Posted on 06/30/2006 7:35:59 AM PDT by mware
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.
Point taken, but what I mean to say is that sometimes things come at a price and that's what you pay if you expect to get what you need, wether or not the church has moral grounds to approve or disapprove of the whole thing.
This is indeed a difficult matter, on which many people will keep disagreeing. So be it.
Morally compromised men moving toward a priesthood with the expectation that morals will soon be abolished. I know you said "sexual morals", but in fact, it's much more likely that it was "morals being abolished. What stronger position for evil to function in than a church with innocent and trusting people wanting to believe? And what would evil preach? It would preach tolerance and acceptance of evil.
Which is why they hate birth control. Fewer future catholics.
Guess all the pro-abortion Democrat Catholics will have to forego a Catholic burial (Kennedy, Pelosi, Kerry, McKulski et al). Wanna place a bet whether their American bishops follow this ruling?
Dear Bazooka,
That's nice.
Nonetheless, you can't intentionally, directly kill innocent human beings to achieve a good.
You may not do what is intrinsically evil to accomplish good.
That's pretty much at the foundation of Catholic moral theology, and has been for two thousand years. If you personally disagree with it in some cases, if you think that there can be exceptions to that principle, well, go for it.
But it isn't reasonable to expect the Catholic Church to provide for exceptions to that principle, and neither is it a double standard to refuse exceptions to that principle.
sitetest
Actually the Catholic Church does approve of the use of Adult Stem Research and cord and placenta cell research.
To be perfectly honest adult stem research is in the process of using it in over 70 clinical studies including cancer. Embryonic stem cell clinical studies = 0
http://www.stemcellresearch.org/ http://www.stemcellresearch.org/
Because the embryos are innocent and non-consenting eggs. Unlike criminals or terrorists, they've done nothing to deserve to be scrambled, and unlike soldiers, they cannot give an informed consent to risk themselves (even in a draft, there is conscientious objector status available, so a potential soldier always, at some level, consents.) Embryos are guilty of nothing, cannot consent to anything, and cannot opt out of anything.
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