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Human cloning attempts
Private research avoids federal restraints
Advanced Cell Technology Inc. (ACT), the first company to admit creating a live human-animal hybrid, has now admitted to having commenced experiments to create human clones for use in stem-cell research.
In the aftermath of a controversial decision by President George Bush to limit federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, scientists at the Massachusetts firm were still conducting their work—without the help of federal funds—and would not report on their results. “Scientific results should be published in scientific journals,” said Michael West, the company’s president and chief executive, declining to answer inquiries from the press.
ACT did disclose that its research aims to fuse the cell from an adult human with an embryo that has been stripped of its own genes. The result, if the scientists achieve it, would be a human embryo with the same genetic makeup as the adult who donated the cell: a human clone.
Priest’s testimony clears defendant
Evidence ruled outside confessional seal
In July, a federal judge in New York overturned the conviction of a man who had been convicted and jailed 12 years ago in a murder case, after a priest came forward to say that another man had confessed the killing.
Jose Morales was found guilty in 1988 of beating and stabbing to death Jose Antonio Rivera. But at a special hearing, Father Joseph Towles testified that another neighborhood gang member, Jesus Fornes, had told him in 1989 that he and two other people—not Morales—were involved in the slaying. Fornes died in 1997.
US District Judge Denny Chin declared that if the priest’s statement had been disclosed at trial, “it is difficult to imagine that any reasonable jury could find Morales guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.” The priest testified that he kept quiet over the years because he considered the confession confidential. But he said he later came to the conclusion that it was not a sacramental confession as defined by canon law—even though he had given Fornes absolution. The Archdiocese of New York concurred in the decision.
At the time of the confession, Father Towles said, he urged Fornes to approach Morales’ attorneys with the truth, which he did. However, a court had ruled his testimony inadmissible because it came too late.
Prelates on the defensive
Charged with neglect in child-abuse cases
Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston was warned in a 1984 letter that a diocesan priest was molesting young boys, according to court papers in a lawsuit against a priest accused of molesting dozens of boys.
Father John Geoghan remained an active priest until 1993, serving in several Boston-area parishes, before he finally resigned following public allegations of pederasty. Geoghan was officially stripped of his ministry in 1998 and is now the subject of at least 84 civil lawsuits as well as criminal charges, covering alleged offenses committed during his time in six parish assignments beginning in 1962.
In an official court filing by the archdiocese’s lawyers, Cardinal Law states that he had “no personal knowledge” of whether the charges in the 1984 warning letter were true. In his weekly column in the archdiocesan newspaper, the Pilot, the cardinal insisted that he had never knowingly shifted a pedophile from one parish to another. He pointed to new policies in the Boston archdiocese governing the treatment of sex-abuse complaints, and said that the Church, like society at large, “has been on a learning curve with regard to the sexual abuse of minors.”
Newspaper reports on the charges lodged against Cardinal Law came at a time when another Church employee, youth worker Christopher Reardon, was being sentenced to 40 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges that he molested at least 75 boys. Some of the assaults were known to have taken place in his office at the rectory of the parish were he was working in Middleton—a town in the Boston archdiocese.
Meanwhile in California, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Diocese of Orange have settled a $5.2 million lawsuit brought by a young man who accused a local priest of molesting him. As part of the settlement, the dioceses also agreed to set up a new procedure for cracking down on sexual abuse by clergy.
Ryan DiMaria, who was a 17-year-old student in 1991, said Msgr. Michael Harris molested him at the time. “I’m very happy with what we got accomplished,” DiMaria told the Orange County Register. “I think it will protect a lot of victims in the future.” Msgr. Harris has never been charged with a crime and has always denied the accusations, but he was placed on inactive leave from ministry in 1994.
In the settlement, the two dioceses agreed to set up a toll-free number and a web site for reporting sexual abuse, to distribute education pamphlets in Catholic churches and schools, and to require that priests sign agreements not to molest, among other things. The code of conduct would be enforced by a judge.
Changing orders
Dissident nun finds a supportive order
A dissident Catholic nun, ordered by her religious congregation to obey a Vatican silencing order, is planning to switch to another religious congregation.
Sister Jeannine Gramick, who has been directed by the Vatican to cease making public statements concerning Church teachings on homosexuality, will transfer from the School Sisters of Notre Dame to the Sisters of Loretto, the Denver Post has reported.
Last year the School Sisters of Notre Dame informed Gramick that if she continued to ignore the Vatican order—which she first received in 1998, with a further clarification in 1999—she could be dismissed from the religious congregation. The Sisters of Loretto have given indications that they will support Gramick as she continues to give public talks criticizing Church teachings, in defiance of the Vatican order.
Back to Catholic World Report October 2001 Table of Contents