Despite their sizable influence on many ethicists, Catholic moral theology of health care and the “principlist” approach to bioethics (expounded by the philosophers Tom Beauchamp and James Childress in their canonical Principles of Biomedical Ethics) have rarely engaged in constructive conversation to date. For instance, the Catholic philosophers John Finnis and Anthony Fisher assert that Beauchamp and Childress’s approach is “legalistic and fails . . . to meet the contemporary challenges to morality in healthcare.” And Beauchamp has criticized Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Evangelium Vitae as “deeply offensive to both individual and moral autonomy.” These strained relations are unfortunate, given a shared fundamental concern for autonomy, justice, nonmaleficence, and beneficence. And to some extent, the grounds provided for these principles coincide: Beauchamp and Childress say they are “drawn from the territory of common morality,” and the Catholic tradition would hold that they are rooted in a natural law accessible to those of all backgrounds. At the same time, the long-established Catholic emphasis on the relationship between morality and human flourishing is largely absent from principlist thinking, and Catholic theologians often come to different conclusions about moral and legal matters, such as physician- assisted suicide and the principle of double effect, than do Beauchamp and Childress. Without downplaying the dissimilarities between Catholic bioethics and secular principlism (or the diversity within each of these positions), I will argue that representatives of these respective perspectives could benefit from some of the other’s insights and find common cause on certain issues. These include an ethical vision that upholds the development of good character and not simply adherence to moral laws, the promotion of the universal right to adequate health care, the protection of vulnerable subjects in biomedical research, and the safeguarding of physician-patient confidentiality (with cognizance of legitimate exceptions to it).