By Deacon Keith A Fournier
© Third Millennium, LLC

The headlines generated by the bizarre claims of the Raelian sect filled the newspapers once more. This time they read “Second Clone Born to a Lesbian Couple.”

Since writing my first piece on this subject (which was posted on numerous “blogs” and resultantly picked up widely) I have received numerous inquiries concerning my thoughts on both the Raelians and cloning. One writer for a Catholic newspaper wrote to me to express the sentiment that he “enjoyed my commentary on the subject” and wanted my “reaction to the reactions” concerning the first cloning claim of this group.

This article is a larger response to his letter than what he expected. Why? Because I believe that the reactions need to be carefully examined so that the Common Good can be protected, promoted and advanced at a critical time in the history of our civilization.

Though I have been mildly encouraged by the swift and largely negative reaction to the first “announcement” of the manufacture of a human being through “cloning”, I fear that the apparently “bogus” scientific claims of cloning by this group will soon become only fodder for political cartoons (I saw a good one today) and late night stand up comic routines.

It also may then provide “cover” for the real moves at manufacturing some “brave, new world” by less bizarre looking “master scientists” who are hell-bent on proceeding with this dangerous experimentation (we call it “technology” now) that always leads to the destruction of a human person. If we do not honestly face the underlying issues now - there is a huge move underway to push us culturally down the road to a new barbarism disguised as enlightened living. It must not be unopposed.

This group and their leader are overtly bizarre and the world is rightly recognizing that they are –to say the least-out of ‘the mainstream.” However, what is revealed (in an almost comic book caricature) in the “messianic” claims of this leader named “Rael” and his growing following, is a “worldview” and “anthropology” that is endemic to much of contemporary western culture.

This worldview and anthropology informs the framework for many other false ideologies, movements and psycho-spiritual groups in our current age. Perhaps even more frightening, it lays a philosophical foundation for the efforts of many new “barbarians”, who unlike the barbarians of old with their unkempt appearance and behavior, now carry briefcases, wear designer suits and white medical coats, pound gavels in courtrooms, teach in our Universities, and hold public office.

What is at risk is that the fundamental tenet of Western Civilization itself - the dignity of every human person no matter what age, stage, size, color, or functionality and the inalienable human rights that are their endowment and form the very basis for all claims to any “civil rights”. In short, civilization is now at risk. I fear that this bigger issue will be lost in the re-packaging of the most ancient of errors revealed in this new abuse of science.

Just last night I saw the representative of Clonaids’ (The company owned by the Raelians that is allegedly carrying out these new Frankenstein experiments) biggest competitor on television. He was protesting the actions of the Raelian group with an aura of feigned concern for the child that will be the “product” of cloning. He looked in the camera and had the audacity to inform the viewers that the technology is here already to “harvest” stem cells from embryos but that is not yet far enough along and therefore it would not be “moral” or right to raise a “defective” child!

We must stop to consider what this man is actually saying! He is telling the whole world that it is perfectly legitimate to use this “technology” (sounds so sanitized doesn’t it?) to manufacture a tiny human embryo in order to destroy it for parts, but wrong to allow that embryo to grow and become a “defective”. The spectre of the now universally repudiated horrific National Socialist experiments on the humans they considered “defectives” jumped out of the T.V. set! This analogy should be clear to anyone with ears to hear- but was probably lost to many who watched!

After all many of those living in the contemporary age, like the proverbial frog in the pot, have allowed the waters of the public rhetoric to boil them to death. How long have we heard the language of the new social, cultural, political, legal and scientific engineers as if it was accurate? We now speak of freedom as a power to do what we choose- not necessarily to do what is right. We do not like to either speak or hear talk of what is “right”.

In a new “abortion state/ politically correct” culture, even some of our pundits speak of children in the womb as “products of conception”. It makes it “easier” to justify scraping them out ...