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INEWS
Volume 7 Number 19 « January
Serving Catholics in Western North Carolina in the Diocese of Charlotte
16,
1998
To Cuba, Pope Hopes To Encourage Cliurch Resurgence In Visit
By JOHN THAVIS VATICAN CITY (CNS) John Paul
— Pope
cross
Cuba
to visit four
in a country that
Catholic. He'll celebrate
25.
other pastoral personnel.
His
comes
visit to the
after a year of pastoral prepara-
mistically of a religious
The this
"comeback."
recent restoration of Christmas as a
public holiday
was one tangible sign of
new confidence among Catholics. The pope's arrival also follows
months of intense media
on the For five
attention
political potential of the visit.
days, the pontiff who helped bring
down
European communism will hold center stage in one of the last bastions of state socialism, and that formula has generated a sense of drama.
Addressing diplomats 10, the
Jan.
Camaguey and Santiago de Cuba, while meeting in Havana with political Clara,
and cultural
Caribbean island
tion that has church leaders talking opti-
at the
Vatican
pope said he wanted
to
strengthen Cuba's "courageous Catho-
and support all Cubans' efforts to build an "ever more just and united homeland, where all individuals can find their rightful place and see their legitimate aspirations realized." Although slowed by age and infirmity in recent years, the pope will crisslics"
major dioceses
was once 85 percent Masses in Santa
aims to bring encouragement to a resurgent church and moral guidance to a society at a pohtical crossroads when he travels to Cuba Jan. 21II
air
leaders, the sick, bishops
and
The visit will culminate in an openMass Jan. 25 in Havana's Plaza of
the Revolution, a place reserved solely
for
government assemblies, where
prayer will replace the shouted slogans
of communist
rallies.
Vatican officials outlined three basic
goals for the pope in Cuba: preach-
ing the Gospel, strengthening the church's role in society and helping to ease Cuba's isolation in the world community. The first task preaching Christian conversion might be overlooked by the media as a "merely" spiritual side of this trip, but it is a priority for Pope John Paul. Drawing on his experience in Eastem Europe, the pope believes it is essential for him to bring a message of Gospel hope, one that transcends ideology and politics, to the many Cubans who are disillusioned with both. After a year of pastoral preparation
JERUSALEM SNOW — Nuns of the Sisters of St. Joseph
See Pope Prepares For Visit, page 2
Old City of Jerusalem Jan. 12. The city was covered with 6 inches of snow overnight from an unusual weather pattern.
—
—
CNS
play
in
photo from Reuters
the
snow
in
the
Cloning Proposal Criticized, Draws Call For Ban WASHINGTON
(CNS)
— News
that a U.S. researcher intends to attempt
cloning of
human beings brought warn-
ings that the effort breaches ethical, sci-
and theological standards. Ethicists, church leaders and President Clinton were among those who said Chicago scientist Richard Seed should not proceed with his plans to treat infertility by impregnating a woman with an embryo created from cloned genetic
entific
material.
Seed said he hoped to have a viable pregnancy started in one of four volunteer couples within 18 months. A physicist. Seed said he was seeking financial backers and physicians to participate. Seed's plans were announced Jan. 6, and he reiterated his intentions in interviews the following weekend, saying he would move the project to Tijuana, Mexico, if Congress were to outlaw hu-
man
cloning research.
Clinton said in his Jan. 10 radio address that Congress should impose such a ban because the techniques involved are "untested
unacceptable."
and unsafe and morally
Two days later, 19 European nations signed an agreement to prohibit genetic human beings. The members of the Council
replication of
of Europe signed a protocol committing their countries to banning "any intervention seeking to create human beings genetically identical to another human being, whether living or dead." A human clone would be created in the image and likeness of man, not God, a Vatican authority said.
Bishop Elio Sgreccia, vice president of the Pontifical Academy for Life and director of the Bioethics Institute at Rome's Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, told Vatican Radio human cloning would be "the most serious" violation of natural and divine laws regarding procreation. "In a formal way, it was already declared seriously illicit in 1987" in a document on the dignity of human procreation issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Bishop Sgreccia told
Vatican Radio Jan. 8. Cloning takes place "outside the exercise of sexuality and is agamic, that is.
without the contribution of a
man and
a
woman,"
said Bishop Sgreccia. "It uses only the genes of one individual to make a photocopy of this individual," he said. The bishop said cloning "represents a dominion by man over man and includes a kind of desire to replace God's plans in an arbitrary and complete way,
creating
man
in
man's image and
like-
ness."
To
attempt cloning a human being would be "a serious sin," said Franciscan Father Gino Concetti, a moral theologian who writes for the Vatican newspaper.
Seed does try to clone a human being it would be "an affront to Almighty God and to the laws on the transmission If
of
human
Father Concetti told the newspaper Avvenire. The Franciscan priest said Seed's plans would be "an affront not only to nature but to reason and good sense: Human cloning cannot be accepted even in cases in which a couple is sterile and has no other possibility for overcoming
Study of Ethics in Health Care, said Seed's plans are more about making
money
than helping infertile couples.
"He's an entrepreneur
who wants
to
make money from exploiting people who have children," Haas said. part of the trend toward commer-
aren't able to "It's
cialization of everything, including hu-
man
life,"
he continued.
From the perspective of scientific progress alone, LeRoy Walters, director of Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics, said Seed's goal of cloning a human being by 1999 "is just so premature as to be an outrageous pro-
posal."
See Cloning
Criticized, page 12
life,"
VOCATIONS AWARENESS 4-page
infertihty."
special insert
Moral theologian John Haas, president of the Pope John Center for the
in this
issue