The Body Worlds 2 exhibit is coming to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science this March. It is an exhibit of actual human bodies that have undergone a process called plastination. The process essentially turns cells into a rigid plastic, thereby preserving anatomical specimens.

Having been in the medical profession I understand the educational value of viewing a real human body. I have experienced that “Ah!” moment when the sight of a real specimen puts it all together. As I understand Catholic teaching, people who donate their bodies for such study, as long as they do not do it as a rejection of the belief in the resurrection of the body, may be doing something meritorious. It cannot be denied that we have all benefited from the many advances in medicine that have come from such donations. In addition to that I also believe that the better we understand the complexities of the human body, the greater our understanding of God as Creator. The detailed study of the human body can fill people with a sense of awe at God's majesty and empower their faith in Him.

I have no opposition to the displays of sliced human bodies, such as can be found at the Smithsonian Institute, or to the display of real unborn babies at the DMNS.  I am aware that the process of plastination itself is not inherently evil. According to the Body Worlds website, in 1983, the Church asked Dr. Von Hagens, the very person bringing the exhibit to the DMNS, to plastinate the heel bone of St. Hildegard of Bingen. (This was prior to the launching of Dr. Von Hagens’ first “art” exhibit in 1995)

That being said, after carefully looking at the Body Worlds website and other available documents, I was disturbed. What I found disturbing were not the bodies themselves, but the lack of dignity in the way they are exhibited. Skinned bodies with the genitals and eyes intact doing such things as sitting in front of a computer monitor, skateboarding, or jumping through mid air. Perhaps it is the fact that Dr. von Hagens signs his  “specimens” that caused me to feel sickened, not by the bodies, but by the person behind such a supercilious display. One gets the clear feeling that the author of this exhibit is not as interested in educating the public as he is in showing off his "art". It is a display of ego with a capital "E", and the fact that he makes a profit by using these bodies makes it doubly distasteful.

BBC writer Ian Youngs (BBC News Online, March 22, 2002) described one particular display of a skinned pregnant woman (belly cut open and eight month old fetus visible) which Dr. Von Hagens insists is positioned to look as if she has a headache, as being in a provocative "playboy" position. Such a comment tells volumes about the attitudes the images of this exhibit elicit. They create a pornographic sense because the obvious over-manipulation of the bodies succeeds in devaluing them, and the devaluation of the human body is precisely what is at the heart of pornography. Looking at the images of these exhibits one is drawn, not to admire the awesomeness of the human body, but to wonder what else can be done with a dead person. Not surprisingly, in a 2003 interview for the British Medical Journal, Gunther von Hagens reveals that his next step in Body Worlds is to exhibit bodies in sexual intercourse. His work is a rape of the human form that takes us one step deeper into the Culture of Death. A culture fueled in great part by a materialist view that hails matter as the total explanation for man.

If man is nothing more than matter, using the human body as mere sculpting material seems perfectly logical. It is in fact the logic behind using embryos for experimentation and a host of other senseless acts. Of course, acts such as experimentation with embryos have the added injury of destroying human life while Dr. von Hagens “specimens” are already dead. However, the result is the same, a denial of the immortal soul and the depersonification of the human being. This is evident in that, while the "sculptures" have names, they are not names such as John Smith or Mary Woods, they are person-less names such as "Thinker", "Skateboarder" or "Skin Man". The mere fact that Dr. von Hagens has given whichever names and attributes he wants to these bodies shows how his “trade” is nothing more that self-deification. What can bring a person closer to apotheosis than the ability “re-create” another?

A few Sundays ago we read in the Gospel how an unclean spirit screamed at Jesus  “…I know who you are, the Holy One of God." But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!" The deacon at our parish explained that the reason Jesus forbids the demon to speak is because in the Jewish tradition to name someone was to have authority over them. This is true for us as well. In baptism we name our children thus setting ourselves in authority over them. This authority is legitimate and established by God. However, the devil does not have authority over Jesus and so he is forbidden to speak. It made me think that perhaps it would have been better if Dr. von Hagens had left these “specimens” untitled, but by naming them this narcissistic man makes these human bodies his own. He does not have a God-given authority to do this. He has given it to himself.

Of course, many who believe in the existence of the soul do not have a problem with this exhibit, after all, The soul is gone, so what’s the big deal?  We are told in scripture that the body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. Volumes can and have been written explaining the Church’s belief in the sacredness of the human body and its profound bond to the soul. It is this belief we proclaim in the Apostles’ Creed when we say “I believe in the resurrection of the body”. Pope John Paul II (whom, ironically, Dr. von Hagens offered to plastinate), in his Theology of the Body, speaks of the human body as a visible sign that expresses the person. He proclaims the unity between body and soul in the following way. “ The body, in fact, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world, the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God and thus to be a sign of it.”(February 20,1980)  In other words, each of the bodies in the exhibit was created to express a person, an unrepeatable word spoken by God, body and soul, once and for all eternity. To attempt to re-speak that word is to claim divinity.

Was the body labeled as “Thinker” indeed created by God to express a person who loved to ponder? Was the body labeled “Skateboarder” really created by God as an expression of a person who felt exhilaration when on a skateboard? Or have these persons been arbitrarily re-named by an egotistical, self-proclaimed demigod, a scientist gone mad?

Has Dr. von Hagens at least honored these temples by retaining their God-given purpose, what they were meant to express? Or has he torn them down until one stone has not been left upon another so that he can rebuild them according to his own designs? If it is the latter, his display can only be summarized as a lie.

But what if in fact the “titles” reflect something about the person?

In interviews Dr. von Hagens seems to think that those who object to the exhibits do so because there is too much of the man exposed. They do not have the courage to explore the “interior face” of man to which the exhibits are dedicated.

Christopher West, speaking as a foremost authority on Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body, said the following: “ The problem with pornography is not that it shows too much of the person, it’s that it does not show enough”. Dr. von Hagens, blinded by his grandiosity, has failed to realize that his titled “specimens”, regardless of the amount of dissection, fall short and do not show enough of the man. They fail to penetrate the true mystery that each body was created to reveal. He accomplishes only the reduction of the man; a reduction eerily represented in the omission of the skin.

And so at best, the Body Worlds exhibits are a lie. At worst, they are a promulgation of a philosophy and a religion whose only hope of acceptance is in extirpating the basic Christian teaching that humans are persons comprised, for all eternity, of a body and an immortal soul. It is no wonder that in the same 2003 interview Dr. von Hagens blames resistance to his exhibits on “Catholic sensibilities”, and states that his aim is to take the body away from “ ‘the keepers of the body’, the Church…”

While the Catholic Church teaches that the dead body should be treated “with respect and charity, in faith and hope of the Resurection” (CCC 2300), Dr. von Hagens says that  “respect [for the dead body] is a matter of opinion…with a whole body you can never forget this is a former person”(emphasis added)(BMJ 2003 interview). We must not give into the false idea that once the soul has left the body what is left behind is refuse. Our personhood does not end with physical death. This is why the Church has declared that burying the dead is a corporal work of mercy that “honors the children of God, who are temples of the Holy Spirit” (CCC 2300). In contrast to that, in September of 2004, the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published an article authored by Tony Walter entitled Plastination for Display: A New Way to dispose of the dead.  The abstract for the research article states the following:

“Plastination provides a new method, governed by medical technique rather than religious ritual, by which human remains may be transformed from unstable/wet to stable/dry. In the Körperwelten/Body Worlds exhibition, the public pay to view plastinated bodies, and are invited to donate their bodies for plastination after death. This article addresses the question of whether Body Worlds visitors accept plastination for display as a legitimate form of disposal. Three sources of data are drawn on: the ethnographer's account of his first visit to the exhibition in Brussels; the written comments of visitors to the London exhibition; and the stated motives of some donors. Plastination as final disposal is accepted by the vast majority of visitors; they perceive the dry, odourless body interiors within the clinical, scientific framework encouraged by the exhibition, and are often fascinated by what they see. This is complicated, however, by certain surface features and modes of display which enable the problematic reinsertion of personhood.”

Dr. von Hagens, of course claims to be only a scientist. He is either unaware of denying  the  “anatomist religion” pushed forward by these exhibits. Something that has not been lost to his colleagues in academia.

A 2004 abstract entitled: Gunther von Hagens and Body Worlds part 2: The Anatomist as Priest and Prophet by Charleen M.Moore and C. Mackenzie Brown (professors at University of Texas Health Science Center and Trinity University respectively) states the following:

“The body in Western cultures is a sacred text amenable to interpretation as handiwork of God, habitation for the soul, and vehicle for resurrection… The body as divinely designed machine encompasses the idea of an indwelling soul expressing its will in actions mediated through the intricate network of muscles - an understanding reflected in the oft occurring muscle men of early anatomical textbooks… Part 2 concludes with consideration of von Hagens as priest and prophet, culminating in the Promethean impulse that recognizes not God but ourselves as proper owners and molders of our destiny, embodied in the plastinator's visionary quest to create the superhuman.”

Recent history (slavery, Auschwitz, and Roe v. Wade come to mind) has shown us the depths of perversity that can be brought about by the denial of personhood, as well as the search for the superhuman. But in a world where the Christian belief in eternal life does not exist, Dr. von Hagens is poised as a messianic figure ready to offer the disillusioned or the enlightened a way to the only immortality available for those who would shed the belief in an immortal soul, the preservation of the body.

Perhaps because he has been inspired by such recent history or perhaps because his trade has taught him the art of patience, Dr. von Hagens realizes that this not-so-new religion can be introduced only by degrees. After, “asking viewers to transcend their fundamental beliefs and convictions about our joint and inescapable fate.”, perhaps he will introduce some new, more shocking specimens.“The youngest plastinated body is 10 or 11 years old. But I don’t show it because I know how much society can bear.” (BMJ 2003 interview)

It is ironic and sad that Dr. von Hagens having himself suffered imprisonment at the hands of communists who, according to the prison records for Gunther Liebchen, wished for “…the prisoner to be trained to develop an appropriate class consciousness so that in his future life, he will follow the standards and regulations of our society”, should end up imitating his captors and trying to shape a “class consciousness” appropriate to his own ends.

People like Dr. von Hagens and other death peddlers accuse Christians of avoiding the reality of death. They wish to assist us in making peace with and even running towards “our inescapable fate”. They do not understand that what they see as a “no” to death is in fact a “yes” to life. We do not fear death, we love life!

Let us remember that death came into this world as a curse, a consequence of sin. We accept it, but we ought not to embrace it as a friend.

The question remains, is it a sin to participate in any way in the Body Worlds exhibition? I will leave the final answer up to theologians. But as a parent I will say this: I would not expose myself or my children to an atmosphere where they will view human bodies as “things” or in any way be encouraged to dismiss the Truths of our Faith for a vision of human life that leads to hopelessness. Be aware that these exhibits are also recruiting grounds for donors. Dr. von Hagens states in the previously mentioned interview that “The youngest people to have registered themselves as body donors are 6 years old.”

To conclude I would like to quote Pope Benedict XVI’s first encyclical, DEUS CARITAS EST (God is Love), where he writes the following:

“…Should he [man] aspire to be pure spirit and to reject the flesh as pertaining to his animal nature alone, then spirit and body would both lose their dignity. On the other hand, should he deny the spirit and consider matter, the body, as the only reality, he would likewise lose his greatness. …Yet it is neither the spirit alone nor the body alone that loves: it is man, the person, a unified creature composed of body and soul, who loves. Only when both dimensions are truly united, does man attain his full stature.

 …Yet the contemporary way of exalting the body is deceptive…Here we are actually dealing with a debasement of the human body: no longer is it integrated into our overall existential freedom; no longer is it a vital expression of our whole being, but it is more or less relegated to the purely biological sphere… Christian faith, on the other hand, has always considered man a unity in duality, a reality in which spirit and matter compenetrate, and in which each is brought to a new nobility.”

We Catholics are quick and consistent in praying for the souls of our brothers and sisters who have died, but it seems we are failing to understand that the dignity of the total man lies also in the honoring of his body. An honor that Mother Church teaches is best served in Christian burial. As recruiting grounds for donors of all ages, the Body Worlds exhibits contradict this truth.

It is my hope that the Archdiocese will make the Catholic position on these exhibits public and clear rather than leaving the faithful in a state of moral confusion.

*All non-referenced von Hagens quotes and information taken from Body Worlds website content as of February 6, 2006

Maria Kneusel
Broomfield, CO