Pastoral Aesthetics for Pediatric Bioethics

Pastoral theology carries the potential to refine the engagement between theology and a principlist approach to bioethics, as Nathan Carlin has argued in Pastoral Aesthetics, but it also provides a basis on which to specifically benefit pediatric bioethics by moving beyond simplistic renderings of children that reduce children to their nonautonomous status. Whereas principlist bioethics tends to regard children chiefly in relation to their lack of capacity to make autonomous decisions, pastoral theology’s interdisciplinary commitments and attention to relationality create possibilities for appreciating the subjectivity of children in the medical environment, respecting the moral weight of their healthcare experiences, and recognizing their agency to exert influence on the adults who make decisions and provide care for them.