Friday, May 28, 2004
Please note the link to My Domestic Church on the left. It's a nice site. A few days ago I wrote about worry that the Catholic Church might become a single-issue Church over abortion. When I was in the Orthodontist's office the other day, I read an article in the Atlantic Monthly called "The Case against Perfection." It's a very long and detailed article concerning the secular arguments against using cloning and gene therapy and in-vitro cleansing to design your perfect baby. So you can see, throw in gay marriage and the Catholic Church is anything but a single-issue church. Abortion, contraception, gay marriage, stem-cell research, in-vitro selection, mapping the human genome... the science of the human body is fast overwhelming our moral language.
I worry: Back in the early 1600's, it was astronomy and mathematics that were beyond our moral language and the church made mistakes about science which she was centuries in overcoming and admitting. We have a lot of new Galileos, mapping the inner universe of our body just as the old Galileo mapped the outer solar system. Explorers want in the worst way to go there and we can be sure, because when have explorers ever been stopped, that they will go there.
The question: Once the new world is discovered, once stem-cell cures for Parkinson's or MS or MD or Alzheimer's are discovered. What then? What will Catholic parents do when the cure is there for others but morally unavailable to them? How many of us, today, reject the Christian Scientists for letting their people die rather than allowing simple, medical treatment. One of my neighbors, a young mother, died over Christmas from a kidney stone infection. She was a Christian Scientist who refused treatment and left two pre-school children behind.
The answer: Who am I to say. My conscience is still in formation.
I worry: Back in the early 1600's, it was astronomy and mathematics that were beyond our moral language and the church made mistakes about science which she was centuries in overcoming and admitting. We have a lot of new Galileos, mapping the inner universe of our body just as the old Galileo mapped the outer solar system. Explorers want in the worst way to go there and we can be sure, because when have explorers ever been stopped, that they will go there.
The question: Once the new world is discovered, once stem-cell cures for Parkinson's or MS or MD or Alzheimer's are discovered. What then? What will Catholic parents do when the cure is there for others but morally unavailable to them? How many of us, today, reject the Christian Scientists for letting their people die rather than allowing simple, medical treatment. One of my neighbors, a young mother, died over Christmas from a kidney stone infection. She was a Christian Scientist who refused treatment and left two pre-school children behind.
The answer: Who am I to say. My conscience is still in formation.
