By Ray Campbell
Dr Nicholas Tonti-Filippini will be well known to readers of The Catholic Leader.
He was often quoted in its pages and at times contributed columns.
Sadly, for those of us left behind, Nicholas died on November 7.
I was a friend and colleague of Nick’s for more than 30 years.
In this tribute I would like to reflect upon the things we can all learn from his life.
Dr Tonti-Filippini is generally described as a “bioethicist”, although he himself would have said he is an ethicist with a particular interest in “bioethical issues”.
Although Nicholas could be classified as an “academic” – he published widely in respected journals, contributed chapters to numerous books, and has recently published four of five volumes on bioethics – he was first and foremost a “practitioner”.
For Nicholas ethics was not simply an academic discipline. It was a vocation, and a vocation of service.
This was the spirit that marked his work during the various turns of his career.
Nicholas was Australia’s first hospital ethicist when he began work at St Vincent’s Hospital, Melbourne, where he was the research officer for the St Vincent’s Bioethics Centre, and then its director.
During this time Nick was involved with day-to-day discussions with doctors, nurses, patients and family members about the care of patients from the ethical point of view.
He sought to be of service to all involved that they might all respect the dignity of the person who was the patient.
This practical experience formed the background to much of his reflection and teaching.
Through the centre he was also heavily involved in debates regarding assisted reproductive technologies, stem cell research and other issues of public policy.
Once again Nicholas sought to be of service to the wider community, helping to inform the community of the realities that were involved and raising questions regarding how we were respecting the dignity of the human person, especially the most vulnerable.
He went on to become the research officer for the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, giving practical advice to the bishops of Australia and helping to formulate their responses to various public policy issues.
He spent some years as a private ethics consultant, and his services were used by members of government and various international bodies.
He served on the Australian Health Ethics Committee and chaired some of their working parties.
This was a significant time for Nicholas as he began to reflect upon how best to enter into public debate.
He has described some of this in the first volume of his collection on bioethics.
For the final part of his career Nicholas has taught at the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family where he has been head of bioethics.
He has sought to instil in others the same sense of service through rigorous thought and argument.
Nicholas respected the views of others and was influenced by some, but he was always an independent thinker. He was never one to stand still and keep on repeating what he had been doing. As mentioned, through his experience on government committees, he began to change his conception of how best to enter into public dialogue.
Like many of us in the early days he tended to take a natural law approach, which although not denying his own theological foundations, tended to be predominantly philosophical.
He decided this approach did not really succeed. Instead he proposed an approach which involved more sharing of one’s own culture, including one’s religious beliefs, and then looking for values which were common.
Nicholas believed that this allowed us to be much more explicit about our theological faith and for a much healthier relationship between our faith and philosophy. Another area in which Nicholas did not stand still was in the manner of teaching bioethics.
He was continually reviewing not just the content of what he taught but how he taught it. His concern was for how best did people learn.
He took on the role of overseeing the development of pedagogy at the JPII Institute, seeking to develop a pedagogy suitable for adult graduate students.
He himself undertook and completed a fellowship with the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australia, and has encouraged other lecturers to undertake graduate courses in higher education.
During all of this he lived with a chronic illness.
I say “lived with” quite deliberately. It was like a constant companion, and at times it was a very demanding companion.
When I first met Nick he still had a partially functioning kidney.
But he told me matter-of-factly that it would not last.
And sure enough not long after he began dialysis which was to continue for the rest of his life. As the years went on various other conditions developed, and he learned to live with them.
If you asked him about it he told you in a very matter-of-fact kind of way. It was simply part of life.
Similarly with his dying. He knew it was coming. He had already been at death’s door a number of times.
He prepared himself for death as best he could, strengthened by his great faith in Jesus Christ, a faith shared with his loving wife Mary.
More than that, he sought to prepare others for his death.
Just days before he died we were discussing our next Bioethics Colloquium and how it should go on without him.
As Brisbane Archbishop Mark Coleridge expressed it so well, it was towards the end of his life “that the Gospel of life and the Gospel of the saving suffering converged, so that Nicholas became more than ever a witness to the Paschal Mystery”.
I have only just touched upon a few areas of his life and career.
He served the Church, the Australian community, the international community, his students and his family with great dedication and distinction. He was a good and faithful servant who did not bury the treasure he had been given.
It was one of Nick’s wishes that his children would know that their father had “made a difference”. I can assure them that his life has made a great difference to many.
He will be sorely missed, but his heritage will live on.
Dr Ray Campbell is the director of the Queensland Bioethics Centre.
[divider]
