A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY
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| Volume 6 Number 27 - Tuesday, July 6th, 2004 |
A Publication of the ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN LAITY |
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The Orthodox Christian News Service |
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THE OFFICIAL POSITION OF THE ROMANIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH CONCERNING THE TRANSPLANT OF ORGANS The Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church approved in its session of 15 – 17 June 2004, the document of the National Commission for Bio-Ethics within the Church, concerning the transplant of organs. “The Church, reads the document, blesses any medical practice designed to reduce the sufferance in the world, therefore the transplant too, with respect both for the receiver and donor, either dead or alive. The dead body should also have all our respect. However, the Church warns that the transplant should be realized as a medical practice designed to eliminate the sufferance of her members, not to promote the idea of the autonomy of physical life and of its eternity, at the expense of the faith in the eternal life (the true life) and of its preparation. As she sees in the organ donor a man able to sacrifice himself, the Church thinks he ought to accomplish his gesture of love for his neighbour, on his own accord, as a result of correct information and free consent, independent of any influence alien to his conscience. The same exigencies should be met by the relatives of the deceased, in charge with his body and willing to grant certain organs of the deceased for transplant. The Church respects the receiver’s wish to live longer or in better conditions, but it expresses so much the more her respect for the acts of love, self-sacrifice and understanding of the donor’s. The Church is against any transaction with human organs or exploitation of the states of crisis and of the vulnerability of the potential donors (the lack of psychic or physic freedom, social penury). As for the establishing the real death (the soul’s leaving the body) identified with the cerebral death legally declared, the Church demands for the strict observation of the legal criteria diagnosing the cerebral death. The law states that the establishment of the death should be made by a medical legal team non-involved in transplant, based on the clinic and laboratory criteria. The Church cannot agree either with the transplant of the embryonic tissues that risk affecting the health of the foetus, or with the transplant of the organs of the acephalous of hydrocephalous newborn. At the same time, the Church can neither agree with some people’s tendency to become organ donors, provided they are euthanasiated. The informed lucid consent to grant an organ, while alive or dead, for the good of his neighbour in need, out of love for him and with no interest whatsoever, as well as the relatives’ decision to allow the extraction of certain tissues or organs in view of transplanting them from the deceased bodies to those to whom they have legal rights, observing the law, are in full agreement with the Christian morals. The Church blesses the persons who can make such sacrifices, but she can also understand those who cannot do it, observing the freedom of decision of any human being. She can also understand those who wish to get rid of sufferance and extend the period of their physical life, fully aware that a longer physical life would give them the chance to come closer to God and to spiritual progress. While blessing the efforts the physicians make to reduce sufferance in the world through the transplant of organs too, as well as the sacrifice of those willing to provide them, the Church cannot encourage some other people’s unjustified negativism (consisting either in refusing the donation of organs or in accepting any form of transplant, or even blood transfusion). If the life of our neighbour, the physical and spiritual one, is guaranteed, no sacrifice is too great on condition that no man is to be killed to allow another to live or to give him life. At the same time, it is necessary that the self-devotion and generosity of the donors for transplant of organs should not be manipulated as a pretext or screen for an unworthy financial profit, which does not ennoble, but degrades the human being.
The Christians, either as medical
staff, donors, and beneficiaries or as
intercessors, ought not to promote science without
having the ethic knowledge and responsibility
towards human dignity. This is why a permanent
spiritual supervision is a must, just like an
active spiritual discernment concerning the
purposes, declared and undeclared, of the
transplant of organs. |
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