Saturday, July 08, 2006

British Scientists Blast Vatican on Stem Cell Research Excommunication



London, England (LifeNews.com) -- British researchers are upset that the Catholic Church has decided it will excommunicate scientists who are involved in embryonic stem cell research. The Vatican says the research, which relies on the destruction of human life to obtain stem cells, is just as bad as abortion.
Last week, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, told an official Vatican magazine that embryonic stem cell research was "the same as abortion."

"Destroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion. It is the same thing," he said.

"Excommunication will be applied to the women, doctors and researchers who eliminate embryos [and to the] politicians that approve the law," the cardinal said in an interview.


This is all very fine and well, but the clergy's record of applying these penalties is positively ABYSMAL. All we ever get are announcements, rarely is anything ever done to Catholics who break faith and are involved in abortion or any kind of destruction of embryonic life. Ho-hum, same-old, same-old as far as I'm concerned. The clergy either don't really believe Church doctrine, or they don't have any guts.


However, British scientists are calling this "religious persecution."

Dr. Stephen Minger, leading stem cell expert at Kings College, told the BBC, "Having been raised a Catholic I found this stance really outrageous."


PFffffttttt, enforcing religious discipline on one's own members is religious persecution???. Talk about your inflated rhetoric.

"Persecuted Scientist": Waaaaah! Mom! He told me I'm a bad Catholic! He's persecuting me! Waaaaah!

Persecution is not being told you've been a bad boy and you've broken Church rules. Persecution is when someone in authority fires you, throws you in jail, abducts you or kills you for your beliefs.

If you were raised Catholic, then you'd know that you're not supposed to be sinning. If you cared all that much about your Faith and Divine Revelation, you'd stop now. But you don't care either way. If you want to be Catholic, then you have to behave like one. You don't get a vote.


"Are they going to excommunicate IVF doctors, nurses and embryologists who routinely put millions of embryos down the sink every year throughout the world?" he asked.


They should but they won't.


Professor Allan Templeton, president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, told the BBC that the cardinal's comments were "insensitive and unhelpful."


We're pretty insensitive to the Culture of Death.


Meanwhile, Professor Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Chair in practical ethics at the University of Oxford, blasted the Catholic church saying the excommunication views amount "to religious persecution of scientists which has no place in modern liberal societies."


Waaah! I'm being denied the Sacraments! Waaah! That hurts! I don't care enough about the Catholic Faith to not do this to begin with, but now they're telling me I'm a bad Catholic! Owwwwww!

This kind of statement is really dangerous. Because when secularists say that the Church's discipline has no place in modern-day society, what they're really saying is that Catholicism doesn't have a place in modern-day society. And that's the beginning of REAL persecution.


An Italian cloning scientist wants to be the first excommunicated from the Catholic Church.


Big whoop. There are thousands left in the world. I'm sure that's keeping him up at night.


Professor Cesare Galli of the Laboratory of Reproductive Technologies in Cremona, the first scientist to clone a horse, said last week that the position makes the Catholic church like the Talbian in Afghanistan.


More inflated rhetoric. Let's see, the Taliban KILLED people who broke the law, cut off body parts, and basically used violence and terror to punish people and make their point.

The Catholic Church uses a canonical measure of excluding a Catholic from Communion and warning them they might be destined for hell.

Whew! The similarities are breathtaking! Thanks for pointing them out, doctor. I would have never seen them if you hadn't told me.


"I can bear excommunication. I was raised as a Catholic, I share Catholic values, but I am able to make my own judgment on some issues and I do not need to be told by the church what to do or to think," Galli told the London Telegraph newspaper.


You gotta laugh. You're Catholic but you don't want to be told what the Truth is or how to behave?

You're in the wrong Church, pal. If you want to make things up for yourself, you don't need to be part of the Church.



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