Category Archives: Abortion

The Tyranny of Sophistry

Abortion, Culture, Marxism, Science, , , , , ,

In his book Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power, Thomist philosopher Josef Pieper comments that the battle against sophistry is a perennial problem.  Satan’s primordial sophistry escaped the gates of Eden and has plagued mankind ever since.  Progress, especially when it is not matched by moral progress, only causes sophistry to grow.  Sophistication, Pieper says, usually entails greater degrees of sophistry.  What the sophist seeks to do is to shut down all pursuit of the truth by playing with words, usually by inventing catch-phrases that slide off a forked tongue and convey some half-truth that is cleverly dressed up as the whole truth.  It is most certainly an abuse of language; for the proper use of language is to convey ideas and tell the truth.  But sophistry uses language in order to manipulate people.

The Sophistry of Today

The problem of sophistry in our own age is particularly acute.  You might say that we are living under the tyranny of sophistry in which any objection to a sophist shibboleth is met by stupefied hostility.  “Pro-choice”: how could you not be in favor of a woman’s right to choose?  “Black lives matter”: so, you think Black lives don’t matter?  The objection is not with the half-truth, but with the half-falsehood that is dressed up by the slogan.  In other words, the objection is with the sophistry that manipulates language to hide what is really going on. 

In general, we should all be pro-choice, but in particular it totally depends on what the object of choice is.  If you are choosing to kill an innocent baby, then no, in fact we should not “Pro-choice”.  Of course, Black lives matter.  But what the honest person objects to is dressing up the Marxist aims of the further destruction of Black lives and society as a whole in this truth.  It is sophistry plain and simple.  And anyone who insists otherwise is a language tyrant.

Following the Science

There is a new slogan that is being peddled by the tyrant—“follow the science”.  Science is a great weapon in the hand of the sophisticated tyrant because it can be made to say anything you want it to say.  It is presented as somehow being about objective truth gathered by running controlled experiments in an unbiased setting.  The  method may be reliable, but the scientist himself is a fallen human being.  He is prone to biases, lapses in attention, ignorance, faulty design and even outright lying.  It does not help that his so-called peers who review his work also suffer from the same inherent problems.  It is also not immune to the “Cancel Culture” with many scientists handcuffed by a cultural confirmation bias.  All of this leads to what scientist Stuart Ritchie in his book Science Fictions: How Fraud, Bias, Negligence, and Hype Undermine the Search for Truth calls a “replication crisis” in modern science.  Experiments are run all the time.  But the true test is when an experiment is replicated.  Almost none of the so-called “science” has been replicated and very often is exposed as flawed when honest scientists attempt to do so.  Like Ritchie we should not be anti-science but instead to use it in a manner that discovers the truth without succumbing to the sophist’s tactic of inventing it.

As I said, science is a powerful tool in the arsenal of the sophisticated tyrant because it can be used to say whatever they want it to say.  Herein lies the half-falsehood found within “following the science”.  Science itself can never lead to certainty.  To assert otherwise is to turn science into a religion that must be governed by faith.  “Follow the science” is a credal statement.

Why is it that science can never lead to certainty?  In short, science, because it deals in material being, always deals with contingencies and therefore only leads to contingent truth.  The truth of what is being asserted always depends on certain conditions also being true.  The point is that when “Science” is presented as certain, without any discussion upon the conditions in which the thing also depends, it is a manipulation. 

Take, for example, the contention that “masks work”.  This is most certainly not an absolute.  What are the conditions under which they work?  To mandate mask wearing without any reference to the conditions under which they work, is not about safety but control.  If you want to keep people safe, then you will school them in the art of wearing the mask.  If you want to control them then any mask will do.  Likewise, the push for vaccination.  What are the conditions under which the vaccines “work”?  What are the conditions under which they don’t, or might even be harmful?  Are we to believe that a vaccine was developed at warp speed that covers every contingency?  To say they are “safe and effective” without observing a multitude of contingencies is not science but scientism.  To even mention those contingencies is sacrosanct and will likely get you censored. 

Science can say whatever I want it to say simply by playing with those contingencies.  I simply design my experiment so that it leads to a positive result.  Then I get peers to agree with the way it was run—never mind that these peers also have a vested interest in toeing the party line.  If it leads to a negative result anyway, I simply put it in the file cabinet.  Whenever you hear some scientific “fact” presented in some absolute manner, always seek the contingencies.  Who or what does this apply to?  When doesn’t it apply?  When someone tells you that it applies across the board, they are presenting something that has some degree of uncertainty as certain.  We may be willing to accept that degree of uncertainty and treat the proposition as true, but it is not anti-science to demand further uncertainty be removed.  But either way, certainty will never be achieved.

In classical Greece, the sophists threatened to take over society until the likes of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle stepped in.  They were unafraid to call sophistry what it was.  But that was not enough for them.  They also rescued the victims of sophistry by teaching them how to reason.  Perhaps in our own sophisticated age, we could do the same.

An Act of Charity?

Abortion, Bioethics, Science, , , , , ,

In the last post, it was discussed that an evolutionary paradigm, motivated by a spirit of transhumanism that was at the heart of the development of the new delivery methods for so-called vaccines.  It was also mentioned in passing how much of the debate so far as centered upon the question of the use of aborted fetal tissues in both the testing (Moderna and Pfizer) and delivery (AstraZeneca and Johnson and Johnson).  Despite this connection to abortion, there are many in the Church that have reasoned that it is morally licit and perhaps even laudatory to receive the vaccine.  In this post, we will discuss why it is neither and we should avoid these and all abortion tainted vaccines.

As usual, the devil is in the details—except this time, the Devil really is in the details.  The four current vaccines all make use of fetal cell lines originating in an aborted child.  Moderna, Pfizer, and AstraZeneca all used cells derived from the HEK293 cell line while the Johnson and Johnson used cells from the PER-C6 line.  These came from different children; the former came from the kidney (HEK=Human Embryonic Kidney, one can imagine that it was not the only sample since it has the number 293,even if it is the most “fruitful” of the collection) of a child in 1973 and the latter from the retina of a child in 1985.  The degree to which each of these vaccines is tainted by the evil of abortion is certainly different.  Although whether this is morally relevant or not is open to discussion.  Before getting to that however, it is good to ponder just what we mean when we say it is tainted by abortion.

The Devil Is in the Details

Most of us would have difficulty imagining how these cell lines are gathered.  Perhaps we might think that a bunch of abortions are performed and they have a bunch of tissue left over that they then sell to harvesters and researchers.  Or maybe we think that the harvester went door to door at abortion mills and ask if they had any extra tissue around.  In truth however the harvester must have arranged a priori, presumably through informed consent of the mother, to gather the cells from the child at the time of the abortion.  Like regular organ donation, fetal organ donation must be fresh in the sense that the live tissue would be preserved right as the abortion is happening.  It might also be that the child is removed along with the womb and kept alive until the harvesting could occur at some secondary site.  The point is that the developer wasn’t just some opportunist, but absolutely complicit in the abortion.  He arranges with both the abortionist and the mother beforehand and does nothing to stop it at the time. Presumably, there is compensation both to the abortionist and the mother, meaning that he has actually encouraged it.

But it isn’t just the abortion that is the problem now.  The developer of the line commits a further evil when he keeps the child alive and harvests his or her organs.  Let that settle in—a child is removed from (or with) his mother’s womb, possibility refrigerated and then, while still living, has his organs removed.  This is the stuff of Mengele’s dreams.  The evils now begin to multiply.  The researcher, because he demands the cell lines for testing, may or may not be cooperating with the abortion, is most certainly cooperating and complicit in organ harvesting.  So while we might be able to say there is a moral difference between simply using the cell line for testing versus using it for delivery, it is not a difference in degree but in number.  Any researcher that uses the cell line formally cooperates in the organ harvesting.      

In order to avoid the reductio ad Hitlerum accusation, it is important to discuss the reference to Josef Mengele.  Regardless of the usefulness of the results and the data, everyone agrees that to use data from any of his experiments is unethical.  This is because the way in which these experiments were conducted was so evil that conscience forbids the use of the results.  Certainly a Catholic conscience should shudder at having anything to do with abortion and organ harvesting tainted vaccines, regardless to what degree a given Pharmaceutical Company used them.  Some actions such as harvesting organs from innocent, living pre-born children is so evil that there is no good that would justify using them.  As the former abortionist Bernard Nathanson said, “it is impossible to separate the issue of abortion from the use of the tissue obtained therefrom.”

Appropriation vs Cooperation

This is why framing the use of these vaccines only in terms of cooperation is incomplete at best.  Cooperation with some act in the past is almost always remote.  Appropriation, that is, whether we can reap the fruits of someone else’s past evil act in the present is another question.  We might not cooperate to the evil of abortion and organ harvesting, but that does not automatically mean we are free to benefit from it.  For example, suppose I buy a bike that I later find out was stolen.  I am obligated to return that bike to its rightful owner, regardless of whether I actually cooperated with its theft and regardless of how desperately I need the bike. 

The theft of the bike is illustrative because in a very real way the organs have been stolen from these children.  Once we become aware of that fact, we must make restitution by returning them to their rightful owner, God by providing them with a proper burial.  This is why it is always an act of charity to bury a person.  When these aborted children were murdered, in justice they must be buried and as long as they remain unburied, the evil is ongoing.  While we may not have the means to gather up all the remains from this child, we most certainly have no right to benefit from their murder and dismemberment.

This is why the two vaccines, Johnson and Johnson and AstraZeneca, that deliver the vaccine through cultures grown in the cell line (that will contain a part of the child’s body, namely their DNA) must be avoided.  There is no question as to whether if there is a grave enough cause or not. It is a clear violation of justice.  The other two vaccines currently on the market, might be justified for an extremely grave reason.  I say might because it is hard to imagine that given the evil that has been done to the unborn persons anyone would in good conscience be willing to do so.

What is clear is that receiving any of these vaccines can not be reduced to an act of charity nor as an obligation to the common good.  Charity is a love of God and love of neighbor for His sake.  It cannot be an act of charity to compromise with evil or reap the fruits of a gravely evil action.  Furthermore, the common good must work for the good of every member of a society.  For the vaccines to truly be instruments of the Common Good, then the goods attached to them must flow back over even the unborn members of society. Clearly, these vaccines are prejudiced against some of the unborn.

In closing it is worth mentioning that the Church’s teaching that focuses on the principle of cooperation has truly backfired.  There are many cases in which a child (or an adult with the COVID vaccines) receives a “a vaccine which was developed using cell lines of illicit origin” when there is no serious “danger to health.”  Not surprisingly the “the duty to make known their disagreement and to ask that their healthcare system make other types of vaccines available” (c.f. Donum Vitae, 8) has fallen upon deaf ears.  We are currently 0 for 4 on the COVID vaccines and there is no reason to think that will change.  Perhaps if, and this would need to happen from the top, Catholics en masse refused the Covid vaccines, then we wouldn’t be in this moral quandary. 

Evolution and the COVID-19 Vaccine

Abortion, Anthropology, Bioethics, Evolution, , , , , , ,

It has been noted on a number of occasions on this site, the bait and switch that those wedded to scientific materialism use to sell their evolutionary worldview.  They use the term Evolution in such an elastic manner that it is refute.  Only the most narrow-minded Fundamentalist would fail to see evolution in action in even the tiniest bacteria that grows resistant to antibiotics.  Darwin himself used the example of finches on the Galapagos islands with their varying adaptive beak lengths.  In short, the fact that there is abundant evidence of limited variation within species does not allow us to conclude that finches turned into something else.  This grand claim does not follow from the smaller claim.  In fact, the smaller claim fits perfectly well with the Biblical notion that God created various kinds of creatures.  But this foundation of limited variation (or what we might call microevolution) is not strong enough to carry the weight of Macroevolution.  In fact, intellectually honest scientists all admit that limited variation is little more than a prop for Evolution because there is no currently accepted mechanism among scientists by which, even given long time periods, one kind becomes another.  The insistence that the evolutionary claim is true, despite no solid evidence, is really meant to be a smokescreen that scientists are actually not as sure as they present themselves to be.  This smokescreen is necessary because it is really because Evolution is a philosophy and not about science at all.

Humanism and the Evolutionary Smokescreen

For evidence of this we need look no further than the ongoing Covid crisis.  Under the microevolutionary model, we should expect that as time goes on, different variants of Covid-19 would tend to be more contagious and less deadly.  Why is that?  Because of survival of the fittest.  Those variants which are able to spread easier while not killing their host, would naturally be selected.  Viruses that are deadly, even if they are highly contagious, simply don’t last because they kill their host.  Assuming that the numbers are accurate, this is precisely why we are currently seeing an uptick in “cases” while the attributed deaths are in decline.  This is exactly what should be expected according to the microevolutionary model.

Why then, if we are following the “science” should we have terror in our hearts for the new variants?  Because science, even when it fits the evolutionary narrative, always takes a backseat to philosophy.  The philosophy that is propped up by scientific evolution is humanism and when science is not useful then it must be discarded or ignored. 

Humanism represents a catch-all philosophical school in which man is the measure of all things.  All forms of it end up in the deification of man and the de-deification of God.  It is at the heart of the not-so-modern attempt to fulfill the promise that “you will be like God”.  Buttressed by the view that man has evolved from bacteria rather than as a Special Creation from the hand of God, it professes that man is at the pinnacle of reality.  Every problem, every limitation, natural or not, can be overcome by human reason aided by technology.

Humanism and the Vaccine

It is this viewpoint that causes the oligarchs to set aside actual science in pursuit of their humanistic ambitions.  If the evolutionary truth that the virus is losing some of its power gets out, then people will not get the “vaccine” which is, in a very real way, the next step in humanism’s evolution of man. 

I put vaccine in scare quotes because what is currently being pedaled as a vaccine isn’t a vaccine, at least in the traditional sense of the term. Vaccines are artificial attempts to trigger the body to act in a natural way, enabling it to defend itself when it encounters the wild-type virus.  There are various schools of thought as to whether this triggering of the immune response works, but its goal is to keep you from getting sick using the natural processes of the body.

The new mRNA vaccines, at least according to the manufacturers, are altogether different.  Rather than acting as vaccines, they are akin to gene therapies.  They do not keep the person from getting the virus but instead attempt to stimulate them to create it.  More specifically, it injects a strand of artificial mRNA into the person that causes them to create the S1 spike protein.  In short, it has your body create the very toxin that normally makes it sick.  The hope is that your body will become “familiarized” with the protein and not have as strong of an immune response when it encounters it in the wild.

The details matter not just from a health standpoint but also from a moral and anthropological standpoint.  The ongoing debate in the Church about the moral obligation to receive these vaccines and their complicity in abortion is mostly a red herring.  And not just because these are not vaccines in the traditional sense, but they also represent an attempt at transhumanism.  Coaxing the body to produce something that is not natural is simply an attempt to modify human nature.  It is not in accord with the nature of man to make spike proteins.  This power of making spike proteins, in other words, goes beyond (trans) human nature.  And the Church has always taught that such attempts to alter human nature, either temporarily or permanently, is a grave evil.   

Summarizing then we can say that these “vaccines” even if they didn’t rely on aborted fetal cells would still be wrong.  Catholics should recognize that they are thinly veiled attempts at transhumanism and the Church should condemn them for what they are.  Unfortunately, the pandemic of humanism has even infected many in the Church as well.

It is an evolutionary mindset that is behind this attempt.  If random selection is true, then tinkering with human nature itself is not only licit, but laudatory.  It is simply speeding up man’s ultimate deification through evolution. As Harvard University Paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson once said, “The fact that man knows he evolves entails the possibility that he can do something to influence his own biological destiny. The fact that uncontrolled evolution often leads to denegeneration and usually to extinction makes it highly advisable that man take a hand in determining his own future.”

This understanding of reality, in which man is “nothing but” a collection of cells arranged by natural selection, means that it is possible to manipulate man’s production of certain cells, without upsetting the rest of the body.  This paradigm ultimately does great harm to the whole person because the body is not just a conglomeration of parts, but an integrated whole designed by God. If the vaccine ultimately doesn’t work then it really doesn’t matter because the more fit will survive either way.  There is no way to lose because it has moved evolution chain ever upward to man’s deification.

The Religion of the Antichrist

Abortion, Church, Church and State, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, Devils, End Times, Marxism, Spiritual Warfare, , , , , , , , ,

When the wall separating east from west in Berlin fell, millions of people were freed from the shackles of Communism in Eastern Europe and Russia.  The man who was instrumental in this happening, St. John Paul II, saw it as part of his divine mandate to facilitate this monumental event.  But as a Catholic who had a great devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, he knew that was not the end of the story.  Russia had spread her errors practically unabated for 75 years; reaching even into our own country.  These errors were not Communism itself, but instead the ideology that underlies it—Marxism.  Marxism is alive and well and is poised to become a global religion through the likes of not just China’s hegemonic aspirations, but the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, WHO’s universal healthcare plan (led by Marxist Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus), Black Lives Matter and a whole host of other organizations.

A Global Religion?

To call Marxism a global religion, may, at first glance, seem to be an exaggeration.  Of course, properly speaking, it is not a religion at all.  Religion is always ordered to God which means that there can be only one true global religion.  It is the one founded by God Himself in the Catholic Church.  But the Devil is always on the prowl to ape Christ including by forming his own global religion.  Marxism is the “religion” of choice and should properly be seen as the religion of the Antichrist.

That Marx himself was under demonic influence can hardly be disputed.  Several of his biographers, many of whom are sympathetic to his cause, have mentioned this.  Paul Kengor, in his new book The Devil and Karl Marx, does a thorough job of compiling the case for Marx’s diabolical connections.  Viewed in this way, it also helps to understand the beguiling effect that Marxism has on a lot of people because of its inherent power of mass Demonic Oppression.  The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council were aware of this as they included several schemas on “The Care of Souls with Regard to Christians Infected with Communism” in their preparatory documents.  Unfortunately, these schemas never saw the light of day and would have been a great aid in fighting an “invention so full of errors and delusions.”

The Great Imitation

Besides the global aspirations of Marxism, there are other, more insidious ways in which it will imitate the true religion.  In taking on human flesh in the Incarnation, Christ sought to both repair and elevate human nature making it capable of sharing in the Divine Nature.  In simplest terms, Marxism is an attempt to fundamentally transform human nature through the instruments of politics and culture.  It may have failed to control economics, but that was not the end of it.  Using the Sexual Revolution, Cultural Marxists have been wildly successful in “transforming” human nature in the sexual realm.  No longer does human nature thrive through monogamous marriage, the family, and private property.  Parents are not uniquely suited to mold their children according to their nature, but instead human nature is malleable and should be molded into the image deemed useful by the State.  Free will, the mark of the Divine image in man (c.f. CCC 1704-1705), is an illusion and replaced through conditioning according to their social structure (or through the correction of “Unconscious Bias” as the remains from obsolete social structures and implemented through “Corporate Training”). 

Christianity worships Christ Who made Himself a victim for our sins (c.f. 2 Cor 5:21) while Marxism worships the Victim Class.  Man’s nature is not social and marked by complementarity but instead is competitive.  It is to be informed by the narrative of oppressor versus oppressed.  There is a never-ending search of the new victim class in order to keep the worship going.  Virtuous men and women, those who are most like God are scorned and those who have been intersected by the most “axes of oppression” are exalted. 

Finally, just as Catholics offer the blood of the Innocent Lamb of God to the Father, Marxists offer the blood of innocent children through abortion to the Devil.  Marxism and abortion are always a package deal because Marxism, like all religions, needs to offer sacrifice.  The Devil throughout history has always demanded the blood of the innocent in sacrifice.  Marxism in all its instantiations always includes abortion.  It was Russia that became the first country to legalize abortion in 1920 and thanks to the Marxist feminists of the 1960s, the United States followed suit.  You can often identify a Marxist by how insistent they are that abortion is a “right”.

The Spirit of Christ animates the Christian religion and so the spirit of the antichrist animates the religion of Marxism.  The globalists who seek a One World Order are Marxists at heart.  Once a critical mass is met, then the world will be ready for the antichrist.  This is not an inevitability however and so Catholics must fight against Marxism in all its manifestations.  The Church was once instrumental in fighting Communism, but now it too has been infected with Marxists.  We need to pray that Christ will once again cleanse the Temple by setting his sights not on the money changers but the Marxists.  We have Our Lady of Fatima on our side and we can fight its spread through the First Saturday Devotion.  We can also zealously combat the errors where we see them and educate ourselves on this most pernicious enemy because there is one other thing the religion of the antichrist does—seeks to wipe out the believers of the True Faith.

Politcal Parties and Cooperation with Evil

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At the beginning of 1931, the German Bishops collectively excommunicated members of the Nazi party and barred all Catholics in Germany from joining.  The excommunication did not extend to those who voted for Nazis, but only those who joined the party.  This ban was put in place even though not all the party platform was evil.  In fact, there were certain policies that were in accord with the Common Good.  Nevertheless, the party protected and promoted certain intrinsic evils that could never be overlooked and washed away in the political give and take that is inevitable in a party system.    Although the ban was walked back slightly after the election of 1933, the German Bishops demonstrated a long-standing Catholic belief that political party affiliation can put one’s soul in jeopardy.

Party Affiliation and Formal Cooperation

Why this is the case can be seen once we examine the principle of formal cooperation.  Recall that the principle of cooperation acknowledges that a number of people often participate in bringing about some evil action.  Moral philosophy makes the distinction between formal and material cooperation.  Formal cooperation means that a person aligns their will with the intention of the principal moral agent.  Material cooperation means that a person offers some material support in the carrying out of an action, even if, they may not be willing participants in the evil itself.

The act of abortion offers an illustrative and relevant example.  Suppose a woman is pondering an abortion so she seeks counsel with a friend.  The friend says she should do it but says she cannot help her get one.  The friend has formally cooperated in the abortion and thus bears the guilt of the act itself in uniting her will to the will of the woman.  She did not, however, offer material support and thus her material cooperation is minimal if non-existent.  When the woman gets to the abortion mill, she is greeted by the janitor outside who is emptying mop water.  He hates abortion but only works here because he needs to feed his family and is unable to find another job currently.  His cooperation too is material, he provides a clean environment for the abortion, but it is remote since it is not vital to the carrying out of the abortion (which is truer than most people would like to admit).  Finally, she enters the abortion mill and is greeted by the nurse.  The nurse too hates abortion (thus no formal cooperation) but her material cooperation is so proximate and vital to the act that she is guilty of cooperation with the evil of abortion.

In summary, because guilt lies in the will, a person is always guilty of sin when they formally cooperate with evil.  A person who formally cooperates with a grave evil bears a proportionate level of guilt for that evil.  They may or may not be guilty when they cooperate materially, depending on their role and their proximity to the act itself.  Related to the topic at hand, a person who is Pro-Choice, even if they never directly assist or counsel a person to get an abortion, simply by making their position known, has formally cooperated with that evil and bear culpability.

The Democratic Party platform, in no uncertain terms, promotes and protects the evil of abortion: “Democrats…believe unequivocally…that every woman should be able to access…safe and legal abortion.”  And because political party affiliation is a free association, any person who joins the party consents to all of the party’s platform.  There is no “I am personally opposed, but …” type logic because of the principle of formal cooperation.  A member of the Democratic Party is aligning their will with that of the other members of the Party.  Why else would they join?  If they did not believe in any of the tenets, they simply need not join.  This was the logic of the German Bishops in 1931, a logic that can likewise be applied to members of the Democratic Party today.

An All-Important Distinction

Please note what has been said and what hasn’t.  The contention is that because joining the Democratic Party constitutes formal cooperation, it is gravely sinful.  This does not mean that voting for a Democrat is always and everywhere gravely sinful.  To extend the arm of sin beyond formal cooperation is a bridge too far.  This was the point that Cardinal Ratzinger made when in 2004 he said,

“A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia.  When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.”

The key word related to material cooperation is proportionate.  There must be not only a good reason to vote, but a proportionate reason.  On this level this means that if Candidate A is in favor of one intrinsically evil action and Candidate B supports a different intrinsically evil action, then we might vote so as to limit the amount of overall evil present in society.  For example, suppose Candidate A supported abortion but was against Euthanasia and Candidate B supported Euthanasia but was against abortion, you might vote for B because abortion constitutes a greater evil on society as a whole.  The point is that you cannot simply perform moral calculus adding up the evil on each side, but instead the proportionately is related to the presence of intrinsically evil actions, or as the Church has put it, “non-negotiables”.

But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.  In fact, it is really a natural outlook that would motivate a Catholic to vote for a Democrat.  A supernatural outlook of the world would never allow us to vote for someone who we know to be in an objective state of grave sin.  The reason for this is simple—a person in a state of mortal sin is the Devil’s pawn.  Mortal sin places a person under his dominion and they are very likely to commit further evil.  If Christ is not King of their heart, then most assuredly they will be working against making Him King of our Country.  This principle really goes for any politician.  If the person is known to be in a state of grave sin then you should never vote for them.

This sounds “judgmental” to modern ears, but it is simply a statement of fact.  A person who directly wills that abortions be provided remains in a gravely sinful state until such time as they repent.  Because the support of abortion was public, true repentance would have to be public, causing the person to separate themselves from the sinful Party.  A person who remains in the Party has thus remained in their sinful state.

As the November election is fast approaching, we must as Catholics, come to understand that voting is not just a political action, but a moral one and thus we must shine the light of Catholic morality on our voting decisions.    

What Happens to Aborted Children?

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At the heart of the Pro-Life movement is the overwhelming concern not just for the temporal well-being of members of society, but for their eternal salvation.  Christians are, by definition, Pro-Life because they desire that society at its core be built upon conditions that are conducive to the salvation of souls.  That is what makes abortion and particularly pernicious offense against life—it puts not only the soul of the mother and those who cooperate with her in jeopardy, but the eternal destiny of the child in danger as well.  Many Catholics are quick to declare these children martyrs and assume that they are in heaven because of it.  However, this belief is by no means definitive and there are good reasons to think that this might not be the case.  Once our gaze is turned towards these innocent victims and the question of their eternal destination, we find that our zeal for souls drives us to eliminate abortion all the more.

To grapple with this issue, we must start with what we can say with assurance.  Despite not being healed from Original Sin and its wounds, these children are not necessarily destined for hell.  Original Sin is not a condition of guilt but one of deprivation.  Mankind is deprived of the gift of sanctifying grace, a necessity for entrance into the Beatific Vision, at their conception.  This does not make the child guilty, only unequipped.  Hell is a punishment for actual sin, and with no actual sins committed, the child does not merit hell.  This is why Pope St. John Paul II said in Evangelium Vitae that mothers can entrust their aborted children “with sure hope [to] the Father and His mercy” (EV, 99, Acta Apostolicae Sedis version).

In the Summa, St. Thomas draws a very important distinction in this regard that is worth discussing.  He says that often “children are punished in temporal matters together with their parents, both because they are a possession of their parents, so that their parents are punished also in their person, and because this is for their good lest, should they be spared, they might imitate the sins of their parents, and thus deserve to be punished still more severely” (ST II-II, q.108, art.4 ad.3).  The “good” that St. Thomas is referring to presumptively would refer to not just towards their temporal welfare but their eternal as well.  But this could refer not only to the good of reward but also the good of receiving less of a punishment than a person might otherwise.

So we can say that the child is not destined to hell per se, but this does not mean that they are destined for heaven either.  There is still the open question of Limbo as an option.   Assuming that John Paul II’s comment about a “sure hope” means hope in the theological sense then the eternal salvation of the child is at least a possibility.  In other words we can now turn to the question about how it is that a child might be equipped for Heaven through the infusion of sanctifying grace.

How then might their salvation be possible?  The first would be through a special miracle akin to the sanctification that is presented in Scripture.  Our Lady, St. John the Baptist, and the prophet Jeremiah whom St. Thomas said were sanctified “outside of the common law as though miraculously in their mother’s wombs” (Commentary on the Sentences, dist.6, q.1).  Although this means it is theologically possible, the acts of sanctification were extraordinary and a result of the mission of the three children.

Deprived of the ordinary means of salvation through baptism, it is also possible to posit that they received a Baptism in Blood.  In short, the children would be classified as martyrs.  Scripture once again offers us an example in the Holy Innocents.  In adults martyrdom occurs when a person dies for some supernatural reason such as in defense of some Christian virtue or as testimony of faith.  Despite being deprived of the use of reason, the Holy Innocents have long been considered to be martyrs because they died in defense of Christ.  This consideration is based upon both Divine Revelation and the Church’s binding and loosing authority.  The Church may have the authority to declare martyrdom, but it cannot be without reason.    It is not clear that the children are being put to death for a supernatural reason as in the case of the Holy Innocents.  Either way though the Church would need to officially declare them as martyrs in order for us to consider them to actually be martyrs.

There is a third option.  Because “God wills that all men be saved” we might assume that prior to death each child is given an opportunity to be saved.  This would include infants in the womb.  We can posit then that they are each tested in some way and given a chance to accept the gift of sanctifying grace.  The problem with this view is that it would require cooperation with actual grace and the ability to use their reason.

Given the inherent difficulties which each of these the solutions, we can begin to see why Limbo remains as a theological possibility not only for unbaptized children, but children in the womb.  What is clear however is that we need to treat the issue of abortion as a real threat to the eternal salvation of the child in the womb and continue to fight for its elimination in our society.   

Relativism, the Supreme Court and Descartes

Abortion, Apologetics, Church, Culture, Defending the Faith, Politics, Relativism, , , ,

GK Chesterton once said that America was the only country built upon a creed.   He thought the American Founders had united the country around certain self-evident truths.  The founding credo has been replaced by a more modern one that is aptly captured by the Supreme Court in their 1992 decision, Planned Parenthood vs Casey.  Writing for the majority in defense of abortion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.”  Freedom to choose trumps even reality itself, and relativism in all its forms was enshrined as dogma.  The only self-evident truth is that there is no objective truth.  Such an exaltation of freedom gives society no foundation upon which men and women may be united.  All that is left to bind the people is force, either through the coercion of political correctness or “the compulsion of the State”.

Quite obviously it is not enough to merely identify the problem.  We must do something about it.  But unless we are going to meet force with force, the only way to correct the problem is to correct the bad ideas that caused it.  Some errors are like weeds. It is not enough to merely pluck the leaves of consequences, but we must attack the roots of the ideas that caused the consequences.  Relativism is the weed that threatens society so that if we are to give society room to flower, then we must tear out its roots.

The Three Words

Three words was all it took to start the avalanche that would overthrow the Christian World Order.  Unwilling to face the Scientistic Zeitgeist head on by restating the higher metaphysical truths of reality, Rene Descartes decided to play the skeptic’s game.  Descartes’ cogito ergo sum, “I think therefore I am”, set the tenor for modern thought and paved the way for the coronation of Relativism.

Good intentions never cover for bad ideas, even if those ideas are “clear and distinct”.  Descartes sought to defend philosophy against the full frontal attack of empirical science.  When you have physics, why do you need metaphysics?  But rather than fixing the problem, he created a crisis in knowledge.  All this because he rejected Scholastic realism, that is, the epistemological position that all knowledge comes in and through the senses.  We come to form ideas based on the perceptions we receive from our encounter with reality.  Our ideas are true only insofar as they conform to reality.  In short, our ideas are means by which we come to knowledge of the highest and lowest things.

Rather than being measured by reality, Descartes thought man was the measure of reality.  Knowledge of reality is an impossibility.  Instead we can only have knowledge of our own ideas.  And not just any ideas, but only those are clear and distinct, the first of which was that he is thinking.  In his own words, “I think therefore I am…In this first knowledge doubtless, there is nothing that gives me assurance of its truth except the clear and distinct perception of what I affirm…and accordingly it seems to me that I may now take as a general rule, that all that is very clearly and distinctly apprehended (conceived) is true” (Descartes,First Meditation).

The Scholastics thought that existence was self-evident and could not be proven.  Our senses drew data only from those things that existed.  This could not be doubted and this was the starting point for all knowledge.  Descartes, rather than starting with the senses, began with the one thing he could not doubt, namely his own thought.  And this formed the basis for his discovering the truth; having a clear and distinct idea.  But because ideas are subjective, truth is no longer objective.  Truth reveals not the outside world, but the state of the mind of the thinker. 

Connecting the Dots

It may not yet be clear how Descartes connects to Casey until we trace out the consequences of Descartes’ thoughts.  We encounter reality in and through our senses and then form ideas about it.  Those ideas are called true which correspond to reality as it really is. Truth, then, is the correspondence of reality and idea.  For Descartes and his intellectual progeny (Locke, Berkeley, Kant, Hume and so on), truth consists only in having clear ideas.  Rather than measuring ideas against reality, they are measured by the mind itself and judged true if they are “clear and distinct”.  True comes to mean “true for me” and “true for you.”  All ideas are equally true, so long as they are sincerely held.  This leads to a contradiction because if every opinion is equally true, then the following opinion is also equally true, namely that not every opinion is equally true.

We have grown accustomed to the cognitive dissonance and navigate it the best we can.  We learn to “tolerate” different opinions about reality.  The problem though is that if each of us is living in a world he has constructed on his own, then there is no means by which a society can be formed.  There may be small pockets of “like-minded” people but no real unity.  The seemingly esoteric philosophical problem becomes the source of a gigantic social problem. 

That is why the solution must also be a social one.  There must be a reintroduction of Medieval Philosophy.  We must go back to just before the train went off the rails and set it back on the tracks.  It starts by properly training the young to think clearly about reality as it really is.  We cannot, like Descartes, pick up the scraps of truth on the hems of the Zeitgeist and expect to build anything solid.  Ideas have consequences and bad ideas have bad consequences.  We must go back to St. Thomas and learn from him truly how to think.  We must teach our children to go back to St. Thomas.  Catholic schools need to be true houses of intellectual formation and not merely alternatives to the public schools.  St. Thomas Aquinas, pray for us.

Limbo and the Fate of Unbaptized Infants

Abortion, Church Fathers, Faith and Reason, Heaven, Mercy, Purgatory, Redemption, Relativism, Sacraments, , , , , ,

In an age of exaggerated mercy there is perhaps no doctrine that is more reprehensible than that of Limbo.  Developed early on in the Church’s history, it is the belief that children who die without receiving baptism go to a place of natural bliss in which they do not share in the Beatific Vision given to the Blessed in Heaven.  Treated as a theological pariah, this belief is summarily dismissed as harsh and medieval but no alternative is given to tackle the difficult question of the everlasting destiny of these children.  When millions of children are lost every year because of abortion it would seem that it should be treated with some theological urgency so that the Church might find a true means of salvation to these children.

Original Sin and Hell

Properly framing the problem helps us first to see why it is a problem of particular urgency.  All of humanity at the moment of conception is plagued with Original Sin.  This condition is not one of actual guilt per se, but of deprivation.  A child is conceived and remains devoid of sanctifying grace until they are reborn in the waters of Baptism (c.f. John 3:5).  Why this matters is because without sanctifying grace, a soul cannot enter into the Vision of God.  This is not because God is a stickler for rules but because Heaven is not natural for human beings such that in order to enter into the presence of the Consuming Fire that is God, a man must be properly clothed (c.f. Mt 22:11) with the “spiritual fire suit” that makes him capable of partaking of the Divine nature (c.f. 2Pt 1:4).

The fact that Heaven is not the natural destiny of mankind is also important for understanding Limbo.  Because no one sees the face of God and lives (c.f. Ex. 33:20), that is by nature man cannot stand before the face of God, it is a supernatural gift that God bestows upon men.  It is a free gift offered to all men, but only those who have been given the gift and maintained it, can actually receive it.  That it is a gift means that to be deprived of the gift is not exactly the same thing as having been punished.

We see an example of this among the righteous men of the Old Testament.  Prior to Christ’s descent into hell, which is understood not as the hell of the damned but as the limbus of Abraham’s Bosom, these men and women were in a state of natural bliss.  They enjoyed God, not face to face and as He really is, but according to their natural knowledge of Him that was illuminated by their faith in His revelation up to that point.  This was a temporary state so that once they saw the Messiah God had promised they were immediately given the Beatific Vision. 

This example is illustrative because it offers us glimpse of what a permanent state of the Limbus Infantium would be like.  Although laboring under the constraints of Original Sin, the children have no actual sin and thus do not deserve to be punished.  That is, they avoid the two punishments of hell: the pain of sense and the pain of loss.  Even though they are deprived of the Beatific Vision (usually considered to be the pain of loss in adults), they have no supernatural knowledge of glory and thus do not know what they are missing.  Because they do not have the natural capacity to achieve it, they do not grieve its loss.  No man grieves the loss of his inability to fly because it is not within his natural capacity to do so.  Instead they experience a natural joy in that they achieve a natural end—contemplation of God by natural means.  As St. Alphonsus puts it:

“children will not only not grieve for the loss of eternal happiness, but will, moreover, have pleasure in their natural gifts; and will even in some way enjoy God, so far as is implied in natural knowledge, and in natural love: ‘Rather will they rejoice in this, that they will participate much in the divine goodness, and in natural perfections.’( St. Thomas Aquinas, De Malo, q.5, a.3)  And he immediately adds, that although they will be separated from God, as regards the union of glory, nevertheless ‘they will be united with him by participation of natural gifts; and so will even be able to rejoice in him with a natural knowledge and love.’”

The Great Means of Salvation and Perfection

“A Possible Theological Opinion”

Despite falling into theological disfavor, the theory of Limbo remains a “possible theological opinion” according to the International Theological Commission in their 2007 document Hope of Salvation of Infants Who Die without Baptism.  It remains possible because it offers a very reasonable solution to the problem.  It remains possible because it is also very hopeful in that it does not condemn otherwise innocent children to the hell of the damned.  It remains possible because it is really only a reasonable solution to the problem of which Revelation never treats directly and any solution would require us to piece together many different doctrines.  But the point is that we should also not be so quick to dismiss it because it is the best solution we have right now because it fits many, if not all, of the pieces together.  It is the best solution because it is the one that has the backing of numerous doctors of the Church, two of whom we have already mentioned—St. Thomas and St. Alphonsus. 

Nevertheless, the Holy Innocents teach us that there are extra-sacramental ways in which children can be saved, especially via a baptism of blood.  Cajetan thought that children could be saved also through a vicarious baptism of desire or others have posited that the children are given the use of their reason just prior to death in order to choose. 

That we don’t know however should spur us to do two things.   First is never to delay baptism.  Baptism remains the ordinary means of salvation and the only sure way we know by which children can be saved.  We should not delay their baptism any longer than is absolutely necessary regardless of a fear of germs or familial convenience.  Second is that the Church has a whole needs to be praying for these children, especially those in the womb who are in danger of death. 

The True Christian History of Abortion

Abortion, Apologetics, Contraception, Culture, Culture of Life, History, , , , , ,

As the battle over legalized abortion continues rage as specific states more clearly draw their battle lines, there is a growing number of Christians who are attempting to make a Christian argument in favor of abortion.  In truth, there is no Christian defense of abortion and there never has been.  Not surprisingly, the abortion apologist’s arguments fall flat, even though they continually recycle the same talking points irrespective of truth.  Even if there are different variations on the propagandistic talking points, they seem never to grow weary of repeating them.  Given the increased frequency in which we are seeing them, it is important that we have a ready defense.

In order to avoid toppling over a straw man,  we will refer to an example that was printed in the Huffington Post last year entitled “The Truth About Christianity and Abortion”.  We use this one not because it was a particularly convincing argument, but because it invokes almost all the common arguments for Christian support of abortion in one place. 

Before diving into the exact arguments, it is a helpful to remember that there are plenty of arguments against abortion that don’t rely solely upon religious convictions.  Instead you can use philosophical reasoning and science.  Since that ground has already been covered, we will stick to the Christian-based arguments since that is terrain over which these abortion advocates like to stomp.

“There are no specific references to abortion in the Bible, either within Old Testament law or in Jesus’ teachings or the writings of Paul and other writers in the New Testament.”

This first argument, namely that the Bible doesn’t say anything about abortion is a bit of a red herring, at least as far as Catholics are concerned.  Not everything we believe need to be mentioned in the Bible explicitly.  If Scripture tells us that the pre-born being in the womb of Elizabeth (somewhere between 20-24 weeks) and the pre-born being in the womb of Mary (somewhere between 0-4 weeks) are both persons (Luke 1:26,41) and that directly killing an innocent person is always wrong (Exodus 20:13) then we could conclude that abortion, that is the direct and intentional  killing of an infant in the womb of the mother, is wrong.  The Bible need not, nor could it list out all the ways that a person might be murdered but can simply articulate the principle in what amounts to a blanket condemnation. 

That being said, the premise that the Bible does not mention abortion is also false.  In the ancient world, they were not nimble enough to play verbal gymnastics like us.  We are fall more sophisticated in the true sense of the word.  Even amongst the pagans, abortion was considered to be baby killing.  In fact, the device that they used to perform the abortion was called embruosqakths, which means “the slayer of the infant, which was of course alive.” (Tertullian, On the Soul, Ch. 25). 

They also used chemical potions to cause abortions, although they were far more dangerous to the mother than using the “slayer of the infant.”  This type of abortion is mentioned in Scripture, even if only implicitly.  We shall expound on this in a moment, but these potions fell under the broad Greek term pharmakeia, the same term St. Paul uses in Galatians 5:20 and we translate as “sorcery”.

“Likewise, throughout the history of the early church into the middle-ages, there is little to no mention of abortion as a topic of great alarm – from the days of the Old Testament until modern history. Hence, there is no case to be made for a definitive Christian stance throughout history on the spiritual or moral aspects of abortion.”

While it may have been convenient in supporting the point, the connection of pharmakeia to abortifacient drugs was not an exercise in originality, but something that the early Church did when they spoke against abortion.  The Didache, written during the Apostolic Age (probably around 70 AD) of the Apostles in expounding on the commandment of love of neighbor it said, “You shall not practice magic. You shall not use potions [pharmakeia). You shall not procure [an] abortion, nor destroy a newborn child” (Didache 2:1–2).  Likewise, the Letter of Barnabas (74 AD), which is a commentary on the Didache says, “thou shalt not slay the child by procuring abortion; nor, again, shalt thou destroy it after it is born” (19).

We already heard from Tertullian in the 2nd Century, but the list of Fathers who spoke against abortion down to the beginning of the 5th Century reads like a who’s who of Patristic teachers: Athenagoras of Athens, Hippolytus, Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, and St. Jerome.  It is also included in the twenty-first canon of the Council of Ancyra and among the Apostolic Constitutions.  In other words, it is hard not to stumble upon a condemnation of abortion among the Early Church Fathers, unless of course you don’t actually look.

Given the unbroken teaching to Apostolic times, abortion was a settled issue and we should not expect to hear about it much unless it is challenged (that is why St. John Paul II included the infallible statement of the Ordinary Magisterium in Evangelium Vitae).  The relative silence of the Middle Ages is a non-sequitur for that reason—it was a settled issue within Christendom and thus did not need to be defended or expounded upon much.

The Augustinian Exception?

Among those Church Fathers listed above there is one notable exception: St. Augustine.  He is notable not because of his silence but because of the fact that he is often quoted out of context.  The Huffington Post author does the same thing quoting him as saying:  “The law does not provide that the act (abortion) pertains to homicide, for there cannot yet be said to be a live soul in a body that lacks sensation.”  Not surprising she doesn’t cite the source of the quote which would enable us to establish context, but it comes from a commentary on Exodus 21.  Taken in context Augustine is asking whether, given the primitive embryology of his time, whether abortion before the 40th day after conception could be classified as homicide or not.  In his mind abortion was still a grave evil no matter how old the infant, but he wasn’t sure whether it should be classified as murder.

To cite this is really disingenuous, for the author knows it is based upon an ancient understanding of human development.  She knows that modern embryology has established that there is sensation long before the 40th day after conception.  Anyone who has seen an ultrasound image (or has watched the movie Silent Scream) can easily attest to that truth.  Unless the author of the article is willing to accept the primitive thinking of the 5th Century, then this is actually an argument against abortion.  If Augustine has access to modern technology, then he would have concluded that it was murder at any stage.

“I’m not saying abortion cannot be an important issue to a Christian, but there is no scriptural or historical backing for it to be the number one issue, at the expense of the ‘least of these’ who are suffering now.”

This line of reasoning really sets up a false dichotomy that pits poverty against abortion.  This is recycled secular thinking.  There are those who suffer because of destitution, and we ought to do what we can to alleviate that, but that does not mean you may alleviate it by reducing the number of mouths that need to be fed.  Why couldn’t the same argument be applied to the already born children of the poor, or even the poor themselves?  One definite way to end poverty would be to kill all the poor people.

As far as it being the “number one issue” is concerned, first we must admit that history is not a repeating cycle in which social ills always occur with the same frequency and intensity.  Perhaps destitution was a greater threat to human thriving than abortion was in ancient Rome or in the Middle Ages, but that does not mean it is still a greater threat.  In fact, we could argue that destitution (“poor” is a relative term and actually a Christian value, destitution is an objective measure) is at an all-time low.  What is not at an all-time low however is the number of innocent lives being snuffed out through abortion every day to the tune of about 125,000 per day worldwide (and this doesn’t include the number of abortions caused by birth control pills which could double or even triple that total).  Abortion, because it involves so many, all of which are the most vulnerable and voiceless, is by far the greatest injustice in the world today.  They are “’the least of these’ who are suffering now.”

A Not-So Hard Case

Abortion, Human Dignity, Moralilty, Science,

As the laws supporting abortion continue to be challenged, a common objection is raised that abortion ought to be legal when the life of the mother is at risk.  So common is this objection that the President, who has been arguably the most pro-life executive ever, says that it is a necessary exception.  Like all the other “reasons” for abortion this one too depends upon propaganda and ignorance.  Therefore, we need to have a reasoned response ready to refute this seeming “no-brainer.”

Notice first that I said it depends upon propaganda.  This is because it is an attempt to circumvent the “exception proves the rule” principle.  If this really is an exception, then you must be willing to concede the rule that abortion is otherwise always wrong.  The problem is that even if we were willing to make a concession in this situation, abortion supporters really want abortion on demand.  It is an attempt to play on compassion while creating a smokescreen that makes abortion legal and right in all cases.

That being said, it is also not an exception to the rule, a point that otherwise preys upon general ignorance.  Abortion, that is the direct killing of a pre-born infant, as either a means or an end, is always wrong and admits of no exceptions.  This does not mean that in true cases where a mother’s life is in jeopardy that she must simply suck it up and put her affairs in order.  Instead, in every case in which a mother’s life might be in jeopardy, there are moral solutions that do not involve an abortion. 

This brings up a point that merits further examination before we dive into the specifics.  It is certainly common sense but unfortunately is often overlooked, especially in the name of medical expedience.  There is always a moral solution to a problem of health.  This is not to say that it won’t involve additional suffering, but that these “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” situations always have solutions that are good for the whole person.  I say this not to be callous but as a reminder that we should never think we have to do something wrong.  It is also meant to be direct challenge to the medical community that they only offer and investigate what would ultimately be moral solutions.  If doctors and medical researchers really care about the health of the person then they will care not just about the body, but the soul as well.  The first question for medicine should never be “can we” but “should we”?

Early Pregnancy

Looking then more closely at the specific situations in which a mother’s life is truly in jeopardy will underscore all that has been said so far.  These threats come most often at the beginning of pregnancy with what are commonly called ectopic pregnancies.  As the etymology of the term suggests, ectopic pregnancies occur when the developing person is “out of place” and implants somewhere other than the uterus.  This can occur in the abdomen or cervix, but the overwhelming majority of cases occur within the fallopian tube.  These pregnancies pose a serious risk to the mother’s life because of hemorrhaging.  As an aside, these types of pregnancies are occurring at much greater rates than in the past thanks to scarring from an increase in the incidence of sexual transmitted diseases (most especially PID), IUDs, tubal sterilization and contraceptive pills.

We should mention both that the child will never achieve viability.  There have been a few, though very few, cases of successful transfer of the child to the uterus but this is still an important area of research we should be devoting energies (and prayers) towards. Also of note is the fact that up to 2/3 of ectopic pregnancies resolve themselves, requiring no medical intervention.  In the remaining cases there are three treatment options.

The first is a chemical solution that uses methotrexate (MTX).  MTX directly attacks the outer layer of cells produced by the developing baby that serves as connective tissue to the mother.  The child detaches and then is washed out of the tube.  Note this has appeal because of it is the least invasive, but also has the most serious side effects.  It also does not treat the underlying cause of the ectopic pregnancy, increasing the likelihood that it will happen again.

Although the Church has not spoken definitively upon this issue, most moralists would categorize this as an abortion because it involves the direct killing of the child as a means to saving the mother’s life.  An unborn child may die as a result of treatment, but the treatment itself cannot be the killing of the child.  The death must be an unintended, although it could be foreseen, side effect of the treatment.  That is why one of the surgical options called a salpingostomy is not a moral option either.  The doctor makes a small incision in the fallopian tube and removes the child in the hopes of preserving the mother’s fertility.  This also amounts to an abortion because it is the direct removal of the child that “saves” the mother.

A third treatment is called salpingectomy.  This has been the preferred method of dealing with ectopic pregnancies by faithful Catholic for years.  It involves removing the portion of the tube that is at risk of rupturing.  Unfortunately, it is the same section that also contains the embryonic human being.  Although the baby dies, it is a double effect and not something directly willed.  This moral solution probably represents the best physical health option as well because it removes the damaged portion of the fallopian tube.  Depending on the amount that is removed (if it is ruptured then a total salpingectomy might be necessary), it does put the mother’s fertility at risk.  Therefore, it is not always preferred even though, by removing the problematic portion of the tube, it makes it far less likely that the problem would ever occur again.

This can seem like a very legalistic approach to things considering that the end result—the termination of the pregnancy—is the same in all three of the approaches.  But, like all moral decisions, the means we use to achieve the end matter just as much as the end itself.  The means we use to do anything must also be good.  The mother, even though she has not seen her baby, is still his mother.  Knowing that, despite the difficult circumstances, she did right by her child can bring her great solace.  But either way, the demand for abortion because of ectopic pregnancy is a red herring.

Later Pregnancy

What about later in the pregnancy?  A moment’s reflection also shows that abortion is not needed.  If the child is viable, then the mother can be induced or an emergency c-section can be performed.  There is absolutely no medical reason why a later-term abortion is necessary.  Even when the child is not viable, inducing labor for the sake of saving the mother’s life can be justified even though the child might not survive.  Obviously, this requires clinical judgment, but the situations where it happens that the woman’s life is in danger because she is pregnant, and the child is not near viability, are very rare (and some say non-existent).  Nevertheless, there is still no need for abortion in these cases either.

Upon closer scrutiny then this so called “hard case” really is not so hard.  I say that not because it is an emotionally and psychologically challenging time, but because it offers a clear moral path.  The need for abortion when the mother’s life is in jeopardy is not a real need and we need to present the facts as such.

On Embryo Adoption

Abortion, Bioethics, Conscience, Culture of Life, Fatherhood, Human Dignity, Theology of the Body, , , , , , ,

According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, there are over 620,000 cryo-preserved embryos in the United States.  Even though the “vast majority” of them are still being considered for use for “family building efforts” and others have been “earmarked by the creating couples for use in research,” there are still as many as 60,000 unclaimed frozen embryos currently.  With the growing popularity of IVF, we should expect these numbers to rise dramatically over the coming years.  All this has left pro-lifers scrambling for ethical solutions that free these children from their cryogenic prison.  One Evangelical Christian group called Snowflake Embryo Adoption matches the embryos with women who are willing to “adopt” them.  In essence the embryos are implanted into the wombs of women who carry them to term and raise them as their own children.   This solution, as we shall see, is not without moral controversy.

We must first admit that the plight of these cryogenically preserved children represents one of the greatest injustices of our age because of the sheer numbers alone.  But because many of the “consumers” of IVF are couples struggling with infertility, very few people are willing to call it out.  Instead it remains hidden away in laboratories and freezers.  Despite intrinsic evil of IVF, we must never forget that the children themselves are not an evil but a good that came from the evil.  They are members of the human community, regardless of how they were conceived, and thus are subject with rights, including the right to a safe environment in which they can thrive.  These voiceless children are crying out for justice, a cry that we are obligated not to ignore.  Therefore, it would seem that “embryo adoption” offers a compassionate solution.  The adoptive parents did not bring the children into existence and are simply looking for a way to “right a wrong” by rescuing these children from a frozen existence. 

Adoption?

When framed in this manner, it seems rather straightforward that this type of adoption is an irrefutable good.  But this is a case where we must be careful with our terms.  To label this an embryo adoption is really a form of begging the question.  This is why many moral theologians prefer the term “embryo rescue”.  For everyone know that adoption is praiseworthy, but it is questionable whether this should be classified as a type of adoption.  Adoption has always referred to a legal process by which a child (usually although not exclusively) enters into a family and assumes all the rights and duties of a biological son or daughter.  Nowhere among these rights and duties however would we find the right to gestation.  That right is reserved only for biological children.  The question is whether this difference carries any moral weight.

The Church defines surrogacy as when “a woman who carries in pregnancy an embryo implanted in her uterus and who is genetically a stranger to the embryo because it has been obtained through the union of the gametes of ‘donors’. She carries the pregnancy with a pledge to surrender the baby once it is born to the party who commissioned or made the agreement for the pregnancy” (Donum Vitae, A3).  Based upon this definition, embryo rescue is more akin to surrogacy than to adoption. The only difference is in the intention of the pregnant woman—in one case she carries the child for another and in the other she carries it for herself.  But surrogacy is not wrong because of the intention of the woman who is impregnated, but because of the nature of the act itself. 

A hypothetical will help to see why this is the case.  Suppose a woman and her husband go through the IVF procedure and find that the woman will never be able to carry a child to term.  She approaches her sister and tells her that they still have three “extra” embryos that are destined for destruction and asks if she would be willing to rescue one of them by offering her womb to carry the child.  She tells her that it would not be surrogacy, but “embryo fostering” because she is simply fostering the child for 9 months.  Verbal gymnastics aside, this clearly fits the definition of surrogacy, an action that the Church has always condemned surrogacy as an intrinsically evil act because it is an offense “against the unity of marriage and the dignity of the procreation of the human person.”  In other words, no matter how good the intention is, it can never be deemed morally licit.  Likewise, embryo adoption suffers a similar fate.

Surrogacy and the Rights of Spouses

Understanding why surrogacy is wrong will help to see why embryo rescue is not a real moral solution.  Notice that Donum Vitae said surrogacy was an offense, not against the procreative aspect of marriage, but the unitive.  A woman should only become a mother through her husband.  He has an exclusive right to her procreative powers and faculties.  When those powers are exercised without him, then the unitive good of marriage has been harmed.  She is a mother of the child, but her husband is in no way the father.  He neither had a hand in creating the child nor in its gestation (both of which a biological father does even in utero).  He may become the child’s adoptive father when it is born, but until then he is not a father.

The unitive good of marriage is maintained when husband and wife must become parents through each other.   Even in the case of adoption, they become parents together and not independently of each other.  This is why we should hesitate to call embryo rescue, adoption.  This solution then introduces a new injustice, mainly against the husband’s exclusive rights to his wife’s procreative faculties.  This is ultimately why the Church has said this is “a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved” (Dignitatis Personae, 19).

What can be done about this then?  For the time being we have an obligation to keep the children already in existence alive until a solution can be found.  This form of embryo adoption by which someone keeps the child from being terminated or subject to scientific testing would be laudable.  When St. John Paul II spoke on the topic he made an “appeal to the conscience of the world’s scientific authorities and in particular to doctors, that the production of human embryos be halted, taking into account that there seems to be no morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the thousands and thousands of ‘frozen’ embryos which are and remain the subjects of essential rights and should therefore be protected by law as human persons”(quoted in Dignitatis Personae, 19).  Putting an end to this sanitized barbarism then should be our primary goal. 

The Danger of Playing House

Abortion, Bioethics, Contraception, Culture, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, Homosexuality, Moralilty, , , ,

“Playing house” is a common children’s make believe game where the children take on adult roles usually centering around family life.  What happens when adults, armed with enough technology to make believe believable still like to play the game?  Something along the lines of what happened in Nebraska recently where a “61-year-old Nebraska mom has become a grandmom after giving birth herself — acting as the surrogate for her adult son and his husband.”   Even Aldous Huxley would find this truth stranger than fiction, despite being only half-way down the slippery slope into which our culture is descending.

Imagine little baby Uma, when she is much older Uma, looking at her birth certificate, the one that “looks really creepy for us.”  On it, she will find the name of one of her fathers, Matthew Eledge.  Under the heading of Mother, she will find the name of her grandmother.  Now this permanent public record will look like a case of incest.  Uma may know better, but is it better that she knows better?  In truth she will know that she was pieced together in a laboratory from various interrelated parts.  She will know she was a “product” of conception that originated with her father’s sperm and her other father’s sister’s egg.

Straight Out of A Brave New World?

As the origins of life grow to more closely resemble Huxley’s decanter than nature, it is increasingly difficult to point out this injustice.  Justice requires that equals be treated as equals.  When a child is conceived in a manner such as this, the relationship between parent and child is not truly a communion of persons but one of producer and product.  In essence this is, as Donum Vitae points out, “equivalent to reducing the child to an object of scientific technology.”   

No one can measure the psychological effects of knowing this upon the person, and, interestingly enough, no one has attempted to study it.  Children of divorce often face an identity crisis even though they are told that their parents “love them very much.”  That is because it is not enough to know you are loved, but you must also know that you came from love, that is, you are not an accident.  Likewise children conceived in a laboratory could face a similar identity crisis.

If you doubt the person-product connection, re-read the linked article and notice the description of the process they went through, including a quality control measure called “preimplantation genetic testing which would help determine the embryos most likely to develop into a healthy baby.”  If you are going to spend all the money (again described in detail in the interview) then you want to make sure you get the most bang for your buck.  Meanwhile six other children, Uma’s brothers and sisters, were set aside as byproducts of conception.  The article doesn’t say what happened to these six children but they were likely frozen or test subjects for human experimentation.  At least there was some semblance of a human decency when the men decided that choosing the sex of the child was too much “like playing God.” 

Procreation and the “Right to Make Life”

Perhaps the clearest indication of where this slippery slope leads is revealed in the form of a question.  After laying out all of the specific costs of the procedure and a complaint from the two men that IVF is cost prohibitive for most “couples”, the author asks, “should citizens have a right to make life?”  And this is, the battleground over which must fight if we are to rectify this injustice.

Humans do not reproduce, they procreate.  This is more than a mere semantical distinction.  Reproduction is a closed activity.  It simply requires two material creatures to exchange their genetic matter to produce offspring.  Human procreation is different however.  Like other material creatures, humans exchange genetic matter.  But they lack the capacity to exchange or create the spiritual element within their offspring.  This must be created by Someone else and requires His intervention.  Because procreation requires the intervention of a Third, the child must always be received as a gift and not as something that the couple is owed.  Couples receive children rather than grasp at them. 

The biological limitations that God has written into nature are there for our own good and for our own thriving.  Seizing what should otherwise be a gift, perhaps the greatest gift that God can bestow on us in the natural realm, leads to spiritual ruin for the parents.  But it need not be so for the children.   Even though the children conceived in this manner face an existential crisis and appear to be a mere product of technology, in truth they are not.  They are still persons of inestimable value because despite their immoral beginnings, God, as the ignored Third, still chose for this child to exist.  He still loved them into existence, even if their parents chose to hide that love behind scientific techniques.

One way to put a halt to the skid down this slippery slope is to change our rights language.  Even if the State grants them, there are no such thing as “reproductive rights” and not just because humans don’t, properly speaking, reproduce.  As proof of this, notice how they have little connection to actual duties towards other people connected to these rights.  In fact, they render children’s rights obsolete.  What people do have are procreative rights.  These natural rights are always in reference to their duties to children and ensure the dignity of children both born and unborn.   

In closing, there is one more thing that needs to be said regarding giving up on gay marriage as a battle already lost.  This is no mere “playing house” precisely because of stories like this.  In order to keep the game up, six children had to be condemned to death or a frozen existence.  This couple may be the first of its kind, but it won’t be the last.  The demand for procedures like this (as well as the demand to develop lower cost alternatives) will continue to increase unless we do something to protect these children.