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BOOK REVIEWS 145 contemplation. In all, this is a worthwhile volume that, despite its omissions, will repay close reading. THOMAS G. GUARINO Seton Hall University South Orange, New Jersey Biomedicine and Beatitude: An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics. By NICANOR AUSTRIACO. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2011. Pp. 336. $17.00 (paper). ISBN: 978-0-8132-1882-3. Some of us know that we can expect that someone who is a Thomist, a priest with extensive pastoral experience (including hospital work), a trained scientist, and a teacher of undergraduates, graduate students, and parishioners would write a terrific book on bioethics. Our expectations are amply satisfied in Nicanor Pier Giorgio Austriaco’s Biomedicine and Beatitude: An Introduction to Catholic Bioethics. Austriaco uses his multiple talents, impressive education, and diversified experience to wonderful effect as he presents a thoroughly up-to-date treatment of bioethics, wherein he follows closely Veritatis Splendor and the Catechism. He is also greatly influenced by the marvelous resituating of Catholic moral theology by his Dominican confrere Servais Pinckaers. Indeed, Pinckaers’s thought was the directing force behind Veritatis Splendor and the Catechism. In my view, Biomedicine and Beatitude is now the finest general book on Catholic bioethics available. Pinckaers, a premier Aristotelian Thomist, rightly insisted that virtue is the key principle of ethics: the most important achievement of the ethical life is the character created by the agent’s free choices, for that character (through the graces of redemption, of course) makes it possible for man to achieve his ultimate end, which is beatitude. Austriaco also rightly moves specifically Christian concerns to the forefront in a discipline that has been too often dominated by a concern for a rational knowledge of ethical principles. Presentations on prayer, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and the meaning of suffering, for instance, are too often absent or tacked onto the end of treatments of Catholic bioethics. It is certainly refreshing to find them included at the outset of Austriaco’s book and appropriately referenced throughout. Biomedicine and Beatitude is not an apologetical work but a closely reasoned presentation of the best Catholic thinking on bioethical issues. Austriaco does a first-rate job of treating various bioethical issues; he efficiently responds to the most powerful arguments against his position and gives forcefully persuasive counter arguments, utilizing science and philosophy, with appropriate appeal to authoritative Church teaching. He deals well with the immense body of literature on bioethics by providing an impressive sampling of articles from a wide variety of sources and 146 BOOK REVIEWS disciplines. I especially appreciate that he is clear about when there is no definitive Church teaching on issues, such as the adoption of embryos or brain death; he clearly and fairly presents divergent views as he defends his own position. Austriaco’s chapter “Bioethics and the Clinical Encounter” is an unusual one to find in a bioethics text and a very valuable one. Here he includes a discussion of the role of the priest in the clinical situation. He also has a marvelous discussion of illness as an opportunity for the patient to grow in the virtues. He beautifully supplements the list of virtues that some scholars have proposed as necessary for patients with the Christian virtues of faith, hope, and charity as applicable to the demands of being a patient. He mentions the need for health-care professionals to be docile to the teachings of the Church and could have said this about patients as well. Very welcome is his example of a prayer suitable for health-care professionals. Also of great value is his concluding chapter, “Catholic Bioethics in a Pluralistic Society.” Here Austriaco gives an excellent analysis of the challenges that face Catholic bioethicists when trying to convey the importance of Christian values to a culture that esteems autonomy over truth, indeed, that denies the existence of objective truth. I would like to have seen some treatment of the tensions among Catholic moralists. The heyday of proportionalism is blessedly over but its influence is still widespread, and readers need to know that not all who wear the mantle of “Catholic bioethicist” are trustworthy. I intend to use Austriaco’s book when...

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