A culture that devalues life

Submitted on August 16, 2001

Send to friend President George W. Bush has made his decision regarding federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Elsewhere in this week's St. Louis Review Archbishop Justin Rigali offers his thoughts on the president's decision. An intriguing aspect of the entire matter is that the Church's position on the issue was actively sought out by our nation's leader. For the past eight years, the former leader of our nation - in accord with many in the secular news media - openly disparaged Catholic thought, especially as it related to the most important life issues of the day. It is almost impossible to count the number of times in the last administration the word "extreme" was used to dismiss important elements of Pope John Paul II's theology of the body. To Bush's credit, his speech to the American people spoke of his worry "about a culture that devalues life," and that as president he has "an important obligation to foster and encourage respect for life in America and throughout the world." If one may separate his words from the actual decision he has made - and that indeed is debatable - the language marks a refreshing change. Conversely, the embryonic stem cell discussion showed that many in the news media remain either hostile or ignorant regarding Catholic intellectual thought. A columnist for The Seattle Times, for example, lamented that the recent meeting between President Bush and Pope John Paul II was "of great concern." "It's not easy to apply 12th-century religious doctrine to life in 2001," the columnist hissed, arguing that "the best we can do is stick to secular and practical values of human progress and urge politicians to leave theology to the theologians." Our local daily newspaper, using a communications strategy perfected by President Bill Clinton, consistently cited polls it said showed the issue was "clear cut." In antiseptic, amoral fashion, the paper's editorialist referred to a human embryo as simply a "product of conception." Only a day after its editorial, the same newspaper told the tragic story of a British woman suing a California couple for whom she had contracted to be a surrogate mother. It seems the couple backed out of the deal when they discovered the surrogate was pregnant with twins. Because the "product of conception" was not what they were expecting, the California couple allegedly demanded the woman abort one of the two babies she was carrying. She declined, but apparently only for personal reasons: "Fearing the procedure would endanger her own health, she refused," the Associated Press said. In both the California case and the issue decided by the president, the human beings at the center of the dispute are thought of, by some, merely as commodities. Praise God that the Church plays an active part in the societal debate, so that one day our society may more aggressively take heed of the Church's wisdom that all of God's "products of conception" are of inestimable intrinsic value.