Thursday, July 5, 2007

Church must uphold its teachings

I find the indignation of John Buggy (Threats do Church no favour West Australian 11/06/07) , Brian Toohey (Opinion West Australian 11/06/07)  and others concerning the comments of Archbishops Hickey and Pell rather hypocritical and amusing.

 

Let me say: I am not a catholic.  I am an agricultural scientist.  Hence I do understand what therapeutic cloning is. Therapeutic cloning is the same method by which Dolly the sheep came to be.   The only difference is that in the provisions of the therapeutic cloning bill, the human Dollys that scientists will be allowed to create, must be put to death by the time they reach the 14th day of their development.   Many people think that this is acceptable.   But the Catholic Church has consistently taught (as do most churches) that this is a gross violation of its teaching on the sanctity of human life.

 

I wonder how indignant Brain Toohey and John Buggy et al would have been if the Roman Catholic Archbishops in Germany had warned Roman Catholic ministers in Hitler’s government, that if they voted in favour of Jews going to the gas chambers, they would be denied communion, or excommunicated.   Would that have warranted an investigation by the Parliamentary Privileges Committee?  Would that be seen by them as a serious violation of the church state divide?  Hardly.  They all would say that the archbishops  took a courageous stand.  

 

Ah, I hear you say: that is different!  As a scientist, I need to tell you that the only difference is that the Archbishops are speaking up for defenceless human beings who are 14 days into their development, where as in the Hitler scenario, the archbishop would have spoken up for defenceless human beings into their 5th, 10th or 90th year of development. 

 

Archbishop Hickey has a responsibility to his church and its members, to ensure that the name of his church is not brought into disrepute.  If I were a member of the Catholic Church, and felt that I needed to vote in favour of the therapeutic cloning bill, then I would consider myself duty bound to resign from the Catholic church.   MPs can hardly claim to be Catholic, if they are not prepared to uphold some of its most basic teaching.  Just as we would not deny Kevin Rudd the right to deal with unionists who do not uphold the values of the ALP, so an Archbishop must have the right to deal with people in their church who do not uphold the values of the church.

 

So rather than refer the Archbishop to the Parliamentary Privileges Committee, I would urge the speaker of the Legislative Assembly to refer Catholic MPs who plan to vote in favour of the  therapeutic cloning bill, to the Trade Practices Commission on the ground of false advertising.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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