Valenţele pastoral-misionare ale bioeticii ortodoxe contemporane
Pastoral-missionary valences of Orthodox contemporary bioethics

Summary/Abstract: Bioethics was born in the United States in the 1970’s as an urgentnecessity, aimed at meeting the challenges of its time. These challenges were seen as being so threatening to humanity, that the American oncologist Van Rensselaer Potter, who coined the term bioethics, calledit “the science of survival”. Today we can observe two types of bioethicalmodels, based on clear-cut differences between orthodox Christianviews, particularly those about life, and secularized views. Accordingly,two distinct currents are generated: the Christian moral system, and the secular ethical system. Secular, or social, bioethics, deeply anchored incontemporary secularism, avoids religious and moral beliefs, advocating the progress of bio-technologies with applicability to human nature, andaccepting moral relativism. These challenges, of an ethical and moralnature, require Christian Orthodox bioethics to adopt a position joiningthe ecclesial, spiritual, and pastoral experience with the reflections and proposals of biologists. The Christian perspective in bioethics implies abandoning the distant concepts grounded only in the common good andmutual interest, and taking roots firmly in the recognition and experience of a transcendent God and in a morality with a full content.

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