The Ethical Consideration of Body Modification: A Comparative Case Study of Tattooing and Body Piercing Practices between Catholic and Orthodox Perspectives Due to the sceptical or even negative stance of the academic world towards body modification practices, especially tattooing and body-piercing, the scholarly attention they have received is inversely proportional to their popularity. Scholarly scepticism is even greater within academic moral theology, as Church Fathers, Church representatives, and Christian ethicists have not dealt with the moral evaluation of body modification, while none of the two original Christian traditions, the Catholic and the Orthodox, has expressed official positions on the topics of tattooing and piercing specifically. The ultimate goal, therefore, of this study is to determine whether or not Orthodox and Catholic Christian ethics could take up a position to accept tattooing and piercing as interventions that are made to the human body. Based on pre-modern and modern literature of both Christian denominations and considering each one’s viewpoint on the human body and humanity’s relation towards it, the research attempts to compare and contrast Orthodox and Catholic perspectives by understanding and presenting their similarities and differences on the subject. This work is multidisciplinary and doubly innovative. First, it analyses a topic that has not been analysed in the past, that of the ethical consideration of tattooing and body-piercing from the standpoint of Christian ethics and bioethics, contributing to the field of moral theology. Even more, it is a comparative work between Orthodox and Catholic perspectives, thus, it is also a Comparative Theology study, with the ultimate ambition to contribute to inter-Christian communication and ecumenical dialogue and respect. Regarding its conclusions, the thesis demonstrates marked differences in emphasis, terminology, and methodology between the two traditions. However, it also reveals that, in terms of ethics, and specifically of the ethics of tattooing and body piercing, their similarities are far more than one might have initially expected.