Category Archives: Contraception

Moral Worlds Apart

February 1, 2025Contraception, Magisterium, Natural LawNFP, OrthodoxyRob Agnelli

The Orthodox Church is going through its “Lambeth moment”. In 1930 at the Lambeth Conference, the Anglican Church opened the door contraception as a morally licit means of birth control provided that “this is done in the light of the same Christian principles.” Every mainline Protestant community soon followed suit. Always behind the times and proud of it, the Orthodox Church is going through a similar debate currently. Many in the Church hold that contraception is always wrong while others think it can be used as long as the couple has the permission of their pastor. With no central teaching authority and guided by “the free conscience of the people” one can imagine where they will eventually land. In the meantime, they use the debate as an opportunity to attack the Catholic Church. Specifically, they claim that contraception and Natural Family Planning (NFP) are essentially the same thing. Reasoning that because the intention is the same in both cases, they are either equally to be condemned or equally allowed. Since this objection comes from other opponents of the Church it is worth examining in full.

Understanding the Plan

Although this should be obvious, it bears mentioning at the outset that NFP is not an action but a plan. NFP is a plan for avoiding or getting pregnant. In this regard it is like an exercise plan that someone puts together in order to lose 10 pounds or to gain ten pounds. Just as no one would morally evaluate the workout plan, you cannot morally evaluate NFP. There is, of course, the decision to put the plan into action which has a moral quality, but the moral quality comes from the individual acts that make up that plan. We are not judged for plans but for actions. So, we cannot immediately compare contraception and NFP because we are trying to compare an action with a plan.

With this necessary distinction in place, we can alter the objection slightly and say that because contraception and recourse to temporary abstinence both intend to avoid pregnancy, they have the same moral quality. To frame it properly almost makes the objection absurd, but it is still worth examining the two actions to see how they differ.

Evaluating the Moral Quality of an Action

Every human act has three sources—the object chosen, the intention and the circumstances surrounding the action. We can look at these three elements to evaluate the morality of any given act. If all three are good, then the action is good. If any of the three is evil, then the action is evil. (see CCC 1750-1753 for more detail). Without getting into the weeds too much, it is also important to note that the object, that is the action we are choosing as a means to carry out our intention, carries a certain primacy in that it must be examined first in order to see if it can ever be ordered to the good. There are certain intrinsic evils that, no matter the intention or circumstances, can never be ordered to a good end. As. Pope St. John Paul II puts it, “[T]he primary and decisive element for moral judgment is the object of the human act, which establishes whether it is capable of being ordered to the good and to the ultimate end, which is God” (Veritatis Splendor, 79).

Let’s begin with an easy example to see how it might work. Suppose a father is intending to give his son a $100 gift and is contemplating two acts. The intention of the two actions is identical and good. For the sake of argument assume the circumstances are the same and good as well.

Object1: Rob a bank

Object 2: Work two extra hours at work.

Despite the intention being the same, it is clear these are two very different acts. The act that includes Object 1 would be wrong because stealing is intrinsically evil. The good intention and circumstances do not override this. The act that includes Object 2, because all three elements are good, is good.

The Moral Difference

We can now apply the same sort of analysis to the question at hand. We will start by setting the circumstance that the woman is thought (in most cases you cannot be absolutely certain) to be fertile. Their intention is twofold: to avoid pregnancy (for reasons that are just) and to have sex. On the surface this seems absurd, but it is clear that because God designed the woman to only be fertile in certain times that this remains a possibility. As stated previously, there is a link between the physical laws and the moral laws such that the former can be a guide for the latter.

Returning to our example, the couple contemplates two acts. Object1 is to have contracepted sex while Object2 is to abstain. With Object1 in view, the action becomes evil because contraception is an intrinsic evil and thus can never be chosen directly as a means for avoiding pregnancy and having sex. Object2 is good per se so that when it is combined with a good intention and circumstances, it is part of a good action.

Changing the circumstances to a time when the woman is believed to be infertile, we can evaluate if the couple does anything wrong in engaging in the marital embrace. The intention remained the same, but the object must retain its connection to procreation. In other words, the act must be one that is procreative in nature. An act that is procreative in nature is one in which pregnancy is the result. There are no artificial barriers, either physical or chemical put in place by the couple. Because fertilization is not automatic and occurs outside the actual act there are natural “barriers” that, known and unknown, can be present. These include whether the woman is temporary or permanently infertile (like post-menopausal), the health of the man’s sperm, the woman’s pH and many others. The key is that neither partner has intentionally rendered the act infertile. That the circumstances have rendered the act ultimately unfruitful is beyond our control and are not morally relevant. Therefore, when we examine the object (conjugal act), intention (marital act while avoiding pregnancy for just reasons) and circumstances we can determine that the conjugal act when the woman is infertile is morally good.

Some have questioned whether the object with the circumstance of infertility is per se good and will cite some (definitely not a consensus view) Church Fathers who said it is wrong; it is never licit to engage in the marital embrace when the woman is infertile. The problem with this view is that it seems to be contrary to Sacred Scripture. Abraham, Issac, and Zechariah all had marital relations with women they knew were infertile. Rather than bringing down a curse for something that is wrong, God eventually blesses each of them with children. Given the abundance of examples without condemnation and the appearance of blessing, it is at least implicit that infertile sex is permitted. The Church has since made it explicit. Furthermore, there is also the additional problem that such a prohibition would mean that those women who get married after going through menopause could not consummate their marriage.

The tendency to only look at the intention of acts is ubiquitous in our culture, but we must look at the entire act itself to determine its moral quality. Despite the fact that contraception and NFP both attempt to avoid pregnancy, the acts associated with them are moral worlds apart.

On Ex Cathedra Statements

January 17, 2025Church, Church Authority, Contraception, Defending the Faith, ScriptureEx Cathedra, Humanae Vitae, Infallbility, Matthew 16Rob Agnelli

When Our Lord promised to Peter the power of “binding and loosing” (Mt 16:19), he was giving to Peter and his successors, the protection of infallibility. This prooftext is well-known by Catholics. What appears to be not as well known is exactly how often this charism has been invoked by the Popes. There is a widely-held belief that it has only been twice—Pope Pius IX in 1854 (Immaculate Conception) and Pope Pius XII in 1950 (Assumption of Mary). Given our great need for certainty in this age of ambiguity, it is fortunate that it has been wielded far more often than that.

What is Infallibility and How Is It Exercised?

Although the First Vatican Council was interrupted when Rome came under occupation, the Fathers of the Council did declare among other dogmas the infallibility of the Pope (Pastor Aeternus, 4):

“Therefore, faithfully adhering to the tradition received from the beginning of the Christian faith, for the glory of God Our Savior, the exaltation of the Catholic Religion, and the salvation of Christian people, the Sacred Council approving, We teach and define that it is a divinely-revealed dogma: that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex Cathedra, that is, when in discharge of the office of Pastor and Teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme Apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or morals to be held by the Universal Church, by the divine assistance promised to him in blessed Peter, is possessed of that infallibility with which the divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals: and that therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church.”

Notice that the solemn declaration not only formally recognizes infallibility as being divinely revealed dogma, but also outlines the conditions for its exercise. First, the Pope must be acting “in discharge of his office as Pastor and Teach of all Christians.” Second, he must be teaching specifically “regarding faith and morals.” Finally, he must be defining the doctrine to be “irreformable” or as Vatican II puts it, “by a definitive act” (LG 25).

Two other things are worth mentioning because they often cause confusion. First, it should be noted that nowhere does it say he must intend to speak ex cathedra. All that is necessary is that he intends to speak definitively about a particular subject. Second, there are no infallible documents. There are only infallible statements contained in certain documents. The question as to whether a document like Humanae Vitae is infallible is the wrong way to look at it. The question would be whether specific statements within it are infallible.

With these three conditions in mind, it is clear that there are far more ex cathedra statements than the two previously mentioned. As an example, we do not need to look too long after the Council to find a clear case of an ex cathedra statement in Pope Leo XIII’s 1893 Encyclical on sacred Scripture, Providentissimus Deus (#20).

“To Our Venerable Brethren, All Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, and Bishops of the Catholic World, in Grace and Communion with the Apostolic See… But it is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the sacred writer has erred. For the system of those who, in order to rid themselves of these difficulties, do not hesitate to concede that divine inspiration regards the things of faith and morals, and nothing beyond, because (as they wrongly think) in a question of the truth or falsehood of a passage, we should consider not so much what God has said as the reason and purpose which He had in mind in saying it-this system cannot be tolerated. For all the books which the Church receives as sacred and canonical, are written wholly and entirely, with all their parts, at the dictation of the Holy Ghost; and so far is it from being possible that any error can co-exist with inspiration, that inspiration not only is essentially incompatible with error, but excludes and rejects it as absolutely and necessarily as it is impossible that God Himself, the supreme Truth, can utter that which is not true.”

The Holy Father is exercising his role as universal teacher, is teaching on faith and morals and defines it to be “absolutely wrong and forbidden” (a definitive statement). Therefore, he is infallibly declaring that the doctrine of limited inerrancy of Scripture is wrong. Given how often Catholics subscribe to limited inerrancy, it is clear that few know this to be an infallible declaration.

A Controversial Example

A second example, which has already been mentioned, is found in Pope St. Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae(#14). In it, the Pope says:

“Therefore, We base Our words on the first principles of a human and Christian doctrine of marriage when We are obliged once more to declare that the direct interruption of the generative process already begun and, above all, all direct abortion, even for therapeutic reasons, are to be absolutely excluded as lawful means of regulating the number of children. Equally to be condemned, as the magisterium of the Church has affirmed on many occasions, is direct sterilization, whether of the man or of the woman, whether permanent or temporary.”

Again we find the three conditions fulfilled. The Pope is clearly exercising his office as universal pastor and teacher and is proclaiming “a teaching which is based on natural law as illuminated and enriched by divine revelation.” He directly declares that any contraceptive act or temporary or permanent sterilization as “absolutely excluded as lawful. This is a definitive statement that admits of no exception. Therefore the Pope is exercising his power to teach ex cathedra.

Once we learn how to apply the three criteria for ex cathedra statements, we readily find that there are far more than the two Marian dogmas and the two examples I mentioned. Naturally we might want a complete list of them. Setting aside whether it would be even be possible for the Church to publish a complete list, there is a list of examples found in a CDF commentary on the Oath of Fidelity, Professio Fidei (#11). In addition to the two Marian dogmas everyone knows and the inerrancy of Scripture listed above, it also lists three other examples: Benedictus Deus (1336) on the immortality of the spiritual soul and its immediate recompense after death; IApostolicae Curae (1896) on the invalidity of Anglican orders; and Evangelium Vitae (1995) on the grave immorality of murder.

These are meant to be, according to the document, just examples and by no means should be interpreted as exhaustive. In any regard, it is clear that there are far more than two cases in which the Pope has spoken ex cathedra.

Out of Voting Options?

October 23, 2024Abortion, American Founding, Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, Conscience, Contraception, Culture of LifeCommon Good, Election, IVFRob Agnelli

With the usual turmoil that comes with a Presidential election it is easy to miss an overall cultural movement that has occurred: it has become increasingly harder for Christians to participate in the political process without compromising their principles. It seems that during this Presidential election cycle we are out of options. The candidate on the Left is radically pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQ “rights”, and has been part of an administration that has repeatedly used lawfare, especially against Catholics. The candidate on the Right during his last administration did much to help the pro-life cause, favors the rule of law, and, as his record shows, favors peace both home and abroad. The choice seems rather easy, except the latter also has recently Donned himself “the Father of IVF” and promises, through his party’s platform, “to promote policies that advance Prenatal Care, access to Birth Control, and IVF (fertility treatments).” Can a Catholic, in good conscience, still vote for the Republican candidate?

Voting and the Common Good

As with any moral examination, it is important to begin by looking at the act in question and to frame it in its context. Since voting is a social action, its moral evaluation must always be in relation to the common good. Admittedly in our atomistic, “are you better off than four years ago?” culture this is a very un-American way of looking at it. Still, voting is a duty because we each have a duty to contribute to the common good. Voting is the means by which the individual chooses a representative whom he thinks will best protect and promote the common good (which is the overarching purpose of the State).

In an ideal world (and assuming our two-party system), any harm done to the common good by a chosen representative would be merely accidental in the sense that the implementation of a policy failed or had unintended consequences. In other words, the ends would be good even if the means were not; a failure in political prudence. Put another way, neither candidate would support what is intrinsically evil and any evil that does arise would be accidental. In that setting, an honest, non-partisan evaluation can occur in which the voter essentially comes up with a pros and cons list for each candidate.

This is why the Church has often spoken as if support for an intrinsic evil is an automatic disqualification. To that end the CDF, under the guidance of Cardinal Ratzinger in 2002, said:

A well-formed Christian conscience does not permit one to vote for a political program or an individual law which contradicts the fundamental contents of faith and morals… When political activity comes up against moral principles that do not admit of exception, compromise or derogation, the Catholic commitment becomes more evident and laden with responsibility… This is the case with laws concerning abortion and euthanasia… Such laws must defend the basic right to life from conception to natural death. In the same way, it is necessary to recall the duty to respect and protect the rights of the human embryo. Analogously, the family needs to be safeguarded and promoted, based on monogamous marriage between a man and a woman.

Because the candidate is openly advocating for a policy that can never be ordered towards advancing the common good, he or she is eliminated as an option. As an important aside, it is necessary to note that there is a distinction between toleration and active promotion. Sometimes the common good dictates that some evils be tolerated because of the moral condition of the polity. You cannot make laws that will eradicate every evil and sometimes the best you can do is contain it or limit it (e.g. John Paul II’s “Art of the Possible” in Evangelium Vitae) .

But what can we do when both candidates are advocating for policies that promote intrinsic evils? “Birth control” and IVF may be of a different moral quality than abortion, nevertheless they cannot be ordered to the common good. The Republican has moved from merely tolerating these things to actively promoting them. It could certainly be argued that because of the sheer number of children killed by both IVF and the Pill (because of its abortifacient properties) that it represents a greater threat to justice in our society than abortion. While it is impossible to quantify the effects, the movement in this direction is certainly a betrayal of those social conservatives who rightly place a premium on the foundations of society in life and the family. It is noteworthy that, in an attempt to avoid being outdone in evil, the Democratic candidate also promises unfettered access to both birth control and IVF as detailed in her party’s platform.

Voting and the Catch-22

There seems to be then a moral justification for not voting for either candidate or, at least, writing in some other worthy candidate. This would be in hopes of sending a message to President Trump that he has lost pro-lifers and he will reverse course. Edward Feser, among others has made a compelling case for that here. The problem with that approach is that, while it may be a political solution, it does not fulfill one’s duty to the common good which is relative to the here and now. The potential harm to the common good should Vice-President Harris win far outweighs the harm President Trump will do to it (this is a point Feser concedes). You must vote to limit the evil as it presents itself here and now; “Sufficient for a day is its own evil” (Mt 6:34). Cardinal Burke made a similar point when he was Archbishop of St. Louis in 2004:

A Catholic may vote for a candidate who, while he supports an evil action, also supports the limitation of the evil involved, if there is no better candidate. For example, a candidate may support procured abortion in a limited number of cases but be opposed to it otherwise. In such a case, the Catholic who recognizes the immorality of all procured abortions may rightly vote for this candidate over another, more unsuitable candidate in an effort to limit the circumstances in which procured abortions would be considered legal. Here the intention of the Catholic voter, unable to find a viable candidate who would stop the evil of procured abortion by making it illegal, is to reduce the number of abortions by limiting the circumstances in which it is legal. This is not a question of choosing the lesser evil, but of limiting all the evil one is able to limit at the time.

Despite the seemingly desperate situation, the only way forward morally is to vote for former President Trump. His policies in many ways advance the common good and he seems protective of the Church. He also seems committed to limiting abortion, although not as strongly as he once was. His pro-IVF and pro-contraception stance is unacceptable, but may actually be limited relative to the Democratic position. Because you cannot remain neutral with respect to your obligation towards the common good, it would be wrong to not cast a vote or to write-in another candidate even if it sends an important political message. That political message needs to be sent more directly and more vociferously by directly and clearly stating our objections to his stances on IVF and contraception.

Looking with Lust

July 1, 2020Anthropology, Contraception, Human Dignity, Incarnation, Sexual Ethics, The Life of Jesus, Theology of the BodyAttraction, Freedom, John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla, Love and Responsibility, Sermon on the Mount, VirtueRob Agnelli

Our Lord would most accurately be labeled, at least according to modern standards, a total prude. He reached a puritanical pinnacle by inventing a totally new category of adultery which he dubs “adultery in the heart” that occurs when a man looks at a woman with lust. This divine priggishness makes it practically impossible for men and women to even be around each other, or at least that is how it seems. The modern mind, trapped in a world without virtue, can only see two options: puritanical or prurient. But Our Lord is really offering a third option, one that ultimately leaves us with the power to love freely and not free love-ers.

Anyone encountering the Sermon on the Mount for the first time must immediately be struck by the unbelievable idealism of the mode of life Christ is putting forth. He would be the world’s most moralistic man except for one important detail. Whenever Our Lord issues a command, He never simply leaves us to our own devices, but also seeks to give us the power to fulfill His commands. His coming to “fulfill the law” isn’t just a matter of prophecy but a matter of grace. Through the power of His grace we are able to fulfill even the most idealistic of His commands, the command not to look upon a man or woman with lust included.

Christ the True Moralist

Herein lies a major point of misunderstanding about Christ the moralist. His commandments are such that they both contain the path to freedom while simultaneously leading us to freedom. He is the Truth and the Way. What Christ is commanding is really an offer that will free us from looking upon another person with lust. The power to see the other person as a person and not merely an object of pleasure. This power then opens the gates of freedom that enable us to love purely as the only true path to happiness.

This pathway to love however also requires us to properly understand what it means, and more importantly what it doesn’t mean, to look at someone with lust. Lust is not just looking at person of the opposite sex, but is a gaze that is filled desire to use the other person. In this regard it is helpful to turn to Pope St. John Paul II’s teachings in Love and Responsibility.

Love and Responsibility and Lust

The former Fr. Wojtyla sought to explain how attraction is felt between members of the opposite sex. In encountering a person of the opposite sex, a man or woman has a natural response to the sexual value of the other person. These responses come in two forms: sensuality or the reaction to the sexual value in the other person’s body, and sentimentality or the reaction to their perceived masculinity or femininity. This spontaneously felt response, without the governing of reason, finds its culmination in the desire to possess the value. Notice that it is the value itself that we desire to possess regardless of the person who possesses that value. The other person becomes an object of use, rather than a subject to love. John Paul II labels this phenomenon subjective egoism because it is based completely on how the person feels in response to the other person. Lust then is the expression of the desire to possess the value, it is the choice to use the other person.

This distinction between interest and expressing the desire is important because merely acknowledging the sexual value of the other person (we might call this interest) is not the same thing as lust. Interest is perfectly natural and in a very real way something that happens to us rather than something chosen. It is not just the seed of lust but also the seed of love. Once the interest is piqued, desire is sparked. Desire sees the person as an object to be enjoyed but still is not sinful as long as the will resists that desire to use the person. This too is an important element of love, but it must always be purified such that it is directed to the whole person.

A few examples might help. A man sees a woman and is drawn towards some perceived sexual value in her body. His emotional response brings him pleasure and he must now make a decision. Will he continue to linger on the fact that she is “hot” and the pleasure that looking at her brings or will he remind himself that it is a person and that using her (even though all he is doing is looking at her) is wrong? If it is the former, then he has lusted. If it is the latter then he has, even in a very primitive way, expressed love for her by willing her good in choosing not to treat her like an object for his own enjoyment.

Notice that what is being suggested is not repression. The attraction is natural and there can be no love without it. What has to be “repressed” is the urge to use the person. The man may feel the attraction and move to meet her, but in order not to be lust, he must go to her as a person and treat her as such. The attraction is still there, but it must move the man towards its proper end—the woman who has stirred his heart and not just her body. In being free from lust, he is now free to love the woman and not his own emotional response to the sexual value of the woman.

Adultery in the heart has everything to do with what is happening interiorly in the man and it is from this that Christ offers freedom. How this happens can be shown by two further examples.

Imagine a married man meets another woman with whom he has regular contact and she awakens sexual interest in him. He begins to develop sexual desire for her and so now he chooses to avoid her because he fears that he may lust after her. To avoid the near occasion of sin is a good thing, but it is not yet freedom. Freedom comes when there is no threat of lust, that is, when the man is chaste.

Like all virtues, chastity governs the spontaneous arising of the emotions attached to attraction. The man is simply able to acknowledge the woman’s beauty without being stirred to lust. He is free now to see her as a person who is beautiful without any desire to possess either her or her beauty. He can simply appreciate it as beautiful and move on. The truly chaste married man only feels attraction for his wife.

Likewise, the chaste unmarried man will feel the emotions of attraction, but they will be moderated such that they do not move him to use the person. Instead he is drawn towards the person and able to pursue her purely based on her personality and not solely on her attributes. He can see her in truth and not be blinded by those attributes. He is completely free in his love for her.

Our Lord’s prudery then is nothing less than an offer for authentic freedom. Our Lord practiced chastity to the perfect degree and has offered us each a share in His virtue in order to free our hearts to love to the full.

The Rehabilitation of Chastity

May 9, 2020Anthropology, Contraception, marriage, Moralilty, Sexual Ethics, Theology of the Body, VirtueCharity, Chastity, Love and Responsibility, Spousal Love, VirtueRob Agnelli

In his book Love and Responsibility, the future Pope John Paul II lamented the demise of virtue, and in particular, the virtue of chastity. A spirit of resentment has emerged in the modern psyche towards high moral standards and anyone who practices them. What was once admirable, even if very few people could master it, is now met with scorn and rationalization. Chastity is viewed as repression and psychologically harmful, especially in young people. But in truth, without chastity there can never be any true love. That is why John Paul II thought modernity needed a “rehabilitation of chastity” and set out a program in Love and Responsibility for accomplishing it.

An Elusive Definition of Chastity?

Part of the reason that such a rehabilitation is necessary is because chastity is rarely defined in positive terms. St. Thomas Aquinas defined chastity as a sub-virtue of temperance, the virtue that controls the concupiscible appetite. He points out that chastity “takes its name from the fact that reason ‘chastises’ concupiscence, which, like a child, needs curbing” (ST II-II, q.151, a.1). Of course, modern sensibilities being what they are, any whiff of restraint, is seen as an assault against freedom. If chastity is to be revived then we must expand our view of it as “a purely negative virtue. Chastity, in this view, is one long ‘no’” (L&R, p.170). What Fr. Wojtyla hoped to accomplish then is to see chastity as “above all the ‘yes’ of which certain ‘no’s’ are the consequence” (ibid).

Chastity’s alleged violation of freedom really seems like an assault on love. But this is only because our view of love, especially between the sexes, is far too narrow. When the love between a man and a woman is viewed as primarily based on the subjective emotional and sexual experiences of the individuals then chastity will always be something negative. This is not love, but use. The two people use each other in order to “feel” like they are in love. They do not love the other person but they love the feeling of being in love. And they will be “in love” with the other person only so long as they are able to cause the emotional response.

As opposed to its counterfeit, love is something objective because it is based not upon on an emotional and sexual response that the other caused, but on the objective value of the other person. Love must always be directed towards the person and the value that they have as persons. As good and as powerful as the sexual value of a person is, it does not exhaust their value. Love between the sexes incorporates that sexual value into the total value of the person as a person.

When use is substituted for love, then chastity “feels” like it is holding love back and keeping it from blossoming. In truth, chastity is an indispensable ingredient for love because “its function is to free love from the utilitarian attitude” (p.169). Chastity is not a ‘No’ to sexual pleasure but a ‘No’ to treating the other person as an object of sexual gratification. It is a steady and habitual refusal to use the other person. It is a habitual readiness to affirm the full value of the other person. Returning to JPII’s words, “only the chaste man and the chaste woman are capable of true love. For chastity frees their association, including their marital intercourse, from that tendency to use a person” (L&R, p. 171).

Pleasure Freed by Chastity

The traditional definition of chastity, true as it is, does not exhaust its full meaning. Chastity does not just moderate our sexual desire, but “liberates love from the attitude of use.” It is then both a ‘No’ and a ‘Yes’—no to use, yes to love. No longer under the sway of unbridled emotion, sexual desire is liberated to roam free and be directed towards the full value of the person. Only the chaste man and woman experience true pleasure of sexual desire because it is governed by reason and directed towards its natural end.

This is the great lie of those who would have us believe that chastity is mere repression. Sinners always love company and seek a way to rationalize their own vices. On the surface, and at least initially, it is easier to yield to sexual desire. But pleasure is always fleeting and when chosen as an end always operates under the law of diminishing returns. But John Paul II encourages his readers to persevere because virtue takes time and suffering because of our fallen nature. Once it matures pleasure is restored to its natural place and, surprising to our untrained minds, actually increases. The “in-between” time in which chastity feels like repression is certainly difficult, but once it grows, like a fully mature tree, it provides the sweet fruit of pleasure. This reality only comes about however when chastity is seen as worthwhile.

Fully rehabilitated chastity enables us to see that it is, like every decision that we make, both a no and a yes. It is a no to a utilitarian relationship and a yes to the full blossoming of both spousal love and friendship.

The Principle of Totality

July 20, 2019Abortion, Bioethics, Catholic Social Teaching, Conscience, Contraception, Culture of LifeAmputation, Organ Donation, Principle of Bodily IntegrityRob Agnelli

During the 1920s, the practice of compulsory sterilization in the United States became commonplace. The Supreme Court even went so far as declaring the constitutionality of the sterilization laws in the 1927 decision in the case of Buck v. Bell. In the majority brief written by Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Court argued in favor of this practice by saying that “(It) is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting the Fallopian tubes…Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” The Church for her part vehemently opposed the practice by appealing to the principle of totality. Because this principle is often cited in support of Catholic Moral teaching related to medical ethics it is instructive to examine it in some detail.

In its simplest form, the principle of totality holds that that under certain circumstances it is morally permissible to sacrifice the good of a part for the sake of the whole. However, this needs further qualification in order to see why something like the Eugenics program of the 1920s was morally wrong. Justice Holmes in his argument thought that for the sake of the whole of society, it would be better to sterilize some of the members.

Clearing Up Confusion

In a speech given to the “Leaders and Members of the Italian Association of Cornea Donors and Italian Association for the Blind,” Pope Pius XII hoped to clear up some of the confusion related to this principle. There were those who argued that the principle of totality justified the removal of vital organs from the dying in order to transplant them into the bodies of those who had a better chance of survival. While he lauds the intention to alleviate suffering he rejects this argument as erroneous by appealing to the “essential difference between a physical organism and a moral organism.” The organs of the body exist solely for the sake of the body while each human person does not exist for the sake of the whole of humanity. Instead each human person has intrinsic worth and thus cannot be coercively sacrificed for the sake of the whole (Pope Pius XII, “Speech to Leaders and Members of the Italian Association of Cornea Donors and Italian Association for the Blind”).

We see then just how important the distinction between a physical organism and a moral organism is in determining the application of this principle. A physical organism is one in which there is a unity on the level of essence. Thus, the relationship of part to whole exists if the part by its very nature has no finality outside the whole. A moral organism however is a group of individuals that are bound together in some unity of action. Each member of the group has a value that is intrinsically bound up with what (or more accurately who) they are rather than what they contribute to the community.

In this way then the Principle of Totality serves a limiting function on medical practice. For the sake of a physical whole, one may sacrifice a part of oneself assuming that the choice does not do harm to an authentic human good. However, if there is a moral unity then there is a limit on the activities of the individual at the service of the community.

It is also important to mention the fact that despite the fact that it applies to a physical organism, the principle is not merely physicalist in nature. It is meant to serve the integral good of the person by creating a harmonious relationship between the physical and spiritual elements. To emphasize this point some authors have referred to it as the principle of “Totality and Integrity.” Fr. Benedict Ashley, one such author, states the principle as follows: “Except to save life itself, the fundamental functional capacities which constitute the human person should not be destroyed, but preserved, developed, and used for the good of the whole person and of the community.”

An Example

If we examine one of the most common procedures that involve the principle of totality, organ donation and transplantation, we can further illuminate this principle and its use in medical ethics. In applying this principle, we are able to find justification for organ donation and transplantation. Provided that the functional integrity of the donor is maintained then living organ donation is morally justifiable. Ashley et al present four related principles that show how the principle of totality might be maintained. There should be a serious need faced by the patient, which can only be satisfied by organ donation. Although it might reduce “anatomical integrity” it should not diminish the “functional integrity” of the person. Thirdly the risk of donation should be viewed as “an act of charity proportionate to the good resulting for the recipient.” Finally there should be “free and informed consent” by the donor.

Many try to justify freely consented sterilization by appealing to the principle of totality. They argue that if a marriage is in general open to children then each act of sexual intercourse need not be. They argue that if the marriage would be harmed in some way by having children, the good of procreation may be sacrificed for the total good of the marriage itself.

The problem with this argument is that it violates the principle that one may never perform an intrinsically evil act (such as contraception) so that good may come about. However, there is a flaw in the logic as well. As was mentioned, the principle of totality actually applies to physical organisms (like organs) and not moral organisms (i.e. persons). The conjugal act has an intrinsic value in itself and it is not just as part of the whole that it gains its value (Pius XII, “Speech to the Twenty-Sixth Congress of the Italian Association of Urology”)..

The problem with appealing to the principle of totality in this manner is that it can lead to justifying nearly anything. For example, there is no reason why an act of infidelity, especially if it might “help” the marriage, would be wrong as long as the totality of the marriage is faithful.

In conclusion, the principle of totality is an important principle in medical ethics because it promotes authentic human good. This may require at times the sacrifice of a physical part for the integral good of the person, but it also serves to limit the activities that may be performed on a person.

On Prenatal Testing

July 6, 2019Autism, Bioethics, Conscience, Contraception, Family, MoraliltyAmniocentesis, Donum Vitae, Genetic Counseling, Genetics, Prenatal TestingRob Agnelli

Thanks to a noninvasive prenatal testing procedure called NIPD, a test which can predict Down Syndrome with 99% accuracy, the number of children born with Down Syndrome worldwide has greatly been reduced. This is not because they can repair the defective condition, but because it fashions the DNA into a bullseye, systematically marking them for death. Between 2/3 and 4/5 of children with Down Syndrome are aborted, reducing the overall rate by 30%. In other countries such as Denmark and Sweden nearly 100% of the children are aborted. This, of course, is an example in which pre-natal testing has been used under nefarious circumstances, but not all of them are bad. In fact, as more and more data pours in from the work on the Human Genome Project we should expect the ability to make more accurate pre-natal diagnoses on any number of conditions to increase. With knowledge always comes power, but this power can be seductive unless we are guided by solid moral principles.

What makes navigating the moral waters upon which pre-natal testing floats particularly perilous is the fact that most of the tests themselves do not carry any moral weight. There are some, like amniocentesis, which present significant dangers for both mother and child. These tests should be avoided unless there are serious medical reasons for doing so. But tests like NIPD and ultrasounds are practically harmless to both mother and child and become part and parcel of the standard of care. The moral issue comes in with the intention of the parents of the unborn child. In other words, what are they going to do with the information?

Why You Want to Know Matters

If they desire to know so that they can abort the child then it becomes morally problematic, even if they don’t actually follow through with it. Knowing that this might be a real temptation, then they shouldn’t have the test. On the flip side, a couple may want to perform the test so that they are better prepared medically and emotionally for parenting a child with serious medical needs then the test can be safely (morally speaking) performed. There continue to be many advances made to in utero diagnosis and surgical interventions that these tests can often be life-saving. Just this week the Cleveland Clinic announced that they had performed successful in utero surgery to repair Spina Bifida. This obviously was made possible through pre-natal testing.

Summarizing, The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services (1994) presents these principles succinctly: “Prenatal diagnosis is permitted when the procedure does not threaten the life or physical integrity of the unborn child or the mother, and does not subject them to disproportionate risks; when the diagnosis can provide information to guide preventive care for the mother or pre- or postnatal care for the child; and when the parents, or at least the mother, give free and informed consent. Prenatal diagnosis is not permitted when undertaken with the intention of aborting an unborn child with a serious defect” (50).

With abortion off the table, what are the guidelines we can use if the unthinkable happens and a child is diagnosed with a medical problem. The Church speaks of avoiding “disproportionate risks”. This assumes a sort of calculus on the part of the parents by which they weigh the seriousness of the disease against the risk of surgery. This might include experimental procedures. Provided that there is an acceptable amount of risk involved and the surgery is done for therapeutic, rather than experimental reasons, then it would be morally permissible to do so. As the Instruction on Respect for Human Life in its Origin, Donum Vitae, puts it, “[N]o objective, even though noble in itself, such as a foreseeable advantage to science, to other human beings or to society, can in any way justify experimentation on living human embryos or fetuses, whether viable or not, either inside or outside the mother’s womb” (DV I, 4).

Not only is abortion not an option, but also those procedures which are not inherently therapeutic. Procedures designed to influence the genetic inheritance of a child, which are not therapeutic, are morally wrong. “Certain attempts to influence chromosomic or genetic inheritance are not therapeutic but are aimed at producing human beings selected according to sex or other predetermined qualities. These manipulations are contrary to the personal dignity of the human being and his or her integrity and identity. Therefore in no way can they be justified on the grounds of possible beneficial consequences for future humanity. Every person must be respected for himself: in this consists the dignity and right of every human being from his or her beginning” (DV, I, 6).

Genetic Counseling

Genetic counseling before a couple actually conceives is growing in use and popularity. The man and the woman each submit to genetic screening that gives a genetic profile enabling them to predict how likely it is that they have a child with a serious genetic defect. Like the pre-natal testing discussed previously there is nothing inherently wrong with doing it. What matters is what you are going to do with the information that is gleaned from it. For example, suppose a couple finds one or both of them are carriers for some genetic condition such as cystic fibrosis or Tay Sachs, both of which pose serious risks to viability and lifespan of the child. They may come to learn that there is a 50% chance that their child develops the condition. Is this a good enough reason to forego having children and adopt instead?

This is one of those cases where the Church does not say one way or the other, although we can certainly apply Catholic principles to come up with a set of guidelines. First, we must never forget that the goal of parenting is to raise children for heaven. The most severely mentally handicapped child will only be so temporarily if they are baptized. I say this not to over-spiritualize the issue, but to put it in perspective. As a father of a special needs child this thought has brought me much comfort and has stifled my fears. Having a child with something wrong with them is among the worst things a parent can deal with, but it is not the worst. Having your child go to hell would be the worst. Knowing that you raised your child and got them to heaven means that you have done all God asked of you. “Well done my good and faithful servant.”

This may not be a reason then to avoid having any children, but it might be counted as a so-called “serious” reason to postpone, even indefinitely, having more children. If a couple has a child with many medical needs and knowing that they are at an increased likelihood to have another like them, they may legitimately decide to not have any more children, provided the means they use to avoid pregnancy are morally licit.

The True Christian History of Abortion

June 26, 2019Abortion, Apologetics, Contraception, Culture, Culture of Life, HistoryAbortifacient, Bible, Didache, Exodus, Poverty, pro-life, St. AugustineRob Agnelli

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 2^nd Century, but the list of Fathers who spoke against abortion down to the beginning of the 5^th 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 40^th 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 5^th 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.”

Master of Your Domain

June 19, 2019Anthropology, Conscience, Contraception, Freedom, Homosexuality, Moralilty, Sexual EthicsFreud, Pleasure, Sexual Desire, Vaping, VocationRob Agnelli

A couple of months back there was an anti-vaping meme that circulating in social media that encouraged teens to masturbate rather than to vape: “Pleasuring yourself with Vape? Try masturbation instead. Masturbating alone or with a friend is a great safe alternative to vaping.” Vaping may be bad, especially for teens, but the solution of masturbation is not a real moral alternative either. The meme creators reasoned that when pleasure is the goal, it is better to choose masturbation because it is a relatively harmless activity when done in private (or even with a “friend”). Unfortunately, anyone who contests this is puritanically shouting into the hyper-libidinous wind that keeps our culture sailing along. Nevertheless, one could, and more importantly should, argue that masturbation is far more harmful to the person than vaping and therefore something that should also be avoided.

Because we are oversexed any conversation on this topic will naturally require some backing up of sorts. Our culture may be obsessed with sex, but so are the apparent puritans who are always moralizing about it. We will back up in order to first understand why sex is such a big deal.

Sex and Desire

Our human desires all seem to point to some personal need that we have. Hunger and thirst point to the need to eat and drink for example. While quelling the hunger pains and slaking the thirst may bring us pleasure, that cannot be enough to decide what and how we should eat and drink. We must always keep the purpose of the desire and its fulfillment in mind. The pleasure is meant to be a motor that moves us towards something that is good for us. In other words, those things we choose to eat and drink must actually meet the needs of nutrition and hydration. Those that do not, we label as perverted. Eating plastic coated with strawberry jelly and drinking antifreeze both might bring us pleasure, but ultimately they fail to meet the need or purpose of the desire. In short, there are right and wrong things to eat, even if some of the wrong things are pleasurable. Every desire must be submitted to our reason that judges right and wrong according to the purpose of the desire.

Sexual desire is similar to hunger and thirst in that it is an innate human desire, but it differs because it is more complex. It is more complex not just because it points to the “need” to reproduce, but because it also points to two other important distinctly human aspects. First, sexual desire points to sexual fulfillment. By sexual fulfillment I don’t mean an orgasm, but to our fulfillment of what it means to be made as men and women. Our sexual desire points to our personal fulfillment in women becoming wives and mothers and men becoming husbands and fathers. I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of people finding fulfillment in other ways, but just to emphasize that we are talking about sexual fulfillment, that is, what the meaning or telos of being made as a man or woman is. Even the most ardent LGBT activist admits this truth when they preach gender identity. In any regard, because our sexual fulfillment is so vital to our personal identity, it is our strongest desire.

The vehemence of the desire is the second aspect. Not only is its tie to personal identity the reason for its strength but the fact that it is the biological motor by which we come out of ourselves. It is a social desire in that it finds its true fulfillment in uniting with another person. But its relative strength also means that it is the one which is mostly likely to become perverted, making it prone to abuse and rationalizing Therefore, it is also the one, in our fallen state, that we need the most need of instruction by which reason might govern its use.

It would be hard to dispute the fact that it is other-directed. Even the person masturbating invokes their imagination to call to mind another person. Sexual pleasure is not just a passive response to being touched, but an intentional pleasure caused by another person to whom one is attracted to. It can never be like scratching an itch where one only receives relief from some tension, but a desire directed towards another person. Kinsey and Freud might have duped us moderns into thinking is was just some physiological response that causes the arousal of the person, but we all know that it is the bodily contact in conjunction with the presence (real or imagined) of another person that one finds attractive. The object of our attraction and our arousal must be a subject.

What’s the Harm?

This other-directedness of sexual desire seems obvious so that we can see why we might label masturbation as wrong. But it seems to be little more than a “guilty pleasure” causing no real harm. The harm may be hidden, or, more accurately, we might say we are blinded to it, but it is a real harm nonetheless. The harm comes into view when we call to mind that human beings are creatures of habit, or virtues and vice. No act occurs in a vacuum but always moves us towards virtue or vice. Because sexual desire is so strong, there is perhaps no field of human activity where the law of habit is more obvious.

Masturbation by its very nature is a self-directing of sexual desire. The aim is not to unite to another person, but to gain pleasure. The turning to the self is no mere guilty pleasure but forms a habit of thinking and acting in that way. It isn’t just a self-indulgent act, but makes someone selfish. The person becomes habituated to seeking their own pleasure first and their partner’s pleasure becomes only a calculated concern. They want their pleasure only so that they will come back around.

Because sexual arousal is an intentional act, the person develops the habit of mind that makes arousal by a real person increasingly difficult. A real person does not always do what the other person wants in the way that they want. Masturbation becomes in a very real sense a gateway perversion to ever-greater perversions. Nearly all sexual deviants began with masturbation. This is not to say that everyone who masturbates will become a depraved sexual predator, but that it sets a person on that path because of what we will call the law of diminishing pleasure.

As we have said, pleasure is like the motor that moves the human engine towards truly good things. But when pleasure becomes the finish line and not the motor, it always diminishes. One then has to find new and more exciting ways in order to increase pleasure or re-direct the pleasure back to its intended end. The point is that the chaste man derives far more pleasure from the marital embrace than the “stud” who traverses from woman to woman, just as the temperate man enjoys a scotch more than a drunk or the temperate woman enjoys a fine steak more than a glutton. When we moderate our pleasures to only the right use of those things that cause the pleasure, pleasure always increases.

Returning back to the anti-vape campaign mentioned at the beginning, we can now see why masturbation is a horrible alternative. Indulging the strongest of our desires may reduce the desire for a lesser one, but it only further ensnares the teenager in a loop of pleasure seeking.

The Danger of Playing House

April 10, 2019Abortion, Bioethics, Contraception, Culture, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, Homosexuality, MoraliltyIVF, Procreation, Reproductive Rights, right to life, SurrogacyRob Agnelli

“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.

The Myth of Bodily Autonomy

April 6, 2019Abortion, Anthropology, Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, Contraception, Human DignityArguments for Abortion, Bodily Autonomy, Hollywood, Pro-Life Legislation, VoluntarismRob Agnelli

The Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, has until May 12^th to either sign or veto a bill that would ban abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected. Until then we should expect that the heat from human rights advocates in Hollywood will continue to increase. They have threated to boycott the state if HB 481 becomes law because it is a dangerous bill that threatens “to strip women of their bodily autonomy.” Whether it is the pithy “my body, my choice” or this principle of “bodily autonomy”, the idea is often invoked to defend abortion. Therefore, it merits a discussion in order to insert some sanity into what is otherwise an insane defense of abortion.

Hidden and Not-So Hidden Assumptions

To refute this position, we must first understand the assumptions upon which it rests. First notice that by invoking this type of argument they are admitting that the fetus is in fact a person. Otherwise their position is absurd in that it contradicts both science and common sense. From the moment of conception, the fetus is an independent biological entity that is self-directed with its own DNA. Now only thing necessary for growth and development is the same thing we need—water, food, oxygen and a healthy interaction with its natural environment. So then it is not a “part” of the mother’s body. This would also lead to the absurd conclusion, that a woman who is carrying a boy has a penis and if she is carrying a girl she has two vaginas and four breasts. Perhaps though, this is not as absurd as it used to be.

Interestingly enough, this concession actually gives too much, at least according to Roe v Wade. As Justice Harry Blackmum put it “(If the) suggestion of personhood [of the preborn] is established, the [abortion rights] case, of course, collapses, for the fetus’ right to life is then guaranteed specifically by the [14th] Amendment.” Nevertheless the argument they are making is that the right to bodily autonomy trumps (or at least carries the same moral weight as) the right to life. In fact to listen to them, it would seem that the right to bodily autonomy is absolute and eclipses all other moral claims.

The bodily autonomy argument rests upon a certain metaphysical presumption of what it means to be human. This presumption reveals itself when we examine the definition—“bodily autonomy is defined as the right to self-governance over one’s own body without external influence or coercion.” If we remove the veil of the “rights language” we immediately realize that while this could be a legitimate right, it can never be absolute. You simply cannot govern your own body without external influence or coercion in all cases because there are other people around. To grant this right to everyone would inevitably lead to chaos. That is because man is social by nature and thus there are certain obligations that arise as members of society. One such obligation is the obligation that a mother has towards her child.

As the usage of the term autonomy suggests, the abortion defender assumes that there are no such things as obligations, or at least to be an obligation it must be voluntarily accepted. All relationships and the obligations attached to them contain an opt-out clause because autonomy dictates that there be ongoing consent. We can see that in certain relationships this is true, but in others the obligation exists. A mother and a father came into a relationship with each other and with a child voluntarily and thus they bear the obligation to nurture that child. A mother is a mother whether she consents to be or not.

The Principle of Consent

This last statement, namely that a mother and father came into relationship with each other and with a child voluntarily, ought to be obvious, but it bears some explanation anyway. One of the reasons why abortion has become so prevalent is because the connection of sex and babies has been virtually divorced. I say “virtually” because this disconnect can only be mental and never real. The fact that we even have something like birth control and abortion admits to this fact. Consent to any given activity is also consent to all the natural consequences attached to that activity, even if it is only implicit. The trapeze artist who jumps to another midflight consents not just to being caught but to falling. He may take many precautions so that he doesn’t fall, but if he does then no one would call it unexpected but an accident. In fact, this intrinsic connection to falling is what makes the activity so exciting. In a similar manner consent to sexual intercourse is consent to a child because children are a natural consequence of that particular activity. Like the trapeze artist, a couple might have an “accident” but it would never be unexpected because it is an activity that is ordered towards that outcome. We may attempt to alter that outcome by being “safe” but that does not change the intrinsic connection.

But not all children are conceived as a result of a consensual act, so what can we say about cases of rape. We must first call the abortion supporter to task for attempting to argue from exception. Even if we were to say that abortion is permissible in the case of rape, this is not really what they are after. They want abortion on demand and when they are pressed on the case of rape they will reveal that. Nevertheless, what we have said also applies to the hard case of rape.

Recall that in order for this line of argument in favor of abortion to proceed, they must be willing to concede that the fetus is a person. Otherwise the argument crumbles and the rape exception is a red herring. As social beings, we are our brother’s keepers. We have an obligation to protect the life of the most vulnerable among us, even though it might be at great personal cost. This obligation is a social one, meaning that everyone must do their part. Some play a part, even if only temporarily, that no one else can play, but that does not remove the obligation. This might be called the argument of common decency. It simply means that a woman must endure the labor of delivery, but not necessarily the labor of raising the child. For that, there are other members of society who are willing to step up. To the issue at hand, it is not without irony that the number of abortions yearly in our country is almost identical to the number of people seeking to adopt.

Under closer inspection then it appears that the argument of bodily autonomy falls flat. There can be no such thing as unlimited bodily autonomy without destroying not just babies in the womb, but society as a whole.

Building the Culture of Life

January 19, 2019Bioethics, Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, Contraception, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, Devils, Politics, Spiritual WarfareEphesians 6, Fasting, march for life, Pro-Choice, pro-lifeRob Agnelli

Culture, it has been said, is its own parent. It is like a feedback loop in that it forms its members who in turn form it. Many remain wholly ignorant of this aspect of culture and simply go with the flow. But even those who consider themselves as “counter-cultural” are not immune to its nascent effects. More specifically we must admit that even those who battle against the culture of death are not immune to it. “Its ubiquitous tentacles,” St. John Paul II once said, “succeeds at times in putting Christian communities themselves to the test” (Evangelium Vitae, 21). The test comes not so much in caving in, although that of course is always a threat, but the test comes is keeping their true Christian mission always in sight.

If the movement to build a culture of life suffers from one defect it is that it tends to define itself as a protest movement. That is, it tends to define it as against the culture of death. The March for Life, as great as it is (and it is great), is really a large protest movement against the injustice of abortion. Supposing Roe v Wade was overturned tomorrow, would such a march still continue? The overturning of Roe v Wade would certainly be a movement towards a more just society but the culture of death would continue. That is because the culture of death cares little about the body count, but instead is designed such that conditions lead to wholesale spiritual death. That an innocent child is sacrificed is really just collateral damage—the real victory comes in the spiritual death of the mother, father and “health-care” providers of the abortion.

The movement for a culture of life is one that is based upon the principles that lead to spiritual life. In other words it must be a Christian culture and that is why JPII saw the culture of death as a threat to Christianity as well. When we make it only about protecting human bodily life and not also about building a culture that actively promotes spiritual well-being then we have only kicked the can down the road. When Christians remember their mission to be leaven and that the goal is not to defeat the enemies of the culture of life, but to convert them then the culture of life will be founded. What would happen if, in addition to the March for Life, we got those same 300,000 people regularly doing penance for the souls trapped in the culture of death? We may pray but that is only half the equation. This kind can only go out with prayer and fasting. Christians, if they are to share in the mission of Christ, must be willing to do penance for the sin of the world as if it was their own. We have forgotten our mission as Christians.

We have forgotten our mission, because we have forgotten who the enemy is. We “battle not against flesh and blood but against the principalities and powers” (Eph. 6:12). That is why I spoke above about the culture of death as if it were personal. It is orchestrated and its conductor is the “father of lies”. The humans are simply his orchestra. But, changing the metaphor to one used by St. Thomas Aquinas in which he says the people are like horses and the demons riders. If you knock the rider off, the horse not only goes free, but joins your cavalry. Every person that works at Planned Parenthood is not the enemy but a potential convert.

Identity politics is a perfect weapon at the hands of the demons because it demonizes other men and women. This is how even Christians are easily duped into fighting the wrong battle. Think of how many times we say “they want to do this, or they think that.” When pressed we realized that we can’t really identify who they are. That is when we know that the true enemy of mankind is at work. As well orchestrated as the culture of death is, how one thing seems to build upon another, we must admit there is an evil non-human genius at work. We should not be surprised for Satan has, from the beginning, been working on his blueprint. His mission has been and remains to build a culture of death (“you will not die”). At certain times in history he has been more successful than others, and certainly our own time is remarkable in that regard, nevertheless he has always been defeated in the same way—the power of the Cross. The battle between the culture of death and the culture of life therefore is not primarily a legislative one but a spiritual one and we must use spiritual weapons to fight it. Only when we remember this will the culture of life prevail. We must remember our mission.

The NFP Lifestyle

October 13, 2018Bioethics, Conscience, Contraception, Culture of LifeCatholic Birth Control, Feminism, NFP, The PillRob Agnelli

In recent years there have been a number of sociological studies linking marital happiness/success with methods of birth regulation. Most of them show positive differences between those couples who practice NFP and those who use other methods of birth control, although not always to the degree that NFP Catholics like to advertise. This is mostly due to the fact that couples practicing NFP fall into two categories—those who do so with a contraceptive mentality and those who live an NFP lifestyle. It is the latter group which would likely show a significantly higher marital satisfaction.

I called it a “lifestyle” because it is about so much more than just family planning. NFP reinforces the one flesh union of marriage even when the couple is not engaged in the marital embrace. At the risk of pointing out the obvious, I will mention that, unlike woman, man’s fertility is non-cyclical. He is fertile all the time. This means that the burden of self-mastery often falls upon him. In fact one could say self-mastery is at the heart of being a man. The man, as he finds stamped into his body, is made to make a gift of himself. But to give oneself away, you must first own yourself, that is, have total self-mastery. Your yes only means something when you are free to say no. Without this requisite self-mastery comes the constant temptation to “lord it over the woman” (c.f. Gen 3:16). When you do not have control over yourself, you will attempt to control other people, especially those that are close to you.

The Burden of Fertility

While man does not experience his fertility as a burden per se, the woman does. This doesn’t mean that it is a bad thing, only that it carries with it “labor” even if that labor is joyfully and willfully endured. She is the one who, ultimately, must bear the consequences of fertility. Family planning and birth control often fall upon her. As proof of this, despite all the nasty side effects, a woman is willing to take a birth control pill. This is also the arena in which NFP can facilitate a true one flesh union by enabling the man to help carry the load of her fertility with her.

The most obvious time of her cycle is during menstruation. The man experiences his constant fertility as a burden so as to be united bodily with his wife during a particularly painful period of time. The burden of fertility that she is feeling can also be felt, albeit in a different way, in his body too. He literally is practicing compassion, that is suffering with. When borne with love and patience he is making a bodily gift of himself to his wife.

Most men already do this, although perhaps in not such a deliberate way. But for those men who practice NFP and have experienced the “disappointment” of the arrival of an early period, this can enable them to see how the one flesh giving might continue. Likewise, when for “just reasons” the couple is using NFP to avoid pregnancy the man puts aside the drive of his constant fertility so as to share in and through his body her fertility. This is where real manhood, that is manhood founded upon self-mastery, is particularly felt because he feels an increase in the burden of his fertility because of the inviting presence of her pheromones signaling her fertility. Even in abstaining from the marital embrace the couple is experiencing a type of one-flesh union when they join their wills together in postponing pregnancy.

NFP’s Effect on Family Life

An NFP lifestyle also makes for a happier home life in general in the relationship between the parents and children. Schooled in self-mastery by NFP the parents are better able to love their children in a disinterested fashion. As John Paul II, in a defense of Humanae Vitae once said:

“[parents that are contracepting] cannot sacrifice their egoism to the good of their spouse, will likewise lack generosity, patience, serenity and calm assurance in their relations with their children. They will love their children to the degree to which their children bring them joy—that is selfishly and not for their own sakes; they will cajole them and teach them self-indulgence and self-love. Instead of the peace given by self-mastery, unrest will reign in the family, because the state of tension created by a truncated sexual act surrounded by precautions, an act that is to be an unreserved gift of self, must in the long term be communicated to the children. It seems that the increasing prevalence of anxiety and even certain neuroses results in large part from contraceptive practices.”

For the better part of the last half-century, the teaching Church has been (at best) silent promoting her teachings on birth control. It is time that the rest of the Church step out into the void and preach the freedom that comes from ditching contraception. The one flesh union within marriage is a daily lived experience.

Power Play

September 7, 2018Abortion, Bioethics, Contraception, Human Dignity, Magisterium, Theology of the BodyContraception, Humanae Vitae, Paul VI, The PillRob Agnelli

As the Church marks the 50^th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, much has been said regarding the prophetic character of Blessed Paul VI’s controversial encyclical. In particular, the Pope predicted that four things would happen as contraceptive use spread throughout a society. There would be an increase in marital infidelity, a general lowering of moral standards, a loss of reverence for woman as she is reduced to an instrument for the satisfaction of a man’s desires and governments would use coercive power to implement “family planning” policies. In reading the signs of the times, the Pope saw the consequences clearly, but why he was so easily able to see this is just important. For these consequences were just symptoms of a deeper mindset that the Holy Father feared would ultimately conquer the hearts and minds of men, a mindset that was just as soul-killing as the contraceptive mentality to which it was linked. After uttering his prophecy of consequences, the Holy Father tells us the root cause is man’s unwillingness to “accept that there are certain limits, beyond which it is wrong to go” (HV , 17).

On the one hand this is nothing new. One can even say that Original Sin itself is the mark of man’s unwillingness to accept his creaturely limits. Man in his Edenic bliss can eat from every tree in the Garden, save one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (GN 2:16-17). Made in the likeness of God, he is confronted with the choice to be “like gods who know good and evil” (Gn 3:5). That is, he has a choice between conforming himself to the limits of reality, or shaping reality to his liking. He quickly finds out that his decision was never a real option. He passes his confusion on to his progeny along with a proclivity for choosing likewise.

Confusing Limits

Because man is now in a state of confusion, he must set out to discover reality as it really is. To enter into a relationship with reality he must also (re-)discover himself as he really is (including his limits) as well. At first, because of his confusion reality appears rock solid and he discovers many limitations in himself. But as the field of discovery expands, he finds that he has the power to manipulate reality more and more. His limitations become blurred except when he asks a simple question: does this new power over reality include power over myself? If so, then it is actually a power within reality, which is the only true power. Otherwise it is a grasping and remaking of reality.

In many ways chemical contraception represents a paramount example of this principle in play. In the past contraception usually involved changing the act, but with the Pill and the like came the power to alter the reality of a woman’s reproductive system. But this is no mere biological alteration, but an alteration to a person’s biology. Therefore it has to be viewed through a personalistic lens. Does the power the Pill gives over a woman’s cycle carry with it the power of the woman to master herself? And, because a woman’s reproductive system is a relational system, does the Pill give the man in whom she enters into a reproductive relationship with a power to master himself?

Power

The wisdom of Blessed Paul VI’s condemnation of contraception begins to emerge, especially when we add a second principle. With the emergence of new technology comes new power over reality. This power is given at the service of controlling men. The question is which men will be controlled. Will the new power be used to control man himself? Or will the power be used to control other men? Or as CS Lewis put it in The Abolition of Man “For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means…the power of some men to make other men what they please.”

Blessed Paul VI was so accurate in his predictions because he knew that the Pill wasn’t really a medicine to control births, but a poison to control other people. His forecasts are really about the power of one person over another. More to the point, the Pill is about men exercising their power over women. It tells women in order to gain her rightful share in society she must act like one of the big boys. But because woman is a “misbegotten male” she must take a pill to do this. But in truth it is a ploy in which man, who is fertile all the time, can find partners who are infertile all the time. It absolves him of all responsibility and creates an injustice in which women are treated as inferiors. What is so puzzling is that many of them, in the name of equality, swallow the pill anyway. Shouldn’t society have to change and adapt to the feminine genius and not woman herself? As then Cardinal Karol Wojtyla (the future St. John Paul II) said ,

“Contraception makes no contribution to the woman’s personal rights. Since it is a process that makes it possible to satisfy the ‘needs of the sexual instinct’ without taking on any of the responsibility for the consequences of sexual activity, it primarily benefits the man. This is why, once accepted contraception leads to sanctioning his erotic hedonist behavior. In this situation, inevitably, the man benefits at the expense of the woman. He ceases to regard the woman in the context of transmitting life. She becomes for him simply the occasion for enjoying pleasure. If one adds to this the fact that it is inscribed in the very structure of man to take initiative in the sexual realm and that the danger of being violated is a threat primarily to the woman, then one must admit that the more constitution of the woman appears grim indeed. Therefore, when contraception is used, the woman faces not only inequality but also sexual slavery.”

In his opening paragraph of Humanae Vitae, Blessed Paul VI recognized that technology, especially reproductive technologies, were a force that the Church was going to need to confront. Unfortunately she has not been up to the task and many women have suffered because of it. As the Church continues to celebrate this Golden Anniversary of Humane Vitae, let’s work towards a rediscovery of the golden wisdom contained within this prophetic document.

Our Lady of Fatima and Gay Marriage

March 22, 2017Church and State, Contraception, Homosexuality, marriageErrors of Communism, Marriage, Marxism, Our Lady of FatimaRob Agnelli

When Our Lady appeared to the children of Fatima, she warned that without conversion, Russia would continue to spreads its errors throughout the world. The “errors” to which she was referring were mainly those of Communism, rooted in the philosophy of Karl Marx. More than an economic theory, Marxism views all of history as the conflict between oppressors and oppressed and seeks to do away with all division, natural or not. Marx himself presented it as a conflict between capital and labor, but those categories can readily be adapted to any two groups including gender, race or sexual orientation. While the fruit of the Marxist tree that is Communism may be dying, the Marxist roots are alive and thriving within our own liberal democracy, a society that is deeply (and deliberately) divided. This makes Our Lady’s words all the more prescient and ought to give us pause as we mark the 100^th anniversary of her appearance at Fatima.

All of the prior Marxist attempts to remake human nature and society have met one almost insurmountable obstacle—the Family. Marx himself envisioned this obstacle and called for the abolition of the family in the Communist Manifesto saying, “Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.”

As long as the foundation of society remained strong and in place, any attempt to change society as a whole would ultimately fail. But weaken the foundation and society will fall with it.

Not surprisingly, the Communist Party USA has been one of the most vocal supporters of the push for gay marriage. They knew that by subverting marriage, the Family would ultimately be laid waste. Ultimately this is why those who oppose Gay Marriage cannot give up the fight. By removing one of the means by which the Marxist spread their errors, we are hastening the reign of the Immaculate Heart.

Thinking Clearly about Marriage

Pascal said that our first moral obligation is to think clearly so that before we do anything we must understand why Marriage and the Family are intrinsically linked. Without marriage, the Family ceases to exist.

Amidst all the debate in the past decade about redefining marriage, neither side could actually define either the classical definition or the revisionist version. In order to see why the family and marriage are linked, we must begin by offering a definition of marriage. Marriage is the complete union of two persons. It is the total union of their persons at every level of their temporal being—spiritual, emotional and bodily. The conjugal bond is what makes marriage unique in comparison to any other relationship or community of persons.

What revisionists have tried to do is to remove one of the elements. They would almost certainly call it an emotional and spiritual bond. Although it may seem surprising it is the bodily union that they must remove; not because it isn’t a sexual relationship but because it is not a conjugal relationship.

Men and women are capable of performing all biological processes on their own, save one, procreation. To perform this process they need a complementary other. In other words, in performing acts that may lead to procreation, they become a single “organism.” It is not just any sexual activity that unites them, but only sexual activity that is intrinsically ordered to procreation. In order to be unitive, sexual activity must also be the kind that is procreative. Any other sexual activity (including contracepted) simply becomes the exchange of pleasure and does not unite the two people physically any more than a handshake, a back rub, or putting one’s finger in another’s ear. Only in the marital embrace can two spouses be physically united, an act that same-sex couples cannot perform. Marriage, under the revisionists’ definition must therefore no longer be a complete union of two persons since the couple is unable to become one flesh.

A word of explanation as to why I have been careful about calling them acts that are “ordered to procreation.” As a biological process, procreation has aspects that are under control of the person and aspects that are not. One may choose to breathe, but one cannot choose to get oxygen into the blood. Provided the conditions are right, that happens “automatically” and is outside the direct control of the person. So too with acts ordered to procreation. A couple can engage in the marital embrace, but whether conception occurs or not, happens after the fact and is outside of their direct control. In other words, it is not the actual conception of the child that causes the act to be unitive. It is unitive because it is a procreative act. Grasping this helps us to see why an infertile couple may still be married (because they are capable of procreative acts even if they do not lead to conception) and a same-sex couple may not.

Marriage and the Family

It also helps us to understand what it means when we say that children are the end of marriage. They are not the purpose of marriage—the purpose is the total union or communion of the persons—but they are the fruit of marriage. In short, they are a natural result of the communion of persons in marriage.

With all that has been said, we can understand that the Church is not being old-fashioned when she defines the family as “born of the intimate communion of life and love founded on the marriage between one man and one woman” (Gaudium et Spes, 48). The family as the first society a person belongs to forms that person in his vision of reality. Each child learns that he or she was generated from an act of love and was quite literally loved into existence. It is the school of love where the child learns both how to love and be loved. In short, “a society built on a family scale is the best guarantee against drifting off course into individualism or collectivism, because within the family the person is always at the center of attention as an end and never as a means” (Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, 213).

Joining the Battle

If the goal is to destroy the family, then get rid of marriage. Erotic love is too powerful to destroy it altogether, but modifying it to the point that it becomes unrecognizable is sufficient to destroy the family. Not surprisingly with a change in marriage we are seeing a change in what people call a family. A “family” that is not founded upon marriage as the communion of persons is built on sand. It is only the complete bond of the spouses to each other that keeps the family together.

Since the Obergefell decision almost two years ago, many Catholics have disengaged from the battle for marriage. It is time to pick up the battle once again, especially considering what Sr. Lucia, the Fatima visionary once said. “The final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family. Don’t be afraid because anyone who operates for the sanctity of marriage and the family will always be contended and opposed in every way, because this is the decisive issue. However, Our Lady has already crushed its head.” Let us re-engage and fight for marriage and the family!

The Church, Contraception and the UN

September 20, 2016ContraceptionRob Agnelli

Today, the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research, will present a report at a UN-hosted meeting calling upon “the Catholic hierarchy to reverse their stance against so called ‘artificial’ contraceptives.” While they have not yet made the full report available, a Summary report is presented on their web site. Although a cursory glance shows that none of their arguments are particularly new, their platform is. To present the report in such a prominent setting is sure to garner attention, especially in our culture of sexual liberation.

In examining their arguments, one can see that they readily acknowledge the reason Humanae Vitae presents such a strong defense against anyone who would seek to reverse the Church’s teachings. It is because it relies on both reason and faith. Because very few people accept arguments from authority any longer, it is instructive to examine their “Assessment of the Objections to the Natural Law.”

3.1. HV’s argument is that because the biological “laws of conception” reveal that sexual intercourse has a “capacity to transmit life” (HV §13), each and every act of sexual intercourse has a “procreative significance” (HV §12) and “finality” (HV §3), and an “intrinsic relationship” to procreation (HV §11).

This misinterprets the biological evidence. The causal relationship between insemination and, on the other hand, fertilization, implantation, and ultimately procreation, is statistical, not necessary. The vast majority of acts of sexual intercourse do not have the biological “capacity” for procreation, and therefore they cannot have procreation as their “finality” or “significance.”

Blessed Paul VI may have been an old, celibate man locked away in the Vatican, but he knew enough that not to say that every sexual act necessarily ends in pregnancy. If he did then there would not have made any mention to having “Recourse to Infertile Periods” (HV 16). They are twisting his words in an attempt to make the Church seem behind the times.

It is still worthwhile addressing the fact that “procreation is statistical, not necessary.” On a biological level, the purpose of sexual intercourse is pregnancy. Two organisms come together for the purpose of becoming a single reproducing organism. Whether pregnancy actually occurs is outside the control of the two organisms. Because man has an animal nature the end of sexual activity in nature is reproduction (its finality). But because man also has reason that enables him to discover the laws of God from within the laws of nature, he knows that he ought not to interfere with the natural end of the marital embrace. There are other factors outside the direct control of the man and woman that determine pregnancy (timing, fertility, etc.), but the basis of the natural law argument is that we ought never to interfere with those things which by nature cause us to flourish (for a more thorough argument against Contraception using the Natural Law, see this entry).

3.2. Secondly, it is mistaken to derive a moral prescription directly from a factual description, i.e. a judgment of value (about what morally ought to be) directly from a judgment of fact (about what is).

However, this is what HV does when it infers that people engaging in sexual intercourse must always be open to the possibility of procreation from the (incorrect) fact that each and every act of sexual intercourse has a procreative finality.

For the same reason, it is also incorrect to deduce a divine command directly from the existence of a law of nature, contrary to what HV does when asserting that the above mentioned moral prescription is God’s will.

It is interesting that they chose to hide this argument here since it would be sufficient (if it were true) to dismiss all of Humanae Vitae’s appeal to reason based on natural law. By invoking the Humean principle that you cannot derive an “ought from an is”, the authors are hoping the entire argument crumbles. In essence they are saying that there is no connection between what a thing is and how it ought to be treated. The problem with this is that it leads to a rejection of all morality and reduces everything to merely subjective wishes. From the fact that a creature is a human being, we derive that they ought to be treated in a certain way. This is the very basis of human dignity, something I am not sure that the even UN would be willing to deny since it is at the foundation of its Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR).

3.3. The affirmation that human beings may not interfere with the biological laws regulating human reproduction because they have been established by God is in contradiction with observational evidence on how human beings interact with the created order.

As agents of reason, human beings have a unique capacity to intentionally alter the schedule of probabilities inherent in the physical, chemical and biological laws of nature. This is a reality of daily life: for instance, any sort of medical intervention, from something as insignificant as taking pain-killers to something as consequential as performing cardiovascular surgery, affects probabilities – of healing, survival, death, etc. Furthermore, the decision not to intervene in natural processes also affects those probabilities, just as choosing to intervene does.

The moral question is not whether to alter the schedule of probabilities within natural processes, but rather whether, when, and how doing so is conducive to human flourishing and the flourishing of all creation.

The pill (or any other act that renders us sterile) is unique among all medical interventions. It actually stops a process that is considered to be healthy from occurring. All of the examples that they gave actually restore healthy functioning to various organs. In other words, this argument is one of a false analogy.

Furthermore, no doubt, as “agents of reason, human beings have a unique capacity to intentionally alter the schedule of probabilities inherent in the physical, chemical and biological laws of nature,” but that does not mean that they should. Just because it is technologically possible doesn’t mean it is morally permissible. This is precisely what is at question here, whether we ought to.

4. Furthermore, it is contradictory to affirm, on the one hand, that as a general principle “sexual intercourse which is deliberately contraceptive [is] intrinsically wrong,” and on the other that it is morally legitimate to practice NFP with the “intention to avoid children and [the] wish to make sure that none will result” (HV §16).

Although he did not sign the document, Machiavelli is there in spirit. This is a common argument that falls under the principle that the end justifies the means. In the case of the couple using contraception and the couple practicing NFP, the end is the same—avoiding pregnancy. But it matters how this end is brought about. I may have a million dollars that I stole or that I worked for. The end is the same, but the means in the first case are immoral while in the second they are praiseworthy.

This mistake flows from something that appears further down in the document:

7.The morality of any human action is determined by the motives and intentions of the agent, the circumstances of the situation, and the consequences of that action.

They left out an important moral determinant, mainly the object itself. The object of the act would be how one would define it if they were to witness the act. There are some objects that regardless of the intention or circumstances, can never be made good (like killing an innocent person). We call these actions intrinsically evil, a term they rejected because they conveniently left out the moral object itself.

When the famous Spanish fencer Inigo Montoya read the statement, he commented “Open. I don’t think that word means what they think it means.” The authors refer to the marital act being “open” but show a confusion as to what it means. The Latin term per se destinatus refers to the marital act itself that must remain open (the object). It does not refer to the couples’ subjective openness to procreation (intention). There are just reasons why they may not want to be pregnant. The authors themselves mention that there are morally good “motives for sexual intercourse include pleasure, love, comfort, celebration and companionship.” Setting aside pleasure (because of its attachment to use), this is true and can even be the primary subjective reason for engaging in the marital act. The point though is that those intentions must always accord with a moral object that can be ordered to the Good.

Before closing, an important subtlety bears mention as well because it shows how the two acts are different. The contracepting couple acts so as to render the sexual act infertile. The couple practicing NFP does not act at all, they simply abstain from the marital embrace during those days in which they may be fertile. It is like the woman who maintains her weight by not eating as much versus the one who has an eating disorder—one respects the natural human process of digestion and weight gain, the other is dis-ordered because it acts against it.

Once word leaked that the Wijngaards Institute for Catholic Research was going to release a document, Professor Janet Smith set out to release a countering document in an attempt “to piggy-back on the extensive publicity they are likely to get.” This is one of the few times the Faithful have had a response prepared at the same time a harmful document has been released. Please support Professor Smith in any way you can, including distributing her document as widely as possible.

On Zika and the Lesser of Two Evils

February 26, 2016Contraception, Natural Law, Pope FrancisRob Agnelli

For most Catholics, Pope Francis and plane-ride interview has become a time ripe for confusion. His return home to the Vatican from his pastoral visit in Mexico was no different. A reporter from Spain asked the Holy Father the following question:

Holy Father, for several weeks there’s been a lot of concern in many Latin American countries but also in Europe regarding the Zika virus. The greatest risk would be for pregnant women. There is anguish. Some authorities have proposed abortion, or else to avoiding pregnancy. As regards avoiding pregnancy, on this issue, can the Church take into consideration the concept of “the lesser of two evils?”

And Pope Francis replied that:

Abortion is not the lesser of two evils. It is a crime. It is to throw someone out in order to save another. That’s what the Mafia does. It is a crime, an absolute evil. On the ‘lesser evil,’ avoiding pregnancy, we are speaking in terms of the conflict between the fifth and sixth commandment. Paul VI, a great man, in a difficult situation in Africa, permitted nuns to use contraceptives in cases of rape.
Don’t confuse the evil of avoiding pregnancy by itself, with abortion. Abortion is not a theological problem, it is a human problem, it is a medical problem. You kill one person to save another, in the best case scenario. Or to live comfortably, no? It’s against the Hippocratic oaths doctors must take. It is an evil in and of itself, but it is not a religious evil in the beginning, no, it’s a human evil. Then obviously, as with every human evil, each killing is condemned.
On the other hand, avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil. In certain cases, as in this one, or in the one I mentioned of Blessed Paul VI, it was clear. I would also urge doctors to do their utmost to find vaccines against these two mosquitoes that carry this disease. This needs to be worked on.

Unfortunately, these “off-the cuff” remarks were picked up by the media and led to headlines like “Pope suggests contraceptives could be used to slow spread of Zika” (CNN), “Zika Shows It’s Time For The Catholic Church To Rethink Its Stance On Birth Control” (Forbes), and “Pope Francis Condones Contraception With Zika Virus” (NPR). An attempt by Fr. Lombardi, the Vatican Spokesman to clarify the Pope’s comments only served to further muddy the waters:

The contraceptive or condom, in particular cases of emergency or gravity, could be the object of discernment in a serious case of conscience. This is what the Pope said…the possibility of taking recourse to contraception or condoms in cases of emergency or special situations. He is not saying that this possibility is accepted without discernment, indeed, he said clearly that it can be considered in cases of special urgency.

These flying papal encounters often leave the faithful with an uncomfortable feeling that the question has not been adequately addressed or even incorrectly so. Thanks be to God that because we have the great gift of Sacred Tradition we can often fill in the ellipsis that the Holy Father tends to insert in his responses. While I will not be so bold as to speculate what the Holy Father meant, I can confidently offer what he could not mean.

Some preliminary background is necessary for understand a full response to the question. The question itself really is “Is it permissible to use contraception to combat the effects of the Zika virus on children in the womb?” In truth, to frame the question in terms of “the lesser of two evils” is to frame it incorrectly. Nowhere within the Catholic moral tradition has it ever been believed that one may choose between the lesser of two evils. In the case of two objectively evil actions, neither may be chosen for its own sake. It may very well be that in choosing a good, we will have to tolerate an evil that is both a “side effect” of our decision and of less moral gravity than the good itself (see here for a discussion of the Principle of Double Effect which governs this idea).

There is also the danger when you speak in terms of evils of seeing the child that is conceived with a birth defect as an evil. As any parent with a special needs child will emphatically tell you, the child is an inconceivable good, even if the condition that plagues them is an evil.

If we reframe the question of the goods involved a clear answer emerges that is both consistent with Tradition, Natural Law and even practical sense. The good to be attained is the avoidance of the birth defects that are (or in truth only “maybe”) associated with the Zika virus. One of the possible means of attaining this good would be to avoid pregnancy altogether. Certainly to avoid becoming pregnant with a child who is likely to carry a serious birth defect is among the “grave reasons” for postponing (even indefinitely) pregnancy that Pope Paul VI spoke of in Humanae Vitae. At this point it is not clear what the chances are of both contracting Zika and having a baby with microcephaly are, but let’s assume that they are significant enough to make it grave.

Pope Francis was clear in his condemnation of abortion as a solution to the issue. A person is an objective good to which the only adequate response is love as St. John Paul II said. This means that to do harm to the person so as to avoid their suffering with a birth defect is always a great evil and can never be a moral solution. St. John Paul II affirmed this by invoking the Church’s charism of Infallibility through the Ordinary Magisterium in Evangelium Vitae saying “I declare that direct abortion, that is, abortion willed as an end or as a means, always constitutes a grave moral disorder, since it is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written Word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium” (EV 62).

The Saintly Pontiff also conceded that there are “differences of nature and moral gravity, contraception and abortion” (EV 13) but this does not mean that contraception too does not constitute an objective evil that cannot be chosen as an ends or a means. In fact we know that Fr. Lombardi’s interpretation what the Pope said is wrong. Assuming that when he made the distinction between “contraceptives and condoms” he was considering chemical contraception, then this falls into the first category of direct abortion.

According to the PDR (and the package inserts on birth control pills), “[C]ombination oral contraceptives act by suppression of gonadotropins. Although the primary mechanism of this action is inhibition of ovulation, other alterations include changes in the cervical mucus, which increase the difficulty of sperm entry into the uterus, and changes in the endometrium which reduce the likelihood of implantation.” The third mechanism that prevents implantation of the fertilized egg (i.e the child) renders the Pill as an abortifacient. In truth because all three mechanisms are at work, there is no way to know whether pregnancy has been avoided or an abortion has taken place. Therefore because of their abortifacient nature, chemical contraceptives would not be an option.

What about condoms as a solution? I have written elsewhere about why any contraceptive measure is always a grave evil, but there is a practical reason why condom usage should not be considered as a solution. Although it often gets lumped into other “calendar methods” in efficacy studies, Natural Family Planning is at least as effective as most chemical methods and more effective than condom usage (one such study supports this can be found here). In any regard it is disappointing to say the least that neither the Pope nor his representative mentioned this as an option. Imagine the power of a response similar to “Yes, there might be reason to avoid pregnancy in the regions afflicted with Zika. We must get those people trained in NFP and we will have the good of strengthening marriages as well.”

A comment also needs to be made about the exception that the Holy Father mentioned regarding the nuns who were in danger of being raped. This is a red herring of sorts because there is no moral equivalency here at all. Birth control as the Church has always taught is related to the conjugal act. By definition this act assumes not only the physical act but also the consent of both parties. Rape may have the same physical act, but lacks the consent. These are fundamentally different things and therefore it is morally licit to do everything that you can to avoid pregnancy after the act (or even during the act). However once pregnancy (i.e fertilization) occurs it is a different thing.

The ability of the Holy Father to act as Universal Pastor of the Church is truly enhanced by the speed at which he is able to travel. What would be good though is if the Flying Magisterium could be avoided. While the Pope himself only alluded to “birth control” in his comments, there was no real indication that he was making any distinction between morally licit means and those that are not. Fr. Lombardi may or may not have accurately conveyed the Pope’s meaning but the fact of the matter is that ambiguity has plagued the papacy of Francis. While Pope Francis is certainly not the only Papal “victim” of the media in this regard, the questions themselves tend to repeat themselves and truly call for a well thought out and nuanced response. Let us all pray that when condoms and the next health crisis come up, the Holy Father will act as a clear prophet.

Seize the Moment

August 26, 2015Catholic Social Teaching, Church and State, ContraceptionRob Agnelli

Pope John Paul II often said that when it comes to her moral teachings, the Catholic “Church proposes: she imposes nothing.” One of the things that he meant by this was that the Church has a complete respect for human freedom in choosing to follow her teachings or not. However the American Church has often shown too much respect for this freedom to the point of not actually proposing the saving truths of the faith. This has led to a culture in which the teachings have been severed from the Church’s pastoral practice. This has become very obvious in the past few years in the Church’s fight against the Obama Administration’s HHS mandate on contraception. The American Bishops now find themselves not only opposed by the unjust HHS mandate, but also an overwhelming majority of those who profess to be Catholic. Although this has placed the Bishops’ Conference on the defensive, the situation presented a tremendous opportunity to go on the offensive and to present the reasonableness of the Church’s teachings to an attentive public. Much of the damage that was done to the Church since 1968 could be undone if this opportunity is seized. The crisis that had been created by the HHS mandate has brought to the forefront two important areas of Catholic teachings that have been ignored. They have been ignored not so much because no one believes them but because no one actually teaches them. The first is not so obvious, while the second is more obvious.

The Forgotten Principle

For many Catholics, Social Justice is a rallying point. However, most would be hard pressed to name the four principles which “constitute the very heart of Catholic social teaching.” They may be able to name three of them—the dignity of the human person, the common good, and solidarity—but would be at a loss to come up with the fourth, subsidiarity.

The Catechism defines subsidiarity as the principle by which “a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.” It serves as a guard against collectivism by setting limits on state intervention. It is certainly the case that government has many necessary and indispensable functions to play roles that cannot be accomplished by individuals acting alone or even by smaller groups in society. Nevertheless, governments often exceed their legitimate role by absorbing individuals and groups in society in order to control them. This leads to what John Paul II referred to in Centesimus Annus as “a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.”

Because of man’s social nature and his vocation to holiness, he needs moral space within society to “to work out his salvation in fear and trembling.” Part of respecting the dignity of the human person means respecting this moral space by allowing men to perform those duties themselves that help them grow in virtue. For example, a man who works to provide for his family is given the opportunity to grow in virtue (thereby increasing his dignity) while the man who receives government subsidies for an indeterminate period of time does not. Pius XI had this in mind when he introduced the principle of subsidiarity into the corpus of Catholic Social Teaching in Quadragesimo Anno. He summarized it as:

“Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them. The supreme authority of the State ought, therefore, to let subordinate groups handle matters and concerns of lesser importance, which would otherwise dissipate its efforts greatly. Thereby the State will more freely, powerfully, and effectively do all those things that belong to it alone because it alone can do them: directing, watching, urging, restraining, as occasion requires and necessity demands.” (Quadragesimo Anno, 79-80)

Because subsidiarity guards against collectivist tendencies, it is an important principle to emphasize in a time when there appears to be a trend towards a more Socialistic state. However this principle is rarely ever taught or emphasized. While individual bishops often appeal to the principle of subsidiarity, the Bishops’ Conference as a whole rarely makes reference to it. In fact it is not even listed as one of the “Themes of Catholic Teaching” on the Justice, Peace and Development section of the USCCB’s website. Had a greater emphasis been placed on this principle, we may not have seen the initial widespread support by the Bishops of President Obama’s Health Care Plan of which the HHS mandate is an offshoot.

There is a more subtle danger however that is in play here as well. When the principle of subsidiarity is ignored, the people slowly grow accustomed to surrendering exercise of their free will. They become so dependent upon the Centralized State that even when they are called upon to exercise their free choice, they no longer have the desire or the even the ability. In this case, many people simply don’t care about the larger implications of the mandate’s attack on freedom of conscience and religious liberty.

While the Church is garnering so much attention, this is an excellent time to emphasize this principle once again. Because the Church is viewed as “out of touch” by many, emphasis upon this very practical principle may help to open many Americans’ eyes to see the Church as a source of great wisdom in other areas too.

A Hidden Danger Reveals the Truth We Are Hiding

As the Church combats the mandate, much of the emphasis has been placed upon the assault on conscience and religious freedom. While this may present a clearer legal path clearer legal path to fight it in the Court there needs to be a second point of emphasis.

To say that we are opposed to the mandate because it violates our conscience is not the whole story. To only label it as against a Catholic conscience is to imply that it is only wrong because it violates our conscience. One quickly concludes if they do not feel it violates their conscience then it is not wrong for them. This is why the overwhelming majority of Catholics do not care about this issue. The fact is that the Church is not opposed to the mandate primarily because it represents a violation of our conscience, but because it is intrinsically wrong. And because it is wrong, it violates our conscience. This is a very important distinction that needs to be emphasized in a time when we hear so much about the “primacy of conscience.”

Likewise it may be politically expedient to emphasize the HHS mandate as an attack on religious liberty, but this can also serve to confuse. First of all, religious liberty only extends to the point where public safety is threatened. Once it goes beyond this point, the government, as protector of the common good, must intervene. If contraception is merely a matter of Catholic dogma then the government can argue that the Church is a threat to the common good by withholding the so called “benefits” of contraception. In truth however, the Church’s teaching on contraception should not be viewed as a religious belief in the sense that it belongs to divine revelation, but as one that is rooted in human nature itself.

That is why the Church must seize the opportunity to present her teachings on the reasons why contraception represents a grave evil. Contraception is wrong not primarily because the Church says so, but because we can use human reason to come to this conclusion. Rather than present the issue as something unique to Catholics, we must be able to put forth anew the natural law arguments for the intrinsic evil of contraception. Despite the fact that moral relativism appears to have won the day, as Americans there is still an awareness that there are certain self-evident truths about man that bind our country together. Therefore natural law language resonates in our hearts even if we cannot articulate what the natural law is.

The Natural Law tradition is based on the idea that using our reason we can look to human nature to decide what is intrinsically good for us. Anything that we do to harm one of these intrinsic goods would be morally wrong. This is because it thwarts true human thriving and thus ultimately harmful to us. One of these intrinsic goods is marriage and procreation. Natural law tells us that contraception, because it directly harms the good of marriage and procreation, is wrong. Contraception does not merely stop procreation from happening, but because the procreative power is the only thing that unites the spouses as one physical organism, it harms the conjugal meaning as well. It should be emphasized repeatedly that this argument does not directly invoke God directly (even though as the author of the Natural Law He remains hidden so to speak) or the authority of the Church. The Church is simply passing on the wisdom attached to the Natural Law tradition faithfully.

For our fellow Christians who have been duped into believing that contraception represents a great good one can also look to Divine Revelation to illumine Natural Law. This remains an important function of the Church. In so doing we find that marriage is to be analogous to the relationship of Christ with His Church. This is a relationship that is based on Christ’s free, total and faithful gift of Himself. Once again we find that contraception distorts this analogy because the gift of the spouses to each other in the marital embrace is no longer total.

Conclusion

Pope Benedict often said that a misunderstanding of the meaning of pastoral has done untold damage to the Church. The “pastoral approach” does not mean that you in any way adjust the truth to a person’s life so as to “meet them where they’re at.” Instead, to be pastoral means to present the truth and then help the person adjust their lives to it. This approach still means meeting the other where they are, but it means picking up the burden of helping God move them into the light of the truth. We are now reaping the fruits of the first approach and the only way out is to adopt the second. This means we must embrace this opportunity while we have everyone’s attention and trust the saving power of the truth. After all the Truth is not merely a set of ideas, but a divine Person.

Through the Looking Glass

August 24, 2015Contraception, marriageRob Agnelli

In his highly prophetic classic Brave New World, Aldous Huxley tells of a world in which all women are forced to turn their eggs over to the state. The eggs are then placed into a manufactured environment which serves as a mother’s womb. Selected sperm is withdrawn from a sperm bank to fertilize the eggs and a new life is grown under supervision. This new process is called “decanting,” rather than birth. While most people in the 1930s would have thought this impossible, today this possibility looms ever closer. Much of what he described has become commonplace in our world today through the use of reproductive technologies such as IVF and artificial insemination. It is so common that one of Time Magazine’s “100 Hundred Questions for the New Century” was whether we will still need sex to procreate. One would think that because the Church is “pro-child” and opposes such things as artificial contraception that she too would be promoting these reproductive technologies. This is because they aid in bringing about the great good of human life. However, because the Church is concerned with “the dignity of the human person and his integral vocation,” she teaches that many of these techniques are morally wrong (Donum Vitae (DV), Introduction, 1).

There are a variety of these techniques available today. The Church opposes the use of some of these means and not others. The basic principle at play in the use of these reproductive technologies is whether a given technique assists or substitutes for the conjugal act. If it assists the conjugal act then it is morally licit and if it replaces the conjugal act it is illicit (DV, Section II, 6). In general the Church refers to the latter as “artificial fertilization” procedures. Among the most common of these procedures are in vitro (literally means “in a glass”) fertilization and artificial insemination.

With this distinction made, it is instructive to look at the foundation the Church uses for making her moral judgment. In 1987, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) released the Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation—called Donum Vitae in Latin—that formally addressed the moral issues associated with these new reproductive technologies. In it, the CDF put forth three reasons to support the Church’s position. They are the dignity of the child, the inseparable link between the unitive and procreative aspects of the conjugal act, and the “language of the body” (DV, II, B 4-5).

All persons from the moment of conception have equal dignity because they are made by God in His own image. This means that every relationship is one of equality between persons. However with the use of artificial fertilization, the relationship between parent and child is not truly a communion of persons but one of producer and product. In essence this is “equivalent to reducing the child to an object of scientific technology” (DV, II, B 4c).

Furthermore, once the child is viewed as a product rather than a person, the temptation to subject him to quality control measures becomes great. In practice it also leads to other evils that are associated with the production of “excess” human lives that are either subject to abortion (referred to benignly as “selective reduction”), frozen for later use or made subject to medical experimentation. One study estimated that on average only 1 out of 30 children conceived outside the womb actually survive.

The personalistic norm of then Karol Cardinal Wojtyla illuminates what is at the heart of the push for reproductive technologies. The norm in its negative form states that a person is “a kind of good which does not admit use and cannot be treated as an object of use and as such the means to an end.” The foundation of the acceptance of these reproductive technologies then is a utilitarian ethic. This can also play out in that many couples who struggle with infertility (or even single women and same sex couples) think that a child will make them happy and they therefore should have one at all costs.

The second reason that is put forward by the Church is the inseparability of the unitive and procreative aspects of the conjugal act. To see why this is the case, we must look at the nature of marriage itself. Part of the nature of marriage is that there are four fundamental goods: fidelity, permanence, openness to children and friendship between the spouses (c.f. CCC 1643-1654). For any act then to be marital, it must be perfective of these goods in some way. Therefore in order for the conjugal act to be truly marital there must not be a “break between the unitive significance and the procreative significance” of the marital embrace (Humanae Vitae, 10).

If the marital embrace is a participation in the goods of marriage then procreation “cannot be likened to those existing in lower forms of life” (DV, Introduction 3). What this means is that there is a fundamental difference between procreation and reproduction. Procreation is a personal act. “Pro-create” literally means to create for. This means that the spouses create for God in that it is God who gives life while the spouses transmit it. Practically speaking this means that we may not create human life in the same manner (such as in test tubes) that we manipulate animals.

The difference between procreation and reproduction is one that is very often missed because of the failure to see children as a gift and not a right (DV, II, B, 8). Although one of the sacred duties of marriage is to “accept children lovingly from God,” this does not mean that the spouses have a right to have children by any means necessary. They must have “respect for the fundamental criteria of the moral law” (DV, Intro). It truly means that the spouses have a willingness to accept children should God bestow that gift on them. Janet Smith has a great analogy that she uses to explain this. She says that infertile couples are like soldiers who go through years of training and never actually fight in a war. They do not have the right to start a war to fulfill their assignment. The assignment is not so much to fight as a willingness to fight.

The final reason that the Church offers is that these reproductive technologies violate the “language of the body.” As we will see, this notion is closely linked to the inseparability principle that was discussed above. This is a notion that is central to John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. It is essential for developing what he called an “adequate anthropology.”

Man, made in the image of God (Gn 1:26), is a body person. This means that the body is not just something accidental or a mere house for the soul. The body is not just part of the person but instead is the person as expressed in the physical world. If the body is the way a person expresses himself, then in some way man must image God, who is a communion of persons pouring themselves out in an eternal exchange of self-giving love, in his body.

John Paul II puts it,

“(T)he body, and it alone, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It was created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden since time immemorial in God, and thus be a sign of it” (John Paul II, General Audience, Feb 20,1980).

In revealing something of the mystery of God, the body in its sexual complentarity has a spousal meaning. The spousal meaning of the body is the body’s “capacity of expressing love, that love in which the person becomes a gift” (John Paul II, General Audience, Jan 16,1980). The spousal meaning of the body is expressed most especially in the conjugal union of spouses. In order for this union to be an authentic sign of the Trinity it must be a true communion of persons (unitive) and lead to the possibility of a third person (procreative). The child’s origin then must be directly based upon an act of bodily self-giving by the spouses and not as the result of a laboratory procedure.

Aldous Huxley may have been prophetic in seeing many of the reproductive technologies that have come about, but it was perhaps the twentieth century’s greatest prophet who saw the ethical consequences. We would all be well advised to heed the warning of John Paul II when he said that once “the human body, considered apart from spirit and thought, comes to be used as raw material in the same way that the bodies of animals are used…we will inevitably arrive at a dreadful ethical defeat” (Letter to Families, 19).

History is Bunk

July 8, 2015Abortion, Church and State, ContraceptionRob Agnelli

Henry Ford once said, “History is more or less bunk. It’s tradition. We don’t want tradition. We want to live in the present. The only history that’s worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today.” Apparently, former Secretary of State and now Democratic presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, believes exactly the same thing as Henry Ford did nearly 100 years ago. Back in 2009, then-Secretary Clinton received the “highest honor” from Planned Parenthood of America, the Margaret Sanger Award.

In her acceptance speech, Mrs. Clinton said the following:

Now, I have to tell you that it was a great privilege when I was told that I would receive this award. I admire Margaret Sanger enormously, her courage, her tenacity, her vision. Another of my great friends, Ellen Chesler, is here, who wrote a magnificent biography of Margaret Sanger called Woman of Valor. And when I think about what she did all those years ago in Brooklyn, taking on archetypes, taking on attitudes and accusations flowing from all directions, I am really in awe of her.

And there are a lot of lessons that we can learn from her life and from the cause she launched and fought for and sacrificed so bravely. One in particular, though, has always stood out for me almost a hundred years later. It’s the lesson that women’s empowerment is always, always about more than bettering the lives of individual women. It is part of a movement. It’s about economic and political progress for all women and girls. It’s about making sure that every woman and girl everywhere has the opportunities that she deserves to fulfill her potential, a potential as a mother, as a worker, as a human being.

“I admire Margaret Sanger enormously … her vision.” Wait. Did she say she admired Margaret Sanger’s vision? I wonder which part of her vision she admired specifically. Because what most people know of her vision is quite scary.

One of her visions was to create a new religion. The religion would be based on eugenics. Sanger thought that eugenics was the most adequate avenue to the solution of racial, political, and social problems. She said, “We do not want word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members… Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.”

Sanger thought that she had solved the problem that vexed most eugenicists from Charles Darwin and Francis Galton on down. In her eyes, natural selection was no longer able to remove the unfit because civilization had softened much of the severity of nature by its misguided compassion and medical advances. She also said the problem was compounded by the high fecundity of the “feeble minded”.

Although this is probably obvious given that they have named an award for her, but Planned Parenthood has never disavowed her or apologized for her comments. In fact they continue her mission today. They build many of their facilities in poorer, African-American neighborhoods to help in primarily targeting African-Americans. In fact, according to the CDC in the year 2000, (the last year for which they have reported these statistics), over 50% (503 per 1000) of pregnancies in the African American community end in abortion. The CDC also reports that 35% of all abortions are performed on African-Americans. Given that they only comprise a little over 10% of the American population that is a startling statistic. It doesn’t take much to connect the dots on this. If you want to know more of the specifics on this, check out blackgenocide.com. That is why I was never sure whether the signs of our first African American president standing in front of t of the Planned Parenthood sign promising FOCA were photo-shopped. How this completely flies under the radar in our racially oversensitive culture can only be diabolically explained. Either way, it’s sad that a leader in the African American community can be promoting this and certainly Sanger’s vision is not one we should admire.

Given that Mrs. Clinton’s “great friend” wrote a magnificent biography, none of this can be news to Mrs. Clinton. It is easy to confront attitudes and accusations when they are true and you are completely unapologetic for them. Certainly, this is nothing that we should be “in awe” of. I think what she meant to say is that it is truly “awe-full” what she did.

What about how Sanger was “making sure that every woman and girl everywhere has the opportunities that she deserves to fulfill her potential, a potential as a mother, as a worker, as a human being.”? Of course I assume that is not including the nearly 635,000 women who will die in the womb this year because of abortion in our country. What about the fact that in places like China, abortion is used to selectively kill women in the womb? Hard to make the argument based on this alone that it is “making sure that every woman and girl everywhere has the opportunities that she deserves”. To say later, as she does, that it has changed the lives of tens of millions of women is an understatement to say the very least. I think that she means that it has changed them for the better, but anyone who actually lives (or dies) with the reality of abortion would totally disagree. Have the 65% of post-abortive women who suffer symptoms of trauma had all the opportunities they deserve? What about the women who battle suicidal thoughts and tendencies because of abortion?

Let me be absolutely clear on this. These are horrible things that happen to women because they have bought the lies about abortion. But abortion itself is morally wrong primarily because it takes the life of an innocent person. That being said, the fact of the matter is that anyone who says they are pro-women cannot at the same time be pro-abortion.

There is another section of her speech that I think bears commenting upon. Secretary Clinton said that

It has changed attitudes and perceptions about women and our roles in society. It ushered in demographic and social changes that have brought us closer to gender equality than at any time.

I can’t believe that I am actually saying this, but I agree with her about the attitudes and perceptions about women. This is the god of equality rearing its head again. And of course this means first like any false god, it must have its sacrificial victims in the millions of unborn children who have been killed in the name of equality. Rather than actually meeting the needs of women, Mrs. Clinton and those of her ilk want to make it possible for them to act like men through chemical alteration of their fertility and abortion. What if we really treated a woman’s fertility as something sacred and helped them to participate more fully in society?

This is why we need to study history accurately. We can learn from the wisdom of our predecessors. If we did then we would find that Alice Paul, who was the author of the Equal Rights Amendment, said that, “abortion is the ultimate exploitation of women.” What abortion does is give society an easy way out of meeting the real needs of women. In making women as close to men, they do not need to do anything that meets the needs unique to women. Society no longer has to take pregnancy seriously. The early feminists such as Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton recognized this and fought against abortion by seeking legal protection from abortion for women and children.

For all the uproar that Humanae Vitae caused both inside the Church and out, Pope Paul VI’s prophetic warning about men easily forgetting the reverence due to woman and reducing her to a mere instrument for the satisfaction of his own desires appears to have been dead spot on. What he couldn’t have seen though is how powerful women like Mrs. Clinton would also forget the reverence due to women. “Gender equality” created in this fashion does not mean equality in dignity. Gender equality as a goal only serves to lessen the dignity of women. That is what women and men should be fighting for.