Ireland's Catholic bishops have condemned cloning as "gravely immoral", and have said that ensuring human life "from its beginning to its natural end is an inescapable task for those who understand the wonder of the gift of life".
"If the European Union approves of or tolerates such an abomination as therapeutic cloning it will be doing violence to the very foundations of respect for human dignity on which the best of European culture is founded."
The bishops have designated next Sunday, October 12th, as Day for Life 2003. Their pastoral letter, The Wonder of Life, was issued yesterday to mark next Sunday and Pope John Paul's Silver Jubilee on October 16th. Approximately 100,000 copies of the pastoral letter are being circulated throughout Ireland.
"The practice of abortion has been widely accepted in many parts of the world. In experimentation on embryos we see tiny human lives being used and discarded. These helpless human beings cannot benefit from such procedures; they are simply being used as instruments, as objects.
"We see proposals to bring human beings into existence by cloning, as was done with Dolly the sheep.Bringing a human being into existence without mother or father, for the purpose of being identical to someone else, would be gravely immoral even if it did not, as it certainly does, risk severe damage to a child who would be produced in this way.
"It is suggested by some that this would be acceptable if the cloned child were never intended to survive and would simply be the object of research or the source of organs and thus serve a 'therapeutic' purpose.
"Thus we see the growing acceptance of what is absurdly called 'therapeutic cloning' as opposed to 'reproductive cloning' - as if all cloning is not, by definition, reproductive.
"If human cloning were 'successful', it would produce a life, capable, if it had been brought about in the way that God intended, of growing and of being born.
"Although the process of cloning is gravely immoral, it would produce a human being, addressed by God's invitation (to life and a relationship with him). 'Therapeutic cloning' simply means that these human beings would be created with a view to abandoning them when they no longer serve any useful purpose for us."
They said when the Pope came to Ireland in 1979 "he pointed out that 'to attack unborn life at any moment from its conception is to undermine the whole moral order'." The Pope said: "The defence of the absolute inviolability of unborn life is part of the defence of human rights and human dignity."
