To promote stem cell awareness, the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine held a poetry contest. One of the two top winners wrote a poem using the words of Jesus at the Last Supper to apply to embryonic stem cell research:
Stem C.
This is my body
which is given for you.
But I am not great.
I have neither wealth,
nor fame, nor grace.
I cannot comfort with words,
nor inspire to march.
I am small and simple,
so leave me this.
Let me heal you.
This is my body
which is given for you.
Take this
in remembrance of me.
I don’t think you could more effectively dissuade the religious from supporting the CIRM’s work, than by awarding a first prize to this poem.
After being published online at the CIRM site, the poem–along with other winners–was removed. perhaps because the Life Legal Defense Foundation, which has clashed legally with the CIRM before, issued a press release: In place of the poems, here’s the CIRM’s apology:
CIRM recently announced two winners of the second annual poetry contest, one of which contained some religious language that is identical to liturgical language used in the context of Christian and Catholic sacraments. The language introduces a religious element that we now realize was offensive to some people. We are deeply sorry for any offense caused by the poem. Neither the author nor CIRM intended for the language to insult or offend any religious group. When CIRM recognized that the language was of concern we removed all four poems from the CIRM web site and from the Stem Cell Awareness Day web site.
Okay. That raises a question: How could they not know it would offend those people mentioned?
So, what are we to make of awarding this a first prize? Was it an intentional slam on Christians, many of which oppose ESCR, which the CIRM realized in retrospect would blow up in their faces? Or did they think the poem, by using the words of Jesus at the Last Supper, would somehow appeal to Christians? Or did they just think it was clever? Whatever it was the judges were thinking–they weren’t thinking. I notice they haven’t taken back the prize, just airbrushed the website, so this could lead to a very big stink.
October 10th, 2010 | 10:51 pm
You left out another possibility. The judges (all of them) did not recognize the allusion to the Mass. They thought the words catchy, though, and vaguely reminiscent of something they’d once heard–or heard tell of.
October 11th, 2010 | 7:47 am
I find Doug’s explanation persuasive. What we have is a popular lack of knowledge of the New Testament. The one positive note is that though ignorant, the judges recognized the last two sentences as classic. Though they might be more embarrassed by the plagiarism once it was pointed out to them than by the offense given to Christian believers. The words rise above classic to a revelation when taken in the original context.
October 11th, 2010 | 9:12 am
Okay, I’ll risk being labeled as the “religious nut” and suggest that what we are to make of the award is that it was issued by a group of ignorant people who were duped and misled by forces beyond them.
Such mockery of human life (made in the image and likeness of God) coupled with mockery of the Mass would, in prior times be rightly identified as having its origin in the demonic.
October 11th, 2010 | 9:53 am
You don’t have to know about the allusions to the Eucharist to think that’s stupid. Since when does a fetus or embryo “give” anything to anyone? It’s a lovely little bit of self-justifying self-delusion to make it sound like a noble sacrifice of sharing, when the embryo has absolutely no say in the matter, and no ability to communicate such giving even if it wanted to. It’s one thing to believe the child has no rights nor any consciousness with which to experience rights or the loss of them; it’s rather telling about how honest they want to be, when they want to impute such consciousness so they can pretend the baby’s knowingly all peachy with the whole arrangement — and give prizes for such willfully deluded propaganda.
October 11th, 2010 | 11:27 am
This is disgusting. The writer takes what is most pure, most holy and selfless and assigns it to the voiceless baby to justify what is most selfish. Will the same poem be used for invalids who “donate” their healthy organs?
The judges, or at least some of them, knew. The reference to Jesus words is what gives this “statement” it’s power. It was a ringer.
Artaban, I have not doubt there is a demonic influence here.
Our Lady, Mother of Life, pray for us!
October 11th, 2010 | 12:24 pm
Doug, was very charitable of you to think the judges did not realize what they were doing. But all they had to do was Google the phrase they thought they might have heard, and they would have realized it would be offensive.
Also, the writer had to know the impact it would have. Someone who is devoted to the cause of ESCR, enough to write a poem, might be simply misguided in using a passage from the Bible. But the words used here change the meaning completely. Dark is light and light is dark. Think about this: the writer assigns a voice to the embryo, in effect “personifying” it (which the ESCR cause vehemently denies), and says, “It’s ok, kill me, really I want you to, so YOU can have life. ” Perhaps the writer was a former Catholic, or CINO who wants to change reality. The “poem” is so powerfully wretching that is truly hard to believe that the writer had no idea what they were provoking.
The fact that CIRM has not taken the prize back shows that they are not really sorry for having awarded the prize. This whole thing may be just to provoke a response from those unreasonable Catholics who won’t support what they want to do. In that way, they can highlight how uncooperative, sensitive, and unnecessarily religious they believe Catholics to be.
October 11th, 2010 | 5:02 pm
What the poem displays is the monstrous lying to onesself that is a long-standing characteristic of societies that have justified human sacrifice, from ancient worshippers of Moloch to modern women seeking abortions. After all, the propaganda of Planned Parenthood is that a mother who kills her unborn child is doing the baby a kindness by not bringing it into a life of being “unwanted”. And Hitler was so kind to the Jews!
October 11th, 2010 | 6:37 pm
I think the judges/poet legitimately thought this poem would appeal to Christians. (They’re crazy, obviously.) Appease the natives by using the lingo, show the Christians how harmless this embryo-destruction thang is by having the cell clump speak in the vernacular. When a good friend of mine decided to have an abortion she told herself the whole procedure was a good idea because her “daughter” came to her in a dream and said it was all right to abort her. Oh, well then! The most innocent and vulnerable actually WANT to be killed, you see. An imagined morality is so much more convenient than God’s law.
October 13th, 2010 | 11:54 pm
Perhaps they pulled it when it suddenly dawned on them what the use of words like “me,” “my,” or “I” implied about the humanity of the embryo.
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