Interview Rev. Dr. Joseph Parkinson
Director L J Goody Bioethics Centre
Background
Fr Joseph Parkinson completed undergraduate studies in philosophy and theology at St Charles Regional Seminary, Guildford WA and St Francis Xavier Seminary, Rostrevor SA between 1974 and 1980.
After ordination to priesthood in March 1981 he was appointed to a number of parishes before commencing postgraduate studies in moral theology at the Alphonsianum in Rome in 1986. Working under Prof. Terry Kennedy CSsR, he attained a Licence in Theology summa cum laude in 1988.
Fr Parkinson then served six years as Director of Youth Ministry in Perth, and two years as Dean of Studies at St Charles Seminary. In 1996 he resumed postgraduate research through the Alphonsianum and the University of Notre Dame Australia in Fremantle WA, and in 2002 was awarded a PhD with distinction for a thesis entitled Material Cooperation and Catholic Institutions: An inquiry into a traditional moral principle and its meaning for Catholic institutions today, with reference to Catholic hospitals in Australia.
Following a short spell as parish priest of Bayswater, WA, Fr Parkinson was appointed Director of the L J Goody Bioethics Centre in Glendalough, WA, at the beginning of 2003.
Professional
Since 1993 Fr Parkinson has presented sessional units in moral philosophy, moral theology and bioethics at St Charles Seminary and the University of Notre Dame Australia, and occasional lectures at other State universities. He regularly presents professional development and adult education programs for educators, health professionals and parishes in Western Australia.
For nearly 20 years Fr Parkinson has also worked on numerous ethics committees:
1989-1993 Committee for the Conduct of Ethical Research, Edith Cowan University, WA
1992-1996 Human Rights Committee, University of Western Australia
1997- 2006 Confidentiality of Health Information Committee, Health Dept of WA
1999- St John of God Health Care (Western Region) Ethics Committee
2000- Reproductive Technology Council, Health Dept of WA
2002- Genomics Branch Ethics Committee, Health Dept of WA
2003- Mercy Ethics Committee, Mt Lawley WA
2006- Clinical Ethics Consultancy Service, Women’s and Children’s Health Services WA
Hong Nhung: Dear Fr. Parkinson,
We are here on behalf of VietCatholic News Agency, a media outlet for the Church in Vietnam and Vietnamese Catholic Communities around the world.
We understand a Catholic Bioethics Centre conducts research, consultation, publishing and education to promote human dignity in health care and life sciences, and derive its messages directly from the teachings of the Catholic Church. Can you give us some more insights of the activities at your centre?
Fr. Parkinson: Sure, this centre, the Goody Bioethics Centre in Perth was established as a resource for the Catholic health care sector in Western Australia. We have 5 Catholic hospitals in the state and they each deal with the issues that sometimes need advice from ethicists that represent Catholic point of view. We also were founded to be a resource for the bishops and for the priests and for the education system and for anyone who really wants to talk about an ethical issue particularly in medical ethics. So people can phone in or email or come in from the streets and sometimes people just want to talk about something that’s happened to them or to their family while they are in hospital or they might be looking forward to some medical procedures and wondering what the Church’s position on that might be. So we’re really just a non-medical ear and hopefully able to shed some light from a Catholic perspective on the issue. We also consult to the West Australia government through the health department and through committees and we take part in a clinical ethics service for women and children’s health, particularly with newborn babies. There can often be difficult ethical issues that doctors need to work through. So we’re able to contribute to that to draw on our experience on not just the Catholic tradition but the philosophical tradition of ethics and make some contribution. I spent all of today talking to schoolteachers, part of our work as in servicing Catholic schoolteachers and principals doing personal and professional formation for them. We also try support a local organisation of Catholic doctors and nurses although they’re quite separate from us we just try to support them along the way. We also do some adult education, speaking in parishes on ethical issues, and we have a Website which we are trying to, we’re still establishing, but we’re trying to make the Website a point of contact for people looking for information on the Catholic Church on issue
Hong Nhung:How does a Catholic Bioethics Centre interact with the ordinary bishop in the administration of the diocese, with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers in the Vatican, and with the domestic public policy-makers?
Fr. Parkinson: Wow that’s a lot, we were set up by the previous Archbishop of Perth William Foley, and we are supported very strongly by the present Archbishop of Perth Barry James Hickey. And really our main task is to provide advice or comment on issues when the bishop asks us to and sometimes we try to get ahead of the game to make comment on the issues that we see coming up so that the bishop is prepared ahead of time. So working with the local bishop is fairly straightforward. We don’t have any formal connections with the offices in Rome, Imperial offices or the Pontifical Councils or the Congregation, of course we receive their documents and part of our job is to try to make those documents more accessible to people and put the contents of the documents into more user friendly language sometimes. Some of the congregation published bulletins that we receive but there are no real formal contacts there. Our relations with domestic policy makers are quite good, in Western Australia we have a fairly reasonable number of politicians, Catholic, Christians, some non-Christians who very much support the values that we would be promoting. And so we’re very happy to work with them to offer them insight into some complicated issues that often they don’t have time to research adequately. And over the last [well] 15 or 20 years, we’ve been able to contribute through public debate on policy, health care policy and other state policy. [Yeah] It’s a good relationship, I think perhaps sometimes the politicians can appear to be very negative and against the culture of life. My experience is that a good number of them are very much on side.
Hong Nhung:Is it true that each individual Australian diocese has its own Bioethics Centre? If so, how do they co-operate with one another?
Fr. Parkinson: Not every diocese does have a bioethics centre, the Australian Church is organised along provincial lines so there are 5 provinces in Australia. But there are about over 30 dioceses, so in this province we have 4 dioceses. So we would resource a lot of those. The centres are in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth. We don’t have any formal association, we do talk to each other from time to time on a personal basis but there’s no formal organisation. We do keep in touch at conferences, and of course, the email makes it very easy for us. There is an association of Catholic bioethicists, but that’s for individuals not for the organisations as such. But by and large we cooperate fairly happily, the Australian Catholic bishops of course have their own committee for ethics and morals and they can co-op any of us to work with them, they frequently do. That’s mainly though bases down the east coast of Australia, so this centre doesn’t get involved in that so much.
Hong Nhung:Can you give us a brief summary of the current ethical climate in Australia with regard to abortion, euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, and stem cell research?
Fr. Parkinson: Sure, give you a brief summary of all that. Abortion is legal in every state in Australia as far as I’m aware, up to about 20 weeks. There are differences from one state to another but that’s pretty much the case across the board. And that’s being the case certainly for the last 20 or 30 years, now there are occasionally efforts to relax the laws on abortion because technically a woman can have an abortion only for health purposes, but we know that that’s not always the case. And then there are sometimes attempts to tighten up the laws to make it more restrictive, they’re rare but every now and again we get well meaning, good intentions politicians attempting to do that and we try and support that. In Victoria recently, a law was passed to remove doctors’ right of conscientious objection. So in Victoria if a person wants a termination of pregnancy the doctor has an obligation either to provide it or to help them acquire it. And that’s something we have a major objection to because while we try to respect the conscience of others we like to think that others would respect the conscience of our doctors as well. With regards to euthanasia, apart from very brief period in the Northern Territory, euthanasia has never been legal in this country. By euthanasia, we mean deliberate taking of a life either by an action or omission intended to relieve suffering. Nevertheless, in Tasmania at the moment there is a law being debated and in Western Australia there is one Member of Parliament who is preparing a bill to introduce euthanasia. Now we’ve fought against that in the past, we’ve put up arguments as to why it shouldn’t be allowed and we’ll continue to do that. I suspect this is going to be an ongoing struggle for us that every couple of years we’ll have to go through this again and again. I fear that at some point, a law will be passed and at that stage we’re going to have some major issues with our hospitals. I hope that’s a long way off though. Stem cell research is at an interesting crossroads in Australia at the moment. There’s very little stem cell research happening in Western Australia in this province. It’s mainly down the East Coast, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and some in Adelaide. The problem we have of course with stem cell research is not with the research itself but the fact that human embryos are destroyed in order to do the research. If research can be done without destroying embryos, we see no problem with it. Now in Western Australia, just a year or two ago, the Parliament refused to allow the creation of embryos for the purpose of research. We are the first state to do that. It’s put us out of step with the rest of the country but many of us a very proud of the fact that at the moment, at least, we have a legislature, which is prepared to stand up for the dignity of human life. And of course all of this might be irrelevant anyway because of the advances being made with induced purely potent stem cells. That is an ordinary skin cell, which can be re-programmed to behave like stem cells. That’s a wonderful advance and we hope that more researchers will take that up because the pressure on embryos will be reduced. So in many what’s happening in Australia mirrors what is happening in the United States, in the United Kingdom and in other parts of the western world. So yes, there’s always something new.
Director L J Goody Bioethics Centre
Background
Fr Joseph Parkinson completed undergraduate studies in philosophy and theology at St Charles Regional Seminary, Guildford WA and St Francis Xavier Seminary, Rostrevor SA between 1974 and 1980.
After ordination to priesthood in March 1981 he was appointed to a number of parishes before commencing postgraduate studies in moral theology at the Alphonsianum in Rome in 1986. Working under Prof. Terry Kennedy CSsR, he attained a Licence in Theology summa cum laude in 1988.
Fr Parkinson then served six years as Director of Youth Ministry in Perth, and two years as Dean of Studies at St Charles Seminary. In 1996 he resumed postgraduate research through the Alphonsianum and the University of Notre Dame Australia in Fremantle WA, and in 2002 was awarded a PhD with distinction for a thesis entitled Material Cooperation and Catholic Institutions: An inquiry into a traditional moral principle and its meaning for Catholic institutions today, with reference to Catholic hospitals in Australia.
Following a short spell as parish priest of Bayswater, WA, Fr Parkinson was appointed Director of the L J Goody Bioethics Centre in Glendalough, WA, at the beginning of 2003.
Professional
Since 1993 Fr Parkinson has presented sessional units in moral philosophy, moral theology and bioethics at St Charles Seminary and the University of Notre Dame Australia, and occasional lectures at other State universities. He regularly presents professional development and adult education programs for educators, health professionals and parishes in Western Australia.
For nearly 20 years Fr Parkinson has also worked on numerous ethics committees:
1989-1993 Committee for the Conduct of Ethical Research, Edith Cowan University, WA
1992-1996 Human Rights Committee, University of Western Australia
1997- 2006 Confidentiality of Health Information Committee, Health Dept of WA
1999- St John of God Health Care (Western Region) Ethics Committee
2000- Reproductive Technology Council, Health Dept of WA
2002- Genomics Branch Ethics Committee, Health Dept of WA
2003- Mercy Ethics Committee, Mt Lawley WA
2006- Clinical Ethics Consultancy Service, Women’s and Children’s Health Services WA
Hong Nhung: Dear Fr. Parkinson,
We are here on behalf of VietCatholic News Agency, a media outlet for the Church in Vietnam and Vietnamese Catholic Communities around the world.
We understand a Catholic Bioethics Centre conducts research, consultation, publishing and education to promote human dignity in health care and life sciences, and derive its messages directly from the teachings of the Catholic Church. Can you give us some more insights of the activities at your centre?
Fr. Parkinson: Sure, this centre, the Goody Bioethics Centre in Perth was established as a resource for the Catholic health care sector in Western Australia. We have 5 Catholic hospitals in the state and they each deal with the issues that sometimes need advice from ethicists that represent Catholic point of view. We also were founded to be a resource for the bishops and for the priests and for the education system and for anyone who really wants to talk about an ethical issue particularly in medical ethics. So people can phone in or email or come in from the streets and sometimes people just want to talk about something that’s happened to them or to their family while they are in hospital or they might be looking forward to some medical procedures and wondering what the Church’s position on that might be. So we’re really just a non-medical ear and hopefully able to shed some light from a Catholic perspective on the issue. We also consult to the West Australia government through the health department and through committees and we take part in a clinical ethics service for women and children’s health, particularly with newborn babies. There can often be difficult ethical issues that doctors need to work through. So we’re able to contribute to that to draw on our experience on not just the Catholic tradition but the philosophical tradition of ethics and make some contribution. I spent all of today talking to schoolteachers, part of our work as in servicing Catholic schoolteachers and principals doing personal and professional formation for them. We also try support a local organisation of Catholic doctors and nurses although they’re quite separate from us we just try to support them along the way. We also do some adult education, speaking in parishes on ethical issues, and we have a Website which we are trying to, we’re still establishing, but we’re trying to make the Website a point of contact for people looking for information on the Catholic Church on issue
Hong Nhung:How does a Catholic Bioethics Centre interact with the ordinary bishop in the administration of the diocese, with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers in the Vatican, and with the domestic public policy-makers?
Fr. Parkinson: Wow that’s a lot, we were set up by the previous Archbishop of Perth William Foley, and we are supported very strongly by the present Archbishop of Perth Barry James Hickey. And really our main task is to provide advice or comment on issues when the bishop asks us to and sometimes we try to get ahead of the game to make comment on the issues that we see coming up so that the bishop is prepared ahead of time. So working with the local bishop is fairly straightforward. We don’t have any formal connections with the offices in Rome, Imperial offices or the Pontifical Councils or the Congregation, of course we receive their documents and part of our job is to try to make those documents more accessible to people and put the contents of the documents into more user friendly language sometimes. Some of the congregation published bulletins that we receive but there are no real formal contacts there. Our relations with domestic policy makers are quite good, in Western Australia we have a fairly reasonable number of politicians, Catholic, Christians, some non-Christians who very much support the values that we would be promoting. And so we’re very happy to work with them to offer them insight into some complicated issues that often they don’t have time to research adequately. And over the last [well] 15 or 20 years, we’ve been able to contribute through public debate on policy, health care policy and other state policy. [Yeah] It’s a good relationship, I think perhaps sometimes the politicians can appear to be very negative and against the culture of life. My experience is that a good number of them are very much on side.
Hong Nhung:Is it true that each individual Australian diocese has its own Bioethics Centre? If so, how do they co-operate with one another?
Fr. Parkinson: Not every diocese does have a bioethics centre, the Australian Church is organised along provincial lines so there are 5 provinces in Australia. But there are about over 30 dioceses, so in this province we have 4 dioceses. So we would resource a lot of those. The centres are in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Perth. We don’t have any formal association, we do talk to each other from time to time on a personal basis but there’s no formal organisation. We do keep in touch at conferences, and of course, the email makes it very easy for us. There is an association of Catholic bioethicists, but that’s for individuals not for the organisations as such. But by and large we cooperate fairly happily, the Australian Catholic bishops of course have their own committee for ethics and morals and they can co-op any of us to work with them, they frequently do. That’s mainly though bases down the east coast of Australia, so this centre doesn’t get involved in that so much.
Hong Nhung:Can you give us a brief summary of the current ethical climate in Australia with regard to abortion, euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, and stem cell research?
Fr. Parkinson: Sure, give you a brief summary of all that. Abortion is legal in every state in Australia as far as I’m aware, up to about 20 weeks. There are differences from one state to another but that’s pretty much the case across the board. And that’s being the case certainly for the last 20 or 30 years, now there are occasionally efforts to relax the laws on abortion because technically a woman can have an abortion only for health purposes, but we know that that’s not always the case. And then there are sometimes attempts to tighten up the laws to make it more restrictive, they’re rare but every now and again we get well meaning, good intentions politicians attempting to do that and we try and support that. In Victoria recently, a law was passed to remove doctors’ right of conscientious objection. So in Victoria if a person wants a termination of pregnancy the doctor has an obligation either to provide it or to help them acquire it. And that’s something we have a major objection to because while we try to respect the conscience of others we like to think that others would respect the conscience of our doctors as well. With regards to euthanasia, apart from very brief period in the Northern Territory, euthanasia has never been legal in this country. By euthanasia, we mean deliberate taking of a life either by an action or omission intended to relieve suffering. Nevertheless, in Tasmania at the moment there is a law being debated and in Western Australia there is one Member of Parliament who is preparing a bill to introduce euthanasia. Now we’ve fought against that in the past, we’ve put up arguments as to why it shouldn’t be allowed and we’ll continue to do that. I suspect this is going to be an ongoing struggle for us that every couple of years we’ll have to go through this again and again. I fear that at some point, a law will be passed and at that stage we’re going to have some major issues with our hospitals. I hope that’s a long way off though. Stem cell research is at an interesting crossroads in Australia at the moment. There’s very little stem cell research happening in Western Australia in this province. It’s mainly down the East Coast, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and some in Adelaide. The problem we have of course with stem cell research is not with the research itself but the fact that human embryos are destroyed in order to do the research. If research can be done without destroying embryos, we see no problem with it. Now in Western Australia, just a year or two ago, the Parliament refused to allow the creation of embryos for the purpose of research. We are the first state to do that. It’s put us out of step with the rest of the country but many of us a very proud of the fact that at the moment, at least, we have a legislature, which is prepared to stand up for the dignity of human life. And of course all of this might be irrelevant anyway because of the advances being made with induced purely potent stem cells. That is an ordinary skin cell, which can be re-programmed to behave like stem cells. That’s a wonderful advance and we hope that more researchers will take that up because the pressure on embryos will be reduced. So in many what’s happening in Australia mirrors what is happening in the United States, in the United Kingdom and in other parts of the western world. So yes, there’s always something new.