Posted on 06/30/2006 12:11:23 AM PDT by Antioch
Scientists who carry out embryonic stem cell research and politicians who pass laws permitting the practice will be excommunicated, the Vatican said yesterday.
"Destroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion. It is the same thing," said Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family.
"Excommunication will be applied to the women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos [and to the] politicians that approve the law," he said in an interview with Famiglia Christiana, an official Vatican magazine.
Excommunication forbids Catholics from receiving communion, assisting in any Church duties, and sometimes from having a Church burial.
But the threat was shrugged off yesterday by Italy's leading expert on cloning, Prof Cesare Galli, of the Laboratory of Reproductive Technologies in Cremona, who was the first scientist to clone a horse.
Prof Galli likened the Vatican to the Taliban and added: "I can bear excommunication. I was raised as a Catholic, I share Catholic values, but I am able to make my own judgment on some issues and I do not need to be told by the Church what to do or to think.
"I will be, together with Elena Cattaneo [a scientist working in the University of Milan] the first to be affected by the excommunication and then there are two other labs that I know using imported embryonic stem cells."
The research is opposed by the Catholic Church because it involves destroying embryos. This occurs at the point when they consist of about 100 to 200 cells and the so-called inner cell mass is removed. These stem cells can grow indefinitely and turn into any of the body's 200 cell types.
Scientists believe research making use of the cells could eventually yield treatments for a range of diseases, including diabetes, heart disease and Parkinson's.
The Vatican's tough stance on the issue came as the Pope prepared to visit Valencia for the fifth annual world conference on the Catholic family. Spain passed a law permitting embryonic stem cell research two years ago to the dismay of the Church.
An Italian senator, Paola Binetti, a member of Opus Dei and a prominent campaigner for Catholic rights, also spoke against the Church's line.
"I am upset and stunned," she said. "It is a mistake to give out the idea that God is angry with Man because he is not in agreement with him."
Cardinal Trujillo said it was not just Spain which had "thrown out the fundamental laws of nature" but also Belgium, Holland, the Scandinavian countries and France. He did not mention Britain, which is at the forefront of embryonic stem cell research.Belgium's divided State.
Well, dissenters make more interesting interlocutors than parrots. Given the choice of having as a dinner guest a dissenter or a party line mouthpiece, I'd go with the dissenter.
I've never found catholic dissenters interesting conversationalists. It's just Liberal mental illness applied to theology-once you understand the gist of their mentality-human beings are random proteins, we are the ultimate creators, and all human happiness is what can grab in this life–then you can complete their argument and sentences before they can. And having once owned a couple of double yellow-head Amazons, I would definitely pick the latter for companionship.
You do not have to invite the same dinner guest every day, do you? I prefer dissidents, as I myself in my youth was a small-time one, in the USSR. So, it is a self-interested statement - here's my full disclosure.
So the question is, will the bishops here in the U.S. enforce the excommunications that are supposed to take place with the so-called Catholic politicians that will (or have?) voted to allow embryonic stem-cell research. I'm thinking of pols like Kerry, Harkin, and Fat Teddy, for starters.
Tell you what, give me a call when you agree to have a guest over who "dissents" from your policy of not urinating at the dinner table. :)
The pro-death crowd is gratuitously dishonest.
That comparison is a real stretch.
The Church, which is allowed to have rules for its members, isn't threatening Galli with any harm.
Gosh. I'd love to listen to some of the non-dissenters.
A non-dissenting researcher might have even more stimulating discussions, since "adult" stem cell research is yielding the goodies.
Entschuldigen. Ich verstehe nicht.
It is time to expel embryonic stem cell politicians from the church!
"To each one's own", as was written over the Buchenwald gate.
My dear father used to say the same thing in Latin and added a phrase of his own --
'"De gustibus non est disputandum," said the old lady as she kissed the pig.'Dad had a great sense of humor.
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