CLONING - TRIUMPH OF HUBRIS

COMMENTARY

By Uwe Siemon-Netto

UPI Religious Affairs Editor

WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- There is no doubt that the cloning of the first mature human embryos in South Korea is a triumph of sorts. But from the Christian point of view, it is a scary triumph indeed -- the triumph of man's hubris.

As Margot Kaessmann, bishop of the territorial church of Hanover, Germany, said last year, "Cloning humans is an attack upon God's creative power." In the eyes of the Rev. Gerald E. Murray, a Catholic canon lawyer and pastor of the Church of St. Vincent de Paul in New York, this is a diabolical act "violating the laws of God and nature for the sake of human pride."

"This stunning news from Korea means that we are manufacturing human beings in order to dismember them to use their body parts or their cells to benefit other people," Murray told United Press International Thursday.

"This is a new form of slavery. Not only could one own another person but also kill him or her for personal use." In a similar vain, the leaders of the Eastern Orthodox Churches have condemned stem cell research as "an un-Christian form of human sacrifice."

In 1997, Gilbert Meilaender, the eminent theological ethicist of Valparaiso University, told the National Bioethics Advisory Commission, "I am aware that we can all imagine circumstances in which we ourselves might -- were the technology available -- be tempted to turn to cloning."

Meilaender listed some examples: "Parents who lose a child in an accident and want to 'replace' her; a seriously ill person in need of embryonic stem cells to repair damaged tissue; a person in need of organs for transplant; a person who is infertile and wants, in some sense, to reproduce."

"Once the child becomes a project or product, such temptations become almost irresistible," Meilaender went on. "There is no end of good causes in the world, and they would sorely tempt us even if we did not live in a society in which the pursuit of health has become a god, justifying almost anything."

Then Meilaender went on the attack: "Even Protestants, those stout defenders of freedom," have not had in mind freedom without ... the limit that is God." He reminded his audience of the true meaning of a child -- "offspring of a man and a woman, but a replication of neither." According to Meilaender -- and all good Christian theology -- children are not products whose meaning and destiny their parents can determine. And this constitutes "a limit to our freedom to make and remake ourselves."

Trying to copy oneself -- either to provide spare parts in case of hitherto incurable illness, or to narcissistically create another human being in one's own image -- is, of course, the very antithesis of the Judeo-Christian faith.

Jews and Christians believe that God has created humans in his own image for the distinct purpose of being partners in the ongoing process of creation. Cloning, on the other hand, is an act of human self-glorification.

"Man is playing God, out to create the uebermensch," warned Gabriel Jay Rochelle, an Eastern Orthodox theologian, referring to Nietzsche's vision of the superhuman, a vision frighteningly caricatured by the Nazis' attempt to develop a master race.

If the cloned man ever becomes reality, what's he or she going to be? "Conceived in an unnatural way with an unnatural genetic makeup, not the product of love between a man and a woman," Murray said. "Can you imagine human beings incapable of saying, 'I have a father and a mother?" asked the Rev. Johannes Richter, a retired bishop in Germany.

"Cloning would deprive humans of their true human origin," warned Cardinal Joachim Meisner, archbishop of Cologne. Ultimately, it seems, though, that those who clone -- rather than the sad product of their cloning -- are the principal problem, according to Richter.

"If man consciously or unconsciously assumes the place of the Creator, man inevitably becomes a threat to himself," said Richter, warning that then there is nothing left to put reins on human hubris.

As for the clone, he or she may look like the original but would still be a separate human being. For all of man's arrogance, Christians hold, it is God who creates human souls and ultimately determines man's destiny.

END