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| Joseph Paul Jernigan at age 27 |
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| Joseph Paul Jernigan at age 27 |
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On the night before the 205th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, after celebrating together with booze and pot, Roy Dean Lamb and Joseph Paul Jernigan decided to break into the home of 75-year-old Edward Hale in tiny Dawson, Texas, and steal his microwave oven, among other things. Both burglars fled the scene when Hale discovered them, but Jernigan, fearing that Hale could identify him and send him back to prison to add to his previous 15-year sentences for burglary, came back and murdered Hale by bludgeoning him with an ashtray and stabbing him several times with a rusty, dull-bladed meat knife. When that didn't kill him, he shot him with Hale's own single-shot .410 gauge shotgun, reloaded, shot him again, and then reloaded again and shot him a third time just for good measure. Jernigan continued burglarizing his home as Hale lay dying!
Jernigan was, by all accounts, a really bad dude! In addition to his two previous convictions for burglary, He had been a drug addict and a chronic drunk and received a general discharge from the Army for unsuitability. His wife, perhaps recognizing the potential disadvantages of having him around loose during divorce proceedings, provided the information leading to his arrest and conviction. After 12 years of appeals of his death sentence, he was finally put to death by lethal injection on August 5th 1993.
That, however, was not the end of him.
At the prompting of a prison chaplain, Jernigan agreed to donate his body for scientific research or medical use. His cadaver was frozen and cut into four blocks for ease of handling. Then each block was ground away, millimeter by millimeter, to reveal 1,878 successive surfaces, each of which was photographed for the Visible Human Project. The result was the publication of an interactive 3D image of Jernigan's mortal remains on the Internet. Project membership is free, with appropriate justification. Members are mostly medical students and patients about to undergo surgery. His contribution by this means to medical education is incalculable.
My religion considers putting a criminal to death a great evil, not to mention deliberately murdering somebody in cold blood. On the other hand, it teaches that God would not permit an evil if He did not cause a good to come from that very evil, and that autopsies can be morally permitted and the free gift of organs is legitimate provided that the bodies of the dead are treated with respect and charity.
My introduction to the scientific uses of the remains of deceased persons began in grade school when my father took me on a day long trip to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. The trip was very much like Sheldon Cooper's boyhood visit to the California Institute of Technology in the Episode "Pasadena" of the TV series Young Sheldon. One of the exhibits was a series of displays of actual human fetuses at different gestational ages. The exhibit is still there. The specimens, probably the donated results of miscarriages by sick or malnourished mothers, were collected during the Great Depression by Dr. Helen Button with help from local hospitals. The exhibit itself is part of the Loyola School of Medicine embryological collection. My personal telephone conversation decades later with the museum curator reinforces my conviction that Loyola University would not have included any specimens that had not been obtained in an ethical manner. Their value as endorsement for the sanctity of the life of the unborn can perhaps be recognized from the reaction of writer Eliza Fogel to the exhibit, which paralleled my own.
My later experiences included what we students perhaps irreverently called "the raising of the dead" at another Loyola University, my alma mater in new Orleans. Every once in a while, bagged corpses that included recently deceased unidentified homeless people were hoisted by crane past the windows of my philosophy class building to the dental school anatomy lab on the top floor. There they were dissected and examined, hopefully with appropriate respect, by the dental students.
I am quite sure that neither the fetuses nor the vagrants gave their permission for the use of their remains in this way. Given that both activities were undertaken with deliberate cooperation of the Jesuits, however, I don't have a problem with them. If you can't trust the Society of Jesus to be ethical, whom can you trust?
I was reminded of all this because of the recent proliferation of Catholic media discussion about the morality of inoculation with vaccines possibly "contaminated" by association with cells obtained in an "illicit" manner. We are not talking about injecting people with fetus soup or cannibalizing our young to keep adults and current children alive here! The cells under discussion are the progeny of some remaining living cells taken from otherwise dead aborted fetuses generations ago. They were then encouraged to reproduce similar cells in a nutrient medium to provide an environment in which viruses that cause diseases like rubella, chickenpox, polio, hepatitis A and, most recently, corona viruses, could be replicated. These viruses would then be inactivated or disassembled to provide the proteins that are the active ingredients of the vaccines. The recipient's immune system reacts to these proteins to produce the antibodies that destroy the viruses that would otherwise cause disease, in this case Covid-19.
Last year, the Los Angeles Times published an article that quoted Bishop Joseph Brennan of Fresno, California as saying that the use of fetal cells at any stage of a vaccine's development means Catholics cannot avail themselves of its scientific results. "I won't be able to take a vaccine, brothers and sisters, and I encourage you not to, if it was developed with material from stem cells that were derived from a baby that was aborted, or material that was cast off from artificial insemination of a human embryo," he said. "That's morally unacceptable for us."
The argument, as I understand it, is that because abortion is evil, the aborted fetuses are "tainted," and thus using any part of them for any purpose represents collaboration with or approval of abortion. This supposedly makes anyone who cooperates in doing so, in any manner, for any purpose, guilty of an intrinsically evil act. No such argument, to my knowledge, has been advanced for not finding a good purpose for the use of the remains of someone who procured or assisted in an abortion. The same argument has not, to my knowledge, been advanced to condemn medical students for dismembering and studying the remains of deceased vagrants who were abandoned by an uncaring society or for using the Visible Human Project instead of cadavers to study anatomy because an evil act put Joseph Jernigan to death, or on account of the supposition that he was an evil man beforehand.
Moral questions are sometimes illuminated by a thought experiment. For example, suppose that there are ten critical hospital patients in need of immediate organ transplantation. Two victims are brought in; one of them a high school student who was murdered in cold blood as she was doing her homework in study hall. The other is the jealous boyfriend who planned and carried out the murder and then accidentally fell down a flight of stairs and broke his neck. Both are pronounced dead on arrival at the same hospital. The organs of each can save five of the critical patients. Between the two of them, their organs can save all ten of the other patients, and both persons' parents have given their consent to do that.
Question: It is morally permissible to use the organs of either or both of the victims?
Bishop Brennan's argument says that the innocent girl's organs cannot be used because her death is the result of an evil act that is "morally unacceptable." Her remains are therefore "tainted," and cannot legitimately be used for any purpose. No such onus is attached to those of her murderer, even though he died a cold blooded killer, albeit accidentally, through no fault of his own. These facts are part of the unalterable past; nothing anyone can do now can revise what was done then or the consequent moral responsibility of those involved. The decision now is deliberately to let five people die because of the "taint" that is supposedly attached to the organs that could save them.
One has to wonder to what extent whoever makes that decision is guilty of the resulting deaths of the five patients, thus increasing the number of victims of the girl's killer by five hundred percent! Is this really a moral imperative for that person? Do the remains of these five additional victims become "tainted" because of the killer's evil act? Is it still permissible to use the murderer's organs to save the other patients, even though he is about to kill five more victims? How does this argument possibly make any sense?
From a religious perspective, Catholics, and many others, believe that God permits evil that good may come of it, and is the author of the human ability freely to choose evil over good or vice versa. Given that deliberately killing a healthy unborn baby is a great evil, is it really morally permissible, let alone necessary, to prevent the obvious good of saving untold numbers of other people from a fatal disease, the only contribution that this child's existence would otherwise make possible? Is this really the intention and mandate of a loving God?
Perhaps it is relevant to point out here that most contemporary Covid-19 vaccines are produced using a different process that doesn't use a single fetal cell - not one! Bishop Brennan didn't say anything about that!
The Vatican doesn't have a problem with either of them. Guidance from the Pontifical Academy for Life issued in July of 2017 states: "...we believe that all clinically recommended vaccinations can be used with a clear conscience and that the use of such vaccines does not signify some sort of cooperation with voluntary abortion." They also noted that "the moral obligation to guarantee the vaccination coverage necessary for the safety of others is no less urgent, especially the safety [of] more vulnerable subjects such as pregnant women and those affected by immunodeficiency who cannot be vaccinated against these diseases." Indeed, it has been reported that any Vatican employee who deals with the public and refuses to get a coronavirus vaccination risks being reassigned to other duties
Lest anyone misunderstand the position of the Catholic Church on this issue with respect to the Covid-19 vaccines, Pope Francis, USA Archbishop John Gomez, Mexican Cardinal Carlos Agular Retes, Honduras Cardinal Rodriguez Maradiaga, Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, El Salvadorian Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chavez and Peruvian Archbishop Miguel Cabrejo, have appeared on a Youtube "Unity Across the Americas | Covid-19 Vaccine Education" advertisement extolling the efficacy, safety and social benefits of vaccination. Therefore, those who claim that Catholic teaching discourages vaccination are at best totally wrong and at worst are hypocrites and enemies of humanity!
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| A living, moving lamb fetus in an artificial womb The technique could be used to save human infants Click on the picture to see the video |
I submit that opposing viewpoints are supported and promulgated by Catholic clergy mainly because, as a group, they are unreasonably influenced by an inflexible, irrational repugnance to elective abortion that goes far beyond all logical bounds. This attitude has even gone so far as for them to claim that Catholics could not vote for a candidate for public office, regardless of any other qualifications, "who is pro-choice!" There has been public discussion in the media of late about denying Communion to politicians who "support abortion rights." Nobody seems to have definitively defined what those terms mean, though.
It has very little to do with protecting the life of the unborn per se. The ordained Catholic judges of the morality of others refuse publicly to discuss the application of proven domestic animal transmaternal transplantation and artificial uterus technology that could save the lives of desperately desired and perfectly healthy unborn children who are now doomed to die along with their sick or injured mothers.
A case in point: The New York Post reported on August 25, 2021, that a pregnant nurse and her unborn baby, died of Covid after refusing to get vaccinated, as recommended by Catholic Bishop Joseph V. Brennan and others. The baby was perfectly healthy, but nobody did anything to save it, Whether Bishop Brennan is guilty of the unnecessary death of this innocent child or not is a matter between him and God. If I were he, however, I would make public atonement!
Catholic parishes spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually sponsoring ineffective, and occasionally lethally violent, demonstrations against abortion instead of addressing the problems that encourage it. They have shown very little support for finding parents for in vitro fertilized embryos that are currently destined to be discarded as so much trash, or for obviously effective legislation that would conclusively recognize the unborn as persons before the law. This may be due in part because they are all men and the only people who have abortions are all women, I don't know. I am, however, absolutely apalled at the display by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who signed the Texas abortion law, of his breathtaking ignorance of even the most basic aspects of human reproduction!
I am personally completely, absolutely and unequivocally opposed to murder of the unborn, which is what the word "abortion" usually, but not necessarily, means. My defense of the civil rights of the unborn has been on record for some time. So has my proposal for an effective means of resolving the problems which motivate elective abortion in the first place. However, out of respect for the esteemed offices of the Catholic bishops, priests and deacons, as well as moral theorists of other faiths, who have publicly taken an opposing viewpoint, I choose not to debate the issue with respect to vaccination and instead to take the Vatican statement as definitive. I strongly suspect, however, that some devout people, and their loved ones for whom they are responsible, are needlessly going to die from corona virus because they have been callously misled by their religious leaders falsely to believe that there is something morally wrong about getting vaccinated. They will be the victims of an inexorable evolutionary process that favors the reasonable over the inflexible and the knowledgeable over the ignorant.
So far, more Americans have died from the pandemic than all the American combat deaths in World War II! Currently, hospitalization and death from Covid-19 occur almost exclusively among the unvaccinated, who are the only ones thus at risk from the pandemic. The clergy who are willingly allowing their teaching of Truth to be contaminated by the Father of Lies are deliberately exposing those for whose welfare they are responsible to needless suffering and death. It seems to me that the Catholic bishops have a professional obligation to teach moral truth in the face of this unprecedented danger to society. The position of the Catholic Church is very clear, namely, "The moral obligation to guarantee the vaccination coverage necessary for the safety of others is no less urgent, especially the safety (of) more vulnerable subjects such as pregnant women and those affected by immunodeficiency who cannot be vaccinated against these diseases." The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops itself has taken the position that, "given the world-wide suffering that this pandemic is causing, we affirm again that being vaccinated can be an act of charity that serves the common good."
I find it unconscionable, then, that contemporary clergy have not fulfilled their duty publicly to urge their congregations to get vaccinated as a discharge of this moral obligation. I would like to believe that there is at least somebody, somewhere, concerned about the health and safety of his "flock!" I invite anyone who has personally heard any Catholic clergyman, other than those named herein, say anything positive about getting vaccinated from the pulpit to email me with this information.
So far, nobody has!
With regard to "tainted" fetal cells, the actual teaching of the Catholic Church, which I personally wholeheartedly support, remains that "the cell lines currently used are very distant from the original abortions and no longer imply that bond of moral cooperation indispensable for an ethically negative evaluation of their use. On the other hand, the moral obligation to guarantee the vaccination coverage necessary for the safety of others is no less urgent... We believe that all clinically recommended vaccinations can be used with a clear conscience and that the use of such vaccines does not signify some sort of cooperation with voluntary abortion."
Joseph Jernigan, the anonymous vagrants, and the unnamed source of the original harvested fetal cells were all victims of great evils. Through the exclusively human and praiseworthy activity of science, they have been the sources of great good. To me, this demonstrates the illustrious triumph of good over evil that should be the vision and goal of every person of good will, Christian or otherwise, everywhere.
A recent directive from the Archdiocese of St. Louis Office of Communication and Planning encourages Catholics to "examine the moral and ethical concerns surrounding the decision to receive this vaccination." This is me doing that!
Case closed.
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