We, doctors, entrusted to protect human life from its conception until its natural end;
1. | BELIEVE in one God, the Lord of Heaven and earth, who created man and woman in His own image and likeness. | ||||||||||||||||
2. | PROCLAIM that the human body and life, being gifts from God, are sacred and inviolable and that,
| ||||||||||||||||
3. | ACCEPT the truth that human sexuality is a gift of God and provides the method by which human beings are ennobled with the privilege to become “co-creators with God in the work of creation” through parenthood. The call to parenthood is God's plan, and only those bound with Him by the holy sacrament of marriage have the ability to rightly use these gifts, which are sacred, in the human body. | ||||||||||||||||
4. | ACKNOWLEDGE that the foundation for the dignity and freedom of the Catholic doctor is exclusively his or her conscience, enlightened by the Holy Spirit and informed by the teaching of the Church, and that he or she has the right to act according to said conscience and in keeping with medical ethics that have established the doctor's right to oppose all acts that are against his or her conscience. | ||||||||||||||||
5. | RECOGNIZE the priority of God's law over the law of nations and,
| ||||||||||||||||
6. | BELIEVE that, while not imposing their beliefs and opinions, Catholics, including doctors and students, have a right to perform their professional activities in accordance with their conscience. |
To Doctors and Nurses
Likewise we hold in the highest esteem those doctors and members of the nursing profession who, in the exercise of their calling, endeavor to fulfill the demands of their Christian vocation before any merely human interest. Let them therefore continue constant in their resolution always to support those lines of action which accord with faith and with right reason. And let them strive to win agreement and support for these policies among their professional colleagues. Moreover, they should regard it as an essential part of their skill to make themselves fully proficient in this difficult field of medical knowledge. For then, when married couples ask for their advice, they may be in a position to give them right counsel and to point them in the proper direction. Married couples have a right to expect this much from them.
Pope Paul VI, Humane vitae, n. 27