CINCINNATI -- The Most Rev. Daniel E. Pilarczyk, Archbishop of Cincinnati, said
Monday that he sees an upcoming exhibit at the Museum Center as something
Catholics should probably not attend.

BODIES...The Exhibition allows visitors to come face-to-face with full human
bodies and partial body specimens, as well as detailed visualizations of our
skeletal, muscular, respiratory and circulatory systems.

Pilarczyk released the following statement on Monday morning:

Catholic moral thought does not regard body and soul as entirely separate.
Rather, it recognizes that human beings are embodied spirits. That means the
body is more than just a container for the soul. The Church's concern for the
dignity of the human person extends, therefore, to the body even after the soul
is no longer present."

"The Church has consistently maintained that dead bodies need to be treated in a
way that recognizes the dignity of the human person. Within this framework, the
use of bodies for scientific research and educational purposes has long been
viewed as permissible provided that the consent of the deceased or the
deceased's family has been obtained. The public exhibition of plasticized
bodies, unclaimed, unreverenced, and unidentified, is a different matter
entirely. It is unseemly and inappropriate."

"Whatever the merits of 'Bodies' as an educational exhibit, and however well
intentioned the exhibit's creators might be, it seems to me that the use of
human bodies in this way fails to respect the persons involved. Therefore I do
not believe that this exhibit is an appropriate destination for field trips by
our Catholic schools. If parents, as the primary educators of their children,
believe that it has educational value, they should be the ones to take their
children to see it."

The exhibit opens on Feb. 1.