Two Popes and today’s sexual chaos - by Judie Brown

April 25, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Canonization is always a special event in the Catholic Church. But history will be made two days from now as two recent popes—both of whom have had a profound effect on the Church, her theology, and the world—will be elevated to sainthood.

The first of these, Pope John XXIII, presided over the opening of the Second Vatican Council. That alone made him a controversial pope in the eyes of those with the misguided notion that convening this council was the beginning ofmodernism in the Church. The fact is that the council did not open the doors to error. The misinterpretation of Vatican II documents was preceded by years of misguided attitudes propagated by wayward priests, bishops, and lay theologians. 

But that’s a story for another day. Suffice it to say, Pope John XXIII had the most honorable of intentions. He opened the council on October 11, 1962, saying among other things: “The Church has always opposed . . . errors. Nowadays, however, the Spouse of Christ prefers to make use of the medicine of mercy rather than that of severity.” 

Though he died just eight months later, the phrase “medicine of mercy” has been tossed about like Frisbee. Some have interpreted it to mean that Vatican II documents teach that it is better to be kind than it is to expect the adherence to truth and the avoidance of sin. This attitude could not be further from the truth.

For example, in May 1961, Pope John XXIII taught in Mater et Magistra:

We must solemnly proclaim that human life is transmitted by means of the family, and the family is based upon a marriage which is one and indissoluble and, with respect to Christians, raised to the dignity of a sacrament. The transmission of human life is the result of a personal and conscious act, and, as such, is subject to the all-holy, inviolable, and immutable laws of God, which no man may ignore or disobey. He is not therefore permitted to use certain ways and means which are allowable in the propagation of plant and animal life.

Human life is sacred—all men must recognize that fact. From its very inception it reveals the creating hand of God. Those who violate His laws not only offend the divine majesty and degrade themselves and humanity, they also sap the vitality of the political community of which they are members.

Here we find the Holy Father illuminating the undeniable truth that respecting human dignity is not optional if one desires to live in a way that is pleasing to God. In other words, living in accordance with Catholic teaching means accepting and sharing the “medicine of mercy.” Nothing in Vatican II documents denies this.

Further, Pope John Paul II taught in 1995, “Despite their differences of nature and moral gravity, contraception and abortion are often closely connected, as fruits of the same tree.”

We can conclude, therefore, that genuine mercy can only be communicated if we understand this virtue and how we must live it, speak it, and share it. Aquinas tells us that mercy signifies our grief for the sins of another person. Expressing this requires our conscious decision to aid someone in error—showing him the wrongdoing and helping him find in Christ the will to repent. 

Whether that action involves abortion, contraception, or other threats to the human person, when we become the ministers of the medicine of mercy we help them by sharing truth in love. We are, by our lives and actions, guiding the wayward to encounter truth, repentance, and forgiveness.

This is the essence of Pope John XXIII and Pope John Paul II’s legacy.

So, as we think about these soon-to-be saints, let us ask each of them to intercede for us that we may courageously oppose cruelty toward every one of our brothers and sisters while administering the medicine of mercy to a culture filled with human beings suffering sexual chaos.

The Joys and Sorrows of Francis's Magisterium - by Sandro Magister

The innovation in method of "Evangelii Gaudium" explained by an Australian theologian. But the pope is not always interpreted correctly. Not even by the director of "La Civiltà Cattolica." The emblematic case of the baptism in Córdoba 

In Chiesaespresso

ROME, April 15, 2014 – From the dicastery heads of the Roman curia called to report at the beginning of this month of April, Pope Francis wanted to hear just one thing, summarized as follows in the official statement: "the reflections and reactions raised in the different dicasteries by the apostolic exhortation 'Evangelii Gaudium' and the perspectives opened for its implementation."

The fact that "Evangelii Gaudium" is essentially the action plan of the pontificate of Jorge Mario Bergoglio is now beyond all doubt.

But it is precisely for this reason that understanding it is so important. And at the same time so difficult. Because the form in which "Evangelii Gaudium" is written is not at all in keeping with the classical canons of the ecclesiastical magisterium, just like the everyday public discourse of Pope Francis.

In the analysis published as an exclusive below, Paul-Anthony McGavin maintains that Francis shuns abstractions, prohibits what he calls "cold syllogisms," and instead loves thinking and action that are "holistic," or all-encompassing. And he shows how precisely this is the novelty of method in "Evangelii Gaudium."

McGavin is a 70-year-old Australian priest of the diocese of Canberra and Goulburn and an ecclesiastical assistant at the University of Canberra. In 2010 he published in "L'Osservatore Romano" an equally extensive and in-depth commentary on the encyclical "Caritas in Veritate" of Benedict XVI.

In Pope Francis - McGavin writes - "we encounter a mind that is grounded in a pastoral empiricism . . . that integrates concrete circumstances within a structured and fundamental understanding of the Gospel."

But McGavin himself acknowledges that this "unfragmented" mentality exposes the pope to substantial risks of misunderstanding. Especially when some of his statements are taken by the media as self-contained aphorisms and turned into comprehensive keys of interpretation for the current pontificate. 

Two recent examples are proof of this misunderstanding.

*

Over the span of 36 hours, between Thursday the 10th and Friday the 11th of April, Pope Francis lashed out - and not for the first time - against the "dictatorship of uniform thought" that suppresses "the freedom of nations, the freedom of the people, freedom of conscience."

He then forcefully defended "the right of children to grow up in a family with a dad and a mom, in relation to the masculinity and femininity of a father and a mother, thus preparing affective maturity."

He furthermore expressed the toughest of views on "the horrors of educational manipulation" that "with the pretense of modernity pushes children and young people to walk the dictatorial path of the single form of thought." And he added the testimony of a "great educator" who had told him a few days earlier, referring to concrete projects of education: "At times one cannot tell with these projects if one is sending a child to school or to a reeducation camp."

And finally he reiterated his opposition to the killing of all "unborn life in the mother's womb," citing the summary judgment of Vatican Council II: "Abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes."

The references to events, to laws, to judicial decisions, to opinion campaigns attributable to "gender" ideology, in the news recently in Italy, France, and other countries, were transparent in the words of Pope Francis.

But in the media in general his warnings had practically no impact. As if they were a pure abstraction, with no influence on reality and foreign to any judgment. Because the key to explaining everything - in the media's narration of Pope Francis - is by now the "who am I to judge?" spoken by the pope for the first time during the press conference on the return flight from Rio de Janeiro and a second time in the interview with "La Civiltà Cattolica," in reference to the homosexual who "is of good will and is in search of God."

*

The second example shows how a distorted and extensive use of the "who am I to judge?" has also made a breach in the Church, and even in some who should have been reliable interpreters of Pope Francis's thinking.

On April 1, at a crowded public conference in Rome, the director of "La Civiltà Cattolica" and the pope's interviewer, Fr. Antonio Spadaro, said:

"If it had not been for Pope Francis it would not have been easy to baptize a baby girl born to a lesbian couple."

The Jesuit was referring to the baptism announced with great fanfare and then administered on April 5 in Argentina, in the cathedral of Córdoba, of the little daughter of a woman united in a civil "marriage" with another woman, both present at the rite as "mothers" and assisted by President Cristina Kirchner as "godmother."

But if this, according to Fr. Spadaro, was the happy news fostered by Pope Francis, it must be said that there is nothing new but rather something very old and traditional in the baptism of a newborn girl, however she may have come into the world. Only a few progressive and anti-Constantinian Catholic currents are against the age-old practice of infant baptism.

The news, for the Church, was instead in all the rest of the highly touted ceremony in Córdoba. Where everything - from the unnatural "family," to the two "mothers," to the "godmother" Kirchner who was an active proponent of the law that allowed the two to be united in "marriage," to the concealed biological father of the newborn girl - spoke of complete submission to that "single form of thought" so staunchly opposed by Pope Francis.

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WHAT’S NEW IN "EVANGELII GAUDIUM"?

by Paul-Anthony McGavin


Pope Francis has attracted wide media attention with his one-line remarks and magazine style interviews. The popular press has largely lauded his remarks, hearing what they want to hear, propagating what they want to hear, and not hearing his refrain: “I am a son of the Church.” 

"Evangelii gaudium" is the first extended and considered literary statement that encompasses much of what the Holy Father has been saying in oral formats. What I intend to show is that what is new in "Evangelii gaudium" is what I call method, the manner of thinking and reasoning.

Pope Francis does not present himself as a scholar, and his simple conversational one-line remarks are often made with unvarnished language. What becomes evident in "Evangelii gaudium" is that he nevertheless has refined intellectuality. The manner in which he thinks is sophisticated and has a distinct method or methodology that may be seen in "Evangelii gaudium". This method is not new. What is new is the simplicity and clarity of its statement.

The irony, however, is that his method is at once simple and complex.

It is simple because it is straightforward. It is simple because there is constant reference to concrete situations, rather than to abstractions that cover all or various situations.

It is complex because it is situated in a cluster of understandings. The Pope’s oft-quoted single-line remarks in fact situate in a mind that sees a cluster of understandings, and not just single-line perspectives that call upon the mentality that we find in syllogistic logic. Pope Francis is a system thinker.

To say “a system thinker” seems abstruse, when Pope Francis is not an abstruse man. To use a different idiom, Pope Francis tends to think “holistically”. He tends to locate the questions with which he deals in view of a whole understanding of the work of God in Christ (the Gospel, "Evangelium"), and that whole understanding in the varieties of situations that are evoked. That is, in the concrete circumstances where he is considering the reception and living out of what God has done and is doing in the Church. His thought is always situated pastorally, rather than abstractly. Yet, however, he sees and thinks through the issues that engage his focus in a whole-view way that is complex.

Let’s look at an example of this from "Evangelii gaudium":

"There also exists a constant tension between ideas and realities. Realities simply “are”, whereas ideas are “worked out”. There has to be a continuous dialogue between the two, lest ideas become detached from realities. It is dangerous to dwell in the realm of words alone… So a third principle comes into play: realities are greater than ideas. This calls for rejecting the various means of masking reality: angelic forms of purity, dictatorships of relativism, empty rhetoric, objectives more ideal than real, brands of ahistorical fundamentalism, ethical systems bereft of wisdom" (n. 231).

One could get hung-up on the rather wide-sweeping list of examples that closes this excerpt, a diverse list that includes things that are likely to provoke an “Ouch!” in most readers. Rather, our attention should focus on the distinction between ideas and realities.

The Pope proposes that ideas are constructed or “worked out”, whereas realities simply “are”. In strict terms, his dichotomization may be questioned, because the subject must perceptually focus on “realities”, must engage an epistemology in order to comprehend the “reality” – just as the subject must engage an epistemology in order to give mental form to something that is noetic, to “ideas”. But introducing such strict philosophical and psychological issues would deflect from the central point that the Pope is making.

His focus is that there is a tension between the conceptual world and the practical world, and that this tension calls us to dialogue. This is an example of what I have named as at once simple and complex. People can readily grasp that there is often a disjunction between the world of ideas and the world of realities. It is a simple proposition. But once this perspective is engaged, it leads to complexity. This could be the complexity of conflict, or of pathways toward a resolution. The Pope proposes the latter, he proposes dialogue that typically is complex and culturally situated.

Just think how complex it is to moderate the position of someone who has constructed an asceticism that is non-incarnational (“angelicism”); or to moderate the position of someone who sees the whole moral order as self-defined (the “dictatorships of relativism”); or to moderate the position of someone whose position stands outside historical understandings of God’s providence in the world (an “a-historical version of Christianity”), to mention just three of the Pope’s examples. 

The Pope comes down on the side of “realities”, saying that “realities are greater than ideas”. This would seem at odds with his emphasis on tension and on dialogue. But it is not really a departure from the points of tension and dialogue. It is an approach that proceeds from the Gospel as first rooted in “realities”, rather than in “ideas”.

The Gospel first involves the “realities” – the facts – of Our Lord’s incarnation, his earthly life, his passion, his resurrection, and his ascension. That is, the Gospel first involves the facts of God’s action in Christ. "He is Risen!" is not first the proclamation of an idea, but of a fact, an experienced fact (n. 7, quoting "Deus Caritas est," 217). The Gospel is predicated upon "witness: That which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the Word of life" (1 John 1:1). The astonishing power of the Christian idea is that it articulates the realities of historical acts as encountered by witnesses.

It is this “reality” that precedes “ideas” in the Christian scheme of things. For the Christian – and using just three of the Pope’s examples – sin is a reality; salvation in Christ is a reality; injustices are a reality (of course, many mistakenly think injustices as perceptual rather than objective, but I do not speak to that); unkindnesses are a reality (although of course misguided sensibilities may wrongly attribute unkindness). In each of these three examples, one can see dangers in detaching from empirical matter-of-factness the notions of sin, injustice, or unkindness: “It is dangerous to dwell in the realm of words alone…” (n. 231).

These reduced-form remarks of the Pope are situated in a comprehensive perspective, in a holistic perspective that is undergirded by a fundamental experience of and appreciation of the Gospel. It is a perspective that is at once simple and complex. It is a perspective that engages dialogue. It is a perspective that unmasks conceits of one kind or another (whether conceits of an artifice of religiosity or of a humanist relativism). The “rejecting the various means of masking reality” (n. 231) may seem a harsh turn of phrase, and here I would turn to the non-textual image of the body language of Pope Francis (n. 140): he can hardly keep a closed body posture; it constantly is open; the typical gesture is toward a meeting, toward a conversation, dialogue. Again taking up the text portion, it is a dialogue of truthfulness, and truthfulness that encounters matter-of-factness.

One sees in this example that the direction of the Holy Father’s manner of thinking and acting is not what I call single-line. He is not grabbed by single-line propositions (“cold syllogisms”, n. 142). His tendency is to thought and action that is holistic – toward a whole understanding of the Gospel, and to the grounding of that whole understanding in matter-of-fact circumstances that avoid abstractions. He is not drawn to a “desk-bound theology” (n. 133). His instinct is toward a pastoral theology.

The pastoral theology focus of Pope Francis may be illustrated with two other key quotations:

"Pastoral ministry in a missionary style is not obsessed with the disjointed transmission of a multitude of doctrines to be insistently imposed" (n. 35). "It needs first to be said that in preaching the Gospel a fitting sense of proportion has to be maintained" (n. 38).

Again in these small quotes we see an implicit holistic grasp of the Gospel; again we see that the significances of aspects of the proclamation or of corollaries of the proclamation are situated in a whole that gives them proportion. What the Pope presents derives from systemic understanding. This is not intellectualist systematizing, but systemic understanding that is grounded in pastoral experience. 

The Pope will be misunderstood if his various utterances (particularly those that grab the media as “sound bites”) are taken as one-line dictums, for the Pope’s mind is not a fragmented one. In Pope Francis we encounter a mind that is grounded in a pastoral empiricism, but an empiricism that is in whole-system dialogue with the foundations of Catholic faith that integrates concrete circumstances within a structured and fundamental understanding of the Gospel.

This is not to say that in each and every respect this integration is perfect. An Apostolic Exhortation forms part of magisterial teaching, but it is not unreformable. Pope Francis retains an Argentine passport, and his larger cultural situation is Latin America. And Latin America and Central America are without exception comprised of nations that are marked with poverty and political instability. His own perspective on this (his own “take”) is rather “culturally formed” – it is formed experientially, rather than conceptually. In brief, Pope Francis is not a social scientist, and does not bring a social science understanding of the poverty and political instability of his cultural background. One could hear him say, understanding has to begin “with realities”, not “with ideas”. Yet the “facts” are that about a century ago, Argentine and Australia had similar configurations of economy and society, but now Australia is materially more advanced, and is more equalitarian and with relatively little poverty. I regard the reasons for this divergence between Australia and Argentine (my home and the Pope’s home) as mainly “cultural” – and cultural divergences that reflect rather different conceptualizations (“ideas”) of economy and civil society. 

I am not about to launch into an excursus on economy and society. I make these remarks to underscore that everything said in "Evangelii gaudium" is not said with equal robustness. There are points where as both a social scientist and a theologian I have heavily annotated "Evangelii gaudium" in a qualifying ways (particularly nn. 48-50 and 144-147, and 152f). But even within sections so annotated, one still finds restatement of the central thesis of Pope Francis. For example:

"Why complicate something so simple [as in biblical calls to almsgiving]? Conceptual tools [such as economic theories] exist to heighten contact with the realities they seek to explain, not to distance us from them [and to dampen direct action to alleviate poverty]" (n. 194).

One can see in this compressed exclamation, the urgency of the Pope’s call to grounded theorizing that is consistent with the generalizations that I earlier made. But in its textual context one can see a perspective that is not well informed in social science terms (nor perhaps in biblical terms if the perspective in Lukan parables is taken a paradigm). 

This suggests that in reading "Evangelii gaudium" we should engage in “conversation”, in dialogue (nn. 31, 133, 137, 142, 165). That is, we should not engage the text as “the last word”, but try to enter the tensions in the text in a conversational manner that moderates positions.

Much in the Exhortation reflects personal positions of the Pope (his “personality”) and his Latin American culture (and a principle of cultural groundedness is crucial to his paradigm: see nn. 115, 123, 132f). His readers will have differing personalities and differing cultural perspectives. The strong contribution of "Evangelii gaudium" is the way it demonstrates a holistic method that has diverse applications for living and communicating the joy of the Gospel. Whether concerning issues of economy and society and social science understanding; or with issues of liturgical inheritance and contemporary expression; or with tangled issues of moral discernment; or with tangled issues of giving a good account in particular situations of the faith of the Church – we need to find both simplicity and complexity that involve tension and that call to sympathetic dialogue.

This is a call to charity, and "charity covers a multitude of sins" (James 5:20). The Exhortation of Pope Francis is, indeed, a call to charity and to joy – joy in the Gospel, "Evangelii gaudium".

__________


The agenda-setting apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis's pontificate:

> Evangelii gaudium

__________


The April 10 homily of Pope Francis against the "dictatorship of uniform thought":

> "Anche oggi…"

The April 11 speech at the International Catholic Child Bureau:

> "Vi ringrazio…"

The speech on the same day to the Italian Movement for life: 

> "Quando sono entrato…"

__________


In the homily on April 10, in denouncing the "idolatry of uniform thought," Bergoglio specified that often "when some governments ask for financial help, we hear the response: ‘if you want this help you have to think this way and you have to enact this law and that, and that other.'"

This denunciation made by the pope can be set alongside what was written in the latest issue of "Il Regno," in an article on "Churches and gay rights" in Africa:

"The idea that the decriminalization of homosexuality is above all a priority of the West has taken on new vigor partly because of the hypothesis of cuts in development aid for Uganda floated by the United States, France, Holland, and Sweden, while the World Bank has frozen an award of 90 million dollars. But already at the end of 2011, after the statements of British prime minister David Cameron and former United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton on the possible suspension of aid for countries without guarantees of 'homosexual rights,' the spokesman of the episcopal conference of Zambia, Fr. Paul Samasumo, had asked that aid not be tied 'to the promotion of immorality.' On that occasion, various other Christian Churches had taken the same stance."

__________

English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.

Cuomo to Catholics: You’re Not Welcome in NY - by George J. Marlin

In TCT

I was born in New York State and have lived here for more than 61 years. During that time I have paid plenty in state and local taxes and have served the public in a number of capacities including two terms as Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

I am also a Catholic and a member of New York’s Conservative Party, have served on the transition teams of governors-elect George Pataki (R) and Andrew Cuomo (D), and have been a member of Cuomo’s Council of Economic and Fiscal Advisors.

Yet despite my public service and the large chunk of my earnings that have gone to support New York’s governmental maze, according to Governor Cuomo, I should move out of the Empire State.

Why?  Because I am pro-life, oppose same-sex marriage, and have doubts about Cuomo’s 2013 hastily prepared gun legislation (the SAFE Act) that permits you to buy a gun with a 10-round magazine, but bans using more than seven shots if you need to defend yourself.      

Here’s what Cuomo said this past Friday on “The Capital Pressroom,” an Albany radio talk show, about a large segment of NY voters:

Who are they? Are they these extreme conservatives who are right to life, pro-assault weapons, anti-gay? Is that who they are?  Because if that’s who they are and they’re the extreme conservatives, they have no place in the state of New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are.

In an unguarded moment, Governor Cuomo stated publicly what many on the Left have been privately thinking for years: that pro-life and pro-traditional marriage supporters are Ku Klux Klan-like bigots who should either shut up or get out.

Cuomo has not only written off millions of New York Christians and Jews (among others) as unfit citizens, he has yanked the welcome mat from under half the nation’s population, who, public opinion polls indicate, oppose abortion and same-sex marriage.

As for those who “have no place in the state of New York,” the person at the top of that list must be the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan. That’s because Dolan has proudly followed in the footsteps of his predecessors who were unabashed defenders of Church teachings in the public square.

For instance, Cardinal Terence Cooke, NYC’s seventh archbishop (1968-1983), whose cause is being promoted for sainthood, publicly fought the passage of the state’s 1970 liberal abortion bill. And the week Roe v. Wade was handed down by the Supreme Court, he issued a pastoral letter that was read in every parish condemning abortion as a “fundamental moral evil.”  Cooke inaugurated the annual Respect Life week and established “Birth Right,” a service to help pregnant women who choose not to abort their babies.

As for “gay rights,” every year Cooke opposed proposed legislation in New York’s City Council that would have amended the administrative code to outlaw discrimination due to “sexual orientation or affectional preference.” You read that right.

A typical statement expressing the Church’s position, released by Cardinal Cooke in April 1978, reads:

If the bill has an underlying purpose, to advocate and gain approval of homosexual behavior and lifestyle, then there is no way in which the Catholic Church in the City of New York may find it acceptable. And there is no way in which we can remain silent on the issue.

The Catholic Church’s moral teaching differentiates between “orientation” and “behavior” for both homosexuals and heterosexuals. While a person’s orientation is not subject to moral evaluation, there is no doubt that a person’s behavior is subject to evaluation. Homosexual behavior and an attendant homosexual life style is not in accord with Catholic moral teaching and is, in fact, harmful to all persons who become involved; heterosexuality is the norm for human behavior.

And lest we forget, in the mid-1970s Cooke had an ally in his fight against abortion and gay rights: Mario Cuomo, father of the current governor.

The New York Times reported during Cuomo the Elder’s unsuccessful 1974 primary run for lieutenant governor that he said in a televised debate that “he would have voted against the 1970 law that relaxed abortion curbs in the state.”  The New York Daily News and the Post also reported that, in his unsuccessful 1977 run for mayor, Mario said he would veto a gay rights bill “that would give homosexual teachers the right to proselytize or advocate their lifestyle.”

I wonder if Governor Andrew Cuomo, a baptized Catholic and a graduate of Archbishop Molloy High School and Fordham University, will demand that Cooke’s cause for canonization be, well, aborted because the cardinal was an “extremist” for defending the teachings of his Church. Will ask his father, himself a former governor, to leave the state for having politically incorrect thoughts forty years ago?

By claiming that people who disagree with his cultural views “have no place in the state of New York,” Cuomo has joined those whom historian Richard Hofstadter described as “totalitarian liberals,” people who employ illiberal means to achieve so-called liberal reforms.

Cardinal Dolan and the bishops of New York’s other eight dioceses have an obligation to respond and to condemn anyone – especially any Catholic public figure – who threatens those who adhere to Church doctrine.

Chicago’s Cardinal Francis George has predicted that he will die in his bed, his successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr. We may not be quite there yet. But unless Church leaders and others act quickly and forcefully, Catholics and others of traditional moral views may find themselves not simply marginalized, but – if some politicians have their way – facing something very like exile in their own nation.

“Reprotech” Ushers in a New Eugenic Age - by Mark D. Oshinskie

In Crisis

Following the devaluation of babies in the 1970s and 80s in the developed world, babies became scarce and, consequently, desirable once again.  Now, any means used to make babies is seen as good, as long as pregnancy occurs at a convenient time.

Some cannot conceive naturally. The prevailing view is that those who cannot do so should have free access to such reproductive technologies as in vitro fertilization (IVF) or the purchase of gametes, i.e., sperm and eggs. Yet, many do not know what occurs in IVF labs and others do not care, as long as offspring result. The zeitgeist favoring “reprotech” obscures the serious social problems that reproductive technologies both reflects and facilitates.

For example, the growing demand for IVF is, in large measure, a response to Western cultural changes.  As birth control and abortion became widely available, sex was more reliably separated from procreation and childbearing has been widely postponed. Deferring parenthood into the mid-thirties and beyond worked for some, but has created many fertility clinic users.  Further, aside from delaying child-bearing, contraception enabled serial sexual partners and over ten million new cases of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) each year, which scar reproductive organs and also impair fertility.  IVF is often used to bypass these obstacles.

IVF and the Effectuation of the Brave New World

Such academic commentators as Leon Kass, Francis Fukuyama and Bill McKibben have observed that human genetic engineering, nanotech and robotics will demoralize individuals and damage human community.  They write, for example, of futuristic highly-skilled classical pianists or athletes who know that their parents purchased strong musical or athletic genes for them, and of the existential crises caused regarding the source of,  and credit for, their respective accomplishments.  They observe that democracy will become untenable if some use these technologies to create a master race.  They view these threats to community as prospective, though imminent, as cloning and gene manipulation research continues in earnest.

These warnings are, at once, an exaggeration and an understatement.  They are an exaggeration because, although genomic research has enabled scientists to identify the effects of many DNA sequences, we are still a while (vagueness deliberate) away from having a clearer sense of which genes influence many other traits.  They are also an exaggeration because many have observed that, to date, gene manipulation efforts reveal that genes cannot often be simply cut and pasted, one for another, especially without causing serious unanticipated effects.

The authors understate the dangers posed by IVF because, in the interim at least, this reprotech enables efforts to clear these technological hurdles.  It uses the same lab equipment and provides cumulating knowledge, techniques and an oversupply of embryos needed to advance genetic engineering and cloning.  IVF is to genetic engineering and cloning what nuclear power plants are to nuclear weapons proliferation.

Reprotech’s effects on the aforementioned commentators’ concerns are understated in another, more important way.  The same ethic of reproductive control that animates IVF also allows egg and sperm shopping, genetic screening and embryo selection—or its companions, sex-selection or eugenic abortion.  One may maintain that the embryo is not a person but one cannot dispute that the embryo at seven days tells us much about the person at 27 years. With its multi-embryo production, IVF already enables parents to select between embryos for numerous lifelong traits, including sex and disability.  Despite their backgrounds, sperm and egg shoppers display distinct preferences for gametes from tall, conventionally attractive gamete sellers with much formal education.   These choices are clearly intended and they are not futuristic practices, which may never become available; they occur every day.

Thus, even if genetic manipulation or cloning never become possible, the eugenic age is already well underway and is accepted by our consumer-sovereign society.  If prospective parents don’t like their unborn’s genes, they can, and often do, end the life.  For example, over 90 percent of fetuses diagnosed with Downs Syndrome are aborted. Not in some futuristic hell, but today, we are ending disability through a medically mediated rendering of Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal,” by purging the disabled.

In a society that increasingly and appropriately declines to execute even serial killers, it seems inconsistent to effectively impose prenatal capital punishment/genocide on the disabled.  Consider further the effects of genetic screening on the self-perception of the able-bodied.  How does it feel to know you were born because you met the standards of your parents and a quality control inspector?  In place of unconditional love, reprotech allows the introduction of discrimination with regard to human dignity based on biological, psychological or educational development, or based on health-related criteria.

Some commentators have suggested that eugenic abortion or embryo selection could be legislatively limited to genes with “life-or-death” diseases. That proposal does not inspire confidence.

First, who can say that a disabled or a relatively brief life—even one with much suffering—is not worth living?  As John Paul II stated in Evangelium Vitae (1995), “The courage and serenity with which so many of our brothers and sisters suffering from serious disabilities lead their lives when they are shown acceptance and love bears eloquent witness to what gives authentic value to life, and makes it, even in difficult conditions, something precious for them and for others.”

Most parents will de-select embryos or abort fetuses whose genes suggest they will someday have MS, ALS, breast cancer or Huntington’s.  These conditions seldom kill, or even afflict, the young.  Besides, as many have observed, the lines between disease and trait or cure and enhancement are quite blurry.  What will be the legislative status of embryos that have genes for schizophrenia?  Deafness?  Depression?  Below average intelligence or height?  Even limiting either genetic manipulation or embryo selection for seemingly esthetic purposes seems impossible, given society’s and the law’s strong support for reproductive choice.  And with reproductive choice as the guiding principle, how will we prohibit parthenogenesis, artificial wombs or chimeras?

The majority of parents allowed to choose between having a fully capable—or perhaps, ultracapable—child, on the one hand, or casting a diffuse vote for an already attenuated democracy on the other, will serve themselves, not the larger group.  As genomic knowledge and embryo selection increase, the pressure to have “perfect” kids will only intensify.  As the number of people with imperfections decreases, society’s acceptance of, and support groups and services for, the imperfect will shrink.  Stanford Law Professor Hank Greely has predicted that, given these competitive pressures, within 50 years, most Americans will be the product of IVF.   While allowing for some incorrect predictions in individual cases, genetic screening will cause the social stratification and personal alienation that the commentators fear, even without the genetic manipulation they foresee.

All we have to do to advance this dystopia is more of what is already done: embrace reprotech, screen gametes/embryos and use/implant those with the traits the parents want.  Even if we could agree on and proscribe what constituted abuses of these practices, regulation of these micro-scale technologies, which involve high stakes to their demanding consumers and the clinics that compete for their business, and which occur behind closed doors in hundreds of office parks, is impracticable.

Distributive Concerns

On a population-wide basis, American medicine is better at generating revenue than it is at advancing health.  Americans spend twice as much per capita on medical care as does any other nation and America ranks twenty seventh in life expectancy, just slightly ahead of Cuba.
 
Medical insurance funds hundreds of billions of medically unnecessary treatments. We routinely test for conditions that are only remotely possible.  One in six adults takes psychoactive drugs, largely because ordinary sadness is now considered a disease.  Sports surgeries are performed to enable 40-somethings to continue to run marathons and ski, instead of taking up walking.

IVF fits squarely within this model of providing elective treatments for the affluent, while the poor do without basic goods and services, and medical care, in the United States and, especially, abroad.  The typical IVF cycle costs $12,000 and multiple cycles are common.  Insurance coverage for IVF is legislatively mandated in 15 of the most populous states.  By itself, IVF adds over 5 percent to medical insurance premiums. The insurance cost of IVF grows sharply when the inflated costs of post-natal care for IVF offspring are considered.  A recent study concluded that twins cost six times ($105,000) and triplets twenty times ($400,000) more than do single babies. Multiple births have increased six-fold because IVF often involves the implantation of multiple embryos.  In a lengthy article in the  New York Times Magazine entitled “The Two Minus One Pregnancy” (2012), we learn that multiples are often reduced in number, in utero, by injections of potassium chloride into the hearts of the “excess,” seemingly weaker, fetuses. While the fertility industry gains an increasing share of insurance dollars, public health/environmental protection measures that would benefit all people are seriously underfunded in relation to the threats presented.

In addition to misallocating resources, IVF facilitates human exploitation.  Like many commercial processes, it allows child-bearing to be outsourced to low income surrogates in the US and abroad.  Instead of mothers producing their own eggs, eggs are harvested from well-pedigreed college students, who risk their health and deplete a significant part of their egg supply, which may endanger their own fertility and accelerate menopause and which enables what the progressive commentator Andrew Kimbrell called “technological adultery.”

Reprotech’s Impact on Self-Perception

Apart from creating a genetically privileged class, reprotech already affects the perception of other beings and basic kinship or solidarity.  Despite vast demographic, ideological and personality differences, until about thirty years ago, humans shared a common, mysterious origin in the union of a woman and a man.  This is no longer universally the case.  In its place, reprotech, immensely profitable in a slow growth economy, applies a corporate model, not only in its technical practices, but in its advertising and competition for market share.

Increasingly, as life is manufactured and sold, it becomes less awesome and more like other possessions.

While reprotech is the ultimate reductionist activity—sperm plus egg plus gestation equals human—it cannot be reduced into its component parts; like all things, we must take its benefit and harm as a unitary whole.  As children have become products of subjective desires and labs, life has been radically altered in ways unreported by the TV news.  

Relativism and utilitarianism have taken firm hold.  God has been removed from most discourse. Churches of all denominations are nearly empty.  Marriage is postponed and eschewed and is increasingly separated from childbearing and raising; more adults live alone and more children live with one parent than ever.  A hook-up culture has supplanted the mutual affection and acceptance of courtship.

The perception and treatment of children have also changed: instead of being born in the fullness of time, many are prenatally frozen or their births are scheduled, they are formula-fed, placed in day care, over-managed and overscheduled.  Social scientists report numerous indicia of sharply diminishing social cohesion since the 1970s.  Have contraception, abortion and reprotech singlehandedly caused each of these changes?  No, but they fit squarely within a cultural context that makes everything, even human life, bend to individual sovereignty, engineering principles and ultimately, commerce.  As Waclav Havel wrote, “The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his life but that it bothers him less and less.”

Fundamentally, reprotech places the interests of the individual above those of the community.  Using it is like building one’s home on the beach at Normandy or in Yosemite Valley. It pleases the consumer and their family and friends.  But it costs the culture something more precious and universal, namely the notion of the sacred and the continuation of a society where genetic advantage cannot be purchased.  Reprotech has generated many offspring. But with its effects on human perception and community, reprotech users should not expect the emerging world to resemble the one their parents grew up in, or be much of a place to raise children.