{"id":362,"date":"2011-02-08T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-08T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2011\/02\/vatican-catholic-hospital-ethics-guidelines-pope-cant-be-organ-donor.html"},"modified":"2011-02-08T11:00:00","modified_gmt":"2011-02-08T11:00:00","slug":"vatican-catholic-hospital-ethics-guidelines-pope-cant-be-organ-donor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2011\/02\/vatican-catholic-hospital-ethics-guidelines-pope-cant-be-organ-donor.html","title":{"rendered":"Vatican Updates Catholic Hospital Ethics Guidelines, But Pope Can&#8217;t Be Organ Donor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Check out the medical news out of the Vatican, as covered by my Religion News Service colleague Francis X. Rocca:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2011\/02\/vatican-to-draft-guidelines-fo.php\">Vatican to Draft Guidelines for Catholic Hospitals<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2011\/02\/05\/pope-cant-be-organ-donor-_n_818915.html\">Pope Can&#8217;t Be Organ Donor, Church Says<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(The first story relates to my previous blog posts about <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2010\/12\/ariz-bishop-to-pregnant-women-drop-dead-rather-than-abort.html\">Arizona&#8217;s ex-Catholic hospital <\/a>and <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2010\/11\/popes-comments-on-condoms-confuse-catholics-correspondents.html\">Pope Benedict&#8217;s confusing condoms comment<\/a>.&nbsp;As for the latter, well,&nbsp;Pope Benedict&#8217;s organs are either&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-popes-organ-donor-card.html\">too holy or too old <\/a>to be donated, depending on whom you ask!)<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m a registered organ donor, but I don&#8217;t have a problem with&nbsp;people having religious or other objections to donating their organs. However, given all the people who die while waiting for a transplant,&nbsp;I have long wondered why we don&#8217;t have presumed consent as the default setting,&nbsp;and folks can opt out if they prefer to keep their bodies intact. Maybe there could be a health insurance benefit or some kind of tax incentive&nbsp;for not opting out. No? (This isn&#8217;t a bizarre proposal &#8212; presumed consent policies&nbsp;have been proposed in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.physorg.com\/news\/2011-01-bill-coloradans-donors-default.html\">Colorado<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dailynews.com\/news\/ci_14970110\">New York<\/a>, Israel, the United Kingdom and elsewhere.)<\/p>\n<p>What do you think? Share your thoughts in the Comments section below.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">*<a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=beliefnet\/beliefbeat\">Click here to<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong>subscribe to Belief Beat<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/strong><\/a>and<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/beliefbeat\">click here to<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong>follow Belief Beat on Twitter.<\/strong><\/a>&nbsp;<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Check out the medical news out of the Vatican, as covered by my Religion News Service colleague Francis X. Rocca: Vatican to Draft Guidelines for Catholic Hospitals Pope Can&#8217;t Be Organ Donor, Church Says (The first story relates to my previous blog posts about Arizona&#8217;s ex-Catholic hospital and Pope Benedict&#8217;s confusing condoms comment.&nbsp;As for the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Vatican Updates Catholic Hospital Ethics Guidelines, But Pope Can&#039;t Be Organ Donor - Belief Beat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2011\/02\/vatican-catholic-hospital-ethics-guidelines-pope-cant-be-organ-donor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Vatican Updates Catholic Hospital Ethics Guidelines, But Pope Can&#039;t Be Organ Donor - Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Check out the medical news out of the Vatican, as covered by my Religion News Service colleague Francis X. Rocca: Vatican to Draft Guidelines for Catholic Hospitals Pope Can&#8217;t Be Organ Donor, Church Says (The first story relates to my previous blog posts about Arizona&#8217;s ex-Catholic hospital and Pope Benedict&#8217;s confusing condoms comment.&nbsp;As for the&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2011\/02\/vatican-catholic-hospital-ethics-guidelines-pope-cant-be-organ-donor.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-02-08T11:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nicole Neroulias\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Vatican Updates Catholic Hospital Ethics Guidelines, But Pope Can't Be Organ Donor - Belief Beat","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2011\/02\/vatican-catholic-hospital-ethics-guidelines-pope-cant-be-organ-donor.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Vatican Updates Catholic Hospital Ethics Guidelines, But Pope Can't Be Organ Donor - Belief Beat","og_description":"Check out the medical news out of the Vatican, as covered by my Religion News Service colleague Francis X. Rocca: Vatican to Draft Guidelines for Catholic Hospitals Pope Can&#8217;t Be Organ Donor, Church Says (The first story relates to my previous blog posts about Arizona&#8217;s ex-Catholic hospital and Pope Benedict&#8217;s confusing condoms comment.&nbsp;As for the&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2011\/02\/vatican-catholic-hospital-ethics-guidelines-pope-cant-be-organ-donor.html","og_site_name":"Belief Beat","article_published_time":"2011-02-08T11:00:00+00:00","author":"Nicole Neroulias","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2011\/02\/vatican-catholic-hospital-ethics-guidelines-pope-cant-be-organ-donor.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2011\/02\/vatican-catholic-hospital-ethics-guidelines-pope-cant-be-organ-donor.html","name":"Vatican Updates Catholic Hospital Ethics Guidelines, But Pope Can't Be Organ Donor - Belief Beat","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-02-08T11:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2011-02-08T11:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/42dac2ebd149a02dfe91f0f93e36761b"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2011\/02\/vatican-catholic-hospital-ethics-guidelines-pope-cant-be-organ-donor.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2011\/02\/vatican-catholic-hospital-ethics-guidelines-pope-cant-be-organ-donor.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2011\/02\/vatican-catholic-hospital-ethics-guidelines-pope-cant-be-organ-donor.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Vatican Updates Catholic Hospital Ethics Guidelines, But Pope Can&#8217;t Be Organ Donor"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/","name":"Belief Beat","description":"BeliefBeat - Nicole Neroulias","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/42dac2ebd149a02dfe91f0f93e36761b","name":"Nicole Neroulias","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/caf\/caf1ad99f5fc2a063b8e935cf82f65fdx96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/caf\/caf1ad99f5fc2a063b8e935cf82f65fdx96.jpg","caption":"Nicole Neroulias"},"description":"Nicole Neroulias is a correspondent for Religion News Service, a secular news and photo service devoted to unbiased coverage of religion and ethics. A graduate of Cornell University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she has previously written for The New York Times and other media outlets. She and her family live in Seattle.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/author\/nneroulias"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}