Dolly’s Earthquake

It is a piece of Franciscan history as fascinating to contemplate as it is difficult to track down. Just before he died in 1924, the arch-communist Vladimir Illich Lenin, appalled at the horrific loss of life he helped bring about after the Russian Revolution in 1917, was reported to have lamented all the killings and massacres, and to have said the following: To save our Russia, what we needed (but it is too late now) was ten Francises of Assisi. Ten Francises of Assisi, and we should have saved Russia.

Had Lenin lived in our day, the dream of making ten Francises of Assisi would not be all that far-fetched, what with cloning and the like. We do well to leave to Franciscan historians the task of tracking down the ultimate source of the quote attributed to Lenin. Let us focus instead on the possibility of cloning a human being.

Hello, Dolly!

The world learned on February 23, 1997 that a group of scientists located at the Roslin Institute in Scotland had performed the first successful cloning of an adult mammal, a sheep affectionately named ‘Dolly,’ after American pop singer Dolly Parton. The unassuming Dr. Ian Wilmut headed the team of researchers. He and ‘Dolly’ became instant celebrities. True, ‘Dolly’ was the only one of 277 sheep foetuses that came successfully to term, but why quibble? After all, hadn’t something had been done for the very first time in human history?

To clone ‘Dolly,’ Wilmut and his team used three sheep: one provided an unfertilised egg, one provided the adult cell, and one - a surrogate mother - carried the recombined egg to term. The scientists took the nucleus out of the egg and placed the DNA from the adult cell into it. Next they jolted the egg with a charge of electricity, thus fusing the egg and the DNA together. The two cells now became one. Remarkably, the adult cell started acting as if it were an embryonic cell. The scientists implanted the now-fertilised egg into the surrogate sheep mother. After the normal gestational period for a sheep, Dolly was born.

The Xerox age

We live in a Xerox age. We love to make copies. Indeed, the magazine you are holding in your hands is one of many thousands of copies of the same magazine. The Messenger of St. Anthony can be printed in such quantity because of technology. We appreciate the technology that allows us to print hundreds and thousands and even millions of copies of the very same magazine over and over and over again. It’s easy with the technology in hand.

Copies work fine for things, for inanimate objects like magazines, fast food, pencils and pens, chairs and tables, T-shirts, beanie babies, and the like. Why, we even speak of computer clones. Current technology allows to go one step further. Modern animal husbandry allows scientists to breed better stocks of cows and sheep, pigs and chickens and so forth. With ‘Dolly,’ human beings are faced with another possibility.

The technological imperative

Why all the hubbub? In a nutshell: if scientists can clone a sheep, why can’t they clone a human being? Why not indeed? Much of the controversy swirling around the Scottish experiments is attributable to that one simple question. At the time Dolly was cloned, many European countries already had laws against the cloning of human beings, the United States did not. President Clinton asked that hearings be held. During them, the following reasons were given for human cloning: the recovery of a loved one, especially a small child who dies young; the improvement of the human race; the creation of spare parts for surgery; the challenges of medical research; the reproduction of one’s own qualities, and, yes, to satisfy mere curiosity.

At issue here is the ‘technological imperative.’ In simplest terms, it is the attitude that says: if we can do something, then we ought to do it. With the vast resources at their disposal, scientists are especially disposed to think along these lines. Implied but unstated is another attitude: the ability establishes and determines the morality of the practice. If we can create an atomic bomb, then we ought to be able to use an atomic bomb. If we can clone a human being, then we ought to do it; technological skill determines ethical uprightness. The technological imperative has given us a world of technological titans and moral midgets.

A crash course on cloning

The word ‘clone’ comes from a Greek word meaning ‘twig’ or ‘slip,’ as in plants. We can define a ‘clone’ as an exact genetic replica of a specific gene or an entire organism derived asexually. What is important to note regarding clones is the fact that the genetic exactness so highly prized by some scientists is bought at the price of genetic diversity. Whatever else it is, cloning is essentially asexual, that is, it is reproduction without sexual intercourse. Sex brings diversity; cloning brings sameness.

We do well to keep in mind this asexual nature of cloning. For while it is true that the Catholic Church does oppose human cloning, she does so not because of any opposition to legitimate science. Far from it. What is actually the case is that Holy Mother Church is striking a blow for good old-fashioned sexual congress as the way human beings ought to come into the world. In the same way and for the same reason is the Church opposed to in vitro fertilisation and other so-called reproductive technologies. Procreation is a much better word than reproduction to express authentic Catholic teaching on the coming to be of human beings.

A Franciscan Reflection

While St. Francis of Assisi knew nothing of the wonders of modern science, he knew much about the workings of the human heart. Hence it may not be unfair to ask ourselves: What would St. Francis have to say about this whole matter of cloning? As usual, Assisi’s saint forces us to think.

Though he regarded himself poor and unlettered, Francis’ openness to experience can teach us much. One of the most important events in the life of the fraternity took place when St. Francis met St. Anthony of Padua. The young Anthony showed Francis that the life of the spirit can go hand in hand with the life of studies. As a result, Francis urged his followers to emulate Anthony in their pursuit of learning, keeping the love of God and His holy will as the top priority in their lives. In the Order this meeting of the two great saints has occasioned a blossoming of learning the likes of which rivals that of any other group of religious in the Church.

When Churchmen, ethicists, and responsible scientists voice their opposition to human cloning, one reason often given is that such a practice will destroy what we mean by ‘family.’ When they say this they are repeating and echoing the vision that St. Francis had centuries ago when he wrote the Canticle of the Creatures. Poet of creation that he was, we remember that he spoke of all creatures as his brothers and his sisters. This familial vision of the created world has endeared Francis to men and women of all times and places, making him not only the world’s saint but also a most formidable thinker of what it is that sustains and uplifts the human spirit.

Precisely because of the familial vision of all reality, both animate and inanimate, St. Francis forces us to reconsider the very premise with which we began our reflection, to wit, that human cloning is the real issue at hand. Saint Francis might well ask us to reconsider what the world takes for granted, namely, that animal cloning is perfectly all right. When Wilmut and his team of Scottish scientists published their ‘Dolly’ findings in the journal Nature, they wrote matter-of-factly of their experiment: At about day 110 of pregnancy, four foetuses were dead, all from embryo-derived cells, and post-mortem analysis was possible after killing the ewes.

‘Killing the ewes’ in the name of science? How do we view that one sentence? The researchers were following scientific protocols. Are creatures to be at the service of humanity to such an extent that they can be killed so matter-of-factly in the name of scientific research? We moderns can probably give many good reasons why animals should be so treated - they can provide us with more wool, more meat, more milk, more, more, more - but I am not sure that these reasons would convince a St. Francis of Assisi. Hence, the gentle saint forces us to think about our not-so-gentle ways.

The balanced saint

For all of his eccentricities, no saint was more balanced than Francis. While his ways compel us to reconsider ours, we instinctively know he would not be an extremist on this issue. He loved animals, lambs especially, and even saved one or two from almost certain death, yet Francis did not deny butchers their livelihood. His words to us remain a constant challenge: I have done what was mine to do; may Christ teach you yours. It is in that mention of Christ as our real teacher that we find the real challenge of living the faith in our day and Francis’ greatest legacy to us.

The saint’s wisdom is borne out in our own day. For while St. Francis was in love with God, heart and soul, our modern age is not. Press reports coming from Scotland tell us that Dr. Wilmut is not a believer in God yet his wife holds a ministerial position in the Church of Scotland. The Wilmuts mirror our age quite well: partly disbelieving, partly faithful.

Part of us wants to take complete charge of creation and do with it what we will, even if it means killing ewes in Scotland or Jews in Germany or unborn children all over the world in the name of the technological imperative: if human beings can do something and want to do it, then human beings ought to do it. We have no master but ourselves. Here we find the extremism of a Lenin, here we find a dead-end for humanity.

Another part of us wants to live in harmony with God’s good creation, serving as responsible stewards rather than as absolute masters of ourselves and God’s creatures. Here we find the balance of a Saint Francis, here we find a vision for a truly humane and just future.

The man of God or the Godless man?

Which way shall humanity go? Shall it seek its salvation in the real God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Francis and Anthony, or one of the myriad false gods that litter the landscape of our own fractured century? Lenin knew nothing of the former, much of the latter. Ironic, is it not, that the godless man, Lenin, the Bolshevik revolutionary-- if he had to do it all over again-- would choose the man of God-- Francis of Assisi cloned ten times over-- to save Russia and do the Revolution right? A world with God or a world without Him? Which shall it be? As we search for an answer, may this prayer St. Francis guide us: Most high, glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart and give me, Lord, a correct faith, a certain hope, a perfect charity, sense and knowledge, so that I may carry out Your holy and true command. Francis’ prayer confirms Dante’s poetry: In His will is our peace. As Lenin came to know, all else is madness.

Dida:
A still from the film Multiplicity directed by Harold Ramis. Michael Keaton stars as Doug Kenney, a Los Angeles construction company owner, and his three clones