A Crisis of Conscience is about one deeply religious doctor's search for the truth when his faith, personal views, and profession came into conflict. Dr. Hugh R. K. Barber is the renowned director of obstetrics and gynecology at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan. His was the perfect idyllic, Irish-American Catholic childhood. He was taught to practice total obedience to his church, and never in all his years as one of America's most eminent physicians has he ever performed an abortion. Then came the crisis of conscience when the archdiocese of New York refused to appoint a brilliant young obstetrician and practicing Catholic to the faculty of New York Medical College, a private medical college affiliated with the Catholic Church where Dr. Barber also served as a director. The medical college rejected the young doctor because he had written a paper on the ethics of aborting a fetus which had no brain. Dr. Barber then resigned as head of the New York Medical College's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Now, as one of millions of profoundly committed Catholics, he speaks out on a number of controversial subjects, from birth control and abortion to women in the Church, papal infallibility, divorce, celibacy, and liberation theology. Among the many topics he confronts: He warmly endorses Catholic feminism, as did Pope John XXIII; argues in favor of women priests, contending that the Church's view represents that of a frightened male hierarchy that projects a hysterical disdain for anything feminine; supports divorce, revealing that the Catholic Church annuls the marriages of the rich and looks with disapproval at requests for annulment by the poor; strongly advocates optional celibacy for both priests and religious women; agrees with a great number of theologians that the Pope is more fallible than infallible; and joins the majority of Catholics who believe that the Pope is wrong in condemning birth control and that Catholics should follow their conscience in accepting its use. He also offers a fascinating discussion of the issues surrounding abortion. Lively, accessible, and filled with fascinating anecdotes, with each issue placed in its historical context, A Crisis of Conscience will ultimately confirm the faith of Catholics who question a church that is in many ways behind the times and out of touch with its followers.
