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VietCatholic interviews Dr. Joseph Parkinson

on Bioethics in Australia
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
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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?
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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
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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.

Hong Nhung: A common argument against the Church’s teaching on euthanasia is

that: “Why should I suffer and then die, when I can choose to die without suffering?”
A few people, even Catholics, have an impression that the Church seems to commend
suffering. How would you respond to that?
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Fr. Joseph Parkinson: I’d make several points, first of all. Generally speaking, in
our health system, it’s not necessary to suffer pain in the process of dying. Generally
speaking. Most pain can be controlled, if not eliminated, controlled to a reasonable
level. It’s true that there is some breakthrough pain, which is extremely difficult to
control. But generally that is towards the very end of life, it’s often in the last days or
hours. But of course what we’re talking about is suffering, not just pain. Suffering
can be more than just physical pain, it can be psychological, and it can be spiritual.
There are other aspects to suffering which can’t necessarily be controlled, certainly
not by medication anyway. Now the Church holds that suffering can be redemptive. If
the person unites themselves with the sufferings of Christ. So that means the person
chooses to identify their own suffering with the suffering of our Lord. And of course
does that with a clear sense of the resurrection, that suffering is not the end of the
story, that there’s something extraordinary and wonderful after that. So we would
certainly hold that as a valuable part of our understanding of suffering. But that’s
something for each individual to choose. It’s not something that the Church says
everyone has to endure. It’s a choice we each can make for our own reasons. And it’s
quite okay to not want to suffer. That’s all right. We are committed as a Church which
promotes health care, to minimize the suffering, to reducing it -- through analgesics,
through medications, through counselling, all of the other ways that are able to
achieve that. Even when medications might render a person unconscious, when that’s
necessary, then we’re quite comfortable with that. So in a sense, there’s no real need
for people to die in pain. If they choose not to, if they want to have that pain
controlled or suppressed, that can happen. Your question, I think, is about euthanasia,
“Why shouldn’t I just be able to ask for an injection that will kill me?” There’d be an
argument; I suppose if that’s all euthanasia lobbying wanted. But in fact, they’re on
the public record saying that they really want the right to choose when to die – the
moment of death and the mode of death, even without suffering. When a person’s
simply tired of life, that, “this is the time to end it, so I’ll end it” But it’s also
important to realise, that in order to do that, a person needs the help of someone else,
a doctor or a nurse, often euthanasia really means physician-assistance suicide. Now
there are major problems with that. Do I really have the right to ask someone to kill
me? Can I make that demand of you? Can I put you under that sort of pressure? Can I
expect the medical profession to change what has been its driving method; it’s
dynamic for hundreds, even thousands, of years; to ask the medical profession, to
change that now because some people want to end their lives at a time of their own
choosing. Nowhere that has passed laws to enable euthanasia have those laws been
able to control the practice. It doesn’t matter whether we’re talking about the
Netherlands or Switzerland or Belgium or the state of Oregon, in the United States. In
all those legislatures, there’s ample evidence of abuses of the law, that people are
being euthanized without being asked first. The requirements of the law not being
met by doctors. Nowhere has been able to control it, so, my sense is, while I can
understand people wanting the right to die at a time of their choosing, I don’t know
that anyone has the right to ask or demand help in doing that, and I know it’s
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impossible to control it, if the law is passed.

Hong Nhung: In Vietnam, we have programs to assist AIDS patients and their
children, to provide health care and aged care for the poor, and palliative care for the
sufferings. We understand that we ought not to simply argue against euthanasia, and
physician-assisted suicide. To be truly credible in our stand, we need to stand up for
the suffering, the dying, and those afraid to endure. Is there anything else that you can
suggest?

Fr. Joseph Parkinson: I understand and I agree entirely. We can’t as a church,

simply be sending a negative message all the time. Jesus wasn’t always all about
telling people what they shouldn’t do. He was about empowering them to be
everything God calls them to be and embraces them to be. So, it’s certainly true that
there comes a time when we need to be prepared to put our money where our mouth
is and commit to initiatives that will support the dying, that will provide relief for
suffering that will seek to look after and comfort and seek cures for HIV and so on.
This is a challenge for the whole church, this is not just for the bishops, and it’s for
the people of the church to take up as well. And of course, in a sense, the bishops can
only do what the people will enable them to do. I can only agree with the direction of
your question. We need to do more than simply say, “no”, all the time, we need to be
promoting the dignity of life in positive ways, in whatever way we can and building
up what Pope John Paul [II] called, “the culture of life” That’s a whole atmosphere,
an ethos which respects all people regardless of where they are, where they come
from or where they’re going. How we do that? Well, we each need to do it in our own
personal life first of all, but then as a church we also need to be committed to making
that happen; health care and in a whole lot of other ways as well.

Hong Nhung: Three years ago, we published your speech – a very eloquent one – at
the launch of the book “Advancing the Culture of Death: Euthanasia And
Physician-Assisted Suicide” written by our fellow countryman, Fr. Peter Hung
Tran. The book was translated into Vietnamese and later published. It has contributed
a lot on the philosophical study of the ethical controversies brought about by
advances in biology and medicine there. We are happy to hear that Fr. Peter Tran has
been working here with you for quite a long time now. Would you like to tell us how
the book and its author have contributed to Bioethics in Australia?

Fr. Joseph Parkinson: Well, that would take a long time to describe. Father Tran’s
book is one of the clearest and best-researched defences of the Catholic position on
euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide. It was a great pleasure to help launch that
book because we need that clarity of thought; we need people prepared to express
themselves clearly, as Father Tran does in the book. And we need people who are
prepared to speak to address groups, to be out there, telling the story – face to face.
Father Tran’s been doing that, speaking to groups and different parts of this city and
this state. The book has been taken up right around Australia. It’s been given to
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politicians, to policy makers, to hospitals; it’s present in libraries right around the
country now. And I think it will continue to be a really important statement of our
church’s position on this question. But Father Peter’s work isn’t limited just to that,
he has also been taking part in adult education and teacher in servicing and he’s
travelled to different parts of the state to speak to various Catholic groups. He
continues to research here, and I know he’s been publishing in Vietnamese and I’m
very much happy for him to continue that and extend that because as a Church here in
Perth, he have benefited greatly from the Vietnamese born population of Perth and
particularly the number of priests who have come to us from the Vietnamese born
population. And so I think there is a time when we can return the compliment, return
the favour, support the Church in Vietnam as well. I see that as our task here. I know
that Father Peter will also be teaching in New Zealand coming up and I’m happy to
be helping him prepare for that. He’s been doing tremendous work, and this is all in
addition to his main work, which in the monastery in North Perth. So we’re very
pleased that Father Tran is working with us and we’re hoping he’s going to stay with
us for a long time.

Hong Nhung: Fr. Parkinson, thanks for your time and your help to raise awareness
among our readers on issues relating to abortion, euthanasia and physician-assisted
suicide.

J.B. An Dang
Perth City, 21 June 2009