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Catholic World News News Feature

Excommunication for embryonic stem-cell research June 29, 2006

Scientists who conduct research involving the destruction of human embryos are subject to excommunication, the president of the Pontifical Council for the Family has warned.

In an interview with the Italian weekly Famiglia Cristiana, Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo said that the canonical penalty of excommunication, which is applied to those involved in abortion, also applies to involvement in stem-cell research.

Deliberately destroying embryos for research purposes, the prelate observed, "is equivalent to abortion." The same penalty would apply, he said, since "it is the same action."

The president of the Pontifical Council for the Family told Famiglia Cristiana that he is deeply concerned by current political trends, which suggest that the Catholic Church could face legal sanctions for defending human life, marriage, and the family. In the Western world, he charged, actions that were once recognized as crimes are now given the status of legal rights. At the same time, he continued, "even talking about the defense of life and of the family's rights is being treated as a kind of crime."

The Colombian prelate lamented that in the eyes of popular culture, "life is no longer sacred, inviolate; it has become something flexible in man's hands." He argued that reliance on scientific and technological progress had produced a "delirium," with gravely harmful results for the life of society.

"The Church risks being brought before some international court" if current political trends continue, Cardinal Lopez Trujillo said. Nevertheless he insisted that the Church will continue to defend human life.

Particularly regarding embryonic stem-cell research, the cardinal said, "Even if the success of therapies using embryonic stem cells can be proven, one cannot produce and then suppress one life to cure another."

Cardinal Lopez Trujillo-- who will preside at the 5th World Meeting for Families in Valencia, Spain in early July-- has become the Vatican's most outspoken prelate on issues involving life and family. Earlier this month his dicastery produced a 60-page guide to Catholic teaching on those issues, entitled Family and Human Procreation. (That document is not yet available in an English translation.) However, in a June 27 letter to the Italian daily La Repubblica, Cardinal Lopez Trujillo clarified his position by saying that the penalty of excommunication did not necessarily apply to politicians who vote for laws allowing abortion. The Code of Canon Law (#1398), he pointed out, invokes the penalty specifically for those who are directly involved in procuring an abortion. While politicians may "violate the norms of the Church" by supporting legal abortion, he said, that offense does not mean that they are "outside the ecclesial communion."