Insight on the News

‘Witnesses Right on Blood’

Each year some 150,000 liters of blood are used in Italian hospitals, according to the Ministry of Health. Dr. Cesare Buresta, chief surgeon of the hospital of Ripatransone in Ascoli Piceno, Italy, pointed out that “it is becoming more and more difficult to obtain donors, and there exists that squalid and almost infamous commerce with human blood around the hospitals, and in addition there is the risk of hepatitis or immunological incompatibility due to the Rh factor.”

But Dr. Buresta also stated: “The curious thing is that . . . Jehovah’s Witnesses reject other people’s blood by virtue of a supposed Biblical prohibition, that is to say they are against transfusions.” However, after his surgical team used artificial blood in three cases with positive results, Dr. Buresta concluded: “Now it seems that science is saying [the Witnesses] are right.”

Jehovah’s Witnesses are only following the Bible command: “Keep abstaining from . . . blood.” (Acts 15:29) Their willingness to follow the Bible’s specific direction on the matter protects them from certain health dangers. But pleasing God is their principal concern, and they heed the admonition at Proverbs 3:5, 6: “Trust in Jehovah with all your heart and do not lean upon your own understanding. In all your ways take notice of him, and he himself will make your paths straight.”

Ritualistic Worship Defended

In a recent issue of U.S. Catholic, executive editor Robert E. Burns wrote: “Plunged as we are into a world of seemingly endless complexity and bewildering distractions, thinking our way to a virtuous life can be terribly difficult . . . And that’s where religious pictures and holy-water fonts and a host of other ‘ritualistic’ things come in.”

In his column, editor Burns was sounding a warning against worship that is devoid of “rituals that appeal to our emotions as well as to our intellectual perception.” He feels that rituals and symbols are “perhaps indispensable means” of “turning our thoughts to God.”

Burns and other Catholic authorities may feel that a host of other “ritualistic” things can be helpful in worshiping God. But note what Jesus Christ said about “the kind of worshipper the Father wants.” To a woman who thought worship at a particular mountain was necessary, Jesus declared: “God is spirit, and those who worship must worship in spirit and truth.” Worshiping “in spirit” clearly rules out the use of visual aids, as is also indicated by the apostle Paul, who said that Christians walk “by faith and not by sight.”​—John 4:23, 24; 2 Corinthians 5:7, Catholic Jerusalem Bible.