3 minute read
Questions of Faith
Comment
Father Wilmer Todd
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Donating body or organs to science
(This column originally ran in the November 2017 issue of Bayou Catholic magazine.)
What is the Catholic Church’s position on people donating their bodies or organs after death to science or some type of medical center? What is the procedure that someone should follow regarding the burial afterwards?
Catholics who donate their bodies for scientific research are acting nobly when it is done for the good of humanity. That means it must be done in the spirit of service to other human beings and not for financial gain. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) says, “Organ donation after death is a noble and meritorious act and is to be encouraged as an expression of generous solidarity” (CCC, No. 2296). Donation of one’s body falls under the same teaching.
When a person donates his or her body to science so that medical students can study and acquaint themselves with the human body, it is completely in line with the teachings of the Catholic Church. These students learn from the donated bodies so that they then can become researchers and healers in their future medical professions.
Jesus told us in John’s Gospel, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:1213). We can look at giving our bodies to science as a type of “laying down of lives for our friends.” We are all part of the human race and when we help another human being live a better life, we are fulfilling Jesus’ command.
St. John Paul II said in an address to the Pontifical Academy for Life, “The church respects and supports scientific research when it has a genuinely human orientation, avoiding any form of destruction of the human being and keeping itself free from the slavery of political and economic interests.”
St. John Paul II also taught that removing the vital organs of a deceased person (e.g., heart, liver, lungs, and any others that can support another’s life) is morally permissible if there is moral certitude that the person has in fact died. The deceased before death or those authorized to dispose of his or her body must have freely given permission to remove those organs for transplanting into a person to preserve their life.
John Paul II explicitly taught that the task of determining that a person has died lies within the competence of medical doctors and scientists. During his pontificate, the “neurological” criterion was accepted as a valid criterion for determining death. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences said, “A person is dead when there has been total and irreversible loss of all capacity for integrating and coordinating physical and mental functions of the body as a unit.”
My aunt gave her body to science. There was a memorial Mass without the body to pray for her and to remember her. This was done without the body present. (They usually take the body away as soon as a person dies to preserve their organs.) When the medical center was finished with their studies, they cremated her body and sent it back to her family. We then arranged to have a grave-side service to properly bury my aunt in her grave.
Since the institutions to which bodies of the deceased are donated routinely cremate those bodies, unless the donor or their caregivers explicitly want to inter the bodily remains in a grave, church law regarding cremation is frequently applicable. Canon law permits cremation (Canon 1177, 3). The church teaches, “We must treat the bodies of the dead with respect and with charity in faith and hope of the Resurrection” (CCC, No. 2300).
The remains should always be buried. This teaching is to be observed whether the bodily or cremated remains of the deceased donor are to be then disposed of in carrying out the expressed desires of the deceased or his family or designated caregivers. BC
