Donate life: Leave a lasting legacy

We all have an opportunity to give life to someone else after we die. This gift of life is the ultimate legacy we can give to someone in need of an organ or tissue transplant. Once we are cremated or buried, our remains are lost forever.

However, if your remains are consigned for transplantation to fulfill a need for someone else, thanks to your donation, another person's life can be saved or improved to the point that they, too, can lead productive and fulfilling lives.

Think about it in reverse. If you needed a vital organ or tissue to sustain your life, wouldn't you accept it? Of course you would. Therefore, in order to give someone else the chance to live, "Donate Life" and become a conduit for the legacy of life.

Increasing need for organs, tissues

There has been increasing publicity about the need for organ and tissue transplants. There are some 98,000 people throughout the country on a waiting list for organs, around 1,600 in Wisconsin alone. While the emphasis has been on organs, the need for tissue donations is just as vital.

Tissue donations are used for cornea replacements, spinal surgeries, reconstructive procedures, sports injuries, burn treatments, cardiovascular repair, and circulatory improvements. Organs include heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, pancreas, and the small intestine. Tissues include heart valves, eyes, skin, bone (both lower and upper extremities and their connective tissues), and selected veins.

The probability of the use of donated organs and tissues varies depending on medical condition/medical history of the donor and age concurrent with needs of a potential recipient; an extensive and exhaustive medical review is made to determine suitability. There are no guarantees that anything can be used. Nor is there any cost incurred for the donor's family for the donation.

Personal experience

I have some personal experience with being a donor spouse. My beloved bride of over 50 years died suddenly and unexpectedly at age 70 of a brain aneurysm. Phyllis and I had decided many years ago to offer our remains for transplant if there was any chance we could help someone else live or lead a better life. She was a registered nurse at a local hospital so became familiar with the different aspects of transplantation and listened as other families considered the same option.

At the time of her death there was no hesitation on my part to sign the consent form. They were able to recover some bone and connective tissue from her. While no match has been made yet, I am hopeful that someone will benefit from her donation. I'm sure she would be tremendously pleased to give this gift of life.

Phyllis was not only my best friend, but the love of my life and the sweetheart of my soul as well as the loving and caring mother to our four marvelous children. While it is always very difficult to lose someone you love, the memories of what you had sustains us for life.

Consider giving the gift of life

I would strongly urge you to consider giving the gift of life. You can express this in several ways. When you renew your driver's license, sign and check the "yes" box on the reverse side of the card, right above the signature block and have the orange "Donor" dot placed on the front of the license, if you so choose to donate. Your decision should be communicated, in writing, to members of your family so there is a clear understanding of your desires.

You should have an estate plan which should include not only your Will/Trust, Durable Power of Attorney but also the Power of Attorney for Health Care; you should express your desire to donate within this document, if you so choose to donate. By federal rule, all hospitals are required to offer the authorized surviving family member a consent form to sign if indeed the decision to donate is made.

We are asked to give our time, talent, and treasure to our families, friends, neighbors, the Church, and the community. While treasure may infer many things, one of the greatest treasures we have are our physical attributes, a gift from God that we can forward to others.

The greatest gift of all is the gift of life.

Jim Berchem is a donor family volunteer for the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation. Berchem is also a member of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Madison. He can be reached at jberchem@tds.net For more information on transplants visit www.mtf.org or www.donatelifewisconsin.org

When ideology corrupts science
and medicine

		Making Sense  Out of Bioethics  Fr. Tad  Pacholczyk

Some physicians and researchers fail to see the important role of ethics and religion in the world of medical science. Others are clearly ready to sideline religion altogether when it comes to discussing the moral values that should guide the conduct of science and scientists.

Recently I came across some published remarks by Professor Richard Sloan of Columbia University dealing with the relationship between medicine and religion. He notes that even though abortion is a "perfectly legal procedure," some physicians withhold information about the practice from their patients, claiming their decision is justified by their religious beliefs.

He goes on to express his displeasure that some states have enacted conscience clauses, "to permit such religiously motivated malpractice." He even states that in some parts of the country, patients may have "no alternative to physicians who think that their primary obligation is to honor their religious convictions rather than act in the best interests of their patients."

Current tension

His remarks expose a real tension between those who believe modern healthcare should be guided by the values of an ethically-informed conscience, and those who believe that it should be driven by various ideologies.

One ideology widely encountered in the field of medicine today promotes the direct taking of human life through abortion, euthanasia, and embryo research, and neglects long-standing codes of medical ethics that insist that the first duty of the physician and the researcher is to "do no harm."

When a physician directly takes the life of another human being, he is, in fact, committing medical malpractice, and acting directly against his central healing mission as a doctor. Abortion, by its very nature, can never be compatible with promoting human dignity. It never respects the human person. It is invariably at odds with the best interests of patients.

As a component of a broader anti-life ideology, it represents a corrosive force in hospital clinics, research laboratories, and other institutions of higher learning. When ideology begins to shun sound ethical thinking rooted in religion, we need to be very concerned.

Corrosive power of ideology

I remember a story my father once told about the corrosive power of ideology, something he had witnessed first-hand living under Communism and working as a physics professor at the University of Warsaw. To enter the university and study physics, all applicants were required to pass three oral exams, one in physics, one in mathematics, and the third in something called "Politics and Marxism." All the exams were held in a single room with different tables for each subject.

One day as my father and another faculty member were interviewing candidates, a young man approached their table. It became immediately clear that he was very intelligent and gifted, and would make an excellent student. They discovered that he had been unable to gain admission to the university for the past two years, because - even though he did brilliantly on the physics and mathematics exams - he couldn't seem to pass the Politics and Marxism exam.

My father and his colleague had seen this before. The Communist party members who conducted these interviews would target applicants who might be religious in their outlook, asking them pointed and discriminatory questions they could not answer in good conscience, and then fail them on the exam.

Timely intervention

Fortunately for the young man, there was a policy that any faculty member was free to move among tables and ask questions during any other department's entrance examination. So when the hopeful student approached the Politics and Marxism table, my father and his friend went over and sat down, one on each side of the Communist party member running the interview.

The first question was: "Please explain how the Church is backwards and oppresses people." The fellow remained silent, since he was a Catholic himself. My father and his colleague stepped in after a moment, and said, "Well, it's clear that he didn't grasp the question. Allow me to repeat the question for him: 'What does Marxism teach about how the Catholic Church is backwards and oppresses people?'"

The fellow was then able to jump in and provide a correct answer, by affirming that the ideology of Marxism did teach thus-and-so. The questions and their refinement by my father and his colleague continued, and the Communist party official became visibly agitated.

The fellow ended up passing the Politics and Marxism exam, along with the physics and mathematics exams, and was admitted to the university. Although the story had a happy ending, the brilliant young man had lost two years of a successful career because of the closed-minded, anti-religious ideologies prevalent in the academic environment of the university under communism.

Anti-religious ideologies

In academic settings today, we still encounter powerful anti-religious ideologies, as Professor Sloan's comments remind us, and they can result in even more damaging consequences than merely delaying admission to the university. As anti-life ideologies, for example, become tolerated and even promoted as part of medicine, not only do many humans end up being destroyed along the way by abortion, euthanasia, in vitro fertilization, or embryo research, but those clinicians and researchers who decline to participate in these practices "feel the heat" and worry their careers may be at risk.

To force health care and research to embrace such anti-life ideologies is to warp and eventually corrupt modern medicine altogether. Instances of such corruption have happened only too often in the past as professors, researchers, and physicians have chosen to minimize the demands of an ethical conscience and to adopt seriously misguided ideologies.

Crimes against humanity

Codes of medical ethics like the Hippocratic Oath, the Nuremberg Code, and the Declaration of Helsinki came into existence after various misguided ideologies gained a foothold, and the medical establishment suffered a core meltdown, allowing doctors and researchers to participate in crimes against humanity.

History sadly reminds us how quickly our human conscience, when deprived of its divine and religious dimensions, becomes untethered in a tumultuous sea of ideological temptations, and can end up on the glide path towards crime and atrocity.

Those who strive to protect the ethical integrity of medicine through conscience protection laws, and those medical professionals who ardently pursue an upright personal conscience by resisting, among other things, maiming or killing actions directed against early human life, provide an essential witness, and a critical counterbalance, to powerful and destructive ideologies that are operative in academia and health care today.

Fr. Tadeusz Pacholczyk earned his doctorate in neuroscience from Yale and did post-doctoral work at Harvard. He is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Mass., and serves as the director of education at the National Catholic Bioethics Center in Philadelphia, Pa.

Understanding Church teaching
on marriage

		Straight Answers  On Marital Love  Fr. William P.  Saunders

Reprinted from the Arlington Catholic Herald with permission.
First in a series of six.

On July 25, we marked the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae, which affirmed the consistent Catholic teaching on the sanctity of marital love and the error of contraception.

Granted, this topic is definitely the one that prompts headlines and excites some people to say, "I disagree with the Church" or "the Church is wrong." I have even had Catholics report to me that when they have visited a Protestant Church, they have heard sermons denounce the Church's teaching on this subject.

	Related items this week: • Loving as God Loves: A women's retreat • Editorial -- Who's our bishop? Not Bill Wineke!

Sadly, many Catholics do not understand the Church's teaching on this issue. Moreover, many priests have failed to address this subject from the pulpit - whether in a positive, rational way or at all. So we need to put aside our prejudices and our misconceptions, open our minds and hearts, and approach this issue.

The next five issues of "Straight Answers" will be devoted to this topic and hopefully provide a clear and better understanding about this subject.

Made in God's image

However, before addressing the issue of contraception per se, one must first understand the Church's moral teaching concerning marriage. The Church does not simply deliver a moral teaching in isolation; rather, the moral teaching is undergirded by a moral framework of how life ought to be lived in the eyes of God. In this case, the moral framework is what God has revealed concerning marriage.

In the creation account of Genesis, we find the beautiful truth, "God made man in His image; in the divine image He created him; male and female He created them" (Genesis 1:27).

In this one verse, we find an intrinsic goodness and dignity to each human being. We also recognize a goodness to our human sexuality - both man and woman are made in God's image and likeness, and both masculinity and femininity are equally good. Yes, man and woman are different - anatomically, physiologically, and even psychologically (as admitted by many psychologists, even "feminist" ones). These differences do not indicate inequality, instead complementarity.

With this truth, we must also view our human life not just by the confines of this world, but also with a view to a supernatural and eternal destiny. God has made us for Himself, and we hope one day to find this life fulfilled in the Kingdom of Heaven.

God-given institution

In the next verse of Genesis (1:28), we read, "God blessed them, saying, 'Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it.'" Here is marriage, a God-given, God-designed institution. If we could think of the best way to realize that "image and likeness of God," it would then be in marriage. In this sacred union, man and woman - each made in God's image and likeness with their similarity and their uniqueness - come together as one.

The second creation account of Genesis reinforces this idea: Here, God takes the rib from the man to create "a suitable partner," whom the man recognizes as "'This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; this one shall be called 'woman' for out of 'her man' this one has been taken.'

That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body" (2:23-24). Pope John Paul II reflected that in marriage "man" in the moment of communion truly becomes the image of God, "an image of an inscrutable divine communion of Persons."

Our Lord, Jesus Christ, in the Gospel affirmed the teaching of Genesis. When asked by the Pharisees about divorce, Jesus replied, "Have you not read that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female, and declared, 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and cling to his wife, and the two shall become as one'? Thus, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore, let no man separate what God has joined" (Matthew 19:3ff).

Marriage as a sacrament

Given this basis in Sacred Scripture, we hold marriage as a sacrament in our Catholic belief. Vatican II's Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et Spes) spoke beautifully about marriage: Marriage is a partnership of life and love designed by God and endowed by Him with its own proper laws, with various benefits, and with various ends in view. Both husband and wife "surrender themselves to each other" and give their "irrevocable personal consent." Marriage involves a mutual giving of two persons, which entails total fidelity and permanence.

A covenant of life and love

Moreover, the love of husband and wife which binds them together as one overflows, and they may participate in creation, giving birth to children. Through the sacrament they live and the bountiful graces offered by our Lord, couples are fortified to fulfill their duties to each other and their family. As such, marriage is clearly the foundation of the family and the whole human race.

Therefore, we speak of marriage not as a contract but as a covenant. Just as God made a covenant of life and love with His people of the Old Testament through Abraham and Moses, just as Christ made the perfect, everlasting, and life-giving covenant through the blood of His cross, so marriage is a covenant, a permanent bonding of life and love. (For this reason, St. Paul frequently used the image of Christ and His Church in explaining the love of husband and wife, e.g. Ephesians 5:22ff.)

Therefore, when a couple exchanges vows, they are promising a love of fidelity, permanence, exclusivity, and perpetuity to each other and God. Man and woman enter into a life-giving covenant with God as husband and wife.

In the next column, we will continue the "foundational discussion" in addressing the expression of love in marriage.

Fr. William P. Saunders is pastor of Our Lady of Hope Parish in Potomac Falls, Va. His columns from the Arlington Catholic Herald have been compiled in two books called Straight Answers. Call 703-256-5994 for more information.

Diocesan Catholic schools to plan
for future

		Our Catholic Schools  Michael Lancaster  Superintendent of Catholic Schools

This fall the Office of Catholic Schools will begin a major 18 to 24 month planning process to ensure the future of Catholic schools in the diocese. This effort is a direct response to directive #7 issued by Bishop Robert C. Morlino at the conclusion of the Guided by the Spirit planning process.

According to directive #7, "All parishes, those with and those without schools, will actively participate in a diocesan wide comprehensive school study to promote and increase our diocesan commitment to Catholic education as outlined in the USCCB publication, Renewing Our Commitment to Catholic Elementary and Secondary Schools in the Third Millennium."

Renewing commitment

In the document, Renewing Our Commitment . . . the United State Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) not only reinforces their commitment to Catholic schools, but they also charge all leaders of Catholic schools with the task of ensuring that Catholic schools are " . . . available, accessible, and affordable . . . " so that all those who seek a Catholic school education may attain it.

In order to adequately answer this call, we must know the present state of our schools as well as have an understanding of the many and constantly changing forces that impact our schools. Questions regarding demographics, population gain and loss, tuition, curriculum, and funding sources, in addition to many others, must be answered in order to plan well to ensure the future of our schools. The comprehensive schools study will give us the information we need to formulate solid and successful plans to ensure that Catholic schools in the Diocese of Madison thrive for generations to come.

Diocese spared

Finally, if ever there was a time for such a project in the diocese, that time is now. According to the National Catholic Educational Association, in the mid-1960s there were nearly 13,000 Catholic elementary and secondary schools nationwide. Today, little more than half of those remain with over 700 Catholic elementary schools closing last year alone.

In 2007, dioceses in the Great Lakes area (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin) reported that 41 Catholic elementary schools were closed or consolidated (NCEA, 2008). None of those were located in the Diocese of Madison.

In the Diocese of Madison in the past 30 years, only two schools have closed (both were high schools) and two elementary schools have consolidated. The consolidated schools still continue to serve students in both communities and continue to use both school buildings. Thus, to a large degree, through the tireless efforts of pastors, parents, and parishioners, Catholic schools in the diocese have bucked the national trend.

Despite this impressive track record, and countless hours of work and sacrifice, we must not ignore the changing and increasing challenges facing our schools. Rather, we must confront these difficulties, study them, understand them, and plan to overcome them so that Catholic schools remain true to their mission, inspired in their vision, and viable in their operation for generations to come.

As we continue planning through the summer, I will provide periodic updates and more information regarding the details of the comprehensive schools planning process. As always, thank you for reading and may God bless you and your families.

Michael Lancaster is superintendent of Catholic Schools for the Diocese of Madison.