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JANUARY 6 2012 THE CATHOLIC HERALD

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Archbishop says organ donation must not be a duty

BY MADELEINE TEAHAN

THE ARCHBISHOP of Cardiff has criticised the Welsh government’s plans to introduce “presumed consent” on organ donation.

Archbishop George Stack said that “the dignity of the human person demands that our autonomy be respected in this profoundly important area”, and that the human body is “not an asset of the state”.

He said: “I agree with my fellow church leaders that our organs should be donated a as gift to others and not as a duty.”

The Welsh government is currently hosting a consultation on their plans to implement a policy through which individuals’ organs would automatically qualify for donation after death unless they opted out of the scheme.

The Department for Health has clarified its “firm intention” to implement “presumed consent” by 2015.

But Church leaders and ethicists have expressed their concerns about the government proposals.

Dr David Albert Jones of the Anscombe Bioethics Centre said: “Pope John Paul II clearly stated that without consent ‘organ transplantation and the grafting of tissue would no longer correspond to an act of donation but would amount to the dispossession or plundering of a body’. This understanding is also expressed in the Catechism of the Catholic Church which lays down that organ donation ‘is not morally acceptable if the donor or his proxy has not given explicit consent.

“Thus laws that allow doctors to remove organs from the dead without consent and even against the objections of the relatives contradict clear Catholic teaching. They contradict the very concept of donation which is a free gift.”

The Anglican Archbishop of Wales Dr Barry Morgan has also criticised proposed moves for presumed consent. He said: “Organ donation surely ought to be a matter of gift and not of duty.

“Giving organs is the most generous act of self giving imaginable but it has to be a choice that is freely embraced, not something that the state assumes.

“Put more crudely, it can turn volunteers into conscripts.

“I think that compromises individual rights and freedoms and poses the moral question as to whether the state can make such decisions.”

Professor John Saunders, the chairman of the Royal College of Physicians’ ethics committee, wrote in am article for the British Medical Association (BMA) online that “presumed consent can no more exist than a squared circle” and pointed out that organ donation rates were rising in Wales without a change in organ donation law.

The NHS Blood and Transplant service argues that, while more than 90 per cent of people support organ donation, only 30 per cent have signed up to donate their organs and the BMA, which represents doctors and nurses, strongly supports a change in the law.

A spokesman for the Welsh government also defended the new proposals, saying: “Our proposals are aimed at improving organ donation rates in Wales by making it easier for the vast majority of people who say they believe in organ donation to become donors after their death. Our proposals also offer people the choice to state if they do not want to donate their organs, which is not something any of us can do now.

“The retrieval of organs after death, as the NICE guidelines for the NHS make clear, is a strictly controlled clinical process in which the state has no part to play. This is the case under the current system and will continue to be the case under our proposals.

“Under our proposed soft opt-out organ donation system, people will be able to opt out of donating their organs if they wish. If a person has not opted out, families will still be consulted when a death has occurred, as happens now.

“However, previous consultations show that the Welsh public supports these proposals.”

A Catholic five-year-old boy who died suddenly last year saved the lives of four people when his parents decided to donate his organs during his final hours of life.

Luca Giovannini, from St Hugh’s primary in Timperley, Stockport, died just 24 hours after being taken ill and when his parents learned that his chances of survival were small they decided to donate his organs so “something positive” could come out of his death.

Luca’s organs were donated last year to a two-year-old girl, a twoyear-old boy, a 35-year-old mother and a 34-year-old man.

Lord Falconer is chairman of a commission on assisted suicide due to publish a report this week PA

Falconer pushes for change to the law on assisted suicide BY MADELEINE TEAHAN

A COMMISSION established by the former Lord Chancellor to investigate Britain’s assisted suicide law is expected to recommend the legalisation of assisted suicide for the terminally ill. Writing in the Daily Telegraph Lord Falconer of Thoroton, chairman of the Commission on Assisted Dying, said: “The evidence identified problems with the current framework and concerns about the consequences of change. We have tried to provide a possible way forward, which addresses the need for safeguards. It is a difficult subject. But for many people it has a profound effect on whether or not their last days on earth are bearable.”

The Commission on Assisted Dying, sponsored by the think tank Demos, was due to report as The Catholic Herald went to press.

The commission has been criticised since its inception in November 2010 because of its membership and its donors.

Critics point out that Lord Falconer previously tried to relax the law on assisted suicide in the House of Lords and that pro-euthanasia campaigner and fantasy author Terry Pratchett is partly funding the commission.

A spokesman for the Care Not Killing Alliance said: “This is a deeply worrying and flawed report that is being presented as a serious investigation into this complicated and divisive issue. It is not. The law exists to protect the vulnerable, elderly and disabled from feeling under pressure to end their lives because they are a burden.”

Nadine Dorries Conservative MP for Bedfordshire told the Daily Mail: “This commission, paid for by a known reformer and packed with strident voices to change the law, is unfortunately already discredited due to its lack of impartiality.”

Lord Falconer’s commission has visited jurisdictions, such as Oregon and Switzerland, where assisted suicide is permissible to assess how the law is operating.

Although the commission has heard from relevant witnesses such as palliative care specialists and disabled people, some have refused to give evidence due to concerns that the commission’s independence is spurious.

The British Medical Association representing 140,000 doctors passed a motion at its annual meeting last year which questioned the Commission on Assisted Dying’s partiality and opposed any submission of evidence to the commission due to worries about its lack of independence.

Among the committee’s members are Baroness Murphy, a former psychiatrist and proponent of previous assisted dying bills, and Penny Mordaunt MP, who chairs the All Party Parliamentary Group on Choice at the End of Life.

The commission also includes former police commissioner Lord Ian Blair, who has said that the law on assisted suicide is “incoherent and unsafe”. While suicide was decriminalised in 1961, assistance with suicide has remained a criminal offence with a prison sentence of up to 14 years.

There have been high-profile cases of relatives and spouses accompanying individuals to Dignitas, the suicide centre in Zurich, but none have been prosecuted.

The law on assisted suicide was clarified in March 2010 following a law lords ruling in favour of multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy.

Keir Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions, issued guidelines which stated that assistance with suicide in which the assister was “wholly motivated by compassion” would lessen the chance of prosecution. The guidelines also stipulated that if the assister was a doctor prosecution was more likely.

Although Miss Purdy and campaigners for a change in the law hailed the guidelines as a victory, the commission’s recommendations are expected to say that the current law on assisted suicide is still inadequate.

Earlier this week Lord Falconer said: “Between 2008 and 2010, 76 Britons ended their lives at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland... Commissioners visited the clinic and spoke to the people who ran it. They did not like much of what they saw.”

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Bishop praised for ‘bold and courageous’ letter Archbishop calls for ‘more mature’ national debate

Continued from Page 1: But the spokesman added: “Is it right that our old folk are supporting the kids they won’t ever see at church?

“The real issue is not the Muslims, but our own people who won’t darken our doors. And unlike in London, we don’t have significant numbers of immigrants in the north to bolster that. We have some Keralan Indians, but not in any significant numbers as they do in Westminster and Southwark.”

Bishop Campbell’s predecessor, Patrick O’Donoghue was praised in Rome and within the Church in England for his Fit for Mission? document in which he suggested that “our Catholic schools and colleges must become powerhouses of evangelisation and catechesis.”

The Diocese of Lancaster invited people to place comments on its website, most of which were positive.

Michael Merrick, a teacher in the diocese called the letter “bold”, and said it “asks some genuinely courageous questions that will no doubt horrify some while delighting others”.

He praised the bishop’s call for evangelisation, adding: “For many Catholic schools, caught in the vice-like grip of external secular pressures placed on the schools system as a whole, as well as the identity-amnesia that has gripped the Church more widely, evangelisation as warranting even a footnote on the mission statement is essentially alien. Holistic visions of a Catholic education, encompassing both organisational structure and pedagogy, are simply trumped by the reality and demands of the schools sector: the dilution of any distinctive ethos thereby brought about through a mixture of cultural change within and without the Church and simple, cold reaction to legislative demand.”

Bishop Malcolm McMahon of Nottingham, chairman of the Catholic Education Service of England and Wales, said in a statement: “Bishop Michael Campbell has raised an important question during a time in which we are all having to examine our priorities. The Church has established her own schools because she considers them as a privileged means of promoting human formation and education in the Catholic faith; as such, Catholic schools contribute to the common good of society and support the Church’s evangelising mission, and are a valuable investment in our young people.

“As Bishop Michael says in his pastoral letter, we will not be able to find answers to the questions which he has raised ‘by human effort and planning alone, but only through a faith that seeks the will of the Father, through the grace of Christ and with the assistance of the Holy Spirit’.”

BY ED WEST

THE ARCHBISHOP of Dublin has appealed for a “more mature dialogue between Church and society in Ireland” at a Mass attended by the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny.

Celebrating World Day of Peace on Sunday at St Mary’s church in Haddington Road in Dublin, along with members of the government, politicians and diplomatic corps, Archbishop Diarmuid Martin prayed for a renewed sense of national purpose in the recession-hit country and greater solidarity with the poor.

The Primate of Ireland prayed for the nation, its leaders and all the country’s citizens and said that, though there were anxieties, believers entered the New Year with hope and with a “renewed commitment to work together to build up what is good”.

Addressing the role of the Church in Ireland in the past, he said: “Faith in Jesus Christ cannot be imposed on any individual. When attempts are made to impose faith on a society then the originality of faith is inevitably damaged.

“There have been dark moments in the history of the Catholic Church which have been unveiled in recent years. Church leaders have, over the years, overstepped the boundaries of their legitimate mandate,” he admitted. Yet, he said: “The contribution of individual believers and of the

Church as an institution to Ireland’s development and social culture has overall been positive.”

But, in comments that would not have gone unnoticed by members of the government, he said: “Certainly criticism, or even rejection of the Catholic Church and what it represents, is legitimate. But criticism is different from a negative and cynical caricature of faith or spin.

“By its very nature spin can turn into perpetual motion in which there remain few anchors around which to base values. A society which seeks only quick answers is the least apt to identify the values that endure.

“Renewal of the Church must also enable its prophetic voice to stand out uncompromised by the culture of any day,” he said.

The archbishop added: “A mature dialogue between Church and society in Ireland requires renewal in the Church.”

In July, following the Cloyne Report into the handling of abuse allegations, Mr Kenny attacked the Vatican in a speech at the Dáil, claiming that “a report into child sexual abuse exposes an attempt by the Holy See to frustrate an inquiry in a sovereign, democratic republic... as little as three years ago”. He added that the Cloyne Report showed the Vatican’s “dysfunction [and] ... narcissism”.

NEWSBULLETIN Landmark Dome of Home church to re-open in March SS PETER and Paul, the Cheshire church that is to be re-opened in March after a campaign by parishioners, is to become a 24hour “beacon” for worship, according to its new priest.

in May it was announced that the traditionalist order, the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest, would make the church a centre for the Extraordinary Form Mass.

The Wirral church, known as the “Dome of Home”, was closed by the Diocese of Shrewsbury in August 2008 after it was decided it was too costly and large to maintain. But

Canon Olivier Meney said: “the dream is to have 24/7 public worship in the church, day and night. We are going to do that slowly, by steps. It will become a beacon.”

Fight breaks out at midnight Mass A FIGHT broke out at a church in Southampton during midnight Mass last month.

Heavy chairs were thrown down the aisle at St Edmund’s church after men attending the service before Christmas began fighting.

Mgr Vincent Harvey managed to continue the Mass before his shocked parishioners after police arrived to arrest the three men involved. Fr Harvey said: “There was loud talking going on at the back but I just assumed some people had had a bit too much to drink.

“But then about three or four minutes later, there were scuffles going on. Then it was obvious it was more than just a scuffle, there was actually a fight going on.”

He continued: “The person involved started throwing fairly heavy chairs down a side aisle, endangering people’s lives. People were frightened that it was happening. If they’d hit anybody they could have been badly injured.”

Abortion figures are released MORE than 100 unborn babies were aborted in 2010 by women expecting twins, triplets and quintuplets, in an effort to reduce their number of children.

According to figures from the Department of Health 101 women aborted their unborn child in this way during 2010, with some mother aborting two or more unborn babies. The number has risen from 59 women aborting at least one unborn child in 2006.

Caritas: reform care of elderly CARITAS Social Action Network has called on the Government to reform England’s “failing” care system for the elderly.

Helen O’Brien, chief executive, signed an open letter published in the Telegraph which claimed that an estimated 800,000 older people were being left “without basic care – lonely, isolated and at risk”. It pointed to “terrible examples” of neglect in the care system.

Long-serving headmaster dies STEPHEN SZEMERENYI, the second longest-serving headmaster at Finchley Catholic High School, has died at the age of 67. He served as headmaster of the school from 1983 to 1999.

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Archbishop prays for Bethlehem Christians

At midnight Mass the Archbishop of Westminster raises plight of families fighting for their homes

BY ED WEST

ARCHBISHOP Vincent Nichols of Westminster has offered prayers for Christians in Bethlehem who risk losing their homes in a homily at Westminster Cathedral.

During midnight Mass Archbishop Nichols spoke of 50 families in the West Bank town who he said could lose their land to Israel.

Addressing the congregation, Archbishop Nichols urged people to “see more clearly all those things which disfigure our world”, adding: “We too live ‘in a land of deep shadow’.

“That shadow falls particularly heavily on the town of Bethlehem tonight. At this moment the people of the parish of Beit Jala prepare for their legal battle to protect their land and homes from further expropriation by Israel.

“Over 50 families face losing their land and their homes as action is taken to complete the separation/security wall across the territory of the district of Bethlehem.

“We pray for them tonight.”

The archbishop went on to speak of the importance of kindness and forgiveness, adding: “In the words of St Paul we are to be a people with ‘no ambition except to do good’.”

He also spoke of hope, saying: “We live in a world in which the prospects for the future, in the terms the world can offer, are distinctly shaky. Yet we find an unshakeable hope in our Saviour.”

In his Christmas Day sermon the Archbishop of Canterbury talked of the “broken bonds and abused trust” in a British society torn apart by riots and financial speculation.

Speaking at Canterbury Cathedral, Dr Rowan Williams asked the congregation to learn lessons about “mutual obligation” from the events of the past year.

The 470-mile long West Bank barrier, which began to be confronted in 2000 during the Second Intifada, was built to prevent suicide bombers from attacking Israel, although it has been credited with significantly decreasing attacks, it has been widely criticised. Some critics have compared it to an “apartheid barrier” and criticised the route, which takes in over 10 per cent of the West Bank.

Bethlehem is surrounded on three sides by the barrier, and locals say that it has damaged their economy. In Bethlehem, where the barrier takes the form of a 30-foot wall, it runs right past private houses, including the home of one Catholic family in the Rachel’s Tomb district, the Anastases, whose house faces the wall on three sides.

In a traditional midday procession from Jerusalem on Christmas Eve. Latin Patriarch Fouad Twal, the leader of Latin Rite Catholics in the Holy Land, crossed through a massive metal gate in the barrier. “We ask the Child of Bethlehem to give

A concrete security wall is dismantled nine years after it was first built in the Jewish neighbourhood of Gilo, Jerusalem us the peace we are in desperate need for, peace in the Middle East, peace in the Holy Land, peace in the heart and in our families,” He told reporters before heading to the Church of the Nativity, where he celebrated Midnight Mass.

Bethlehem was once a stronghold of Palestinian Christianity, but the proportion of Christians in the town has fallen from over 80 per cent at the time of the Six Day War in 1967 to barely more than 25 per cent today. Across the West Bank the proportion of Christians has declined as the world’s oldest

Christian community has moved to South America, the United States and Europe to escape from the violence of the Israeli-Arab conflict and subsequent economic problems.

In October the Israeli government announced the construction of a new settlement that threatens to cut Bethlehem off from Jerusalem. Givat Hamatos would connect two other settlements, Har Homa and Gilo, closing the corridor that had connected Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Har Homa is built on land where angels are said to have announced the birth of Christ to local shepherds.

Local priest Fr Ibrahim Shomali of Beit Jala parish said: “If Jesus were to come this year, Bethlehem would be closed. He would either have to be born at a checkpoint or at the separation wall. Mary and Joseph would

AP photo have needed Israeli permission – or to have been tourists. This really is the big problem for Palestinians in Bethlehem: what will happen when they close us off completely?”

The Israeli Embassy press office was unavailable for comment.

Documents show pope’s effort to end Irish hunger strike

BY MICHAEL KELLY

DECLASSIFIED British documents have disclosed the extent to which Blessed Pope John Paul II tried to intervene to end a 1981 hunger strike by Catholic prisoners in a British jail in Northern Ireland.

The documents claim that, after the pope sent a special envoy, the leader of the Provisional Irish Republican Army prisoners, Bobby Sands, was willing to suspend the fast just days before he died.

The offer was conveyed to the

British authorities by the pope’s secretary, Irish Mgr John Magee, whom Pope John Paul dispatched to persuade the prisoners to call off the hunger strike.

The state papers, declassified under the 30-year rule, claim that Sands told Mgr Magee, who later became the Bishop of Cloyne, that he would suspend his strike in return for discussions with a British government official, two priests and three other prisoners as witnesses.

But, the British rejected the offer, claiming it was an attempt to open negotiations. The prisoners, incarcerated for paramilitary activity against British rule in Northern Ireland, had begun their hunger strike in an attempt to be reclassified as political prisoners, a move Britain vehemently rejected.

Sands died on May 5 1981 after 66 days on hunger strike. He was buried with a crucifix that Mgr Magee had given him as a gift from Pope John Paul. Ten prisoners starved themselves to death before a compromise was reached that October.

The hunger strike significantly polarised tensions between the

Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland.

More than 100,000 Catholics attended Sands’s funeral, and Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, began contesting elections for the first time.

Most Northern Irish Catholics want Britain to cede the region to the Irish Republic to form a single independent Ireland, while most Protestants support the region remaining part of the United Kingdom.

A 1998 peace accord committed all sides to pursue their goals by purely peaceful means. As a result, Northern Ireland remains part of the United Kingdom but is governed by a cross-community power-sharing government based in Belfast.

The declassified papers also reveal that Irish prime minister Garret FitzGerald appealed to Cardinal Tomas O Fiaich in 1981 for a change in the Catholic Church’s approach to interchurch marriages.

At the time, children of interchurch marriages were required to be raised Catholic.

But Mr FitzGerald said he believed a change would aid peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland.

He wrote to the cardinal saying that the government wanted to “indicate concern” and “raise the possibility” that the Vatican “might not perhaps be disposed to take special account of the Irish situation if invited to do so”.

“I trust that Your Eminence will appreciate and understand the motives that have led me to write to you at this time in these terms, in full recognition of the separation of Church and state,” he added.

Soon after, the Irish bishops decided to postpone publication of a revised directory on mixed marriages.

After a meeting with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in November 1981, Mr FitzGerald described the bishops’ postponement as “significant”.

The new directory issued in November 1983 retained the promise by the Catholic partner to raise the children Catholic, but stressed that parents had joint responsibility for the religious upbringing of their children.

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Retreat centre worth millions is sold to developer BY MADELEINE TEAHAN

THE ALL SAINTS Pastoral Centre in London Colney, Hertfordshire, is to be sold to property developers, the Diocese of Westminster has announced.

In a statement on its website the diocese said: “The Trustees of the Diocese of Westminster have now given permission for its agents to conclude the sale to the preferred bidder and to ensure that this complies fully with Charity Law concerning the sale of property.

from time spent there, finding encouragement, companionship, new understanding and deeper prayer. Thank you all very much.”

The announcement deeply disappointed campaigners who are determined to keep the centre, which is worth millions of pounds, open.

Peter Baker of the group Save All Saints (SAS) told the Herts Advertiser that the decision was “a great disappointment to all concerned” but that they would keep fighting for the centre’s survival.

“In January 2011, the Diocese of Westminster announced the closure of All Saints Pastoral Centre. An earlier review concluded that the costs of upgrading the centre facilities would not have represented a prudent use of diocesan resources.”

The statement continued: “In what is a challenging economic climate, the sale of All Saints Pastoral Centre will help this diocese make better use of its resources. It will allow us to invest in expanding our ministry to young people.”

Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Westminster added his personal thoughts on the sale of the centre.

He said: “I want to thank and pay tribute to all who have worked at the All Saints Pastoral Centre over its 37year history. Valiant efforts were made to get the centre established and to sustain it over these years. Many thousands of people have benefited

Mr Baker wrote to Westminster Auxillary Bishop John Arnold in November last year suggesting ways of raising money in order to keep the centre alive. But his group received a letter before Christmas outlining the centre’s sale to a property developer.

Chris Brazier, Herts county councillor for the Colneys, said: “The diocese has not entered into negotiations with local people, and has gone for the highest price.”

Brian Plunkett, another member of the SAS group, said that he hoped the diocese would re-think its decision to sell the property given that “passions are running high in London Colney”.He said: “It would be wonderful to find a chink in the sale. The ink is not dry yet.”

All Saints was built in 1901 and originally housed the All Saints Sisters. It was obtained by the Diocese of Westminster in 1973.

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