ENI — Faith leaders in Canada have joined a campaign to educate their members about the benefits of donating their organs and tissue, since Catholics and members of other faith communities, including Muslims and some Jews, are seen as continuing to have misconceptions about the issue of organ donation.
At the September launch of an awareness campaign by the Trillium Gift of Life Network, Rabbi Michal Shekel said there is agreement about the importance of organ donation among Jewish leaders. Some members, however, think they are proscribed from organ donation due to Jewish teaching forbidding the desecration of one’s body. That teaching, however, refers to “mutilation” through practices such as branding and tattooing, said Shekel.
The Jewish, Muslim and Catholic leaders at the launch said their groups would distribute 200,000 faith-specific brochures to their congregations in coming weeks.
Moira McQueen, director of the Canadian Catholic Bioethics Institute, said some Catholics are concerned that organ donation may have implications for their resurrection. “The soul leaves the body, so there is no problem in using parts of the body [for organ donation],” said McQueen.
The Times of London reported in 2008 that Pope Benedict, calling it an “act of love,” had registered as an organ donor in 1999, when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
