If you are an organ donor on your driver’s license do you know what you signed up for? Most people I have talked to were never informed what it means. Their thinking is “hey, if I’m already dead I’d like for someone to be able to use my organs”. Most have no idea that it means that their organs cannot be donated if they are dead. Vital organs are retrieved from patients that are declared brain dead. There are several problems with a brain death diagnosis.
Diagnosis of death by neurological criteria alone is theory, not scientific fact. It is not sufficient to overcome the presumption of life and in fact, hundreds of people who have been declared brain dead have lived to tell about it. Some of them woke up on the operating table. Their cases were explained away as misdiagnoses or a miraculous raising from the dead. However, the real cause is that “brain dead” is not dead. There is overwhelming medical and scientific evidence that the complete and irreversible cessation of all brain activity (in the cerebrum, cerebellum and brain stem) is not proof of death.
There is common misperception that a machine is keeping the body of brain dead people alive. But machines can only do so much. If you hook up machines to a dead body they won’t make the body function. People who have been declared brain go through puberty, fight infections, nourish growing babies, metabolize etc.-all things that are managed by the brain and cannot be run by a machine. Our soul and our bodies are integrated, not just our souls and our brains. When true death occurs, there is a dis-integration of the body and soul. So a person who is declared “brain dead” may be injured, but they are not dead.
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It has been said that “Jesus has a strict immigration policy”. The bible speaks of two moral duties when it comes to helping the foreigner and we can’t do one without the other.
What does charity require us to do? The fist duty is to welcome the foreigner to the extent we are able. We have an obligation to help those truly in need to the extent we have the ability to do so. Does that mean that you must bring the homeless man asking for help to sleep in your home? Remember the Good Samaritan was good and commended by Christ. The Good Samaritan did the right thing: humanitarian aid. He did not take the roadside victim home with him. Rather, the Good Samaritan put the victim up in a hotel and paid for him to get better.
Our second duty is to secure one’s border and enforce the law for the sake of the common good of all people. Do you lock your doors at night while your children sleep? Or do you leave them wide open for anyone who may enter, no matter what their intent, risking good of your children to anyone who demands that you allow them in?
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Did Pope Francis change infallible church teaching when he changed the catechism on the death penalty?
No. He didn’t change the moral principles, he changed how the principles are currently are applied. Why? Because, “in Pope Francis’s judgment, society has changed in a way that requires a different application of them.” Understanding the Catechism Changes on the Death Penalty