magisterial root of the precautionary principle, which Benedict XVI made concrete for organ donation in 2008: if the Magisterium leaves the definition of death to medicine — yet binds it to morality — then wherever the medical definition is not scientifically unambiguous, the principle of precaution applies.
In the DCD discussion (cf. donation after circulatory death) this means: the permanence-based determination of death is legitimately formulated from the medical side, but under the precautionary principle it cannot be sufficient where permanence does not suffice, substance-ontologically, for certain death.
Significance for the Book
The book takes up Pius XII not primarily as a theologian or politician, but as the voice that formulated the Catholic position on bioethics before the brain-death debate (UDDA 1980, Harvard criteria 1968). His model — medical freedom of definition within moral limits — is the template for the personalist ontology of the present.
Sources
Primary sources
- Pius XII (1957): Le Dr. Bruno Haid — address to an international congress of anesthesiologists, 24 November 1957. Acta Apostolicae Sedis 49 (1957): 1027–1033. Original text in French; German translation in Herders Theologisches Taschenlexikon and in the acts of the Pontificium Consilium pro Operatoribus Sanitatis.
- Pius XII (1957): The Prolongation of Life: An Address to an International Congress of Anesthesiologists, November 24, 1957. English translation in: The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 9(2) (2009): 327–332. https://www.pdcnet.org/ncbq/content/ncbq_2009_0009_0002_0327_0332
- Pius XII (1957): Anesthesia: Three Moral Questions — An Address of Pope Pius XII to a Symposium of the Italian Society of Anesthesiology, 24 February 1957 — separate, earlier address on analgesia (not the resuscitation address of 24 November 1957). English translation in: The Pope Speaks 4 (1957). Georgetown University Library Repository. https://repository.library.georgetown.edu/handle/10822/762162
Secondary literature
- Cronin, Daniel A. (1958): The Moral Law in Regard to the Ordinary and Extraordinary Means of Conserving Life. Diss. Pontificia Università Gregoriana, Rome. The standard work on Pius’s ordinary/extraordinary distinction. New edition: Cronin, Daniel A. (2011/2012): Ordinary and Extraordinary Means of Conserving Life: Fiftieth Anniversary Issue. With a foreword by Marie Hilliard. Philadelphia: National Catholic Bioethics Center.
- Henke, Donald E. (2005): A History of Ordinary and Extraordinary Means. The National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 5(3): 555–575. — Historical reconstruction of the distinction with Pius XII as the key figure.