IN VITRO A LUCRATIVE SPHERE OF BIOTECHNOLOGY

MAGDALENA KOWALEWSKA: – Who will win the fight between the civilization of death and culture of life?

ARCHBISHOP HENRYK HOSER SAC: – Surely life will win, which is stronger than death. Death preys on life, there would not be death without life. We believe in life, we defend it and we promote it. Therefore we cannot contribute to all this which endangers it and kills it.

– Together with the Metropolitan of Warsaw, Archbishop expressed his opinion about the case of prof. Bogdan Chazan. Laying professional responsibility on people who opt for life is understandable?

– In the logics of evil – yes. The perversion of evil is based just on the fact that it presents bad actions as good, and, what is more, it persuades others to think that they are good. For, example, it persuades people to think that suffering can be diminished at the cost of the life of another man. This is a perverse assumption. For example, euthanasia is based on it. It is said more and more often that it happens so for economical reasons. Who loses in this confrontation? The weakest ones. An unborn baby who does not any defence, is killed in the body of his mother. Disabled people, who are weak, ill, are close to the end of their life. The society treats people in the perspective of their productive capabilities. Those who are able to produce, to consume, are interesting in the market of life. An elderly retired lady is then unnecessary. It is an extremely essential fight which, in these discussions, is directed to following medical procedures. After all, it concerns the human life! The fifth commandment ‘Do not kill’ is a security of the first human right which is the right for life. It is the basis and fundament. If we do not defend this right, all the others will lose the sense of existence.

– Does eugenic mentality prevail in medicine?

– Medicine is likely to be more and more service-like, deprived of ethical reflection. What shocks me in these discussions, among the others with the Bioethics Committee at the Presidium of the Polish Sciences Academy, is the atrophy of ethical thought, inability to use ethical particular criteria.

– How is the defect of these opinions reflected?

– In the logics of power. Now it is all about constructing power on the basis of the co-called consensus. It means that our decisions are to be a resultant of various opinions of people who enter the political environment and want to program the social life. It is a kind of commercial compromise reflected in politicking system which decides about it, regardless of basic axiological criteria.

– What is a Catholic man supposed to do when the statutory law is contradictory with the natural law?

– Unjust law is not obliging. One must have civil courage to say it. It is expressed by a big number of people, then the authority, using the unjust law – will get weaker. I am worried by its arrogance and the fact that it stopped considering social reactions. It is already an European phenomenon.

– Are the provisions about the conscience clause of doctors, about whom a lot is being said now, coherent?

– No, if somebody rejects an act, thinking that he cannot do it because of his conscience, he cannot become a participant of this act, giving an address where, for example, abortion can be done. The conscience clause is a constitutional value – as an expression and usage of the right for the freedom of speech – is also inscribed into the human rights, which are included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948. It should be emphasized that they were formulated on the basis of the natural law. Today enormous efforts are taken to inscribe something into human rights which is their negation.

– Recently there have appeared voices that teachers should be subject to the conscience clause.

– They do not mean the colour of school uniforms, but upbringing children and the youth by parents according to their conscience and opposing to scandal ideas of leviathan – a super-country which promotes taking away the authority of parents and teaching in contradiction with their beliefs. The created pseudo-culture is focused on sexuality of the man, and the gender ideology is also based on it. It diminishes what the man received in heritage: his/her body. It is similar with demanding marital rights for the so-called single-sex couples. Such couples do not have any capability for marriage, which is different-sex by definition; it is a life relation between a woman and a man who are capable of procreation through each other and thanks to each other.

– If a teacher wants to fight with the gender ideology, will he be able to refer to the conscience clause?

– It is possible and necessary to demand the conscience clause in this issue, but there are also schools which do not want this ideology brought in through the back door. It is necessary to teach about this ideology in order to know its assumptions and social purposes. But it should not be taught to use it. Please, note that these sessions proposed by the Group of Sexual Educators ‘Ponton’ and others, which lead to the earlier sexual initiation and usage of contraception, take place during the absence of parents and teachers.

– What does ratification of the so-called anti-violence convention of the European Council by Poland mean?

– Introducing the gender ideology. The convention is opening open doors, because none righteous man accepts violence in the family, besides it, using violence is legally fortified and prohibited. This convention is dangerous for Poland and is the introduction for implementing the provision indicating that sexual orientation is changeable and it is the source of violence….I think that promoters of the gender ideology did not expect that the voice of the Church would be so early and they made the public opinion aware of the fact that the convention is the Trojan horse.

– There are works carried out on the project of the act about ‘treating’ infertility with the in vitro method. Some people expect the compromise of the Church in this issue…

– There is not going any compromise. Indeed, this project mentions infertility as the basic problem, however, not directly but directly. It says about the diagnosis not treating fertility which brings back marital fertility. Whereas we are dealing with a part of a bigger global project, intervention of technology into very intimate spheres, when the third parties take over the act of creating the human being from parents. A litmus paper of this act is the fact that on the one hand it says about in vitro accessible for people being together in ‘the communal life and relationships’, but on the other hand – about donation of cells and embryos, practically without any limits, also for single people. And it means that cells and embryos are entering the market. It is an extremely lucrative sphere of biotechnology which is driven by the worldly business. The definition of embryo defies scientific criteria. Rights and the future of a child are completely ignored. The act is so bad that it is not suitable for a serious discussion. We are going to return to this issue.

– We are celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising which was tragically inscribed in the family of Archbishop.

– Yes. My father Janusz Hoser was in the National Army, and my grandfather Henryk Hoser belonged to the National Military Forces. Both of them were shot dead in Wola on 5 August 1944 in the factory Franaszka.

– How did your relatives find out about it?

– From the report of women who were expelled to the church of St. Wojciech and among whom my aunt was – Maria Hoser, my father’s sister. Women were not shot dead, but her fiancée, Władysław Wysocki, was. Men were expelled into the place where they were shot dead with machine guns. There piles of corpses there which were burnt and body ashes of people were buried under pavements. After the war, a barrow in Wola was piled from the ashes. There were 12 tons of ashes which are estimated for the minimum of 120 thousand bodies.

– Do these events explain particular patriotism of Archbishop?

– I was brought up in the home ethos of the Warsaw Uprising and the National Army. Members of my family were engaged in the conspiracy work. Our famous seeds shop which was in Jerozolimskie Aleje, belonging to the company ‘Brothers Hoser’, was an excellent PO for distribution of leaflets and conspiracy newspapers. In our house, at 31 Wolska Street, situated near the monastery of the Carmelite Sisters, destroyed after the uprising of Germany, there was a food supply centre, prepared for divisions fighting in Wola. My cousin – Tadeusz Ejmont, who also participated in the uprising in the Downtown, told us that in a greenhouse in our garden, documents of the National Army and weapon were buried under pavements.
I was brought up in the patriotic spirit. In the book ‘God is greater’ which has recently been published, there is a recently found photograph of my father, a uniformed soldier of the Warsaw Battle of 1920 in which he participated with my uncle Stefan. The patriotic trend was strongly rooted in my family, although it was a family of immigrants, who arrived from Czech Republic to Warsaw in 1844. As a child I had an excellent political knowledge. At home we used to listen to BBC Radio, Radio Free Europe, which was initially broadcast from Madrid. I remember that I listened to the so-called process of Katyń. And I knew very well what had happened in Katyń. I and my family are not familiar with any kind of sympathies to communism or totalitarianism which appeared after the war.

– Are the disputes on the Warsaw Uprising justified?

– The disputes are going on, but the so-called mistake of anachronism is being made. People who have more knowledge about what geopolitical conditions were and policy of big empires in 1944, pass verdicts towards people who did not have this knowledge. The uprising was planned for a short time of fight, which was to prepare an area for the Red Army to enter. This awareness, that the relief is coming, the Germans are retreating, and population of Warsaw does not react to orders of the occupant, all this caused a situation in which commanders and combatants were sure that the uprising was inevitable. This was psychic atmosphere – it was necessary to show that we did not allow for being annihilated and we did not fall onto knees before the occupant. Hence today we have to listen to what participants of the uprising say. A leader for me is prof. Witold Kieżun, whom I have known for 20 years, and we met in Africa. He shows the most thoroughly taken decisions, which turned out to be a military defeat, but became a great victory of the spirit! We must not forget about it.

– In 1944 the scenario proved to be right again: ‘Along the corpse of Poland to the heart of Europe’.

– That is right. The Warsaw Battle (Miracle at the Vistula) had a striking analogy to the Warsaw Uprising and great merits for Western Europe. The Warsaw Uprising, about which the West does not remember, delayed the movement of the Red Army to the West, which would have conquered a much bigger area, if it had crossed the Vistula in the campaign in 1944. Please note one more thread of these events connected with the Second World War – those who fought in the Warsaw Battle, were killed in Katyń, which was a revenge of Stalin for the year 1920. It was also the reason for creating a glade in the diocese of Warsaw in Ossowo, which, on behalf of Poland, commemorates people who were flying to Katyń in 2010, in order to pay tribute to victims shot dead there.

(AA)

"Niedziela" 34/2014

Editor: Tygodnik Katolicki "Niedziela", ul. 3 Maja 12, 42-200 Czestochowa, Polska
Editor-in-chief: Fr Jaroslaw Grabowski • E-mail: redakcja@niedziela.pl