Original scientific paper

Selected Bioethical Questions in the Croatian Society According to Results of the European Values Study 2017

Tonči Matulić orcid.org/0000-0003-3419-9938 ; Catholic Faculty of Theology, University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Croatia
Ivan Balabanić orcid.org/0000-0003-4785-4436 ; Catholic University of Croatia, Zagreb, Croatia

Abstract

The article presents attitudes and opinions of Croatian citizens on some current bioethical challenges: on the question of abortion, artificial insemination, euthanasia, suicide, and capital punishment. The results were acquired through the European Values Study (EVS), carried out in 2017. The aforementioned questions constitute only a small portion of the wide spectrum of questions that the EVS-questionnaire was inquiring into in order to study attitudes of Croatian citizens on some fundamental values of human life. Replies to these questions were analysed in terms of gender of examinees and the frequency of attending religious rites. It has been determined that about 80% of examinees identify themselves as Roman Catholics and that about 25% attends religious rites at least once a week. Furthermore, the results of the study showed that about 70% of all examinees approves of artificial insemination. In terms of other aforementioned bioethical questions, about 30 to 40 percent of examinees supports or approves of the Catholic moral position on these questions. There are no significant differences in value attitudes between men and women. Significant differences have only been noted among those examinees who attend religious rites more frequently; a fact that shows that religion and religious practice have a large influence on the development of moral attitudes and value orientation. Unfortunately, even this study showed that in the statistical sense the influence of religion on personal moral attitudes is decreasing, since the discrepancy between individual attitudes and official Church moral teaching on bioethical questions discussed in this article is increasing. This leads to the conclusion that although three quarters of examinees have declared themselves as Catholics, the results of the study reveal larger or smaller cracks in the presumed unity of declared religious conviction and membership, on the one hand, and expressed value attitude on some current bioethical questions, on the other hand.

Keywords

European Values Study 2017; abortion; artificial insemination; euthanasia; suicide; capital punishment; bioethical questions; Catholic morality; religious practice.

Hrčak ID:

223158

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/223158

Publication date:

23.7.2019.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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