Speaking at the Bambino Gesu pediatric hospital, Cardinal Pietro Parolin encouraged financial donations. No surprise there. But a Vatican News report goes on:
The Vatican Secretary of State then turned to organ donation, a particularly meaningful act in dialysis wards. It reflects the words of Jesus: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
There are two problems with that statement.
First, the reference to a dialysis unit suggests the donation of a kidney. Someone who donates a kidney is making a great sacrifice, but he is not laying down his life. The removal of one kidney (since we ordinarily have two) does not cause the death of the donor.
Second, while applauding those who allow for their organs to be harvested after they die, the Church has always insisted that the removal of organs for transplantation must not cause death. And since the condition of a vital organ begins to deteriorate immediately at death, an organ suitable for transplantation must be taken from a donor who is (at least by traditional standards) still alive. If a heart is transplanted, for example, it is still beating until it is removed from the donor— who at that point, obviously, is dead by any reckoning.
The diagnosis of “brain death” allows physicians to remove a vital organ from a patient who still displays signs of life. Whether “brain death” is a valid diagnosis is a subject of lively debate. (For what it is worth, I think it is not.) But if “brain death” really is true death, then again the donor is not laying down his life.
Since Bambina Gesu is a hospital for children, Cardinal Parolin is really speaking to the parents who must consent to the use of their children’s organs. The Vatican News report continues:
This gesture takes on even deeper significance when, in the “immense suffering” of loss, a parent is able to generate “life, hope, and a future” for others—overcoming despair and offering another child “the chance to grow up.”
Since these snippets from the Vatican News report include only fragments of quotes from Cardinal Parolin, we don’t know where the cardinal’s words end and the reporter’s inferences begin. But the article as it stands could convey the awful impression that he is encouraging parents to sacrifice their own children
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I have intimate knowledge of the horror of finding out, after consenting to donate my husband's organs, that they would have to be taken while his heart still beat and he was still breathing. It was not hospital personnel who told me this but my brother, who made inquiries on my behalf. In a panic, he let me know what was entailed in the proposed organ donation and I withdrew consent. This was over 25 years ago and I was grateful for others' sake that the truth about organ donation became widespread news of late. Parolin, if he is not aware of this reality, needs to be brought into the light.
This is very disturbing. I also read an article today on Crisis Magazine by Sheryl Collmer on actual child sacrifice that is extremely disturbing.