Fourteen years ago, the nation’s first four-year bioethics curriculum launched at Saint John Paul the Great Catholic High School. Now, the author and department chair behind the landmark program passes the torch to new leadership and emphasizes the enduring need for ethical formation of this generation’s high school students.
In 2008, the nation buzzed with debate over the ethical question of human embryonic stem cell research. The value of human life from the moment of conception — and the question of whether it was morally permissible to use stem cells from unborn children for research — was called into question at the federal level. Amid the controversy, John Paul the Great opened its doors in Potomac Shores that fall. From its conception, the school was uniquely positioned to take on the ethical questions at play in the nation.
“Bishop (Emeritus) Paul Loverde had the idea for this school; he wanted the graduates to be able to address the issues of the day, particularly bioethical issues,” said Dominican Sister Terese Auer, founder of the bioethics curriculum at John Paul the Great. “He didn’t want these students just carried along with the culture.”
Sister Terese, who has a doctorate in philosophy from the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minn., was asked by her community — the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia Congregation — to take on this project. Thus, the first four-year high school bioethics curriculum in the nation was born, with the goal of rooting students in a firm philosophical foundation to equip them to answer the bioethical questions of our era. Since then, the program has developed and created a precedent for the growing number of high schools across the country that have implemented the curriculum.
Now, after 14 years as chair of the bioethics department, Sister Terese will take a well-earned sabbatical. She passes on leadership of the landmark program to her colleague Andrew Kubick, who has a doctorate in bioethics and has taught at John Paul the Great for eight years.
Reflecting on the past 14 years, Sister Terese noted that her underlying mindset in creating the bioethics program remains its guiding principle.
“Being a philosopher, my mindset going in was that I wanted kids to know not just the ‘what’ of truth and right and wrong, but to know the ‘why’,” Sister Terese said. “I think when any human being sees that the faith is not in the dark but is founded on right reason and aimed to make us happy, they can see that following God’s plan is the key and the way to happiness.”
In her classes, Sister Terese always encouraged students to ask questions and challenge ideas, teaching them to think critically and argue well with one another. Students who have graduated from the program notice a marked difference in their ability to engage in debate with others.
As she wrote the program, Sister Terese initially wrestled with the question of whether high school freshmen and sophomores could really learn philosophy material that at the time was almost exclusively introduced at the college level. But as time went on, she found that it worked.
“Philosophy is well-suited to teenagers,” she said. “It’s actually perfect for them, because teenagers want to know what’s reasonable. They’re not content with ‘because my parents say so’, or ‘because the church says so.’ ”
Kubick, the new Bioethics Department Chair, shared a similar sentiment. While in graduate school at Holy Apostles College and Seminary, he entered the National Catholic Bioethics Center’s one-year certification program in Catholic Health Care Ethics. While most of the program focused on bioethics through the lens of the Catholic faith, it also addressed arguments that people outside of the faith could understand and even agree with. Philosophy, he realized, is the language the secular world will listen to.
“Philosophy and theology were both taught, and I realized it was by way of philosophy — ethics, specifically — that we can engage a culture that does not know or has rejected the Gospel,” Kubick said. “I realized philosophy is the language of the people, spoken by both believers and non-believers — through which life can be defended and the truth can be taught in circumstances when the Gospel falls on deaf or defiant ears.”
“I want young people to be lovers of truth,” Sister Terese said. “The more they live in the truth, the more in line they are with God’s love and His will for them. It’s a multi-dimensional project that we’re doing at this school: we lay the philosophical foundation for how to know what is truth, the dignity of the human person, and what’s the plan for achieving the happiness God wants for them. And it’s getting harder to teach that, because society is more and more opposed to that, but it is more important than ever to hold onto that vision.”
Kubick looks forward to carrying that vision to future students at John Paul the Great, and expressed gratitude and excitement to continue teaching alongside outstanding faculty in the Bioethics Department this year.
