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Catholic leaders mull ethics By Susan Hogan/Albach Dallas Morning News, 2/7/2001 DALLAS - For 18 years, many Roman Catholic leaders from around the world have been slipping quietly into the Dallas area to wrestle with the moral implications of medical issues. This year's meeting, which began yesterday in Las Colinas, is not on any official church calendar, and many Catholics are not aware of it. The bishops and cardinals do not plan to make any pronouncements. But the week spent studying scientific and medical advances and questioning experts is critical to shaping Catholic ethical teaching, the bishops said. It is where faith meets reason and collides head-on with the rapidly changing technologies. ''This is a private time for the bishops to listen and study about serious matters in faith and science,'' said Susan Jordan, spokeswoman for the National Catholic Bioethics Center in suburban Boston. The center, which organized the workshop, has barred the media from the three-day event at the Omni Mandalay Hotel. The meeting is so confidential that organizers will not identify the names of the 150 to 200 bishops, cardinals, and speakers invited to grapple with bioethics issues such as human genome mapping and stem cell research. ''They meet here and then they go away, and we rarely know what happens,'' said Bronson Havard, editor of the Texas Catholic, the newspaper of the Diocese of Dallas. Four cardinals are slated to attend, according to a list obtained by The Dallas Morning News: Bernard Law of Boston, Francis George of Chicago, James Hickeym, the retired archbishop of Washington, and Luis Aponte Martinez, the retired archbishop of San Juan. The church leaders will listen to a panel of moral and medical experts address the workshop theme: ''What Is Man, O Lord: The Human Person in a Biotech Age.'' Dr. Thomas Shannon, a Catholic bioethicist from Worcester, said the speakers, as well as the organizers of the workshop, espouse the Vatican's thinking on moral issues. ''It's a very conservative group that's mostly interested in articulating the magisterium's position on questions of bioethics,'' said Shannon, who was not invited to the workshop. The National Catholic Bioethics Center says in published materials that its mission is to ''promote and safeguard the dignity of the human person'' in the health and life sciences. ''The bishops are the largest constituents, but we also do a lot of work with hospitals and people in the medical field,'' Jordan said. Vatican specialists are divided over bioethical questions, to the point of disagreeing publicly over stem cell research. Stem cells occur in early stages of embryonic development. At issue is whether a new method involves an actual embryo. Catholic authority, referred to as the magisterium, forbids destroying human embryos or using them for experimentation. The genome debate also perplexes church leaders. They have listened cautiously as scientists discuss potential medical advances from the mapping of the human genetic code. ''The experts will be helping us think about the ethical dilemmas,'' said Coadjutor Bishop Joseph Galante of the Diocese of Dallas. ''It's so helpful. These are all outstanding people making presentations.'' This story ran on page A5 of the Boston Globe on 2/7/2001. © Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company. http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/038/nation/Catholic_leaders_mull_ethics+.shtml ***************