Regarding Certain Cutting Remarks

Ok, they weren't cutting, not at all; but I couldn't resist the pun. A reader commented on our local "educational" show, Body Worlds, and asked why our local bishops have been against it. On the other side of it, I was actually surprised that they didn't speak more strongly. So, a few things:

First: the charge that the Church was against autopsies for medical purposes during the Middle Ages. That bit of pop-history is false (as is the idea that medieval people believed the Earth was flat. They actually had a good idea of its circumference.) Medieval men were not stupid, not any more stupid than their modern counterparts at any rate (and often less so.) For more on that you'd have to study, but here's a reasonable article by peer-reviewed academics. It gives a fair representation of how the period is understood by those who study it for a living (the whole piece is good, but check the part regarding the Dark Ages.) The article is here. But if this is common knowledge for academics, why would there be such a disconnect between academia and common history? My notions on that aren't at all kind, so never mind. (Oh fine, here it is: I think it suits most people to think poorly of their ancestors. If the people of yesterday were stupid neanderthals, we can forge bravely ahead into madness, right? It's more convenient to discount the past than to actually engage it.)

As for the Bishops of Edmonton (Latin and Ukrainian rite) and their document. If you actually read it, you find that the Bishops aren't against science at all; they are simply for humanity. So let's take stock for a moment. Here we have an exhibit of human bodies in various poses with all sorts of folks paying to come and take a look. They (the human beings, the people on display) gave their bodies to science, presumably for medical research, the training of doctors, etc. But that isn't what's going on. Instead we get something that really harkens back to a day when insensitivity reigned and people really were a bit nastier than today. What we have, ladies an gentlemen, children of all ages, is an honest to goodness Freakshow, complete with admission payments and snacks and giggling children.

Now, if there were something you could accomplish with plastinated corpses that you couldn't do as well with plastic models, I'd agree with the whole thing. But is this medically necessary? Is there any research going on? These were people once, with families, with dreams, and they died. A measure of a people is how we honour our dead and this is a contemptible treatment of humanity without any of the necessity of research or medical training, or organ donation for that matter. These aren't Med students filing through, gawking at the flayed corpses; it's regular folk come for a glimpse. It isn't a matter of rushing a heart to a transplant recipient. If I ever give my organs to some anonymous person, I hope he doesn't inflate my bladder and use it like a ball to amuse his children.

That would be medieval.