San Antonio, Texas, Jul 31, 2005 / 22:00 pm
The Catholic Church will not and cannot base its teaching on opinion polls, said Archbishop Jose Gomez of San Antonio in reference to the embryonic stem-cell research debate.
The archbishop was responding to an opinion piece, written by Kevin Eckstrom, titled “Galileo's ghost haunts Catholic Church” (Religion, July 23).
“To constantly bring back Galileo's "ghost" and judge the Catholic Church by a 17th-century event is like judging the veracity of the medical community because in the past it used bleeding and leeches,” he wrote, commenting on Eckstrom’s pieces. “Not even Galileo's telescope would look that far back.”
The archbishop pointed out that the Church is not opposed to all stem-cell research; it supports adult stem-cell research, which does not require taking human life.