Post-Modern Contradictions
Ethics and World Religions: Cross-Cultural Case Studies.
Edited by Regina Wentzel Wolfe and Christine E. Gudorf.
Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1999. 439pp. $25.00 (paper).

This book illustrates the strengths and contradictions of post-modern ethics. Presenting a controversial narrative about Eastern and Western religions, it also claims that post-modernity renders "grand narratives" untenable. This incoherent approach detracts from an otherwise well-conceived project.

To introduce ethical issues, the editors use cases, followed by commentaries from two scholars representing different religious traditions. The ethical issues selected include traditional ones such as sexual morality and poverty, as well as neglected issues like corporal punishment and religious expression in public schools. Filled with engaging detail, the cases are the best part of the book: an African-American contemplating adoption recalls his negative experiences as an adoptee; a Brazilian man struggles to decide whether to distribute land to the poor; and a Japanese business executive feels torn between misgivings about insider trading and employee loyalty. Invoking sympathy and reflection, this careful attention to feeling and circumstances draws the reader into the cases.

Those writing commentaries include a Japanese Buddhist, a Native-American, a theologically conservative African-American, a Latin American Christian, an Orthodox Jews, and a Yoruba, among others. Some contributors draw on too much material, ranging over complex religious traditions with superficial ease. Others, however, carefully use one tradition to explore contemporary problems. The differences between thinkers are substantial, yet are also very illuminating.

Unfortunately, the editors organize the material with a peculiar narrative. They maintain that unlike Western thinkers, Eastern scholars shy away from ethical codes and "categorical claims." However, when introducing Buddhism, they provide counter-evidence for their thesis, observing that it includes the Vinaya (Monastic Rule). In Thailand, Sri Lanka and other Buddhist countries, scholars devote enormous intellectual energy to studying the Vinaya. With more than 200 rules, it is not a collection of recommendations, but a code binding on all who live the monastic life. However, the editors ignore this key aspect of Buddhist thought, selecting thinkers who say little about monasticism.

Similarly, they never define the term "categorical claim," but appear to mean a statement of the sort, "all persons should do x." However, the contributers from Eastern traditions repeatedly make categorical claims. For example, carefully exploring infanticide, Tibetan Buddhist scholar Vesna A. Wallace argues that Buddhist compassion cannot support killing disabled infants. For her, compassion is not merely a Tibetan virtue, but one that all human beings should embody.

To its credit, post-modernity has created space for neglected ethical and religious traditions, breaking patterns of hegemonic discourse. However, far from rendering categorical claims or ethical codes untenable, it has introduced more of them into religious ethics. This book would have been more compelling if it had acknowledged this positive development and abandoned unfounded generalizations about East and West.

Nevertheless, despite it shortcomings, this volume should interest ethicists, general readers, and policy-makers, who will enjoy its last chapters, which discuss infanticide, in vitro fertilization, organ donation, and parental rights and AIDS. In these and other areas, the book's cross-cultural focus and detailed narratives make it an excellent pedagogical tool.

Cloning Our Values
Lori B. Andrews.
The Clone Age: Adventures in the New World of Reproductive Technology
(New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1999).

Are cloning and other new reproductive technologies as threatening to human society and values as the media frequently makes them out to be? Is there anything wrong with parents using genetic technologies to enhance the quality of their offspring? Isn't all courtship and mating about selecting partners with desirable physical and other attributes that can be passed on to their children? These and other questions are asked and answered in lawyer and bioethicist Lori B. Andrews' "memoir" of her work in the field of reproductive law.

A presidential and congressional adviser and consultant to the World Health Organization, the National Institutes of Health, and the Human Genome Project, Andrews blends legal and ethical concerns early on when she poses the regulatory question, "Should anything be allowable so long as a lawyer can come up with a scheme to deal with it? Or are there some scientific 'advances' that would so change the nature of our society (or so waste money or so damage the participants) that they should be prohibited?" As a lawyer, Andrews is keenly aware of the power of law to shape society, particularly in areas as novel as reproductive technology. What stands out in her account is how reproductive techniques create new desires and new values, but always within the parameters of particular cultures.

Perhaps the sharpest insight that Andrews offers in chronicling this new scientific arena is her observation that when we resort to reproductive technologies, we may be "cloning our values." Values are concretized in the deliberations of women over the attributes of potential sperm donors, in the advertisements posted by couples to solicit egg donors, and the willingness of couples to use genetic technologies to enhance the appearance and intelligence of their children. These rather superficial values are magnified in the largely unregulated reproductive industry, creating a consumer market in which taller and smarter children, or children with "Nordic features," can simply be purchased. Andrews notes that this predilection for and selection of particular traits that carry social value may ultimately result in the narrowing of our gene pool. It also caters to extremely high parental expectations of children and puts great pressure on couples to "ratify social prejudices by choosing offspring that embody them.

Other values are deeper and potentially more sinister if they become grounds for genetic and reproductive manipulation. One of Andrews' interviewees suggests that societies might eliminate racism by producing children of only one race. The Arab nation of Dubai decided, following Andrews' unsuccessful interventions, to allow cloning of men only. Andrews even reports the prediction of one observer that, in light of new research suggesting that firstborn children are more successful, the cross-cultural preference for firstborn sons, now attainable through reproductive technologies, could produce a permanent underclass of laterborn women. All of these values and disvalues--of race, of sex, of birth order--may be replicated and legitimated through the use of new technologies.

These are only a few of the stories in Andrews' memoir of her involvement in crucial discussions of new reproductive technologies in fora as diverse as the First International Congress on Mammalian Cloning and the "Oprah" show. The book is a fascinating and highly readable account of the potential for hubris in the reproduction of our species and in the reproduction of our values.

Examined Life, Unexamined Premises
The Good Life: Where Morality & Spirituality Converge
Richard M. Gula, S.S.
Paulist Press, New York/Mahwah N.J. 1999. 132 pages

Renowned liturgical theologian Godfrey Diekmann was fond of pointing out that in the patristic period of church history, most theologians were as highly regarded for their sanctity as their theological acumen. Diekmann's comment comes to mind when reading The Good Life: Where Morality & Spirituality Converge. Richard M. Gula's new treatise would have been unnecessary in the age to which Diekmann refers. So the question is, What went wrong from the Reformation on? Why are not contemporary theologians examples of a lived spirituality as well as theological insight?

In his short, practical book, Gula does not answer the question, but he does make an insightful contribution to the conversation. As a Roman Catholic moral theologian, Gula solidly bases his reflections in classical Christian fundamental theology and relates these doctrines to an approach to dealing with ethical issues and Christian living. His thesis is simply that if one lived out the implications of Catholic theology, then an approach to modern ethical issues would appear less awesome. Only the individual grounded in theology, and a spirituality based on it, is in the proper disposition or frame of mind to deal with contemporary moral issues that include questions in the areas of business relations, sexuality, and life-and-death issues.

Gula is striving more to achieve the proper frame of mind in his readers for dealing with ethical questions than articulating clear responses to contemporary moral problems. Throughout this book, Gula demonstrates what the good life is by discussing the classical virtues in a new and refreshing way illustrated by many stories and examples.

The text appears to be published class notes, not only because of its orderly division of chapters, all of which individually would make a good class, but with each chapter Gula offers exercises (homework) which the reader can do to more thoroughly integrate the points into her spirituality and ethical reflections.

Such an approach would prove instructive for the committed Catholic who on a day-to-day basis is faced with "moral" questions and feels overwhelmed by their subtlety and implications. Healthcare practitioners, among others, might find in this book a way to deal with the countless daily ethical questions that surface in contemporary medical practice and theory. A truly integrated spirituality that draws on one's religious convictions can be of help.

Where Gula's efforts fall short is in the unquestioned and assumed theological stance from which his insights are drawn. The theological premises on which he bases his book are largely unexamined, and the fact that they may raise some questions in and of themselves is not even alluded to. He does not make a great apologist. A word to the reader at the beginning acknowledging his theological assumptions as complex issues would have been helpful. Somehow the great scholars and saints of the patristic and medieval periods of Christian history were able to accomplish this in both their teachings and pious reflections, making them instructive for Christian and non-Christians alike. Though of some value to the Catholic reader, this would not be the case with The Good Life.

Self-Help for the Dying
Handbook for Mortals: Guidance for People Facing Serious Illness.
By Joanne Lynne, M.D., Joan Harrold, M.D., and the Center to Improve Care of the Dying.
Oxford University Press, 1999, 242 pp. $25

Despite Joanne Lynne and Joan Harrold's noble intentions, eloquent approach, and clever title, most Americans remain unprepared to confront the subject of death as candidly as this book does. That's too bad. Most of us will need a book like this.

Lynn, the well-regarded director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center to Improve Care of the Dying at the George Washington Medical School and a passionate proselytizer of end of life care, and Harrold, a fellow at the National Cancer Institute, have produced a well-written and useful guide to dealing with our final days.

The book tackles these painful, seldom-discussed topics facing millions of Americans and their families, people who are living with illnesses and terminal conditions longer than previous generations could ever have imagined. In earlier eras people with cancer, heart disease and degenerative diseases died younger and faster. Death rituals were a more pronounced part of our culture.

Today improved medicine, technology, diet, and healthcare, though still unable to cure, have conspired to keep many terminal diseases at bay and prolong lives. The price paid, however, is often greater pain sustained for longer and increased dependence upon family members and social programs.

Lynn and Harrold explore hard-to-talk about issues, like living with malignant cancer, controlling pain, suicide, the role of faith, planning for and facing death and dealing with the sudden or impending deaths of loved ones. Handbook confronts these subjects with grace, sensitivity, and a knowing, experienced eye. Its authors have treated hundreds of dying patients, gleaned their feelings and observations about life's last days and incorporated them into a book. Inspirational, humorous, and wise quotations from sources as diverse as nursing home and hospice patients to writers such as Raymond Carver, Emily Dickinson, and centenarian Sarah Delaney season the work.

Like experienced Sherpa guides they gently nudge us to face the unthinkable, embarrassing and sorrowful, leading us to ways we can find meaning, acceptance and finally, peace, from the experience of death. Through a series of probing questions the reader learns how to find end of life care, settle affairs, and say goodbye and let go.

The authors strongly suggest planning ahead, anticipating the inevitable by discussing beliefs, wishes, and values. The book offers a values questionnaire, a glossary of terms relating to end of life care and a helpful resource directory of organizations, associations, and support groups on subjects from advanced directives, care giving, and mourning to hospice, pain management, diseases, and organ donation.

The role of faith in the dying process is addressed briefly but poignantly. Spirituality is understood as another means of exploring life's meaning. "One Catholic monk has said that all religion is about the same thing: death, and trying to make sense of it," the authors write. "Religion gives believers a pathway with clear road signs and expected activities . . . It is helpful to see the spiritual journey at the end of life-despite its challenges and troubles-as an opportunity to learn and grow. If you have faith, you may take comfort in the milestones that mark the way, no matter how troubling the journey."

Ultimately, this book serves as a kind of owner's manual, dispensing practical advice for the common mechanical failures affecting the human body and soul. It falls into a niche of its own as a helpful, wide-ranging, and well-informed work. If only all of us were issued a copy at birth.