From Mr G. Borg

What is Fr Peter Serracino Inglott A molehill rather than a mountain (TMIS, 17 December) playing at?

In replying to my letter of a week before, he seemed embarrassed by my admiration of him for having had the courage to distance himself from the teachings of the Church. I did not enter into the merits of whether he was right or wrong over whether there is or there is not a person before or after the 14th day of a pregnancy, nor whether his claim that it is morally justifiable to interrupt a pregnancy in its first 14 days to use stem cells to generate organs for other living people was right or wrong.

I merely recorded the fact that while the Roman Church is categorical in stating that interrupting a pregnancy to extract stem cells is a breach of the right to life (and by implication, murder), Fr Peter was categorical in quoting from Georg Sapiano’s Doksa that this was hogwash.

Now Fr Emanuel Agius, listening to Fr Peter on Doksa, cleared any confusion. Fr Peter’s statements are contrary to the official teaching of the Church. That, to my mind, did not necessarily prove that Fr Peter was wrong (or, for that matter, that he was right). It did prove to me that there was a difference between the views of the Church and Fr Peter – a substantial difference. The difference between a position that says it is murder to extract stem cells in the first 14 days after fertilisation and a position that says it is not. A difference between right and wrong.

Between any two ethicists this is a fascinating debate. Between two priests of the Church – giants as both Emanuel Agius and Peter Serracino Inglott are – this is a clash of titans, worth recording even by an unknown George Borg who may or may not be an ordinary Catholic seeking moral guidance and finding nothing but confusion and doubt.

Fr Peter said the difference between him and the Roman Church was not a “mountain” but a “molehill”. It is all a matter of scale, is it not? Big or small it is a difference, and people suffering from Alzheimer’s or a dozen other illnesses will find the difference more substantial than Fr Peter would now have us think.

I am disappointed by Fr Peter’s attempt to obfuscate a clear position he stated in public and which I was careful to quote word for word (and which anyway can be confirmed by any recording of that fateful episode of Doksa). The Roman Church will probably be especially concerned that in trying to shorten the distance from it, Fr Peter did not recant and repudiate his previously held view, but rather claimed that the Church’s position is, after all, not that far from his own. I think it is rather far, and since the Church would argue that this is, quite literally, a matter of life and death, it is not likely that it will let a George Borg make its case alone for long.

In attempting to douse the fire, Fr Peter stokes up an inferno. The words he chose in his reply to me were: “After saying that the living human organism in a mother’s womb before at least the 14th day of pregnancy could not be said to be a ‘person’ in the ordinary sense of the word, I added that it still deserved to be treated with all the respect due to a living human organism.” What? A mother? A living human organism? Not a person? If the womb belongs to a

“mother”, rather than merely a “woman”, then surely what is in the womb is a daughter or a son. Surely then a daughter or a son must be a person.

I should say that I found Fr Peter’s original arguments in the interview for Doksa far more sound and compelling. I was certainly impressed by the scientific and ethical case he was making against the idea that the moment of fertilisation is equivalent to the beginning of human life. It appears to me that in giving this interview, Fr Peter thought he was having a private conversation and he continued to think so until he saw his words quoted in print in your newspaper. That is when he regretted his own opinions and – unsurprisingly too proud to repudiate them altogether – tried to smoke them out.

Now I am really confused.

George Borg