Ratzinger on cloning as WMD

Cardinal Ratzinger is no dummy.

• "Man is capable of producing another man in the laboratory who, therefore, is no longer a gift of God or of nature. He can be fabricated and, just as he can be fabricated, he can be destroyed," said the prefect of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. If this is man's power, then "he is becoming a more dangerous threat than weapons of mass destruction," he added.
• "It has been said that the European Constitution could not mention the Judeo-Christian roots so as not to offend Islam. But what offends Islam is contempt for God, the arrogance of reason that causes fundamentalism."
• "Reason is not an enemy of faith -- on the contrary. The problem is when there is contempt for God and for the sacred"
• Reflecting on freedom, Cardinal Ratzinger said that today it is understood in an individualist sense, while "man is created to coexist. There is a shared freedom that guarantees freedom to all against its being absolutized."

Since California passed a pro embryonic stem cell research bill last night, the first point is particularly apt. We have to be aware that the west is not immune from acts of barbarism. It is, in fact, especially prone to quiet ones done in a lab.