Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan

Herald of Hope is a weekly column started by former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert G. Weakland in the Catholic Herald and written by the bishops of the Milwaukee Archdiocese.

Past columns

As I write this week’s column, I look out upon Bambino Gesu Children’s Hospital, on the Janiculum Hill in Rome, next door to the North American College, where I am staying for the week. The rector of the seminary was kind to invite me to deliver a lecture and to celebrate installation to the ministry of lector for the seminarians. It’s good to be here, where I spent 11 happy years of my life.

Back to Bambino Gesu Children’s hospital. It is known throughout Europe as a premier pediatric hospital, renowned for its research and for its loving care of kids. It’s kind of the “St. Jude’s Childrens’ Hospital” of Italy.

Of course, it’s Catholic, administered by a religious order of sisters, the Daughters of Charity, deeply committed to traditional, ageless, moral values of healing in the name of Jesus, on property owned by the Vatican.

It is reported, it was in this hospital – Catholic to its core – that some of the earliest research began on stem-cell therapy. Medical scholars and researchers began study of the restorative, healing possibilities of stem cells harvested from umbilical cords at this Catholic children’s hospital years ago.

Yes, you heard me right … all this at a Catholic hospital! Does this surprise you? Probably, since the hype has it that the nasty, mean, uncaring, anti-scientific church is stubbornly opposed to stem-cell research and therapy.

Of course, as usual, the hype has it all wrong, since, not only Bambino Gesu, but Catholic hospitals and universities all over the world, have been in the forefront of such promising research.

The pivotal question is not whether we are for or against the use of stem cells for healing. The hinge question is what kind of research and use? As with every exciting new scientific discovery – the splitting of the atom, for instance, leading to the cure of cancer on one hand, or to Chernobyl on the other – there has to be boundaries, ethical norms, to make sure that this new discovery protects human life, never harms it.

That, of course, is the crux. Experts tell us that there are abundant possibilities for cure and restoration in the use of stem cells harvested from umbilical cords, other parts of the human anatomy, and, as recently reported, even from the amniotic fluid in the womb of an expectant mother. Full-speed ahead, the church – in company with legions of thoughtful scientists and physicians – proclaims. This is promising, this is good, this is ethical, this heals diseased human life without destroying someone else’s.

But, to produce an embryo in a laboratory so that stem-cells can be extracted from that tiny yet verifiable incipient human life? Sorry! Seems like I read once about such things in Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New Word,” and saw such labs in a movie called “Frankenstein.”

Put simply, human life is not a commodity, a means to an end. Human life is an end in itself, and reflective human beings, among whom were the founders of our nation, realize that the “right to life” is, in their words, inalienable. That means, it’s a given, it cannot be taken away, it must be respected and defended if a civilized, ethical society is to survive.

When it comes to human life, size does not matter. Granted, the tiny, microscopic, incipient human life of an embryonic stem cell is sure a lot smaller than that of a newborn baby, but they are both simply different stages of the sacred continuum of life, beginning at conception and concluding at natural death.

Does the human life present in an embryonic stem cell look different than the bouncing human life of a baby? Sure. But, so does the human life present in the 80-pound dying woman in a fetal position in a bed of a nursing home look different from the life so vigorous in an 18 year old. But, we would not harvest organs from the 90-year old who “hardly looks alive” to help the 18 year old! (Correct that – sorry to say, I read that they are, as a matter of fact, doing just that in some “medically advanced” countries).

As Patrick McIlheran commented this past December in his Journal Sentinel column: “If one’s humanity rests on a social decision, all rights are at risk. If it suits society to decide that eight cells aren’t enough to make an embryo human, will 16 cells do? 32? 128? Six pounds and wailing isn’t enough for ethicists who talk of euthanizing disabled babies. Down this road lie all the horrors in which some races as classes … weren’t seen as human enough to live.”

Thirty-four years ago this Monday, the Supreme Court decided that the life of the pre-born baby in the womb was not protected by the law, and could be ended by the decision of another. At the time, thoughtful people expressed concern: will the next step be the extermination of babies as they are being born? Or infanticide? Or Euthanasia? Or laboratory experimentation on human life that results in embryos rinsed down the lab’s sink?

These people were dismissed as alarmists, extremists, fanatics, religious zealots, unenlightened, unprogressive Neanderthals who were standing in the way of our brave, new world.

I call them prophets.

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