Expert: Griff Ruby - 3/26/2011

Question
Does the Catholic church have any teaching on organ transplants? Should we be doing this just because we can---and how to justify the decision of who is chosen for donation and who is not? What would God think of harvesting human organs to extend life? How does someone justify their decision NOT be a donor (or recipient) without being labeled as selfish?

Answer
I haven't heard (at least from any reliable source) that the Church has any position one way or the other on the bare question of whether a Catholic may or must or must not offer his organs in case of death.  That does not mean that another expert might not be able to point you to some authoritative source of which I am unaware.
On the one hand the corpse of a Catholic is sacred and one ought not run a risk of desecrating it, but on the other hand the extraordinary charity of perhaps saving a life by laying down one's own life, or the means of that life, would have to be at least in some sense quite virtuous.
I believe that there could be ways that someone willing to be an organ donor can, through some legal process, specify priorities as to who or what sort of person should be permitted to receive the necessary organs, but this is something one would have to take up with a lawyer.  Perhaps some Allexperts in Law might be able to provide some free legal advice about this.  (You would have to hire and pay for a lawyer to set this up, I would expect.)
There is however one significant reason why a person should not consider being an organ donor, a practical one, and that is that there are some hospitals and doctors (and you never know who) that might see someone volunteering as an organ donor as an opportunity for profit, and thereby to allow a borderline or difficult case to go without some necessary medical treatment so as to obtain their organs instead of helping the patient.  In short, there is some small but measurable risk of one's life being taken by some ghoulish doctor or medical staff as a source of harvested organs.  There was a novel (and recent movie) titled "Coma" about this very scenario, and while the chances of that happening are quite small, the possibility is nevertheless quite real.  It is not selfish to protect one's own life from extinction.
Hope that helps, God bless!