{"id":162,"date":"2011-02-04T15:58:25","date_gmt":"2011-02-04T15:58:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-popes-organ-donor-card.html"},"modified":"2011-02-04T15:58:25","modified_gmt":"2011-02-04T15:58:25","slug":"the-popes-organ-donor-card","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-popes-organ-donor-card.html","title":{"rendered":"The pope’s organ donor card"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"relic.jpg\"I’m a medievalist, so forgive me. But I’m sorry to learn that Pope Benedict decided<\/a>
\nto turn in his organ donor card when he became pope. I don’t believe
\nscholastic theologians would have had a problem had he decided to do
\notherwise. Pace Polish Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, the head of the
\nVatican’s health office,
\nwho told La Repubblica <\/i>that a pope’s
\nbody should remain intact because it belongs to the entire church.
\nMedieval saints were accustomed to having their bodies pulled apart, so
\ndifferent sites could enjoy the beneficial effects.<\/p>\n

Bodies are strange things. As my old teacher Caroline Bynum has written<\/a>,
\ntransplants raise all kinds of fascinating questions about continuity
\nand personhood and the numinous quality of the fleshly. While I doubt
\ndoctors would consider 80-year-old organs plausible candidates for
\ndonation, there’s something extraordinary afoot here. Imagine having
\nreceived a kidney from, say, the soon-to-be-beatified John Paul II, and
\nturning into a living, breathing reliquary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m a medievalist, so forgive me. But I’m sorry to learn that Pope Benedict decided to turn in his organ donor card when he became pope. I don’t believe scholastic theologians would have had a problem had he decided to do otherwise. Pace Polish Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, the head of the Vatican’s health office, who…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nThe pope's organ donor card - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/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\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-popes-organ-donor-card.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The pope's organ donor card - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I’m a medievalist, so forgive me. But I’m sorry to learn that Pope Benedict decided to turn in his organ donor card when he became pope. I don’t believe scholastic theologians would have had a problem had he decided to do otherwise. Pace Polish Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, the head of the Vatican’s health office, who…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-popes-organ-donor-card.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-02-04T15:58:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.spiritual-politics.org\/relic.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"The pope's organ donor card - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","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\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-popes-organ-donor-card.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"The pope's organ donor card - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"I’m a medievalist, so forgive me. But I’m sorry to learn that Pope Benedict decided to turn in his organ donor card when he became pope. I don’t believe scholastic theologians would have had a problem had he decided to do otherwise. Pace Polish Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, the head of the Vatican’s health office, who…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-popes-organ-donor-card.html","og_site_name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2011-02-04T15:58:25+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.spiritual-politics.org\/relic.jpg"}],"author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-popes-organ-donor-card.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-popes-organ-donor-card.html","name":"The pope's organ donor card - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-popes-organ-donor-card.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-popes-organ-donor-card.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.spiritual-politics.org\/relic.jpg","datePublished":"2011-02-04T15:58:25+00:00","dateModified":"2011-02-04T15:58:25+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-popes-organ-donor-card.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-popes-organ-donor-card.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-popes-organ-donor-card.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.spiritual-politics.org\/relic.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.spiritual-politics.org\/relic.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2011\/02\/the-popes-organ-donor-card.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"The pope’s organ donor card"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/","name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/?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\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d","name":"Mark Silk","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","caption":"Mark Silk"},"description":"Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}