Pubdate: Sat, 23 Sep 2000
Source: Sydney Morning Herald (Australia)
Copyright: 2000 The Sydney Morning Herald
Contact:  GPO Box 3771, Sydney NSW 2001
Fax: +61-(0)2-9282 3492
Website: http://www.smh.com.au/
Forum: http://forums.fairfax.com.au/
Author: Paola Totaro

VATICAN BANS ALL HEROIN TRIALS

The Vatican has issued a decree that no Catholic organisation should 
participate in the trial of a legal heroin injecting room, ruling this 
would involve cooperation with "grave evil".

The document implies that Rome also strongly opposes any Catholic 
involvement in existing harm minimisation programs such as needle exchanges.

"... the good intention and the hoped-for benefits are not sufficient to 
outweigh the fact of its constituting an extremely proximate material 
cooperation in the grave evil of drug abuse and its foreseeable bad side 
effects," the document says.

The formal ruling was prepared by the Vatican's Congregation for the 
Doctrine of the Faith, the church's most powerful doctrinal tribunal in Rome.

The six-page moral evaluation was provided to the Sisters of Charity last 
week - the response coming more than a year after the Vatican's 
unprecedented order that the Sisters abandon their pledge to help the NSW 
Government conduct an 18-month trial of the nation's first medically 
supervised injecting service in Kings Cross.

According to the ruling, a copy of which has been obtained by the Herald, 
the Vatican is particularly anxious about the potential for scandal should 
a Catholic organisation involve itself in such drug harm-minimisation programs.

"One of the most important bad side effects to this proposed service is 
scandal, which the Sisters of Charity are aware of and would take serious 
measures to address," the document notes.

"Nevertheless, precisely because of the extreme proximity of the 
cooperation of a Catholic institution in a serious evil, some people will 
still be scandalised; it will seemto them to be formal cooperation."

The document concedes that the supervised injecting service is not a case 
of "explicit or implicit" formal cooperation in evil, but insists that it 
is "beyond question" that it does involve "some degree of material 
cooperation in the evil of drug abuse".

And while cooperation in evil may not be formal, this does not mean that it 
is "morally neutral", and it is therefore "in itself undesirable" and 
should be avoided.

"The harm minimised through this service is accidental to the act of 
injecting illicit drugs (such as infection), but not that which is 
essential and necessarily connected to the evil of drug abuse: the loss of 
the status as free and responsible moral agents, proper to man, and the 
progressive destruction of life and health," the document concludes.

The Vatican's ruling appears to overlook the point that the Sydney trial 
will be a clinical experiment with a set, 18-month, lifespan.

It also appears not to take into account the experience of several European 
countries, which - while inconclusive - does provide strong preliminary 
evidence that medically supervised injecting services save lives.

Instead, it seems to require absolute proof of the benefits of medically 
supervised injecting services as a precondition for allowing participation 
in any trial.

Sister Annette Cunliffe, Congregational Leader of the Sisters of Charity, 
said she was "pleased to note that there is no disagreement in moral 
principle" between the Sisters and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the 
Faith, although there were "differences in emphasis and a different final 
conclusion".

Sister Annette said St Vincent's Hospital would continue to provide the 
best possible health care to "all its patients, including those afflicted 
by drug addiction" and would continue to expand its drug rehabilitation 
programs.

The Uniting Church is overseeing work on the injecting room site at 66 
Darlinghurst Road, and is expected to start the trial by the end of the year.
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MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart