This week's Reader Question comes from "carolmb," who used our submission form to ask it. Her question was prompted by my answer to last week's question:
After reading your response about donating your body to science, I'm wondering how donating an organ fits into this. If at the final resurrection, my physical body no longer has my liver, or eyes, or lungs, etc., how does that factor into our decision regarding organ donation?
This is a surprisingly common concern, but it should not be. To look at it another way, what about those whose bodies have been cremated? What will be there at the resurrection of the body?
God is not constrained by such conditions. At the resurrection, our bodies will be whole and complete, and reunited with our souls. Thus, the Church has no objection to organ donation in theory.
In recent years, however, some theologians and Catholic doctors have raised questions about how organ donation is practiced. Medical conferences have been held at the Vatican to discuss the timing of organ harvesting. Time is of the essence, since organs harvested soon after death are much more likely to be transplanted successfully than organs that are harvested even a few minutes later.
That has led to some concern that doctors who knew that a patient is an organ donor have been too quick to declare the patient brain dead. And some Catholic doctors and theologians have even questioned whether "brain death" is the appropriate criterion for determining whether the patient has in fact died.
It is likely that these questions will be addressed sometime in the near future (the next few years) by the Vatican. In the meantime, there is no doctrinal reason why Catholics who wish to donate their organs should not do so.
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