ABSTRACT
Physicians are more uncertain today about the meaning of their vocation, despite immense scientific and technological progress, because their authority is no longer what it once was, either personally or culturally. In effect, the high post-Protestant authority of the Supreme Court paralleled the popular art of Grace Metalious: both were condemning the efforts to condemn in the old way. The Catholic sources for debates in bioethics have been influential, sociologically speaking, in how deliberations are conducted rather than in what answers are reached. Both Daniel Callahan's and John T. Noonan's efforts are at once related to and distinct from the tradition of pastoral medicine out of which they arose. Auguste Comte's vision of positivism finds parallels in the normative approaches in bioethics. Collaboration gave way to social movement forces in the transformation of medical norms, on the side of sociology, and to litigation in the courts and new laws by legislatures, on the side of bioethics.
