Sunday Newsletter

Masses Today

66.30: Joe Coyne, (Anniv).
11.00: Mary Margetts, (Anniv).
6.30: Sarah Duggan, (Anniv).

As I Was Saying...

Two British couples have donated and received kidneys from each other in the first paired transplants in the UK recently. They are part of a new scheme aimed at increasing the number of donor organs. Peter Horrell, from Cambridgeshire, donated one of his kidneys to a man from Lothian, while the man's wife gave a kidney to Mr Horrell's wife Roma.

Mrs Horrell, who had her operation three months ago, said it had transformed her life. "I used to do home dialysis twice a day so it was quite a burden," she said. "Plus I got crippling gout, one of the side-effects of my kidney failure. Sometimes I was barely able to walk or bend down. Now I feel really well, it's given me my freedom back."

Mr Horrell wanted to donate his kidney to his wife but he was not a compatible donor, and says this is the next best thing. "As far as I was concerned I was helping Roma in this way. We're also very grateful to the woman in Scotland who gave a kidney to Roma. Indeed, everyone has benefited," he said.

The case of Mr and Mrs Horrell raises the question why people do good things, what makes us act in a moral way. It's often thought that altruism - sacrificing one's own interests in order to help someone else - is at the heart of morality. The most extreme form of altruism, of course, is to lay down one's life for the sake of others.

Such behaviour has long been a puzzle for evolutionary biologists. Because a gene that led its owner to sacrifice its life would surely damage its chances of being passed on. Darwin established the 'survival of the fittest' rather than the 'survival of the best'!

In the last 30 years biologists have come up with a more convincing theory, that of 'reciprocal altruism' meaning that those who sacrifice themselves often share the same genes or have a particular interest in one another's survival. Reciprocal altruism seems a suitable phrase to describe the actions of the couples who swapped kidneys. And in Bill Clinton's newly published book, Giving, he writes of the efforts that many people make, not just by giving money, but of time and effort for the sake of others that is to the mutual benefit of us all. Yet can reciprocal altruism really explain the most extraordinary sacrifices that some people make? Can genes really explain the price paid by Fr Maximilian Kolbe who volunteered to die in the place of a stranger at Auschwitz?

I suspect Kolbe was more driven by Christ's admonition that we love our enemies, do good, and expect nothing in return. From time to time we all come across examples of altruism, of sheer goodness that no biologist could ever explain. These examples are to be found from time to time in every community, irrespective of creed or colour. These examples illustrate that there is more to being human than being a biological construct.

A Christian might say it reveals the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. But all of us would agree that it is love. And, as St. John wrote, 'where love is, there is God'.

-Dick Lyng

Items of Some Interest

Month of November

Belated Recognition

Sixty-four years after he was beheaded by the Nazis in 1943 for refusing to serve in Hitler's army, Franz Jägerstätter, a farmer from Upper Austria, is to be beatified in Linz on Friday next, 26 October. The beatification is a belated recognition of a controversial martyr.

Franz Jägerstätter is the first Austrian layman to be beatified for putting his faith before the Fatherland. But as well as recognising his own remarkable faith and opposition to Nazism, Friday's beatification also signifies a change in the way Austrians deal with the past. For years they were not prepared to confront the support of their countrymen for Hitler, nor the lack of opposition to Nazism by the Catholic Church. All their lives they had been told that obedience to church and state authorities was a foremost virtue.

Jägerstätter was a provocation that they could not yet bring themselves to face. Catholic priests who had survived the concentration camps were seldom welcomed when they got back to their parishes. People felt uncomfortable in their presence. Franz Jägerstätter's stand against fascism, in being so unusual, was a disconcerting truth.

-The Tablet, October 19, 2007.

Top

Valid HTML 4.01 Strict