Where Do (Modern) Babies Come From? - by Alana S. Newman

In The Public Discourse

“Eggsploitation” reveals the predatory practices of the fertility industry, which lures young women in need of money to undergo medical procedures that carry the risk of severe long-term health problems.

In 2000, a California nurse named Jennifer Lahl founded a nonprofit in the East Bay called The Center for Bioethics and Culture Network. CBCN is dedicated to educating the public about the troubling bioethical issues unfolding in the modern medical field.

Although she had no previous experience in filmmaking, Lahl managed to raise some money and set out to create a documentary. The resulting film, Lines That Divide, explored the stem-cell research debate, highlighting its terrifying connection to human cloning, and revealing how it required vast quantities of human eggs in order for the research to progress. As she began to write and speak publicly about egg donation and its risks, Lahl started to receive emails from women who had been harmed by selling their eggs.

Concerned for her three daughters, and for all young women, she began work on her second documentary Eggsploitation, which was originally released in 2010. Eggsploitation captured the attention of women’s advocacy groups around the country, including the National Organization for Women. It was the first film to shine light on the predatory nature of the fertility industry and its exploitation of college-aged women. It gave a voice to women who were lured by money and ended up sacrificing their health, fertility, and—in some cases—their very lives.

The original film had a low budget and was clearly the product of a nurse on a mission, not an experienced filmmaker. But, like a Bob Dylan song, the film’s powerful content broke through any aesthetic weaknesses, and it won Best Documentary in the 2011 California Independent Film Festival. So far, it has sold over 6,000 copies worldwide, with translations in Italian, French, and Japanese. Lahl has become an effective public advocate, making a huge impact and appearing on national TV shows such as Dr. Oz.

In the last three years, young women have poured out their stories, affirming Eggsploitation’s thesis that egg donation harms healthy young women. If you visit the film’s website you can read interviews with women like Y, who became infertile at 28 and suspects that her early menopause was caused by her egg harvesting, or Americus Dotter, who shares her frightening experience with postpartum psychosis.

In fact, so many more women came forward with their stories and concerns that Lahl felt she had to compile a second cut of Eggsploitation. The expanded film features new stories and updated facts and footage that show the unadvertised power dynamics and big money involved in this industry. The production value of the new Eggsploitation has dramatically improved. The cast is comprised of both familiar and new interviewees. The audience gets a helpful history of IVF, including its startling failure rate (70 percent) and price tags ($12,000+ per cycle).

The human stories are the heart of the documentary, and the egg donors in the film are given the compassion and generosity they deserve. Yet respect for scientific research and medical facts is equally central. It is this combination, undoubtedly a byproduct of Lahl’s decades of experience as both a nurse and a mom, that makes the documentary so extraordinarily compelling.

“Egg donors are not sick, yet they assume all the risk in order to help someone else.” –Jennifer Lahl

Kylee and Calla, two egg donors interviewed in the documentary, suffered strokes as a direct result of their egg harvesting. Alexandra lost an ovary and eventually developed breast cancer (a condition which does not run in her family). Sindy almost bled to death. Linda and Latoya were hospitalized with Ovarian Hyper-Stimulation Syndrome. And Jessica was diagnosed with colon cancer at age 29, then died at 34.

One of the primary drugs used in egg harvesting is Lupron–which has never been approved by the FDA for fertility use. And in the thirty years the human egg trade has existed, there has never been one peer-reviewed study confirming that egg harvesting is safe long-term.

“Economic desperation causes healthy women to accept risks that are against their own health interests.” –Jennifer Lahl

The elite and wealthy who hope to further science or become parents may assume that these women undergo such invasive treatments altruistically, because $8,000 is an inconsequential sum to them. But a few thousand dollars can mean the world to a broke and ambitious young woman. It’s a needle-length journey into a whole new class—through a college degree, the “right” address, or travel experience.

The exchange of money is problematic because the commissioning parents may feel entitled to mistreat and use the egg donor as just another service-provider. And it is problematic to the donor, in particular, because she risks her health in exchange for money. But money can’t buy back her health once it’s gone. This is why we don’t sell organs. It threatens human thriving.

Leah Campbell, a former egg donor, wrote a book called Single Infertile Female: Adventures in Love, Life and Infertility detailing her inability to conceive and her struggles with IVF just two years after selling her eggs. Speaking publicly at a recent event, Campbell said that when she told the clinic about her infertility—probably caused by her egg donation—they delightfully offered to connect her with a similarly unsuspecting young egg donor to aid in her now-desperate efforts to have a baby of her own. They were happy to have her back as a customer.

The infertility industry works hard to recruit “smart” egg donors, because good grades and name-brand colleges sell better. But when those same young women use their intelligence to ask questions about proper dosages and try to advocate for their own health, their concerns are dismissed or ignored entirely. They are pressured to continue painful cycles against their intuition in order to have a successful harvest, because medicine wasted is money wasted.

I remember when I was twenty and sold my eggs.

That $8,000 seemed like the gateway to millions more. I had never seen that much money, and it seemed like the answer to all of my heart’s desires. I was small and compliant as I interviewed with the agency personnel. I didn’t want to make a fuss or be difficult in any way, because my eye was on the check. My only act of defiance was insisting on being open for contact if the children ever wanted to know my identity.

During the week of the egg harvest, my body cavity was as dense and inflexible as the trunk of an oak. I couldn’t so much as lightly jog due to the pain. I used part of the money to record my first EP—my musical debut. In the recording studio, I made my sound engineer uncomfortable as I writhed on the floor in pain, unable to sit in a chair for the pressure I felt in my abdomen. But I’m one of the lucky ones. I was still able to have children later when I met my husband.

But beyond the temporary physical pain, there is a guilt that lingers: the realization that I sold my children. To strangers. It’s a reasonable conclusion to come to when you start to unravel the euphemisms.

Eggsploitation is just what the doctor ordered—or fears, rather—in the debate on reproductive technologies and stem-cell research. Show it to every college-aged woman you care for. And if you’re trying to make a case against third-party reproduction to an audience you think might be antagonistic, this powerful documentary is the perfect place to start.

Contraception: Sex as a Disease - by Randall Smith

In TCT 

There is no question I am asked about more than Church teaching on contraception. It is the thing that either bemuses or confuses my questioners most about Catholicism:  “Catholics and contraception, it’s just so weird. What’s the deal with you people?”  

The “deal” has to do with the Church having a certain view of how sex fits into a healthy, flourishing human life. The Catholic Church teaches that sexual intercourse is best reserved for a long-term committed relationship open to the procreation of new life. Why?  Because, as I’ve suggested before, sexual intercourse involves the planting of seed in potentially fertile soil. 

If the partners in this act are not ready for the potential consequences of the act – that is, if they’re not prepared to accept the child that is the fruit of their union – then they’re courting some serious unhappiness. Sex, the Church believes, should involve a selfless gift of oneself to another in a relationship of mutual self-giving, love, and concern. 

Now, to be quite honest, this positive vision seems utterly unrealistic to many of my interlocutors: “That sounds nice, but it’s not doable.” So let’s be clear: The Catholic teaching on sex requires not only the virtues of prudence and temperance, above all it calls for hope.

I’ve found over the years that the problem isn’t that people want too much, it’s that they settle for too little. What God and the Church envision for couples is a relationship of mutual love and concern. Too often they settle on so much less. 

Our first task, then, is to convince young women in particular that they’re worth more, and should demand more, than the kind of cheap sexual using of them that society currently encourages. 

The Church’s message to women is basically this: Don’t let anyone convince you to treat your fertility as a kind of disease, as a pathology that needs to be “treated” with drugs or “cured” by surgery. What sort of odd mentality causes us to consider a perfectly healthy function of the human being as something that needs to be dis-abled? We don’t consider cutting off someone’s legs, do we, except in the direst circumstances?  

The “problem” in the case of contraception isn’t some dysfunction. The “problem” is precisely that the human organism is functioning perfectly. If it weren’t, there wouldn’t be any need for drugs or surgery! 

When spouses insist on this particular “intervention,” they are saying (with their actions, if not with their words) something like this: “I accept you totally and completely in this sexual act, except for that troublesome fertility thing. So, before we have sex, could you please take care of that? 

To my mind, this is like saying: I accept you totally and completely in this sexual act, except could you first please put on this blond wig for me, or could you first lose thirty pounds?  If you accept a person for who they are, then you accept them. You don’t force them to agree to an operation to “fix” themselves first. This is why John Paul II repeatedly taught that to insist on the disabling of fertility as a precondition for having sex is to destroy not only the procreative dimension of the sexual act, but the unitive dimension as well.

Granted, one needn’t always be intending to have a child (why insist on that?), but what do you want honestly to be able to tell your child?

            (1) “Well, Billy, we did everything humanly, medically possible to prevent your existence, but somehow, you squirmed through anyway. So, when we found you existed, we cried a bit but decided in the end not to terminate you. So here you are!”  Or:

            (2) “Granted, son, we were not intending you when you were conceived, but we were always open to new life. Thus, when we found out about you, we were filled with joy, because we never intended to prevent you.”

The sexual act is not meant to involve fear – specifically, fear of the natural consequences of the act actually occurring, which is a bit like being frightened that the nail might actually go in the wood when you hammer it. The notion of “safe sex” implies that sex itself (apart from the drugs and prophylactics they sell you) is somehow “dangerous,” which is like allowing people to convince you that eating is dangerous – perhaps even deadly – unless you take an expensive drug first. 

We all know that under the current regime of sexual “liberation,” one of the most fear-inducing, toxic substances on the face of the earth is unwanted male sperm. You can’t spill a drop. One drop could kill you or destroy your entire life: “Oh God, my contraception failed last night”?  The sad irony is the conviction that one’s life might be over if a new life has been created. 

It is important to note that a couple can adopt a “conceptive mentality” even when they are not using contraception. If the sexual act is done in fear of a child, then the couple is in the wrong place mentally and spiritually. There are few things more tragic than two human beings doing that most miraculous thing two humans can do with one another – creating a new human life together – and then having one partner say to the other:  “O dear God, no. Anything but that!”  

That tragic reaction is possible whether or not a couple has been using contraception if they’re not open to the natural consequences of the act in which they are engaged: thus the importance of always remaining “open” to God’s creative act, even when not intending to have a child.

Is the Church’s teaching really so foolish, then?  Or are we? Have women in particular allowed themselves to set their standards too low? Aim higher, declares the Church.

 

VÍDEO: Maravilhosa entrevista do Papa Francisco à TV Globo

As Wise as Pigeons: Lessons Never Learned - by Anthony Esolen

In Crisis

Why must the children of light always be ten revolutions and a hundred years behind the children of darkness?  If we cannot always defeat our enemies on the battlefield, can’t we at least learn to recognize their tactics so that we won’t be fooled the next time?  Never mind that.  Can’t we learn to recognize, from the bullets whistling past our ears and our comrades lying beside us shot through the heart, that they are our enemies?

Several days ago I was at a tent meeting with some of the oddest of the children of light.  These Christians preach Christ, and Him crucified.  Indeed, they preach so doggedly about Christ’s atonement for our sins and our complete helplessness to save ourselves, that they never get around to talking our new life in Christ.  Every day is Good Friday, and what happened on Easter merely confirms the power of Christ’s blood and so redirects our attention to the Cross.

None of this is wrong, as far as it goes.  But it doesn’t go far.  I have a soft spot in my heart for underdogs, especially when they preach about the Lord to a people stultified by bad schools, television, and the unutterable banality of vice.  I wish my friends well, though I suspect they believe I’m not “saved,” because I haven’t been struck blind on the road to Damascus.  My conversion was slower and more embarrassing, but that’s another story.

After the meeting I enjoyed refreshments with the members of the group, including several young people, three lads and a lass, between seventeen and twenty four years old.  We got to talking about school.  I’m an American, but we spend our summers in Canada, in Cape Breton.  And since I always ask my freshmen at Providence College what they’ve studied in high schools public and parochial, and, more to the point, what they have not studied, what they haven’t ever heard of, I asked the same questions to these pleasant Canadians.

“I’m going to name a few English writers,” I said.  “All I want to know is whether you recognize the names.  You don’t have to tell me anything about them.”  These people were bright enough, as you could tell from their presence at the meeting and their conversation.

Milton.  No recognition.  Wordsworth.  No recognition.  Tennyson.  One of the boys said, “Albert?”  That was a hint that he had once heard the name.  “Close,” I said.  “Alfred, Lord Tennyson, the great Victorian poet.  Can you tell me anything about him?”  No, nothing.  “What on earth do you do in school for twelve years?” I asked.  That’s a question I’ve asked a thousand times, in both countries.  They laughed.  They were not going to defend their schools, not even as Canadians to an American.  They knew they were indefensible.

They did tell me that they read Shakespeare, one play a year, detached from the history of England, from the tradition of English literature, and, most disappointing, from Shakespeare’s Christian faith.  Shakespeare is the most theological of English dramatists.  It’s not simply that he alludes to scripture all the time.  It’s that entire plays are structured around theological questions—and are incomprehensible without the foundation of the Christian story.

Here the young lady became the lead interlocutor.  She was the oldest and had read the most.  She wouldn’t allow that Shakespeare was a profoundly Christian author; not because her interpretation of Shakespeare differed from mine, but because, in comparison with the gospel, the Christian writer meant nothing, even if he was the greatest dramatist who ever lived.  She understood that many people flourished by being taught at home, but she was glad she went to high school, not for what she learned there, which she admitted was not a lot, but because it gave her the opportunity to witness to Jesus.

I couldn’t let matters rest.  “But that’s not what school is for,” I said.  “Look at what you might have learned, in a sane world.  You might have learned about Bach, that giant of a composer, who dedicated every work he composed to the name of Jesus Christ!”  She shrugged and said she enjoyed Bach, but she wouldn’t go so far as to call him a Christian.  She was moved not one inch by the wealth of Christian history, art, music, drama, and poetry that she had been denied the chance to study.  She said she reads Jane Austen for pleasure, but the humanities in themselves mean nothing to her.

It struck me that there’s a strange similarity between these Christians and the secularists who dominate our schools and who have eviscerated our curricula, replacing the great poets of our heritage with ephemeral scribblers upon “current events.”  That’s the one thing that cannot be taught with any perspective.  But it requires no special study (ignorance is a boon if you’re reading Maureen Dowd).  It exposes no deficiencies in the teachers.  The young people at the meeting didn’t care about Wordsworth or Tennyson, because they had Jesus.  The secularists are worse.  They don’t care about Wordsworth or Tennyson, because they have Tony Kushner or some other purveyor of twaddle.

Which brings me to the Common Core Curriculum that is being pedaled (not peddled; the governmental foot is on the accelerator) to our schools.  Apparently plenty of Catholic schools are on board, too.  That is baffling.  Every big “reform” of the public schools for the last sixty years has been disastrous—the expunging of any trace of religion from the classroom; the replacement of small schools with hulking institutions; the consolidation of school boards to attenuate local control and personal oversight; the abandonment of geography; the shift from history to current events; the New Math; the basal reader; comic books to amuse the poorer students in high school; the war on boys; the expansion of health class to “sex education” (what the heck is so complicated?); the corruption of the latter; teaching to standardized tests; the absurdly biased textbooks; the abandonment of any systematic study of grammar; teaching foreign languages “conversationally,” which means, in effect, illiterately; the abandonment of math-based sciences such as physics and chemistry, in favor of biology, reduced to ecology, reduced to cuddles; what on earth would make us think that anything this system produces can do us any good?  Homeschoolers enjoy their signal and mortifying success largely because they see everything that is done in school and then go and do precisely the opposite.

So why should Catholic schools line up for a curriculum that stiffs literature and the arts?  Why accept a curriculum whose utilitarian presuppositions are inimical to everything that a Catholic is supposed to believe about human flourishing?  Why, to recall the article published here a few days ago, rush to adopt the Big History program promoted by atheist Bill Gates—a program that certainly is Big but is sorely lacking in History, that is permeated with determinist assumptions regarding human life, and that wholly ignores or reviles the single most significant event in human history (the one event my young evangelizers know about and cherish), and that wholly ignores or reviles the single most culturally dynamic institution in human history, the Church?  Why should John Dewey or Bill Gates write our curricula?  That would be like having Alfred Kinsey write our sex education lessons.  Ah, but I forget—we have those, don’t we?  Or it would be like having Carl Rogers run a “spiritual” retreat for nuns—ah yes, we did that too, didn’t we?  It would be like hiring the disciples of the secularist architects Gropius and Von der Rohe to design worship-machines for us, boxes that consign the Stations of the Cross to scratches of graffiti a hundred feet away, and that awake no sense of mystery, and recall no rich heritage of symbols and gestures—but wait, we built those boxes, and when we didn’t build them, we transmogrified perfectly lovely churches into their image and likeness; and we breathed upon them, and they became mausoleums.

But why should there even be a national curriculum?  Have we lost our minds?  Have we forgotten who and what we are?  A man and woman marry and have children, and the responsibility to educate those children rests upon them, because children aren’t bottle caps to be stamped with the same label, one after another.  The principle of incarnation forbids it.  One home cannot be a copy of another, because the spiritual, intellectual, artisanal, and physical strengths of one couple and their kin are not the same as those of another.  No two siblings are alike.  The very idea of a national curriculum, to be pedaled upon the children of three hundred millions, should be repugnant to a freedom-loving people, and anathema to people of faith.

Here I throw my hands up in despair, because the leaders of my church, after a hundred years of the attenuation of genuine community life, consumed by Big This and That, still cannot understand that there’s as much difference between a community and a faceless aggregate as there is between a free man and a numbered inmate in a prison.  They cannot understand that even if the National Curriculum were acceptable—even if, this time, the man who sold us rat poison for corn meal is going to give us healthy food—that there should be no such, that the very existence of a National Curriculum fundamentally alters the relationship of the citizen, the school, the town, the state, and even the family to the national government?  Why is that so hard to grasp?

Then there’s the Catholic Health Association, giving its lordly fiat potestas—let there be might—to the national government, to control every feature of our health care system.  What has made the bishops so slow to understand that, even if a nifty legal filter could pick out the specks of rat poison in the meal for Catholic schools and hospitals, that doesn’t do a damned thing for individual Catholics, or for other Christian objectors, or simply for people of good faith who don’t want to pony up for somebody else’s pills or diaphragms or snuffed babies?  Why have they not seen that a nationalized medical system also fundamentally alters the relationship between the government and the citizen?  Why can’t they divine the difference between inequalities that result by circumstance, and rationing as a matter of principle?  They’ve climbed into the lifeboat, then they object if the skipper mistreats them—when the thing to do was to reject the lifeboat and its principles, and to use our own resources and our Christian mandate to assist people in need.

The wise Laocoon hurled his lance at the wooden horse and cried, “I fear the Greeks, even when they are bringing gifts!”  Why, why must the children of light say, “Look here, Mammon’s going to build us a new school and a new hospital, and they’re free!”

As wise as pigeons—or as innocent as snakes.

More evidence that those who say they want Abortion “Safe and Legal” are not really serious about the “safe” part - by Msgr. Charles Pope

In AofW

Many of you are aware that last week the Texas Legislature passed historic legislation that significantly limits abortion in Texas and shows that the claim of the “Pro-Choice” abortion advocates that they mere want abortion “safe and legal.” For the Texas Law places significant requirements that so-called “clinics” must meet basic medical requirements and certification. All of these requirements will significantly enhance women’s safety from unsafe and shoddy medical practices all too common in abortion “clinics.”

 

Now, of course, pro-choice advocates, who have long marched under the banner of “safe and legal,” should hail the Texas decision since it goes a long way to ensure one of their two “pillar” positions (i.e. that abortion be “safe”). But of course they are not, they are howling in protest.

Yet as strong advocates for “women’s safety” they claim to look back in horror to the days of “coat-hanger” abortions and insist that those days must never return. So, surely, they will support measures to further protect women from the often unsafe, unsanitary and under-regulated women’s “clinics.” Many stories have recently surfaced that show just how unsafe these clinics are. For example

1. http://www.slate.com/id/2285810/
2. http://bmb.oxfordjournals.org/content/67/1/99.full
3. http://veneremurcernui.wordpress.com/2011/01/31/more-abortion-clinics-found-unsafe/
4. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/legal_ugly_unsafe_igmHR7AIndw0LBZjeBTSqO
5. http://www.slate.com/id/2285631/
6. http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/flexicontent/item/14578-abortion-doc-gosnell-associate-in-delaware-is-suspended/
7. http://www.slate.com/id/2285491/
8. http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20110205/NEWS02/102050352/Delaware-health-officials-clergy-urge-lawmakers-act-abortion
9. http://www.politicspa.com/gop-dems-on-same-page-in-response-to-abortion-clinic-scandal/21114/

Well, you get the point. There are huge problems in the abortion “industry” regarding safety. The pro-choice advocates claim they want to have safe abortions available. Here comes Texas to the rescue with strong legislative protections for women who go to these so-called clinics. But as we can see from the reactions above, the “safe and legal” advocates are well prepared to sacrifice safety in order to keep abortion more legal.

It is clear that regulating abortion will limit its availability. Hence the “Safe” pillar, they claim to be at the foundation of their movement, has to give way for the legal pillar. Never mind that some women are butchered and even die.

It would seem it’s really the “legal” of “safe and legal” that matters. Or so it would seem. For all the talk about women’s safety, it would appear that such a concern is quite secondary.

Hence, the Texas Law puts the lie to the propaganda of the Pro-choice advocates. “Safe” for them appears to be more of an abstraction or a slogan. Real safety doesn’t seem to interest them, or at least, it seems to threaten them.

Without a doubt, the victory in Texas is a sad and ironic one. Focusing on women’s safety is a fine goal in itself. But, what of the safety of the unborn children? Well, step by step we’ll make this journey to recapture of the hearts of our countrymen. As for the safety of women, fine, but half of all babies killed are female. Would that Pro-Choice advocates really care about the safety of all women and children.

Here at least is a step to further exposing the hypocrisy of many who cry “safe and legal.” Here at least is a step in seeing that women who are often pressured to have abortions are not easily subjected to the horrors of an under-regulated “industry.”

Irish Bishops’ briefing note on the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013

In ICBC

In recent days bishops have sent the following briefing note to deputies and senators on the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill 2013.  The briefing note highlights flaws in the abortion bill which is currently being debated in Oireachtas Éireann and explains that, if the abortion bill is enacted, it:

• will fundamentally alter the culture and practice of medical care in Ireland;
• accepts the premise that abortion is an appropriate response to suicidal ideation; and,
• creates serious moral, legal and constitutional conflicts in the area of freedom of conscience and religious belief.

 

1.      This Bill will fundamentally alter the culture and practice of medical care in Ireland. It provides a wide and at times subjective interpretation of the risk to the life of the mother, by which the life of an unborn child can be ended. This is clear because:

1. In the assessment of ‘a real and substantial’ risk to the life of the mother, whether arising from a medical situation or a threat of suicide, the explanatory memorandum to the Bill is clear that, ‘this risk does not need to be immediate nor inevitable’. This means that a risk which is ‘remote’ or ‘avoidable’ could trigger the death of an innocent and voiceless child in the womb;
2. At the same time, the assessment of risk is to be based on ‘reasonable opinion’, which in the words of the notes to the Bill, ‘means an opinion formed by the practitioner or committee, as the case may be, in good faith which has regard to the need to preserve unborn human life as far as practicable’. The phrase ‘in good faith’ is subject to wide interpretation;
3. In addition, Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 have been repealed, thereby giving doctors latitude to terminate pregnancy in a wider range of circumstances than heretofore. While the Bill makes it an offence to ‘intentionally destroy human life’, it explicitly excludes the possibility of such an offence for all terminations carried out under the Bill;
4. The Bill provides mechanisms of appeal for a mother to vindicate her right to life. However, it provides no mechanism of defence or appeal for the unborn. The Government claims vindication of the right to life of the unborn is provided by the legislative obligation on medical personnel to ‘have regard to’ the right to life of the unborn ‘as far as is practicable’. However, the Heads of Bill are clear that: “This emphasis on preserving unborn human life as far as practicable governs the actual medical procedure – the termination of pregnancy only and not whether there is a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother.” In other words, it applies only to the procedure carried out following the assessment of the risk to the life of the mother but not to the assessment of risk itself, upon which the decision to end the life of the unborn will be made.

Taken together, these aspects of the Bill mean that in practice the right to life of the unborn child is no longer treated as equal to that of the mother. This represents a fundamental shift in current medical culture and practice in Irish hospitals, which to date have provided some of the safest places in the world for a mother and her unborn child during pregnancy precisely because they were treated as two patients with an equal right to life.  The failure of this Bill to adequately vindicate the equal right to life of the unborn, in so many respects, provides grounds for a viable challenge to the Constitutionality of the Bill itself and that this ought to be pursued.

2.      The Bill accepts the premise that abortion is an appropriate response to suicidal ideation. This is contrary to substantial medical evidence.

1. The direct and intentional ending of the life of an unborn child, at any stage of pregnancy from the moment of conception, is never morally acceptable. What will happen if the unborn child is close to viability, say, at twenty two weeks? Would termination be postponed to give the child a greater chance of survival outside the womb? Who will advocate for the rights of the child in this situation? The Bill is silent on these matters.
2. Furthermore, where the unborn child is deemed viable, the Bill envisages the child being delivered prematurely in response to the suicidal ideation of the mother. Such premature delivery runs a high risk of serious and permanent damage to the health of the child. We are told that the child will then be placed into State care. How can such a foreseeable damaging and high risk medical procedure be reconciled with the Constitutional duty on the State (Article 42A) to ensure that in all decisions the welfare of the child shall be ‘the paramount consideration’ and with the provisions of Part 15 of the Criminal Justice Act 2006 on the Reckless Endangerment of Children?
3. A further very serious confusion exists in relation to the scope for “termination” in response to the risk of suicide. According to the interpretive notes to the Heads of the Bill: ‘In circumstances where the unborn may be potentially viable outside the womb, doctors must make all efforts to sustain its life after delivery. However, that requirement does not go so far as to oblige a medical practitioner to disregard a real and substantial risk to the life of the woman on the basis that it will result in the death of the unborn.’ It is legally possible to understand this note to mean that where the child is ‘potentially viable outside the womb’, but there is a real and substantial risk to the life of the mother based on suicidal ideation, a doctor may directly and intentionally intervene in a manner that ‘will result in the death of the [viable] unborn’. There are no time limits on such an intervention.

 

3.      The Bill also creates a number of serious moral, legal and Constitutional conflicts in the area of freedom of conscience and religious belief, notably:

1. The Bill provides for conscientious objection by ‘any medical practitioner, nurse or midwife’ only. It excludes others who may be obliged to co-operate in providing abortion services against their conscience or religious belief. This is in contrast to the wording of the proposed Protection of Human Life in Pregnancy Bill 2001, which provided for conscientious objection by ‘any person’ carrying out or assisting in an abortion. The operation of this clause is also unacceptable because it involves a form of co-operation in evil by obliging those who conscientiously object to knowingly put the patient in to the care of medical personnel who will carry out an abortion. In effect, therefore, medical personnel are being given no choice but to cooperate in an abortion. This is in contrast to the practice in many other countries which ask only that the patient be handed over to the care of other medical personnel. Limiting the scope of conscientious objection in this way is potentially in conflict with Article 44.2.3 of the Constitution, which states that: “The State shall not impose any disabilities or make any discrimination on the ground of religious profession, belief or status”, with the general direction of legal interpretation of Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights and with recent UK based cases such as Doogan & Anor v NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde Health Board [2013] ScotCS CSIH 36.
2. Article 44.2.3 also raises important questions of principle about the application of the Party Whip system to oblige members of the Oireachtas to vote in favour of this legislation, against their religious conscience. It may even open the possibility of a Constitutional challenge to the legislation itself on the basis of an un-constitutional legislative process.
3. The obligation on ‘appropriate institutions’ identified by the Minister to provide abortion services may be in conflict with existing legal arrangements and, in some cases with Article 44.2.5 of the Constitution, which states that: “Every religious denomination shall have the right to manage its own affairs, own, acquire and administer property, movable and immovable, and maintain institutions for religious or charitable purposes”.

A final question:  Was it possible to provide an adequate response to the European Court by means of justiciable professional guidelines which do not involve legislating for the direct and intentional killing of the unborn?

The questions posed above are substantial. They reflect the seriousness of the issues at stake.

Legislators should be free to exercise their conscience on this fundamental moral issue, in accordance with the principles of a free and democratic society and their express right as citizens under Article 44.2.3 of the Constitution.  No one should entrust the decisions of their conscience to another on issues like this which are, literally, matters of life and death.

Entrevista ao P. Miguel Cabral, MD, PhD, sobre o aborto e as gravidezes de risco

Entrevista ao Dr. João Paulo Malta sobre apoio a mães grávidas, contracepção, NaproTechnology

Aborto aumenta mortalidad materna y daña salud de mujeres, aseguran expertos ante ONU

NUEVA YORK, 08 Mar. 13 / 04:39 am (ACI/EWTN Noticias).- Expertos en medicina argumentaron en Nueva York ante la Comisión Jurídica y Social de la Mujer de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU), que el aborto incrementa la tasa de mortalidad materna y daña la salud de las mujeres.

Los especialistas, provenientes de diversas partes del mundo, afirmaron que el aborto no es necesario para promover la salud de las mujeres ya que en realidad la perjudica.

Además rechazaron las hipótesis de los que apoyan la expansión del aborto como “derecho”, enfatizando que en los embarazos, incluso aquellos considerados como de alto riesgo, no generan un conflicto entre las necesidades de la madre y las del niño.

La Dra. Donna J. Harrison, Directora de Investigación de la Póliza Pública de la Asociación Estadounidense de Obstetras y Ginecólogas Provida, conversó con ACI Prensa luego de su intervención ante la ONU el 6 de marzo.
 
Harrison enfatizó que “los verdaderos cuidados médicos disminuyen la tasa de mortalidad materna, el aborto en cambio no” y señaló que las píldoras abortivas originan “una alza en las complicaciones después del aborto. Son mucho más peligrosas”.
 
La experta recordó que para los que promueven el aborto "es mucho más fácil promover una píldora que el aborto quirúrgico” porque para los que realizan esta práctica es “más barato dársela a una mujer, que cuidar de ella quirúrgicamente o estar disponible para ella en caso se presentara alguna complicación".
 
Señaló asimismo que las píldoras, al no estar necesariamente bajo la supervisión de un médico, se administran libremente y sin haber examinado a la mujer “y sin ningún plan de seguimiento". Todo eso es lo que en realidad aumenta el riesgo de mortalidad.
 
La doctora subrayó que en países en vía de desarrollo, si se presentan complicaciones como hemorragia severa y abortos incompletos, “se convierten en muerte” porque la mujer no tiene la posibilidad de acceder a una atención de emergencia inmediata.
 
Otro de los especialistas que intervino ante la Comisión fue el Dr. Eoghan De Faoite, miembro de la Junta de la Comisión de Excelencia en la Salud Materna de Irlanda.
 
El médico criticó los ataques internacionales a la defensa de la vida a través de la prohibición del aborto en Irlanda y precisó que esta práctica no es un procedimiento médicamente necesario.
 
De Faoite dijo que Irlanda tiene una de las tasas más bajas de mortalidad materna en el primer mundo y que no han experimentado el "aumento de la mortalidad" que se ve en otros países occidentales que han legalizado el aborto.
 
Además citó varios estudios que afirman que no hay datos que sugieran que el aborto disminuye la mortalidad materna.
El Dr. Elard Koch del Centro de Medicina Embrionaria y la Salud Materna en Chile explicó a su turno que los datos que demuestran un aumento de la mortalidad materna cuando se ha legalizado el aborto en diversos países alrededor del orbe.
Koch sostuvo que la mortalidad materna se puede reducir con la educación, teniendo más técnicos especializados en la atención de partos.

Precisó que una de las medidas que debe promoverse es que las mujeres tengan acceso a centros higiénicos de salud con un personal altamente calificado, en vez del aborto como alternativa que solo daña a las mujeres.

Católica suspende pós-graduação após críticas de activistas antiaborto

In Público

A Universidade Católica Portuguesa (UCP) suspendeu uma pós-graduação na área da saúde mental que estava prestes a lançar e que teria como docentes e conferencistas várias personalidades que defenderam publicamente a interrupção voluntária da gravidez (IVG). 

A decisão foi tomada esta semana, depois de um grupo de activistas antiaborto ter criticado a instituição de ensino superior pela escolha destas individualidades, que no seu entender viola a doutrina da Igreja Católica relativamente ao aborto.

Em comunicado divulgado esta semana, o Movimento Mulheres em Acção sustenta que a Faculdade de Ciências Humanas daquela universidade está a lançar uma pós-graduação em Serviço Social na Saúde Mental, em parceria com a Associação dos Profissionais de Serviço Social, que terá como formadores e conferencistas “destacados e públicos opositores da posição da Igreja Católica sobre a inviolabilidade do valor e da dignidade da vida humana”.

Em causa estão, segundo o movimento, personalidades que “colaboraram notoriamente pelo 'sim'" no referendo sobre o aborto, casos de António Leuschner (presidente do Conselho Nacional de Saúde Mental), Álvaro de Carvalho (coordenador do Programa Nacional de Saúde Mental), Francisco George (director-geral da Saúde) e José Miguel Caldas de Almeida (director da Faculdade de Ciências Médicas de Lisboa).

Considerando que a universidade é “uma instituição da Igreja”, integrada na missão da Igreja, “enquanto serviço específico à comunidade eclesial e humana”, o movimento defende que devem “ser escolhidos docentes e investigadores que, além da idoneidade profissional, primem pela integridade da doutrina”, citando os estatutos da UCP.

O curso acabou por ser suspenso esta semana, logo após a tomada de posição das Mulheres em Acção. Para Álvaro de Carvalho, um dos especialistas que tinham sido contratados pela Católica para leccionar o novo curso, trata-se de uma situação lamentável e comparável a “uma atitude de ayatollahs no mundo muçulmano”.

A instituição de ensino superior justificou a suspensão da pós-graduação por “um lapso de tramitação formal no processo de aprovação interna, pelos órgãos legalmente competentes da faculdade”. Sem fazer qualquer referência às acusações das Mulheres em Acção, numa resposta enviada por escrito à Rádio Renascença, os responsáveis da Católica referem apenas que “o curso já não está a ser oferecido pela faculdade, e não irá sê-lo até que a proposta científica seja aprovada nos termos correctos”. Contactada nesta sexta-feira pelo PÚBLICO, Inês Romba, a responsável pelo gabinete de comunicação da Faculdade de Ciências Humanas da Católica, adiantou que “a universidade não irá fazer mais comentários sobre este assunto”.
  

Outras universidades interessadas

Para Álvaro de Carvalho, é difícil acreditar que não exista uma relação entre as críticas do movimento de activistas e a suspensão da pós-graduação que, apesar da “justificação formal”, estará assente numa “decisão profundamente ideológica”. “Estava tudo preparado para avançar, com financiamento assegurado e os convites feitos e aceites”, confirma ao PÚBLICO, acrescentando que ainda não recebeu qualquer comunicação formal da universidade quanto à suspensão do curso, que deveria iniciar-se em Fevereiro e tinha inscrições abertas até 25 de Janeiro.

“O assunto é grave. Trata-se da expressão de uma sociedade portuguesa e de um sectarismo inaudito”, considera Álvaro de Carvalho, que é o actual coordenador do Programa Nacional para a Saúde Mental. “Lamento que uma instituição universitária que respeito confunda de forma grave posições pessoais com perspectivas ideológicas e religiosas e com a actividade científica”, diz ainda.

De resto, o especialista adianta que sempre esteve e estará disponível para colaborar com todas as iniciativas científicas relacionadas com a saúde mental e acrescenta que esta pós-graduação era um importante contributo. Aliás, segundo adianta, existem já outras universidades interessadas em avançar com esta formação, que permite uma especialização dos assistentes sociais na área da saúde mental.

A suspensão da pós-graduação também já terá levado António Leuschner, outro dos docentes escolhidos, a cancelar a sua participação numa outra pós-graduação (Psicogeriatria) na mesma universidade.

Catholics and Depression - by CWR Staff

In CWR 

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, MD, is the author, with Msgr. John Cihak, STD, of the book, The Catholic Guide to Depression: How the Saints, the Sacraments, and Psychiatry Can Help You Break Its Grip and Find Happiness Again (Sophia Institute Press, 2012). Dr. Kheriaty is the Director of Residency Training and Medical Education in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, Irvine. He co-directs the Program in Medical Ethics in the School of Medicine, and serves as chairman of the clinical ethics committee at UCI Medical Center. Dr. Kheriaty graduated from the University of Notre Dame in philosophy and pre-medical sciences, and earned his MD degree from Georgetown University. Msgr. Cihak is a priest of the Archdiocese of Portland in Oregon who currently works in the Vatican. He helped to start Quo Vadis Days camps promoting discernment and the priesthood at the high school level that now operate in several U.S. dioceses. He has been a pastor and served in seminary formation. 

Their book “reviews the effective ways that have recently been devised to deal with this grave and sometimes deadly affliction — ways that are not only consistent with the teachings of the Church, but even rooted in many of those teachings.” The authors were recently interviewed by Carl E. Olson, editor of Catholic World Report, about the serious challenges posed by depression and how those challenges can be best addressed through faith, clinical science, and other means.
 
CWR: The topic of depression is fairly commonplace, but you note that there is no simple definition of "depression". What are some of the major features of depression? Is it just an emotional state, or more?
 
Dr. Kheriaty: Depression is more than just an emotional state, though of course it typically involves profound changes in a person’s emotions.  Sadness and anxiety are the most common emotional states associated with depression, though anger and irritability are also commonly found in depressed individuals.  Depression affects other areas of our mental and physical life beyond our emotions. Depressed individuals typically experience changes in their thinking, with difficulty concentrating or focusing, and a lack of cognitive flexibility.  Depressed individuals develop a kind of “tunnel vision” where their thoughts are rigidly and pervasively negative.  In many cases, suicidal thinking is present, driven by thoughts or feelings of hopelessness and despair.  A person with depression often feels physically drained, with low levels of energy, little or no motivation, and slowed movements. 

Another feature of depression is what psychiatrists called “anhedonia”, which is the inability to experience pleasure or joy in activities that the person would typically enjoy.  Sleep is often disturbed, and the normal sleep-wake cycle is disrupted.  

Changes in appetite are common, often with consequent weight loss or occasionally weight gain (in so-called “atypical depression”).  So we see that depression involves many mental and physical changes, and affects not just a person’s emotions, but also their physical health and their ability to think clearly and act in the world.

CWR: Christians sometime think, or are tempted to think, that depression is a sign of spiritual failure or evidence of a lack of faith. What are the problems with, and dangers of, such perspectives?

Dr. Kheriaty: The problem with this perspective is that it does not recognize that depression is a complex illness with many contributing factors.  While we acknowledge in The Catholic Guide to Depression that spiritual or moral factors can be among the causes, we also argue that there are many other factors that play a role in the development of depression, many of which are outside of the patient’s direct control – biological factors, genetic predispositions, familial and early attachment problems, interpersonal loss, traumatic experiences, early abuse, neglect, and so on.  If we attend only to the spiritual or moral factors, then we do the person a disservice by ignoring other important contributing elements that often play a significant role in depression.  With that said, the spiritual factors, and other behavioral factors within a patient’s control, should not be ignored either.  We wrote this book, in part, as a way to bring the medical, social, and biological sciences into dialogue with philosophy, theology, and Catholic spirituality, in order to gain a fuller and more comprehensive understanding of this complex affliction.  We hope that this multifaceted approach will help people more adequately address depression from all of these complementary perspectives.

Msgr. Cihak: I would completely agree. I think perhaps sometimes in our desire to get to the bottom of things, we can tend to oversimplify the situation. As Dr. Kheriaty said, there can be many contributing factors. The book reflects an intentionally Catholic approach by integrating the truths of medicine, philosophy and faith. We should keep the whole in mind as well as the deep connection between the body and the soul. In our respective vocations, we have both encountered people suffering from depression who actually manifest a strong faith, which they themselves might not be able to see, but which has been helping them to keep going in the tough times. That being said, we attempt to demonstrate in the book that our Faith has profound things to say about depression, its deepest theological origins, its redemption by Jesus Christ and its transformation in His Church.

CWR: Are psychiatry and Christian faith in opposition to one another? If not, how can Christians discern between the benefits of psychiatry and problematic theories, for example, Freudian or Jungian accounts of religious belief and human relationships?

Msgr. Cihak: Put simply, no. Since all truth has its ultimate origin in God, the Church has always taught that the truths of faith and the truths of reason can never contradict each other. On this point, we can appeal to giants such as St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure as well as the various pronouncements of the Magisterium such as Bl. John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio. Because of this common divine origin, we can say that all truths have an intrinsic unity; truth is symphonic. Put one truth next to another and they resonate with each other. Sound medical or psychological science, and Christian faith rightly understood and interpreted, are not and never have been in opposition. We see our task as Catholic thinkers to build bridges between these sciences, always maintaining their proper competencies and autonomy, and to search out these harmonies, confident that they are already there to be discovered.

Dr. Kheriaty: We should add, however, that at various points in the history of psychiatry, some psychiatrists have ventured beyond what medical science can legitimately claim, and have made anti-religious claims in the name of psychiatry, or masquerading under the banner of “science”.  For example, the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, famously claimed that religious belief was psychologically unhealthy – indeed, he called religion the “universal obsessive neurosis of mankind”.  But this claim had nothing to do with actual empirical research; it instead reflected Freud’s own personal bias against religion.  The elements of his theory upon which this claim supposedly relied were never scientific; that is, they could not be subjected to scientific measurement or empirical proof.  The fact is that more recent evidence from a large body of medical and scientific research has shown that for most people, religious and spiritual practices (like meditative prayer, attending church regularly, and participating in communal worship) actually have positive benefits on a person’s mental and physical health, including reducing the risk of depression and helping patients to recover more quickly from depressive episodes.

Our book is one attempt to help readers thoughtfully discern between the legitimate benefits of psychiatry and problematic theories that have sometimes been put forward in the name of psychiatry or psychology.  There are other Catholic writers, Paul Vitz for example, who have addressed these issues in some of their writings as well.  Certainly there is more work that needs to be done in this area by people that have expertise in both the medical and psychological sciences and in philosophical anthropology and spiritual theology.  We need ongoing academic research and dialogue here, as well as people who can “translate” this intellectual work into writing that is accessible to a lay audience.  We hope that our book can make a contribution to this dialogue.  We also hope that it will serve as a user-friendly and practical guide for people suffering from depression, as well as for therapists, clergy, spiritual directors, and family members or friends who are trying to help a loved one with depression.

CWR: Bl. John Paul II said (as you quote), "Depression is always a spiritual trial." What should Christians know about the relationship between depression and the spiritual life? How is the "dark night of soul" different from various forms of depression?

Dr. Kheriaty: Depression certainly affects our spiritual life, and our spiritual life is central to helping us prevent or recover from depression. Depression is indeed a spiritual trial because it wounds us so deeply – you could say that it is an affliction not just of the body but also of the soul.  Depression can make prayer feel impossibly hard (though prayer is always possible, even when affective consolations are absent, even when we are assailed by dryness or distraction). We can know, with certainty and confidence, that God is our loving Father, that he is close to us and that he sustains us, even through painful trials and periods of suffering in this life.  We know also, in faith, that our suffering is not pointless, but can be redemptive when united to the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.

Msgr. Cihak: Although depression can sometimes resemble on the surface other spiritual or moral states, like spiritual lukewarmness or acedia on one hand, or the dark nights of the senses and of the spirit described by St. John of the Cross on the other, we argue in the book that it is very important to distinguish carefully between depression and these states because these states mean different things. In the case of lukewarmness or acedia, it is a negative, bad trend in the spiritual life involving moral fault which results in weakening one’s movement toward the Lord. The dark nights are actually positive, good, grace-filled movements in the spiritual life bringing one into deeper intimacy with the Lord.

Dr. Kheriaty: Yes, exactly.  With careful and prudent discernment, these states of mind and soul can be distinguished.  For example, the dark night is typically not accompanied by the physical or bodily symptoms of depression, like sleep disturbances, appetite changes, or changes in one’s level of physical energy.  These distinctions can be made by consultation with a prudent spiritual director, ideally in conjunction with and communication with a sensitive psychiatric or medical assessment when symptoms of depression are present.  We describe these various states and distinguish them in some detail in The Catholic Guide to Depression; however, it’s also important to recognize that sometimes these states can appear together, so clean distinctions are often difficult in practice.  Depression can go hand-in-hand with acedia or spiritual lukewarmness; it may be sustained by behaviors that, wittingly or unwittingly, the afflicted person is engaging in, and which call for repentance and reform.

CWR: What are some reasons for people committing suicide? What are some of the challenges faced in dealing with those struggling with suicidal tendencies and impulses?

Msgr. Cihak: I think the first thing we must say is that suicide is awful. I think one of the more powerful parts of the book is Dr. Kheriaty’s discussion of one such tragedy. God is the sovereign Master of life. We are the stewards, not owners, of the life entrusted to us by Him. Suicide contradicts the natural human inclination to live, which is placed in us by the good God. So suicide is gravely contrary to the just love of self, love of neighbor and love of God. However, though it is always wrong, the Church teaches that conditions such as grave psychological disturbances, anguish, grave fear of hardship, or suffering can diminish one’s responsibility in committing suicide (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2280-2283).

Dr. Kheriaty: The reasons for a person’s suicide often remain a mystery, to a large extent.  Research on suicide suggests that it is typically an ambivalent and impulsive act.  The person’s rationality may be impaired by a serious mental illness, like depression or psychosis.  Often drug or alcohol abuse catalyze a suicide attempt, by making a vulnerable individual more impulsive and impairing his judgment.  Depression plays a central role in a majority of suicides, which is one of the chief reasons why we should recognize and treat depression early on in the course of the episode.  A central psychological theme of most suicidal individuals is a profound sense of hopelessness.  This is one of the reasons, as research has demonstrated, that Christian faith can significantly lower the risk of suicide: our faith raises our sites to a glorious future, beyond the vicissitudes of this life; in faith, we have hope for eternal life with God.  Faith, hope, and love can therefore help us endure situations in this life that might otherwise feel intolerable.

Suicide is, tragically, all too common.  It is now the second leading cause of death among college students, and the third leading cause of death among young people age 15 - 24.  Many family members and friends struggle for the rest of their lives with a sense of guilt and self-blame after the death of a loved one by suicide, wondering what they might have done to prevent it.  In my professional experience, some suicides can be prevented, and we should always do whatever we can to lower a person’s risk of suicide. That being said, there are some suicidal individuals who are very difficult to assist.  In these instances, we place these individuals prayerfully in the hands of God, as the Catechism states with pastoral sensitivity: “We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives.  By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance.  The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives” (2283).  And so should we.

CWR: What are some of the myths or misnomers regarding psychotherapy? And what basis exists for a Christian approach to psychotherapy?

Dr. Kheriaty: It seems in recent decades that the psychotherapist’s office has replaced the confessional in the Western world.  While it is true that the confession lines are all too short, and most of us, including those suffering from depression, would benefit from receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation more frequently, it is also true that the confessional is not meant to cure psychological disorders like depression.  Blessed John Paul II said as much in an address to psychiatrists when he said that the confessional is not and cannot be an alternative to the psychoanalyst or psychotherapist’s office, nor can one expect the Sacrament of Penance to heal truly pathological conditions.  He went on to say that the confessor, though he is a healer of souls, is not a physician or a healer in the technical sense of the term. In fact, if the condition of the penitent seems to require medical care, the confessor should not deal with the matter himself, but should send the penitent to competent and honest professionals. 

The relationship between psychotherapy and the Sacrament of Confession once again points to the need for constructive dialogue between religion and psychiatry, between priests who are instruments of Christ’s healing in the confessional, and psychiatrists and other therapists who are instruments of Christ’s healing in psychotherapy.  Neither one can or should try to replace the work of the other.  Psychotherapy has its limitations, and therapy alone cannot cure our deepest wounds, but it can play an important role in the lives of many people in need of psychological healing.

Msgr. Cihak: Another way of stating this truth is that no amount of psychotherapy can take away sin or the guilt that comes from sin.  For this, we need conversion and Sacramental Confession.  On the other hand, while we never presume to limit the way in which God works, the grace of the Sacrament and the counsel given in the confessional (which by necessity is usually very brief), isn’t designed to work directly on the deep and habitual patterns of thinking and feeling that are the focus of treatment in psychotherapy. In fact, by respecting the competence and autonomy of each of these two ways of healing, they can come together to work powerfully in a person’s life. We made the deliberate choice to work together on this book—one a psychiatrist and the other a priest—precisely to show how this Catholic approach can be so effective.

Dr. Kheriaty: I’ll add a few remarks regarding your question about a Christian basis for psychotherapy.  A Christian approach to psychotherapy does not just mean that the therapist quotes Bible verses when offering counsel (though of course, this may be helpful in some circumstances).  Rather, it informs the entire approach to the patient in therapy, which seeks to know and heal the person in a way consonant with the person’s nature as a human being.  All therapists can recognize some foundational truths about the human person, by the light of reason and sound science: that the human person is a substantial unity of body and soul; that he is rational (able to grasp truth), relational (made for relationships of love and self-giving), and free to pursue the good.  A Christian therapist, moreover, by the light of revelation, can also perceive that the human person is created good, though fallen and therefore wounded, but also redeemed and capable of being sanctified by God.  This is the philosophical and theological framework within which a Catholic therapist approaches his or her work.  These characteristics, unfortunately, are often denied or contradicted by many modern and overly narrow psychological theories that do not take into account the full truth about the human person, but instead attempt to reduce the person to one or another aspect only.  This may allow for partial truths and insights to emerge, but such a reductionistic approach ultimately prevents one from seeing the full and marvelous truth about the human person as created and redeemed by God.

Msgr. Cihak: As people can see from what Dr. Kheriaty said, psychotherapy has everything to do with the big questions of human life, and therefore has everything to do with philosophy and theology. Psychotherapy is basically applying philosophical and theological insights to the way we think, feel and approach life. It is fundamentally a human science. Psychotherapy can benefit from the full truth of the human person that comes from the philosophical and theological tradition of the Church; and this same tradition can benefit from way these ideas actually come to bear on a person’s life in psychotherapy.

CWR: What are some of the spiritual disorders that lead to depression?

Msgr. Cihak: I think we could begin by observing that sin creates misery. Moral evil is not simply a bad idea; it harms and ruins peoples’ lives. The fundamental spiritual disorder is the choice of sin, which if left unchecked becomes habitual and begins to corrupt and even destroy that vital relationship with the Lord of life who desires our fulfillment and happiness. So being immersed in serious sin can certainly lead one to or hold one in a depressive state.

Dr. Kheriaty: Precisely.  I will mention as well the sin of despair, which is contrary to the virtue of hope, and commonly leads to depressive states.  Also envy, which is a form of sadness at another person’s good, can also incline one toward depression.  Spiritual lukewarmness or coldness in relation to the things of God, and what George Weigel has called “metaphysical boredom”, a sort of spiritual ennui, can put a person at risk for depressive or anxious states.  Atheism, especially in the face of death, can lead ultimately to despair or a denial of reality.  A person faces his own mortality, yet lacks a transcendental hope or a spiritual reference point, will often resort to desperate attempts to control the timing and circumstances of his death, or to avoid suffering at all costs.  We see this in the push for physician-assisted suicide, for example.  The world is chock full of dead end paths that lead a person away from ultimate and lasting happiness.  Not all spiritual disorders lead to clinical depression, but all spiritual disorders ultimately lead toward unhappiness of one form or another.

CWR: How can the saints and the sacraments bring freedom from anxiety and depression?

Msgr. Cihak: The saints show the life of Christ to be real, concrete and possible.

Dr. Kheriaty: Well said.  When we look to the saints for help with depression, it’s important to remember that every one of the saints was a person of flesh and blood, just like us.  Each of them had defects that they had to struggle to overcome.  Too many overly pious biographies of saints gloss over the messy aspects of their life and omit their defects or vulnerabilities, as though these people were sanctified from birth – as though they were made from fundamentally different “stuff” than the rest of us.  These well-intentioned books ought to be tossed in the trash bin.  The saints were real people.  They fought and won; they fought and lost.  But the thing that made them saints is that when they were defeated by their own weaknesses, they got up again, brushed themselves off, and with God’s grace, they went back into the fray to fight again.  Many of them suffered from depression or other severe mental illnesses at various points in their journey of life.  With God’s grace they finished the race, they kept the faith.  The saints can, through their friendship and their intercession, help us also to fight the battles against our own defects and weaknesses, to struggle and persevere on those days that feel messy, where nothing seems to be going right.  They know; they’ve been there too.  And from Heaven they are cheering us on to victory.

Msgr. Cihak: If the saints make the divine life a real possibility and a concrete invitation to imitate, then the Sacraments are the primary way that the divine life is communicated to us. Jesus does nothing superfluous, and so the Sacraments that He instituted should be of paramount importance to the Christian. Immersing ourselves in the sacramental life, as well as cultivating a life of prayer and virtue, is what we call “the ordinary means of sanctification”. These means can be of great help in resisting and recovering from mental illness, including depression. It is important to remember that the primary aim of the graces of the Sacraments is to accomplish the work of salvation in us, but we ought not to overly compartmentalize the effects of grace given the unity of the human person. Grace can also accomplish physical and mental healing when it is part of God’s plan for us. In any case, the Lord’s grace is always good for us.

CWR: Therapy, you note, cannot uncover the most important truths about the human person. What is the foundational truth that must be appropriated in order that we might be whole and healed?

Msgr. Cihak: God desires our happiness. We were made in His very image and called to become like Him. We were created to live with the Blessed Trinity forever and to have our humanity become fully illuminated and enlivened by the divine life. This happens through Jesus Christ, the one and only Savior of the world. Because of sin, the path to that destiny is marked by the Cross. So every follower of Christ will have difficulties and struggles in this earthly life. Sometimes struggling against depression is part of one’s conformity to the Cross of Christ, which always leads to everlasting life. By union with Christ, in the end, He will form us by the power of His grace to be like Him, truly Godlike.

Dr. Kheriaty: Here is another way of saying the same thing: the most important truth about us is truth of our divine filiation – the marvelous truth that God is my loving Father.  In Christ the Son, my Savior, I am an adopted son or daughter of God.  Each day we should try to go deeper into the meaning of this truth for our lives.  The fact that God is my loving Father is not just one more fact among many; it is, so to speak, the lens through which I should view everything else in my life and in the world.  God loves me more intensely and more affectionately than all the fathers and mothers of this world love their children.  He is close to me, so very close, “more inward to me than I am to myself,” in St. Augustine’s mysterious formulation.  Not only did he create me, in love he sent his own Son to redeem me from sin, from death, and from despair.  Jesus Christ, who is our brother, our friend, our Savior and our God, says to us now what he said to his apostles the night before he died: “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy” (Jn 16:20), and he assures us, “In the world you will have tribulation, but take courage, for I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33).