200 priests gather for prayer, bioethics studies

By Peter Finney Jr., Clarion Herald

More than 200 priests of the Archdiocese of New Orleans gathered Sept. 18-20 for a convocation and heard from Archbishop Gregory Aymond and experts from the National Catholic Bioethics Center (NCBC) on life issues.

The archbishop again offered his apology to priests about the failures of bishops who did not properly supervise or sanction priests who sexually abused children.

“No doubt this is a painful time,” the archbishop said, reminding the priests always to keep the victims of sexual abuse utmost in their thoughts and prayers.

“It is also a time that we must pray and remain faithful to the Lord, and a time where we have to be united as the priests of the church and move forward,” he said.

Hurry up and die

In one of his talks on bioethics issues that impact priestly ministry, Dr. John Haas, president of the NCBC, said Catholics must advocate for the dignity of vulnerable life in an era of health care where money drives many decisions.

“Most hospital expenses are spent on people in the last five years of their lives,” Haas said, meaning sometimes it would be cheaper for those elderly who are seriously ill to hurry up and die. “It’s a problem when you have the strong and powerful willing to sacrifice the weak and vulnerable for their own benefits.”

Experts from the NCBC offered an analysis of various life issues, including how priests can be pastorally sensitive when discussing with couples in vitro fertilization, artificial contraception and infertility issues.

Contraception history

Haas said it was often assumed by Protestants that the Bible did not include a specific prohibition against artificial contraception. However, he said St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians (5:19-20) uses the word “pharmakeia,” which often is translated into English as “witchcraft,” as “the works of the flesh.”

     

Haas said pharmakeia may refer to the contraceptive “potions” used by women in the Greco-Roman world.

“‘Pharmakeia’ doesn’t refer to witchcraft at all,” Haas said. “When Judeo-Christian people began to spread into the Greco-Romans of the day, that’s where they discovered contraception. Greco-Roman women were taking contraceptive potions to prevent the consequences of immoral behavior.”

Haas said artificial contraception was not sanctioned by any Christian denomination until 1930, when the Anglicans’ Lambeth Conference offered its restricted approval when, in a narrow vote, it said contraception might be used “by married couples if a couple had to avoid children. It said the most Christian response was abstinence, but if this was impossible, for a brief period of time, couples could use contraception. This was the first Christian opening to accepting this at all.”

Hope for infertile couples

Dr. DiAnn Ecret of the NCBC said priests could offer couples struggling with infertility a great online resource – www.catholicinfertility.org.

She said the first thing a couple struggling to conceive should do is to have medical examinations to see what any underlying problems might be.

She cautioned about the moral dangers of using in vitro fertilization, where conception takes place outside the woman’s body and sexual intercourse. About 1 million human embryos, now frozen, have been created in U.S. laboratories.

IVF and hormone treatments also can lead parents to selectively reduce multiple embryos.

“I was working with triplets in the ICU, changing diapers,” Ecret said. “The mother came in for visit, and a friend came to visit. I’m quite naive, but as I was changing the baby’s diaper, I heard the mother say, ‘We decided to have only three of the six.’ Then she went on to say, ‘We decided on two girls and one boy because we didn’t want to go through all of this again.’ She said it with no remorse or guilt.”

Peter Finney Jr. can be reached at pfinney@clarionherald.org.