Stem Cells: Morally Troubling?
Philipiine News, Commentary, Lito Gutierrez, Posted: Jun 02, 2005
I am, as I write this, watching a debate on CNN between a paralyzed man, a former race car driver, and a congressman. The subject is stem cell research, a wedge issue between religious pro-life conservatives (many of whom strangely enough are staunch death penalty proponents) and secular pro-choice liberals.
The paralytic is saying that he hopes Congress will pass the stem research bill so that a cure might be found that would make him walk again. The politician’s response was the paralytic could not oblige him because his (the politician’s) conscience wouldn’t allow him to “kill” embryos that are going to be destroyed anyway.
The interview takes a disturbing turn when the moderator asks the politician what he feels about the South Koreans allowing stem-cell research to find cures for 18 diseases such as diabetes, Alzheimer’s and cerebral palsy. The politician turns even more grave and says the Koreans are different, the tone of which was Americans, or at least those who shared his beliefs, are morally superior to the Koreans.
As of this writing there is majority bipartisan support for the bill, a reflection of what most Americans (about 54%, according to the polls) feel. But the Cardinal-cum-Evangelical George W. Bush, lock in step with the Vatican, said he was going to veto it anyway.
A White House statement said the bill “relies on unsupported scientific assertions to promote morally troubling and socially controversial research.”
Controversial, certainly, but morally troubling? As of this writing, more than 1,827 Americans soldiers have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting to topple theocracies and replace them with democracies. And yet, here in America, we have a democratically elected president who can’t seem to discern that he is here to serve man, not God, and who seems intent on just pandering to the desires of those who believe in his God.
As a Christian, I should actually be happy since Bush and I worship the same religious team. But what about the Muslims, the Buddhists, or even the atheists. And what about fellow Christians who believe that an embryo is not a living, breathing human being, as what the fundamentalists insist everyone else should believe.
To be sure, this is one issue that cuts across party lines. There are Republicans and Democrats on either side. But it is a political issue with heavy religious undertones. More precisely it is another faith issue, like gay marriage, abortion, and sexual abstinence, that the religious hardliners have politicized in their dogged efforts to dictate America’s moral code.
Religion can’t operate in a vacuum. It can grow only if continues to be relevant and responsive to the needs of its faithful and even the vagaries of the times. This is why women no longer wear veils when they go to church. This is why Mass is no longer said in Latin. That is why priests, in saying Mass, no longer hold the tips of their thumbs and forefingers together after the Consecration. (Why? Because, according to my religion teachers in Lourdes School, “crumbs” of the Body of Christ could be embedded on the skin of the fingers and locking the fingertips would prevent parts of His Body from falling to the ground.)
Imagine what the Church would be like today if its doctrines continued to insist that the world is flat; or that evolution is heresy; or that there is no place in heaven for other religions. It would be one hell, no pun intended, of a lonely Church, completely detached from reality. Like the Taliban.
But this is what religious fundamentalists and their congressional confederates, want America to be, a nation of puritanical, intolerant Christians.
Lito Gutierrez is the Publisher and Editor of Philippine News
Related Story
Bush's Moralism on Stem Cell Research Is Misguided
Page
1 of 1
|
