QUESTION:
Last time I wrote, I forgot to ask you if you could answer a question for me, which in particular interests my twin sister. She would like to know why it is a sin in the Orthodox Church to donate your organs, and if Orthodox Christians are able to donate blood.
Svetlana Zivkovic
REPLY:
I cannot imagine where your sister got the idea that the Orthodox Church considers it a sin to donate organs. I can imagine that some semi-converts from various Western fundamentalist or scholastic traditions might have brought some such idea with them, but I assure you that there is no such teaching of the Orthodox Church. The opinions of individuals of whatever rank are simply personal opinions, but they certainly do not speak for the Orthodox Church. There is nothing wrong with donating organs; indeed the first organ transplant we hear of occurred in Eden when a rib was transplanted.
Because blood is a liquid, some people appear unaware that blood is an organ of the body just as is a kidney or heart. Blood transfusions are, indeed, organ transplants and I am sure that no Orthodox person would suggest to you that donating blood is "a sin."
The question arises sometimes about the heart, but only because some people are labouring under the notion that the "soul is located in the heart." The heart is no more than an electrically driven pump, and people who espouse the idea that the soul dwells in the ventricles of the heart have a heretical idea of the nature of the soul, so the objection to heart transplants is based on sheer superstition and ignorance. When we speak of "purifying the heart" in prayer and spiritual struggle, we are speaking of the conscience and using the term "heart" metaphorically. There is nothing wrong with heart transplants or, for that matter, the use of pig heart valves to replace valves in the human heart which have failed. While one might expect an outcry from the scholastic fringe, I am quite adamant about this answer.
+Archbishop Lazar
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