The Cardinal's Chair

I fear that the Scottish Cardinal makes himself ridiculous by invoking Frankenstein and talking about the embryology bill as a 'monstrous attack on human rights'. If I wanted to think up an example of 'a monstrous attack on human rights' I would think of Mugabe in Zimbabwe, or ethnic cleansing in Serbia, or what is happening in Darfur. The Cardinal speaks in a tone of voice that somehow doesn't have the gravity that it might have if we were indeed talking about Sudan, there is something in it that doesn't ring quite true, partly just because he expresses himself in an emotional tone that is borrowed from our reaction to such outrages. In the present case the rest of us just don't see it, in a way that isn't true about our reaction to Darfur, and that is worrying. The emotion in the Cardinal's voice depends upon a particular movement of thought. The natural reaction we feel to violations of human dignity is in this case dependent upon a metaphysical belief, that this embryo is a human being, etc. The Welsh Archbishop talks in similar terms, about how we cannot properly think of the human being as a commodity, and of course we are inclined to agree with the general proposition: it is just the application that is so doubtful, this little cluster of cells. Well, it is not just a little cluster of cells, he will say, but the human being at the earliest stage of its development ... And yet, it seems to me much more obviously a tiny cluster of cells that has the potential under the right conditions, none of which are going to be met, of developing into a human being. There is a doctrine about the arrival (infusion) of the human soul in all this. Aquinas thought that the soul arrived much later, at the 'quickening', forty days, was it, for men, and later for women? On the other hand, critics of the Catholic position argue very badly and play into the Cardinal's hands when they say that these procedures will save lives and help treat people with terrible diseases ... that is only a consideration when we have already established that the experiments are not wrong. They are not wrong in my opinion: a judgment that is not based on the fact that they will save lives. Simply appealing to the benefits of the research is not enough. No one is going to say that it's okay to carry out vivisection on human beings because it will help us in the treatment of terrible diseases. The original act must be morally justified first, and then we can talk about its benefits.

The issue of conscience is independent of all this, though I haven't grasped yet why Gordon Brown has a problem with a free vote so I'm not in a position to say that there should be. If you vote according to your conscience (or against it) you have to accept the consequences.