September 2, 2001

I used to be an embryo

I’ve come to learn how proud St. Brigid parishioners are of their ethnic heritages. Some are trying to figure out mine. “What are you, Father?”, they’ve been asking. “American,” I say. “No, I mean what were your family origins?”, they say. I want to say “Embryonic.” And it’s true -- I, like everyone else, was once an embryo. So when there is public debate over whether our tax dollars should be used to kill embryos to get stem cells for research, I take it personally, for I used to be an embryo!

There’s a problem with how this debate is framed in the media. Our neighboring pastor, Fr. Don Hanson described it best when he wrote in Our Lady of Hope’s bulletin: “Some reporting (perhaps out of an unconscious bias) has set up the question to look like this: Science, which has unlimited power for good, is trying to find cures for devastating genetic diseases; the Church, science’s perennial enemy (remember Galileo), is once more trying to hold back progress. The subtext is: science is benign and trustworthy; religion is irrelevant (at best) or dangerous (at worst) and in any case should not be allowed to interfere.”

Well the truth of the matter is that the Church supports scientific research that will lead to the cure of diseases. Remember, we follow Jesus who spent a good portion of his ministry healing the sick. It’s just that he didn’t kill anyone in order to heal another. The Church supports stem cell research on cells that were obtained without having destroyed an embryo.

Reports in the media, and even the President’s recent decision to use our tax dollars to fund limited research on embryonic stem cells, fail to recognize that embryos are human life in its beginning stage. (The President explained that embryos had the “potential” for human life and therefore shouldn’t be destroyed.) The truth is that embryos are not just “potential” life...they ARE life. And they are human lives. No human embryo grows into a zebra or a fish. When given the opportunity to live, human embryos grow into people like you and me. (By the way it could be argued that some of us live only a small portion of our “potential” as human beings, but that would be no reason to cut us apart to use our bodies for research.)

It’s important to respect all life, from conception to natural death and while a lot of attention is being paid to embryos these days, let us not forget to appreciate the gift of the grown-up embryos who are our neighbors and family. Today, tell them that you love them.

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For the Record..

See Father's Ralph's first spoken greeting to the community at St. Brigid..

Italian Mass
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Haitian Mass
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