Procreation, creation, and IVF

Ryan T. Anderson posted a fascinating article on Catholic arguments against IVF. Pope Benedict has just called on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to articulate for the Church "the great values at stake, and providing the faithful, and all men and women of good will, with ethical and moral principles and guidelines for these new and important questions.”

There are two principles in Catholic sexual ethics that the CDF must keep in mind: “(a) unconditional respect for the human being as a person from conception to natural death; (b) respect for the originality of the transmission of human life through the acts proper to spouses.”

Anderson notes the parallels between Benedict's call and the work done by Paul VI prior to Humanae Vitae's publication: new reproductive technology arises, the Church must apply Christ's "eternal truths" to new moral quandaries in which the faithful find themselves.

You will remember that Humanae Vitae--the 1968 encyclical definitively condemning artificial contraception--came rather as a shock to the hierarchy as well as to the laity. One can easily see the CDF's forthcoming response to IVF, the manufacture of "three-parent" embryos, etc... to be equally shocking.

On one level, I can sympathize with infertile couples seeking to conceive their own biological children. Thus far, Catholic teaching has largely been articulated in terms of "treating the child as a someone, not a something." The couple desperately trying to conceive will respond: "We certainly will receive this child as a person. We don't see it as another possession--that's why we're so desperate." The connection between what our actions say objectively ("I will create life that belongs to me!") and what we're feeling emotionally and in relationships ("This child is its own person, of course!") is simply not clear to us in our fallen condition.

Similarly, arguing from consequences--however right your prediction may turn out to be--usually fails to move hearts. The Church puts herself--again, necessarily--in the role of "harbinger of dire warning." Sometimes, this is necessary. But is there another way? Are there arguments against IVF and embryo-manufacture that stem from the very act of procreation itself? Is there something about the sexual relationship that says to all men of good will, "This is how we are meant to come into being?"

Anderson suggests several lines of argument the CDF may take:

"Paul VI [in Humanae Viate] did not rest his argument on predicted consequences alone. He proposed that the connection between the procreative and unitive aspects of the marital act is both natural and divinely ordained. But he did not give us much of an argument as to why these have to be united and how we know that fact. One argument might focus on a philosophical anthropology: the natural ends of the body and the proper function of the sex organs. Another line of argument might focus on the goods of human flourishing at stake in contraception and IVF and how only a sexual act open to life protects those goods. When we use contraception, we orient ourselves against the good of life itself—and, in the same way, when we use IVF to create a new human being, we treat that being solely as a means to our own purposes."

Like Anderson, I favor the latter approach, always remembering that it is not arguments that will convince infertile couples. It is the cross.

But I do "get" this.

Here is an article from The Hudson Review on J.S. Bach. It's rather long, but I love the ideas:

"When we hear “Mozart” or “Beethoven,” we think of a person behind the music. When we hear “Bach,” we think of music only."

The composer has become so phantasmal, but his music speaks eternal truths.

I have to include this on the blog, because my Profile says that Shakira and J.S. Bach are my two favorite musicians. That's like saying that Jesus Christ and The Scientist Dad are my two favorite men. The distance between them is infinite.

Lest anyone think I am being flippant, here is an article on Shakira to prove my devotion and that "infinite distance." Or you could just listen to some Brandenberg concertos.

I just don't...

...get it.

Finit!

The thesis defense is done, and the Master's is a fait accompli!

How did it go? It went smashingly. I realized about three weeks previous that I had hardly had a philosophical discussion with anyone save The Scientist Dad in over a year. This, as you may imagine, made me rather nervous to attempt a philosophical discussion with three of my most-admired profs. But it all came flooding back in a wave of Pascalian raptures.

It ended on an uplifting note: My advisor recalled her favorite Pascal image. Imagine, if you will, a cave filled with people. Every day several are taken (at random) out of the cave and beheaded. Those left in the cave, instead of preparing for their inevitable end, divert themselves to the point of indifference.

This is human life, says Pascal. This is the human condition. Resist it.

Very Lenten. Very dark. And yet, is it not true?

The Chair of Peter

Somehow "chair" makes me think--not of the golden throne in St. Peter's--but of his final seat on this earth: the inverted cross. Ave crux!

Tomorrow.

I will be done. (Deo gratias.) Feeling very grumpy about Pascal, Descartes, and the whole stinkin' lot. And very glad that I have all the resources of the Church to shore up the glooms.

"You have no idea how much nastier I would be if I was not a Catholic. Without supernatural aid I would hardly be a human being." -- Evelyn Waugh

Amen.

Capybaras, beavers, and other fish

Apparently, some time ago, the Vatican gave permission for the poor of Venezuela to eat capybara on Fridays in Lent. The large rodent being, I assume, sufficiently non-meaty to count as a penitential meal. Wikipedia has confirmed such reports, but I'm still looking for proof that water-dwelling mammals in general are acceptable! Beavers seem quite capybara-ish.

Before you get yer dander up, the whole "fish Fridays" thing is not some ploy to subsidize the fishing industry. It's an opportunity to forgo celebratory foods in memory of the Passion and in solidarity with the poor. Meat has traditionally been an expensive food, and to give it up is a sign of this remembrance. I cannot think of a better way to express poverty than a good rodent chili.