BBC Bitesize has retracted the claim that the Church banned dissection in the Middle Ages after a complaint from an academic.
The popular revision website had told GCSE students that “the Church played a big part in medical stagnation” partly by “forbidding the dissection of corpses”.
Professor David Paton, who wrote a blogpost for catholicherald.co.uk noting that historians had dismissed this as a myth, also wrote to the BBC complaints department.
The BBC agreed to remove the claim about dissection and said senior management would be informed about the change.
Prof Paton said he hoped exam boards and GCSE textbooks that still promote the myth would “take the lead of the BBC and stop claiming that the Church banned dissection”. But he argued that the page was still inaccurate, since it claimed that Catholicism was responsible for “stagnation” by promoting “prayer and superstition”, and made no note of the Church’s contributions to medical progress.
Prof Paton said: “Although it is good to see some progress being made, the BBC Bitesize page still gives a very biased and misleading view of the Church’s role in the development of medicine. It is laughable when the only positive thing the BBC can find to say about the Church is that it encouraged people to go on the Crusades. Children learning GCSE history deserve better.”
Eleanor Parker, a lecturer in medieval history at Oxford University, also welcomed the correction, but said it still gave the false impression that the “medieval Church actively discouraged scientific progress by encouraging prayer as a replacement for medicine. Medieval Christians did not see science and religion as opposed to each other, and the Church encouraged and supported the study of science.”
Churches urged to toll bells to mark 50 years of abortion
The Pro-Life Alliance is appealing for churches across Britain to toll their bells to mark the 50th anniversary of the Abortion Act.
The group wants bells to be rung – ideally 50 times – a week on Sunday to commemorate eight million lives lost.
Ann Widdecombe, a former Conservative minister and current Herald columnist, backed the appeal in a video posted on the group’s Vimeo page. She said the nation’s conscience had been “deadened” to abortion over the last 50 years. Those who voted for the Act in 1967, she said, would have been “absolutely horrified” at what the law had resulted in.
“Parliament was assured that it wasn’t going to lead to abortion on demand, that it was only going to alleviate misery in a few very serious cases,” she said. “There were all these safeguards. You needed two doctors, you needed the risk of continuing the pregnancy to be too great … But it hasn’t turned out like that at all.”
More than eight million unborn children had been taken from the womb since then, she said. “That’s the equivalent of the population of London,” she added.
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