By Ivy Chai
KUCHING — Dr Sim Kui Hian, Minister of Public Health, Housing and Local Government who is also the Sarawak Deputy Premier, launched the Sarawak state-level Organ Donation Awareness Week 2022 at the Sarawak General Hospital (SGH) on 25 August.
During the event, Dr Sim also launched the hospital’s organ procurement unit office (UPOH).
In conjunction with the launching, a forum touching on the religious views of organ donation by different religions, namely Islam, Buddhism and Christianity was also organised at the CRC auditorium.
Among the panellists was Roman Catholic Archbishop Simon Poh, who was invited to share from a Christian perspective what the Bible says about organ donation and whether it affects the donor’s spiritual relationship with God.
Below, Archbishop Simon Poh shares his views in response to the questions posed to him.
CHRISTIANITY
Qn 1. What does the Bible say about organ donation?
Since the organ donor nor the family receives no monetary compensation, and the only reason it’s done is with the notion of helping another. It’s considered an act of love, saving other lives and healing those who are suffering. Please elaborate further….
Archbishop Simon: A common teaching called golden rule, is also found in the teaching of Jesus in the Bible:
- “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Mark 12:31)
- “Indeed, it is seldom that anyone will die for a just person, although perhaps for a good person someone might be willing to die. Thus, God proved his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:7-8)
- “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13)
In other words, this implies:
- Giving of one’s life is the ultimate of love for another!
- I am willing to die in your place that you may live.
Thankfully, we are all not called to make such total sacrifices. But in reality, we know that in daily life, parents make sacrifices so that their children can go to school and eventually to further their studies.
The Christian Stance on Organ Donation & Transplantation
Christians view organ, eye and tissue donation as an act of charity and love. Transplants are morally and ethically compatible with Church teachings.
According to Catholic Priest Rev Leroy Wickowski, Director of the Office of Health Affairs of the Archdiocese of Chicago, “We encourage donation as an act of charity. It is something good that can result from tragedy and a way for families to find comfort by helping others.”
The key word is donation. Similar to cash donation given to houses of worship, this has to be freely given and never as an exchange of services to be done. When such exchange has a condition of payment, this would be considered as a commercial transaction (sales and purchase, supply and demand) and thus one would be selling organ and not donating!
Selling of organ for money is immoral according to the Christian Faith.
Every human being is a PERSON with dignity, created in the likeness of God. Human persons are NOT things or items for sale on the market. We are NOT commodities or GOODs to be traded or exploited for profit. We know that greed for money has given rise to human trafficking and organ theft – where persons and their organs are treated as goods to be sold, rented out for sex and abuse for a profit and money.
In conclusion, from a Christian perspective that the human person – comprises of body and soul – is to be given respect as created in God’s image. Accordingly, human organs can only be donated freely for the higher motive of saving life and should never be traded for profit.
“The act of love, which is expressed with the gift of one’s own vital organs, is a genuine testament of charity that knows how to look beyond death so that life always wins. The recipient should be aware of the value of this gesture that one receives, of a gift that goes beyond the therapeutic benefit. What they receive is a testament of love, and it should give rise to a response equally generous, and in this way grows the culture of gift and gratitude.”
Pope Benedict XVI, November 2008
Address to Participants at a Conference entitled,
"A Gift for Life :Considerations on Organ Donation"
“Transplants are a great step forward in science’s service of man, and many people today owe their lives to an organ transplant. Increasingly, the technique of transplants has proven to be a valid means of attaining the primary goal of all medicine – the service of human life…There is a need to instill in people’s hearts, especially in the hearts of the young, a genuine and deep appreciation of the need for brotherly love, a love that can find expression in the decision to become an organ donor.”
Pope John Paul II, Rome, August 2000
International Congress on Transplants
Qn 2. Does organ donation affect their spiritual relationship with God?
Christians believe in eternal life and that the body does not impact their spiritual relationship with God. Please elaborate further….
Archbishop Simon: Human beings relate to God who is our creator in a relationship of love and worship which constitutes part of our spiritual relationship with God. This relationship with God is expressed in following the Ten Commandments that God has revealed to Moses in the bible.
These Ten Commandments are ways on relating to God and to fellow human beings. Jesus summaries these Commandments as loving God AND Loving our neighbours with our whole heart, soul, will and mind.
Love demands that we give ourselves – our TIME, TALENTS, TREASURES and ultimately our very life.
- “You shall love your neighbour as yourself.” (Mark 12:31)
- “If someone says, ‘I love God,’ and yet he hates his brother or sister, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother and sister whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God must also love his brother and sister.” (1 John 4:20-21)
- “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (John 15:13)
From the relationship of loving God and loving our neighbours, Christians are called to serve by giving their whole life as a gift of love. Thus we use captions like :
- Give generously in almsgiving to alleviate poverty and those in need
- Give money to give children a new beginning
- Give blood and save lives of others
- Donate organs that others may live
A Christian views death as the culmination of earthly life and a transition to the next life. And at the end of each person’s life, each will have to stand alone before God to give an account of how each has used the life with many talents that God has given us.
Ultimately, before a God of love, we will be judged on whether we have loved or not. Whether we have fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick and ultimately, whether we have loved others especially those who cannot give us anything in return.
Giving of organs is an act of great love for others. Accordingly, the Church teaches that organ, eye and tissue donation and transplantation, is permissible as Christians.
For the Roman Catholic Church, Vatican supports organ donation by all Catholics and considers this as a selfless act of compassion.
Everyone one of us will eventually die. Thus, planning for the End-of-Life is part of a Christian’s approach towards responsible stewardship of one’s life. Before my time for death comes,
- How prepared am I to leave this world to meet my creator?
- How have I loved and what have I given to help others?
The Church thus encourages a person to donate his or her organ as a gift of compassion and life to other human persons that they may have life with a new purpose.
World Catholic Spiritual leaders like Pope John Paul II stated: “The Catholic church would promote the fact that there is need for organ donors and that Christians should accept this as a ‘challenge to their generosity and fraternal love’ so long as ethical principles are followed.”
Some ethical and moral considerations
1. Respecting and Caring for the Deceased. Treat the Body with respect.
Traditional funeral and burial services are important to all faith communities. Deceased donors are always treated with the utmost respect and dignity throughout the entire donation process. If your loved one’s organs and tissues are eligible to be donated, a team of specialist surgeons show respect during the recovery process by caring for the donor in a way that still allows a traditional open casket funeral.
By donating your organs so that others may have life, you are in keeping with the Catholic Church’s teaching on respect for life and the dignity of each human person. The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us:
“The transplant of organs is morally acceptable with the consent of the donor and without excessive risks to him or her. Before allowing the noble act of organ donation after death, one must verify that the donor is truly dead.” (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church n.2296)
2. The ethics of organ donation depends on these criterias:
- The patient or the family has to give free and informed consent to organ procurement.
- The desire to offer one’s organs after death to someone diagnosed with organ failure is noble and should be honoured.
- The patient is in fact deceased when vital organs are removed.
- Note: The willing donation by the living of non-vital organs, such as one kidney; a lung; or a portion of the liver, the pancreas, or intestines is always permissible.
3. Vital Organs can only be removed after death. When is it considered the moment of death – heart that stops beating or brain death?
- Medical science determines that death has occurred based on signs that an individual’s ability to carry out the activities of life in an integrated way is irreversibly lost. Usually this is based on detecting a person’s permanent loss of a heartbeat and ability to breathe, but increasingly with the use of ventilators and other life-sustaining treatments, doctors rely on neurological signs.
- BRAIN DEATH has been defined as the irreversible loss of the capacity for consciousness combined with the irreversible loss of all brainstem functions including the capacity to breathe is generally accepted by the medical community and the public as equivalent to the traditional circulatory criterion of death.
4. Determining Death: Called Home to God.
Catholics have embraced organ donation for years and have recognised that death can be determined, using reasonable available means, by the complete and irreversible cessation of all brain activity – so called “brain death”.
When brain activity stops completely and irreversibly, the functions necessary to sustain life have also ceased and the death of the person may be medically declared.
Many hospitals use 5 minutes as the benchmark. Catholic hospitals prudently use a benchmark of 10 minutes once the heart has stopped beating before organ donation occurs. This protocol is followed to be morally certain that all of the integrated functions necessary to sustain life have irreversibly ceased.
In 2000, Pope St John Paul II’s address to the International Congress on Transplants echoes what Pope Pius XII stated more than forty years prior, regarding the definition of death.
- Death is the “total disintegration of that unitary and integrated whole that is the personal self.”
- Death is the separation of the soul from the body. Regarding the medical definition, whether the traditional cardio-respiratory signs or the neurological signs, John Paul again affirmed his predecessor and emphatically asserted that “the Church does not make technical decisions.”
- The Church is concerned with human dignity.
- If there is “moral certainty” that death has occurred before organ procurement, then it is ethical if consent has been given. That is the guiding principle in both the theological and medical determination of death: moral certainty.
In conclusion…
Organ donation is the greatest act of charity and love a person can perform.
“Organ donation is a peculiar form of witness to charity. In a period like ours, often marked by various forms of selfishness, it is ever more urgent to understand how the logic of free giving is vital to a correct conception of life. Indeed, a responsibility of love and charity exist that commits one to make of their own life a gift to others, if one truly wishes to fulfil oneself. As the Lord Jesus has taught us, only whoever gives his own life can save it (cf. Lk 9: 24).”
Pope Benedict XVI, November 2008
“A Gift for Life. Considerations on Organ Donation.”
