Is eating human flesh ok in severe situations?

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studygirl

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I am doing a project about the tragic story that inspired Alive (the books and movie) and was wondering if people think what the boys did to survive the Andes was morally correct. Keep in mind that the survivors of the plane crash only ate the people that were already dead and frozen and had absolutely no other provisions.

see the closed conversation: “Is it morally licit to eat a dead human if it is the only way to survive?”
 
The bodies of the dead must be treated with respect and charity, in faith and hope of the Resurrection. ( Catechism of the Catholic Church , 2300)
 
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How far can we go when survival is on the line Moral Theology
I read this book many years ago when I was much younger. I remember it being a very good book. The survivors of the crash really did struggle with the issue, and everyone respected the decision made by the others. They were very spiritual about it, and while they didn’t confuse the issue in any way with Holy Communion, some of the survivors did use the Eucharist as a sort of model for making their decision. Also, some time after the survivors were rescued they met Pope Paul VI, in which the…
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Does that apply when the respecting of a dead body causes a living Catholic to perish?
 
Yes, it was morally acceptable.

Although God probably wouldn’t have held it against them if they didn’t do it either.
 
studygirl said:
some of the survivors did use the Eucharist as a sort of model for making their decision.
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No because the Eucharist is the body and blood of Jesus, who was both human but also God in the flesh. Apples and oranges with the body of a survivor., who is not God made flesh
studygirl said:
the respecting of a dead body causes a living Catholic to perish?
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To a Catholic, they’re thinking not just of this mortal life but the eternal afterlife. So to the Catholic its far more important how their eternal afterlife is spent rather than whether they survive a few more years in this mortal life. My point is the Catholic isn’t solely assessing things in terms of this mortal lifespan.
 
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Interesting. Thank you for sharing. Do you think you would have chosen to starve if you were one of the people in the plane crash?
 
Who knows? I am thinking starve but its easy for me to say that as I type on here and am munching on yummy snacks , but I’m human which means inherently that my will is weak. If I was in that scenario its very likely I wouldn’t starve. But is it a sin? I dont know either. Catechism seems to say so but the exception of having no other food around seems to be extenuating factor.
 
There’s a difference between what the right thing to do is and willpower to resist and culpability for doing something wrong.
 
studygirl said:
Interesting. Thank you for sharing. Do you think you would have chosen to starve if you were one of the people in the plane crash?
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I would have eaten the human flesh, yes.

You’re bound to find some disagreement on this but there is a principal in Catholic theology called double effect, which means if there is simultaneously a material good and a material evil in an action, then the action is morally permissible. For example, if it is certain beyond any reasonable doubt that both the mother and child will die in a delivery, then it is permissible for the child to die (and also permissible to allow the mother to die if she chooses).
 
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Is it morally licit to eat a dead human if it is the only way to survive? Moral Theology
The church has ruled on this definitively, as it has happened on a few occasions. It IS morally licit if there is NO other alternative, and the person is already definitively deceased due to natural causes. The church actually classifies it in the same category as organ donation.
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This is from the closed forum I mentioned in the description. I couldn’t find where the church ruled this, though. I suppose it is similar to “double effect”.
 
I think I would try to find something else. I’m a vegetarian, but if all I have to eat is birds or fish, I definitely would not be. Generally, even on high mountains, you could probably find birds, but it may be kind of hard to kill them. If a human is already dead, I think that may minimize the culpability. I’m not an expert in this, but I understand why you would ask the question. If you land on an island, you would have fish. Landing in mountains though, looking at the elevation, (3,570 metres), there may have been food at that low of an elevation. Though, I would imagine surviving a plane crash would be very exhausting, and they may not have the energy to find food.
 
TK421 said:
For example, if it is certain beyond any reasonable doubt that both the mother and child will die in a delivery, then it is permissible for the child to die (and also permissible to allow the mother to die if she chooses).
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except those aren’t morally equivalent outcomes. the child is younger. if an adult and child are drowning in a boat and you can only save one, you save the child.
 
They were stranded for 72 days in the middle of winter in high elevation on the Andes mountain. Temperatures were cold enough to preserve th bodies for 2 months. I don’t think there would have been d=food in this specific situation. If in a slightly different situation, I would try to find food too.
 
Aquinas11 said:
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TK421:
For example, if it is certain beyond any reasonable doubt that both the mother and child will die in a delivery, then it is permissible for the child to die (and also permissible to allow the mother to die if she chooses).
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except those aren’t morally equivalent outcomes. the child is younger. if an adult and child are drowning in a boat and you can only save one, you save the child.
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This isn’t me saying this. It’s what the Church teaches.

The value of human life is intrinsic from being created in the image of God and isn’t determined by X number of (likely) years that somebody will be alive, or on how healthy they are, how strong they are, how smart they are, how likeable they are, etc.

Saving children is what any noble person would naturally do, but a 9-year-old isn’t objectively more or less valuable than a 90-year-old. That is a utilitarian argument.

When we prioritize children, it is because they are vulnerable and dependent. We also usually prioritize saving women over men, which is also noble and good and Christ-like. But children, women, men, old people, etc., all possess infinite value. Christian societies prioritize children, women, and men based on vulnerability; the more vulnerable are put first and the less vulnerable are put last. Not all cultures were like this. Many pagan societies might have been inclined to ditch the children.
 
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TK421 said:
For example, if it is certain beyond any reasonable doubt that both the mother and child will die in a delivery, then it is permissible for the child to die (and also permissible to allow the mother to die if she chooses).
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I read up on this and I think it depends on what you mean by “permissible for the child to die”. Its not permissible under Double Effect doctrine, for example, if that would mean abortion, since an action would be taken to intentionally kill the child, which is forbidden. An example they do give that would be permissible is if the mother is suffering from cancer and the doctor took an action to save her from cancer (hysterectomy) that would be ok, despite the fact that an unintended side effect of that procedure would be death of the baby. The difference is that with abortion, an act is being intentionally taken on the baby to kill it v. with hysterectomy an action is being taken on the mother to save her, with unintended consequence of the baby’s death. This may be what you meant by “permissible to let the baby die”, not sure.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/
 
yes intrinsic worth isn’t the same as practical prioritzation in event of emergency. as your hypothetical illustrated, there will come times when you can’t save everyone and your decision to save one over another isn’t because one is intrinsically less valuable.
 
If one of you has the Catholic Bible commentary to this passage at hand, it would be relevant:
‘The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they became their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people.’ - Lamentations 4:10
 
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Oddly enough, one of the first Catholic homilies I heard, decades ago when I was investigating the Church as a teen and young adult, was on this topic and that situation specifically. The priest was extremely condemnatory of the choice, though I think that was just him and not the Church). It’s true that the Church teaches reverence for the bodies of the dead, to the point of forbidding cremation for several centuries and still forbidding any disposition of ashes other than interment, but she also understands extreme situations. Obviously it would be wrong to kill someone to eat, or to make space in a lifeboat or whatever, but subsisting on the flesh of the dead in desperate need would seem to be a different situation.
 
studygirl said:
Keep in mind that the survivors of the plane crash only ate the people that were already dead and frozen and had absolutely no other provisions.
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Also, although it doesn’t really show in the tone of the book (which I only read 40 years ago), these were Jesuit educated young men.

I read it as a freshman in my Jesuit high school, before I understood the full meaning of that . . .
Usagi said:
It’s true that the Church teaches reverence for the bodies of the dead, to the point of forbidding cremation for several centuries
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That is simply not why cremation was banned.

The French Revolution and its ilk advocated cremation as a defiance of Church teaching; banning it was the response.

hawk
 
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