La procesión atea va por dentro - Juan Manuel de Prada

Juan Manuel de Prada

Me estremecieron las declaraciones de uno de los convocantes de esa «procesión atea» que pretendía desfilar la tarde de Jueves Santo: «Representamos un frente ideológico. Un frente dedicado, única y exclusivamente, a castigar las conciencias católicas. Nuestro propósito es hacer daño. Y no nos andamos con contemplaciones».

No se me escapa que el odium fidei es un sentimiento inextinguible, cuyas ascuas no se apagarán nunca, mientras el mundo sea mundo; pero me había habituado a considerar que, en este fase democrática de la Historia, el odium fideise manifestaba bajo expresiones menos furibundas, más sibilinas o asépticas, englobadas bajo lo que hemos dado en denominar «laicismo».

Las declaraciones de ese convocante de la «procesión atea» me han permitido comprender que ambas expresiones del odium fidei pueden ser simultáneas y concurrentes, que puede haber un Estado que muy democráticamente imponga una idolatría política de obligado cumplimiento, a la vez que sus más furibundos paladines se ocupan de «castigar» y «hacer daño» a los recalcitrantes que se resistan a obedecerla. De hecho, los odiadores más sañudos de la religión sólo afloran allá donde previamente se ha impuesto una idolatría política que sibilinamente la combate. De todos es sabido que unos sacuden el árbol y otros recogen las nueces. Y declaraciones tan sañudas como las de ese convocante de la «procesión atea» sólo adquieren un sentido pleno si las interpretamos a la luz de otras de apariencia más sibilina, como las que esgrimía Peces-Barba en un artículo reciente: «Cuanto más se les consiente y se les soporta, peor responden. Solo entienden del palo y de la separación de los campos». Para que nadie interprete malévolamente que Peces-Barba está promoviendo la organización de guetos judíos, diremos que se refiere a los católicos.

La «procesión atea» ha sido, en fin, prohibida, por razones más bien colaterales y hasta peregrinas, tal vez porque los odiadores sibilinos de la religión, muy en su papel de polis buenos, consideraban que en esta ocasión los odiadores más sañudos —los polis malos— se habían excedido en su ímpetu. Pero esta «procesión atea» no era sino un aspaviento histriónico; y la verdadera procesión del odium fidei va por dentro. No emplea —de momento— el palo, sino el veneno sutil de la propaganda; y así, envenenando las conciencias, se logra crear el caldo de cultivo que a la larga permitirá sacar el palo del armario sin escándalo. En una célebre obra de C. S. Lewis, Cartas del diablo a su sobrino, Screwtape, un diablo veterano y de alcurnia, dedica a un diablo segundón y bisoño una serie de consejos que faciliten su misión en la tierra; entre los cuales se halla éste: «Queremos que la Iglesia siga siendo pequeña, no sólo para que los menos hombres posibles aprendan a conocer al Enemigo, sino sobre todo para que quienes se vuelvan contra él se coloquen en ese estado de exaltación enfermiza y de fariseísmo agresivo característicos de una sociedad secreta».

Esta es la verdadera procesión del odium fidei que juzgo preocupante: la que, a la vez que propaga el ateísmo, pretende caracterizar a los católicos como una secta de fanáticos encerrada en una ciudadela. Y contra esa secta de peligrosos fanáticos sólo vale el «palo», como propugnaba Peces-Barba: la mofa y el escarnio elevados a la categoría de rutina, el confinamiento en un gueto de ostracismo, la muerte civil dosificada en pequeñas dosis. Quien lo probó lo sabe.

www.juanmanueldeprada.com

Oura vez Páscoa - P. Gonçalo Portocarrero de Almada

P. Gonçalo Portocarrero de Almada

Isabel estava à espera de um filho. A expectativa tinha sido muita porque desde que casara com o João, ambos agora com trinta e oito anos, tinham decorrido dez anos de malogradas esperanças. Mas quando – finalmente! – se confirmou o diagnóstico da gravidez, todas as agruras de uma aflitiva espera se transfiguraram na alegria do nascimento iminente.

Todos os dias eram todos para a criança a nascer. Enquanto o João andava já à procura de cadeirinhas acopláveis ao assento do carro, a Isabel só tinha olhos para as montras das lojas de bebés, onde namorava todo o tipo de vestimentas para todas as estações, sempre indecisa na opção mas decidida em dar ao tão esperado filho o melhor enxoval.

Chegou finalmente o dia da desejada ecografia. Quando apareceram as primeiras imagens daquele ser diminuto, agitando-se no ventre materno, Isabel apertou com força a mão do João. A médica não teve dificuldade em reconhecer que se tratava de um rapaz mas, ao mesmo tempo que o disse, ambos notaram que pelo seu semblante perpassou uma sombra aziaga, a que correspondeu um imediato sobressalto nos pais do petiz. A médica levantou-se e ao ver o olhar ansioso do casal, não conseguiu esconder a sua preocupação e tristeza:

- Tenho muita pena, mas o vosso filho padece trissomia 21.

Isabel sentiu como que uma tontura, enquanto o João a abraçou sem saber muito bem o que dizer. Na dolorosa confusão do momento, engasgou umas quantas frases, na ilusão de que o diagnóstico pudesse não ser confirmado, mas a médica foi peremptória no seu veredicto. Esmagados por aquele antecipado luto, os dois regressaram a casa em silêncio, apenas intervalado pelos seus soluços.

Murcha a primavera da esperança, abateu-se sobre a família o inverno da desesperação. As questões sucediam-se em catadupa e o aparente silêncio de Deus, tão distante lá no seu longínquo Céu, dilacerava os corações da Isabel e do João. Surgiu então, com uma estranha evidência, a única resposta lógica àquele drama: não permitir que a criança vingasse e proceder, quanto antes, à interrupção da gravidez. Amigos houve que lhes aconselharam esse recurso, fazendo-lhes ver que, com a sua idade, não poderiam prestar a assistência necessária a um filho tão dependente. Outros recordaram-lhes a gravidade moral do acto, mas o João e a Isabel sentiam-se tão abandonados por Deus que quase lhes parecia justa aquela retaliação.

Marcaram a intervenção, numa clínica especializada. O João, por razões profissionais, não pode acompanhar a Isabel que, sozinha, teria que pôr termo à sua gestação. Mas, antes de sair de casa, ouviu tocar a campainha: era uma vizinha que, com um filho pela mão, lhe pedia licença para usar o telefone, porque o marido estava inanimado e não tinha outro meio de chamar a ambulância. Isabel levou-a até ao telefone e depois afundou-se numa poltrona. Foi então que, para seu espanto, viu que a criança era mongolóide. O pequenino sentou-se ao seu colo, pegou-lhe na mão, perguntou-lhe o nome e falou-lhe, com entusiasmo, das suas brincadeiras.

Terminada a chamada telefónica, a vizinha chamou o filho e pediu desculpa a Isabel pela sua inconveniência. O pequerrucho deu um beijo a Isabel e correu para a mãe, que o levou consigo, ficando Isabel só. A verdade é que não estava só, estava também com o seu filho, que era como aquele menino carinhoso que se sentara ao seu colo. Foi então que lhe veio à mente um pensamento aterrador: não podia matar uma criança assim! Não podia abortar o seu filho! Era seu, Deus tinha-lho dado para que o amasse e ele, que já estava de algum modo no seu colo, esperava as suas carícias de mãe. Não importava como fosse ou deixasse de ser, era seu e era também de João, era sobretudo um filho predilecto de Deus!

Naquela noite, houve festa na casa do João e da Isabel porque o seu filho, que estava perdido, foi encontrado e, estando morto, ressuscitou. Deus acendera no fogo do seu Espírito aqueles dois corações, quais círios pascais, porque quando o amor e a vida vencem o pecado e a morte é Páscoa. Outra vez.

Democratic Bioethics and Eugenics

Prominent bioethicists Arthur Caplan and Robert P. George on the role of bioethics in a democracy and the dangers of eugenics.

by Sherif Girgis

In The Public Discourse - April 15, 2011

In December 2010, Sherif Girgis sat down with Arthur Caplan, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and unofficial “dean” of liberal bioethicists, and Robert P. George, a professor at Princeton University and a conservative member of President Bush’s Council on Bioethics, to discuss the current state of bioethics in America. Today we present the second part of an adaptation of that interview. Part one may be read here. – Ed.

AC: In the early days of bioethics, we had these conferences at the Hastings Center, where I began my bioethics career, where Alasdair MacIntyre, Paul Ramsey, Leon Kass would come and talk about issues. And I began to form an idea of what bioethics’ role was—and I still believe it to this day: My philosophical idol is Socrates. He worked frequently in the pubic sphere. I think as a bioethicist you try to alert the public, you warn people, you push to see what’s true, but at the end of the day, bioethics gets out of the way. You don’t issue final judgment; you must resolve issues in the political sphere. If Robby’s guys get elected all the time, and they ban embryonic stem-cell research, I’ll scream and yell, but if that’s what people decide, that’s what people decide. I favor bioethics commissions that raise issues, clarify them, and then give them to the polity to resolve.

RG: Well, it’s true that President Bush’s council on bioethics, on which I had the honor to serve, sometimes went beyond advising the president of the United States himself. But it’s worth remembering that the Executive Order creating the Council included a mandate to “provide a forum for a national discussion of bioethical issues.” The collected readings we published were an effort at large-scale public education. I think that kind of work can easily be defended, and the best defense is that by doing it under the auspices of a commission, and especially an ideologically diverse commission like ours, it is possible to draw attention to the basic values issues that Americans should think about when they consider bioethical questions. I doubt that it would be possible to do it as well in reports issued by, say, Princeton University, or even the premier center for bioethics here at the University of Pennsylvania. If the commission is not the place, where, then? Because the universities aren’t doing it very well, and perhaps can’t.

AC: So it’s funny you should say that, because I’ve also thought—and I don’t know how to make this happen, exactly—but if I had a politician ask me for advice on something, I’d like to be able to bring Robby in—really—and say, “I’ll tell you my advice, and you can listen to the minority, distorted, bizarro other opinion…”

RG: Soon to be the majority! [Laughter]

AC: But here it is, listen to the other view, and you’ll get more from a conversation than you might from me just talking to you.

RG: Art is absolutely right on this. I was asked by three Republican presidential candidates in the run-up to the 2008 election for briefings on embryonic stem-cell research. Senator McCain, Governor Romney, and Mayor Giuliani. Mayor Giuliani did it differently than the other two. He invited me and an advocate of embryonic stem-cell research from one of the New York-based patient advocacy groups to discuss the question with him. Essentially, it was a debate in front of Mayor Giuliani. And I do think that it was more fruitful than the other two briefings, where I had my little captive audience, but would just give my best answer when they asked, “Well, why do the people on the other side think what they think?” And I’d try to give the argument, but I think I was probably less effective in giving the argument than someone who actually believed it.

Let’s have one of those exchanges now about a big issue in bioethics: eugenics. You have people like Professor Kass, who are warning that it is popping up again in the availability of certain options for improving the gene pool or selecting for or against early human life that has certain defects and so on—but that the “new eugenics” are disguised as opportunities for practicing autonomy, and that, as a result, they are viewed as morally okay. Do you think that’s happening, as a factual matter? And is even uncoerced eugenics wrong in principle? Was eugenics in the 1930s, say, wrong only because it was coercive, or also because it was eugenics?

RG: You’ve heard me make the argument about human dignity without any appeal to religious authority or biblical revelation or theological premises. But the most vivid expression of that idea is that man is made in the image and likeness of God. Whether or not that’s literally true, I would still hold that human beings have a certain dignity that distinguishes them from other material objects that we know about. There may be other creatures in the universe that possess a rational nature, and I would say that if there are such beings, they too are of inherent and equal dignity and cannot be reduced to the status of mere means or property. In the end, this is really the only reason to oppose something like slavery, or to consider that domination and conquest are a bad thing. So people who oppose these evils have to embrace some notion of the special worth—we can use the word “dignity” or “sanctity”—of a human being. But that means there are some ways you can’t treat human beings. You can’t treat them as instruments, or just the way you treat cows and horses. That is true even when it comes to breeding, or to improving the quality of the race. Or treating them like products—this is what Leon Kass is so worried about. He’s worried about reducing human beings to the status of products of manufacture. And he’s absolutely right to be concerned about that. That is incompatible with our dignity as human beings. Which leads me to think that the problem with eugenics is eugenics itself. It’s not just that the eugenics practiced by the Nazis was coercive. The idea predated the Nazis. The book Die Freigabe der Vernichtung Lebensunwerten Lebens (Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life) was not written by the Nazis. It was written by German progressives in the Weimar period, Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche, who were, respectively (as I recall), a jurist and a medical doctor. And they weren’t thugs like the Nazis; they were well-educated, well-intentioned, polite people—the kind of people that you’d be pleased to have dinner with. But I believe they embraced a very bad idea that was easily taken by the Nazis as a justification for the atrocities that they committed. So I would like to see eugenics itself, and not just the Nazi version of it, relegated to the ash-heap of history. Today we are seeing a revival in eugenics, this time under the cover of (and often in the name of) autonomy. People say, for example, that so long as it is parents who are choosing to abort a Down syndrome baby, or failing to treat a handicapped newborn, and it’s not the state mandating it, then it’s okay. That, I believe, represents the abandonment of something precious in our civilization and in our polity. And that’s the idea of the equality and dignity of all human beings. This treasure of our civilization is the idea that, in some fundamental sense, all of us are created equal.

AC: So, I think that the coercion is, historically, really what made the Nazis’ position absolutely wrong. They practiced government-mandated negative eugenics. They killed involuntarily as social policy to improve the German genome. So put that aside, that’s just an issue of making sure you know when you’re going to use the metaphor—it’s not just eugenics, it’s that kind of eugenics. So to me, I think that intervening to try to improve health and function is part of what medicine does. And there’s some role for medical engineering and cellular engineering to achieve those goals. I think when you start to slide into the aesthetic and cosmetic improvements—I’m not sure that’s something that society or the public has to fulfill. But do I think we will someday try to alter a genetic message to get rid of certain diseases? Yes. Do I think that we’re likely to see the selection of certain types of gametes that might avoid certain clear-cut disease states? Yes. Do I think that the state has to be in the business of affording the opportunity for everyone to have a 6’5” basketball-playing mathematician? No. For me, there is some role for what I’ll concede as eugenics—if you want to take eugenics as just trying to improve the overall hereditary health of the public. For example, if you could fix the child with Tay-Sachs, I don’t think it takes away from the dignity of the child with Tay-Sachs.

RG: I agree. But would you draw the line at intelligence as trying to enhance—

AC: I do. I think intelligence is so complicated that you don’t know what the hell you’re doing. If someone came to me and said, “Well, I’m going to try to enhance memory,” that may be good and that may be bad. It’s tricky business, number one. And number two, that isn’t a disease. So I’ve never been a proponent of allowing sex selection. We don’t allow it at Penn, actually. We could do it instantly. It’s not that hard. And other places do it. But gender is not a disease. If you come to us and say, “Could I use gene therapy”—as I said, “for Tay-Sachs, or to try to improve muscular dystrophy”—I’d be first in line to say, “I think that’s great, and we have to test it, and there may be some risk to that, but I’m okay with it,” even though some in the disability community might say, “Well, then, your goal is to get rid of disability, isn’t it?” And I might concede at that point, “Yes—if I could do it.”

RG: But not by getting rid of the disabled.

AC: Oh, no, no, no.

RG: Because that’s the key distinction.

AC: I agree, but some in the disability community hear inferiority, lack of respect, when you say, “I’d prefer people who could function more.” I’ve heard this with the deaf community. To me, hearing is better than not hearing. And it’s pretty clearly a function you’re supposed to have. It’s true that you can sign, and that there is a deaf community. And I get that there’s Gallaudet College. I’m not proposing to close them; I think you should fund them. But at the end of the day, if I’m the child of a deaf couple, I’d rather be able to hear and sign, and decide what I’m going to do from there. I’m not going to make a deaf baby because the couple says, “We want a kid like us.” No steps should be made to honor that kind of autonomy—things that will harm or set back people. I’m worried for that reason about things like intelligence or athletic ability. You’re narrowing futures, deciding what the kid is going to be, raising expectations, instead of allowing them to be more open. So I favor, if you will, ‘eugenics’ on the disease-elimination front, but I am not so crazy about performance-enhancement or the behavioral meliorism.

So it sounds like both you have two distinctions you want to draw. One is between enhancement and therapy—

AC: Right. And many say you can’t, but I think you can at the extremes.

And the other is between negative and positive, between destroying life that has the therapeutic problems versus—

AC: Trying to engineer it away. Medicine does that now, right?

RG: I think Art’s reminding us of the ends of medicine: the goal of medicine is the restoration of healthy functioning of the organism and its parts, within the bounds of ethical norms. I mean, you don’t restore health by murdering someone conveniently to get a heart for somebody else who happens to need a heart transplant. We understand that. That’s just a plain violation. But my point is that when we treat medical professionals as people who are supposed to enhance our lifestyle choices—the kind of kids we want to have, whether our kids are good at math, whether they’re basketball players and 6’5”—it causes medicine to lose track of its mission and places at risk its commitment to ethical norms shaped by that mission.

Read the first part of this interview here.

Hard Cases for Defenders of Abortion - by William E. May, Ph.D

by William E. May, Ph.D. Senior Fellow

In Culture of Life Foundation

There are several “hard cases” that advocates of abortion find difficult to justify. In the recent, The Ethics of Abortion: Women’s Rights, Human Life, and the Question of Justice (New York/London: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, Routledge Annals of Bioethics, 2011), author Christopher Kaczor identifies these contradictions of reason as 8 “hard cases.” The first two cases he treats, 1. murder of pregnant women, and 2. sex selection abortion, I will consider for this essay and elaborate with material of my own.

The murder of pregnant women

Almost everyone thinks that raping women is a morally repugnant act, especially if she is pregnant and even more so if it causes her to miscarry. This is so true, Kaczor notes, that even the most vociferous champions of capital punishment balk at executing a woman while she is pregnant. If someone murders the pregnant woman and murders her unborn baby as well, this horrible crime becomes even more odious.

But there exist vicious men who have caused their wives or girl friends to become pregnant by sexually abusing them or using them in the sexual act to satisfy their lustful urges while at the same time not wanting the pregnancy that may result. Some such men have been found to go so far as to murder the wives or girlfriends they made pregnant when they refuse to abort the child. They do not want to incur the obligation—one that can be, has been, and is legally enforced—to help pay expenses for the care of the child after he or she is born. A notorious example occurred in the early years of this century. Scott Peterson’s wife Laci was eight months pregnant with their son Connor. She went missing on Christmas Eve, 2002. After she disappeared, Peterson changed his appearance and purchased a pick-up truck using his mother's maiden name instead of his own. He added two pornography television channels to his cable service a few days after his wife's disappearance; and later, after he had been brought to trial, the prosecution made clear its inference that this behavior showed that Peterson knew that his wife would not be returning home. He also showed interest in selling the house he had shared with his wife, and he did sell Laci's Land Rover. The prosecution presented Scott Peterson's affair with Amber Frey and money as motives for the murder. Prosecutors argued that Peterson killed his pregnant wife due to increasing debt and a desire to be single again (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Peterson gives details of this celebrated case). On April 14 the bodies of Laci and Connor were separately washed to shore in San Francisco Bay. Baby Connor’s umbilical cord was still attached.

Despite protests by abortion rights advocates, Peterson was legally charged and found guilty by the California Court with two counts of murder, with “special circumstances”—the second murder, that of Connor, the unborn child, calling for tougher penalties.

This is obviously a hard or difficult case for abortion advocates. Here we have a duly constituted jury in the State of California, finding a person guilty of murdering an unborn child. One is never condemned or executed as a murderer of a non-human animal or a non-person. But abortion advocates claim that unborn human beings are not “persons.”

Sex-Selection Abortion (SSA)

Kaczor addressed this matter not only in his book but also in “Sex Selection of Children” [for abortion], available at http://www.lifeissues.net/writers/kac/kac_02sexselection.html. Sex selection can and does occur after implantation by abortion. Sex Selection Abortion (SSA) can be done very early during pregnancy—one blood sample in early weeks of embryonic development can show whether the embryo is male or female. One authority, J. M. Millietz, who judges SSA to be morally wrong, in an important article (“Sex Selection for Non-Medical Purposes,” Reproductive BioMedicine Online 14, 114-117) even stated that SSA “for personal convenience is unanimously banned” (at 115). Kazor notes that this is not true because, for example, abortion for any reason is legally permissible throughout the entire pregnancy in the US.

Nevertheless, many who describe themselves as pro-choice oppose SSA, among them the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG). But from a pro-choice perspective, it seems difficult to explain why fetal killing for gender preference should be wrong. Amazingly, however, Wendy Rogers, Angeline Ballyntyne, and Heather Draper developed arguments in “Is Sex-Selective Abortion Morally Justified and Should It Be Prohibited?” (Bioethics (2007) 21.9, 320-324) that abortion advocates think are compatible with a defense of abortion. The authors argue that SSA is wrong, but it is not wrong because it kills an unborn human person (they adhere to the claim that the unborn entity may be a human being but definitely not a “person” with rights that need to be taken into account). They find SSA wrong because it discriminates unjustly against women and can lead to further violence against women.

Millietz’s major claim in his article is that SSA is morally wrong because it unjustly kills an innocent human person in the embryonic or fetal stage of his or her development. According to him abortion in general ends the lives of “girls” and “children” and this surely applies to SSA.

Toward the end of his article posted on the Life Issues website, Kaczor refers to and quotes from an excellent article by S. Matthew Liao, “The Right of Children to Be Loved” (this appeared in Journal of Public Philosophy (2006) 14.4, 420-440). In it Liao considers SSA and argues that children have a right to be loved. The following quotation from Liao is in my opinion a fitting end for this brief piece.

Liao writes as follows:

Human beings have rights to…conditions . . . essential for a good life. As human beings, children have rights to those conditions. Being loved is a condition. . . essential for children to have a good life. Therefore, children have a right to be loved. To explicate this argument, let me begin by characterizing the kind of love at issue, namely, parental love, which has the following characteristics: To love a child is to seek a highly intense interaction with the child, where one values the child for the child's sake, where one seeks to bring about and to maintain physical and psychological proximity with the child, where one seeks to promote the child's well-being for the child's sake, and where one desires that the child reciprocate or, at least, is responsive to, one's love. One important feature of parental love is valuing the child for the child's sake. As a child psychologist Mia Pringle argues: "The basic and all-pervasive feature of parental love is that the child is valued unconditionally and for his own sake, irrespective of his sex, appearance, abilities or personality; that this love is given without expectation of or demand for gratitude” (422).

Conclusion

Surely the murdering of pregnant women and their unborn children as well as abortion chosen because the unborn child is not the “right” sex are cases very difficult for abortion advocates to justify. Kaczor, in his book, gives excellent reasons why the efforts of some to do so fail miserably, thus demonstrating the inability to truly justify the killing of innocent human life.

O sucedâneo

Parece estar em crescendo acelerado a compreensão de que correr com José Sócrates e o seu governo é não só um imperativo de consciência mas também um imperativo nacional. Em consequência deste inesperado despertar de uma hipnose, que se prolongou por seis anos, o prestidigitador maligno, sedutor até ao âmago, tem semeado expectativas enganadoras e esperanças falsas através de um sucedâneo do actual primeiro-ministro, demissionário. O sucedâneo, para quem não se recorda, é uma substância ou um fármaco, no caso em apreço, uma pessoa, diferente mas cujos efeitos ou comportamentos são semelhantes.

Pedro Passos Coelho advogou a liberalização do aborto, a legalização das drogas, o divórcio expresso/sem culpa, o iniquamente chamado casamento entre pessoas do mesmo sexo, a adopção de crianças por parelhas sodomitas e a eutanásia. Soube-se agora pela comunicação social que Fernando Nobre aceitou o convite de Coelho para cabeça de lista por Lisboa e futuro presidente da assembleia da república, ou seja, segunda figura do estado português. Não é de espantar, uma vez que este médico, também concorda com a liberalização do aborto, com o “casamento” entre sodomitas, com a eutanásia e sabe-se lá o que mais.

Será caso para dizer, entre o original e o sucedâneo venha o diabo e escolha.

Nuno Serras Pereira

11. 04. 2011

3 Arguments Against IVF - Artificial Reproduction Is Not Procreation

by E. Christian Brugge, Ph D

WASHINGTON, D.C., APRIL 6, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Here is a question on bioethics asked by a ZENIT reader and answered by the fellows of the Culture of Life Foundation.

Q: The Catholic Church teaches that in vitro fertilization (IVF) is always wrong. I understand this to be the case when embryos are made and destroyed. But my doctor said that IVF could be used in a way that wouldn't create and destroy "extra" embryos, even though it would lower our chances for a successful pregnancy. If this is true, why is IVF wrong when used by husbands and wives? K.M. -- Denver, Colorado

E. Christian Brugger offers the following response:

A: The question rightly identifies the wrongness of creating and destroying (and we should add freezing) human embryos in and through the process of IVF. But even if IVF was chosen only by married couples, and those couples intended to create only as many embryos as they implant, and they rejected the eugenic screening and destruction of disabled embryos, IVF still would be gravely wrong.

This confuses many people. How can it be wrong to bring a child into the world, a child whom a couple intends to love and cherish and perhaps even raise as a good Christian? The answer gets at the heart of the Catholic Church's teachings on both the dignity of human life and of marriage.

Two Vatican "Instructions" on bioethical issues address this, both published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF): "Donum Vitae" (1987), Section II, B, 4, and "Dignitas Personae" (2008), No. 12. The documents set forth three basic arguments, or sets of reasons, to explain why children are licitly conceived only through a marital act (defined in Canon law as a "conjugal act which is per se suitable for the generation of children to which marriage is ordered by its nature and by which the spouses become one flesh," Canon 1061, § 1). I will refer to them as the "unity-procreation" argument, the "language of the body" argument, and the "begotten-not-made" argument.

1. The "unity-procreation" argument

The first is simple. It holds that the meaning of the marital act derives from the meaning of marriage itself. Marriage by definition is a procreative and unitive type of relationship. The marital act therefore has an intrinsic meaning which includes these two goods: unity and procreation. It follows that procreation should not be intentionally excluded from sexual intercourse (as taught in "Humanae Vitae"), nor should procreation take place outside of sexual intercourse, as takes place with IVF. (Some Catholic theologians even deny that creating a baby through IVF should not be called procreation, but rather reproduction.)

2. The "language of the body" argument

The second argument maintains that because persons are a unity of body and soul; and because marriage is the realization of a unique body-soul--two-in-one-flesh -- committed relationship; conjugal self-giving is meant by God uniquely to express this body-soul reality. It has a spiritual dimension, the unitive meaning, and a bodily dimension, the procreative meaning. "Donum Vitae" (following John Paul II's "Theology of the Body") refers to this two-fold meaning as the "language of the body." Marital intercourse is meant to speak, as it were, the "language" of bodily self-giving and spiritual self-giving. To intentionally exclude either is to falsify the language of the body. Its wrongness lies in a kind of deception.

So just as excluding the procreative dimension of intercourse through contraceptive choices is wrong, so also excluding the unitive dimension from the choice to procreate is wrong. Procreation (bringing new life into the world) should only follow as a result of the spiritual/bodily self-giving of the spouses in marital intercourse.

3. The "begotten-not-made" argument

Finally, Catholic moral teaching holds that because of the intrinsic value of persons, children not only should be treated in a way befitting of persons after they come into existence, but that their origin -- their conception -- should be fully personal. Bringing children into the world through the self-giving act of marital love is treating them -- in their origins -- in a manner befitting of persons.

"Donum Vitae" teaches that we should "affirm the right of the child to have a fully human origin through conception in conformity with the personal nature of the human being" (DV, I, 6, note 32). In other words, children should be -- and have a right to be -- the fruit of the one-flesh union of marital intercourse.

This is morally different from bringing a child into the world by a technique in a laboratory. In IVF a child does not come into existence as a fruit supervening upon the one-flesh union of a husband and wife. They come into existence as the end product of a laboratory procedure: gametes (sperm and egg) are the raw materials; intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection is the (most common) technique; and a child is the product. Children are made, not begotten.

It is true that not all children conceived through IVF are treated merely as products. Many IVF parents affirm the child they create as a person; but they only do so partly; and partly they do not. Insofar as they intend to love the child and sacrifice for the child (and if Christians raise the child in the faith), to that extent they affirm the child as a person. We might say this is the end of their act.

But their means -- also determining the moral species of the act -- is to bring the child into the world through a laboratory technique. So by virtue of the act's end, a child is welcomed as a person. But by virtue of its means, the child is not welcomed as a person, but treated as a product. In their coming-to-be, IVF children are treated as things, not affirmed as persons.

I would like to end by pointing to a connection between the logic of baby-making through IVF and the wide-spread problem of destroying unwanted preborn children.

All products exist for purposes beyond themselves. In this sense, products are not unto themselves, but unto ends beyond them; nor are they equal to their makers, but stand (morally speaking) in a relationship of "maker" to "thing made."

But the logic of making, and the relation of maker to object, justifies the act of unmaking. If a thing can be made for certain reasons, it can be unmade (destroyed) for contrary reasons. When those reasons arise, the "why" of the making is negated. Moreover, products are subject to quality controls so that defective products are discarded if they do not measure up to standards: think of automobiles.

What's the purpose for making a baby through IVF? To satisfy the parents' desire for a child -- they "want a child." If however the parents do not want a child -- if the embryo or fetus is unwanted -- whether because he or she is defective, or inconveniently timed, or poses a health risk to the mother, the child can be discarded. The general logic of IVF extends to justifying "selective reduction" abortions, eugenic screening of IVF embryos, and eugenic abortions.

Homosexual activists pelt Belgian archbishop with pies

In Catholic Culture

Homosexual activists threw pies at Archbishop Andre-Joseph Leonard of Brussels on April 6, as the archbishop was speaking at the Catholic University in Louvain.

Archbishop Leonard has become a chief target of gay-rights campaigners because of his opposition to homosexuality. He was the target of several different pies during his appearance in Louvain, and a noted homosexual activist posted videos of the assault on the internet.

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Head of Belgian Catholic Church hit with pies for views on abortion, homosexuality (LifeSiteNews)