"Do you feel that [imagining] offends God? Why are you afraid of God? I imagine God as something good...."
The context was about John Lennon's song "Imagine," which isn't really germane to my point.
If God is good, then no, we shouldn't fear Him like we'd fear a criminal or a rabid animal. However, because God is good, we should fear him in proportion to how we offend him. I do not fear the devil for offending him by doing good, for good is right. If I do wrong, then I should not be too keen on myself or my actions.
We should love and trust God first, of course, but forgiveness is beyond saying "It's okay"--doing something wrong isn't okay--and repenting of sin calls for recognizing that sin is, in fact, rather dreadful.
A relationship, with God or human, shouldn't be based on fear of reprisal, of course, but sin does displease God, and if He's that great and you love Him that much, you should take care not to offend Him just as you'd take care not to hurt the feelings of your loved ones.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
The ten verses Marcus Grodi never saw in the Bible
...until becoming Catholic.
I'm reproducing them here without commentary. They deserve to be showcased without any clutter.
I'm reproducing them here without commentary. They deserve to be showcased without any clutter.
- Proverbs 3:5-6
"Trust in the Lord with all you heart, And lean not unto your own understanding; In all your ways acknowledge Him. And He will direct your paths." - 1 Timothy 3: 14-15 (The Church)
"I hope to come to you soon, but I am writing these instructions to you so that, if I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth." - 2 Timothy 3:14-17 (Scripture)
"But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings which are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." - 2 Thessalonians 2:15 (Sacred Tradition)
"So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter." - Matthew 16:13-19 (Peter)
"And Jesus answered him, 'Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.'" - Revelation 14:13 (Importance of works)
"And I heard a voice from heaven saying, 'Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth.' 'Blessed indeed,' says the Spirit, 'that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them!" - Romans 10:14-15 (Ordination)
"But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent?" - John 15: 4 and 6:56 (Eucharist)
"Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me."
"He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. " - Colossians 1:24 (Suffering)
"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church," - Luke 1:46-49 (Mary)
"And Mary said, 'My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.'"
Monday, August 21, 2006
Priestess Faces Excommunication
Eileen DiFranco, a cradle Catholic who claims to have been ordained, hopes not to be excommunicated for committing "holy disobedience" by trying to say Mass, sponsored by the Church of the Beatitudes, after having been given the usual warnings.
I didn't think an Old Catholic group would go for something so unorthodox, but I guess once you unhinge yourself from the Magisterium, you'll swing with any breeze.
"I feel conscious [sic] bound that if I think that a law is unjust, I am obliged to break it," she said. No word was given about the possibility that egalitarianism might not be the best yardstick to hold against the justice of supernatural vocations.
"I am continually saddened that my brothers are seeing this as a source of dissension instead of a means for bringing people back to church," DiFranco added. Therein, I think, lies the problem. She's not validly ordained, so anyone who comes to her isn't coming to the Church as such. Having more people show up on Sunday morning as nice, but we shouldn't be settling for the empty ritual Paul warns us about. The least we should consider is where these people are showing up. I get that she thinks she's bringing people to the truth, but how hard must it be for her to see that copping an "I can be at odds with core teachings of the Church but still be united with the Church" attitude is just for starters going to be confusing? The Church is not some western democracy; if she'd done enough academic study in her discernment to learn that much...ah, but then she might also have learned how a female priesthood is invalid, and immutably so. Safer to rely on a feeling of being called to spiritual fatherhood, eh?
One man said, after DiFranco's liturgical charade, "It's time for a change." I realize that the 40 years since Vatican II we've spent changing things isn't a terribly long time, but if all these innovations were really that great, shouldn't we be seeing some fruits like increased devotion, mass attendance, and vocations amongst the dissenters? Instead we get circuses and unqualified individuals brushing aside the discernment process so they can grasp the brass ring of priesthood. Doesn't it seem suspicious?
Whatever.
I didn't think an Old Catholic group would go for something so unorthodox, but I guess once you unhinge yourself from the Magisterium, you'll swing with any breeze.
"I feel conscious [sic] bound that if I think that a law is unjust, I am obliged to break it," she said. No word was given about the possibility that egalitarianism might not be the best yardstick to hold against the justice of supernatural vocations.
"I am continually saddened that my brothers are seeing this as a source of dissension instead of a means for bringing people back to church," DiFranco added. Therein, I think, lies the problem. She's not validly ordained, so anyone who comes to her isn't coming to the Church as such. Having more people show up on Sunday morning as nice, but we shouldn't be settling for the empty ritual Paul warns us about. The least we should consider is where these people are showing up. I get that she thinks she's bringing people to the truth, but how hard must it be for her to see that copping an "I can be at odds with core teachings of the Church but still be united with the Church" attitude is just for starters going to be confusing? The Church is not some western democracy; if she'd done enough academic study in her discernment to learn that much...ah, but then she might also have learned how a female priesthood is invalid, and immutably so. Safer to rely on a feeling of being called to spiritual fatherhood, eh?
One man said, after DiFranco's liturgical charade, "It's time for a change." I realize that the 40 years since Vatican II we've spent changing things isn't a terribly long time, but if all these innovations were really that great, shouldn't we be seeing some fruits like increased devotion, mass attendance, and vocations amongst the dissenters? Instead we get circuses and unqualified individuals brushing aside the discernment process so they can grasp the brass ring of priesthood. Doesn't it seem suspicious?
Whatever.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
At 3 pm on August 20 of this year, Al Oliver became the first man in the Saginaw Diocese to be ordained a deacon since 1981. The deaconate program had been closed until women would be admitted, but Saginaw's new pastor, Bishop Robert Carlson, had other plans.
Two years ago, Saginaw had two seminarians. Today, they have seventeen.
I'm just sayin'.
Two years ago, Saginaw had two seminarians. Today, they have seventeen.
I'm just sayin'.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
With apologies to Stephen Colbert
Newsy, adj. Something, such as a typical MSM item, that would be news if it contained truth, rather than truthiness.
I'm not coining a new term here. A web search will turn up loads of sites where people refer to something that has some quality of news as being "newsy." I just want to emphasize a somewhat less gracious but more precise meaning, increasingly appropriate in recent decades, that more strongly implies that newsiness resembles actual news only superficially, or that it claims to do so but lacks the essence of objectivity and accuracy to a meaningful degree.
I'm tired of ignoring the slow drift to yellow journalism, or having to spell it out each time I'm in a discussion over an article that's much more sloppily assembled than a critical reader should be willing to tolerate.
I'm not coining a new term here. A web search will turn up loads of sites where people refer to something that has some quality of news as being "newsy." I just want to emphasize a somewhat less gracious but more precise meaning, increasingly appropriate in recent decades, that more strongly implies that newsiness resembles actual news only superficially, or that it claims to do so but lacks the essence of objectivity and accuracy to a meaningful degree.
I'm tired of ignoring the slow drift to yellow journalism, or having to spell it out each time I'm in a discussion over an article that's much more sloppily assembled than a critical reader should be willing to tolerate.
Friday, August 11, 2006
Agenda-driven "reporting"
Forgive me if I've posted on a related topic before, but it's worth rehashing.
Zombie's got some good coverage of the media fraud at Reuters that's come to the surface recently. While a lot of it is clearly inexcusable, I wonder yet if some of the occurrences are a manifestation of something other than overt malice or sensationalism.
My favorite example is the time when George Bush said that it'd be a lot easier to run the country if he were a dictator. In the earliest publications quoting him, they pointed out that he was joking. Of course: a dictatorship goes against everything we believe in, but if there were no debate, if our government had been designed for efficiency (it was not--checks and balances, remember?), then whoever led the government could certainly get a lot done with all the time he instead has to spend pontificating.
Well, after a while the media would rerun his quote, but they wouldn't point out that he was joking, that everyone he was talking to laughed because they got the joke. Maybe the caption writers thought everyone would remember the context and felt that reminding us of the words alone would be enough for...for something. Whether they were just flirting with laziness (streamlining a story isn't all bad if the original meaning is preserved) or were actually trying to pry Bush into a less tasteful apparent position, the latter seemed to be the effect that was achieved; more than once I heard people "reminding" us that Bush, in the end, just wanted to be a dictator, because the last thing they read about his dictator line made him sound pretty serious.
Were they just short-attention-span types who were confused by reporting that was on the sloppy side of efficient? Were they deliberately misled? Were they willingly misled because it confirmed their suspicions or wishes? Were these suspicions first planted by journalists who made some honest mistakes that fit a political pattern, or by journalists who had a problem with objective reporting, or propagandists who happened to work for the major media and perhaps studied journalism in school?
I don't know, but the "All the news that fits our preconceptions will be printed" era can't end soon enough. Hopefully we can get a little more Matt Drudge and even a little Pajamas Media for contrast. I'm tired of running into people who trust CNN because they watch it, and then dismiss anything different that Fox News says because CNN already reported on it.
It happens the other way, too, but Fox isn't as entrenched yet, so it's a little less frequent. 'Cept maybe to people who only watch CNN, or only read the New York Times, f'rinstance. Folks who think a single news source is comprehensive and infallibly objective are probably even more frustrated by folks who think the same about a different news source.
Zombie's got some good coverage of the media fraud at Reuters that's come to the surface recently. While a lot of it is clearly inexcusable, I wonder yet if some of the occurrences are a manifestation of something other than overt malice or sensationalism.
My favorite example is the time when George Bush said that it'd be a lot easier to run the country if he were a dictator. In the earliest publications quoting him, they pointed out that he was joking. Of course: a dictatorship goes against everything we believe in, but if there were no debate, if our government had been designed for efficiency (it was not--checks and balances, remember?), then whoever led the government could certainly get a lot done with all the time he instead has to spend pontificating.
Well, after a while the media would rerun his quote, but they wouldn't point out that he was joking, that everyone he was talking to laughed because they got the joke. Maybe the caption writers thought everyone would remember the context and felt that reminding us of the words alone would be enough for...for something. Whether they were just flirting with laziness (streamlining a story isn't all bad if the original meaning is preserved) or were actually trying to pry Bush into a less tasteful apparent position, the latter seemed to be the effect that was achieved; more than once I heard people "reminding" us that Bush, in the end, just wanted to be a dictator, because the last thing they read about his dictator line made him sound pretty serious.
Were they just short-attention-span types who were confused by reporting that was on the sloppy side of efficient? Were they deliberately misled? Were they willingly misled because it confirmed their suspicions or wishes? Were these suspicions first planted by journalists who made some honest mistakes that fit a political pattern, or by journalists who had a problem with objective reporting, or propagandists who happened to work for the major media and perhaps studied journalism in school?
I don't know, but the "All the news that fits our preconceptions will be printed" era can't end soon enough. Hopefully we can get a little more Matt Drudge and even a little Pajamas Media for contrast. I'm tired of running into people who trust CNN because they watch it, and then dismiss anything different that Fox News says because CNN already reported on it.
It happens the other way, too, but Fox isn't as entrenched yet, so it's a little less frequent. 'Cept maybe to people who only watch CNN, or only read the New York Times, f'rinstance. Folks who think a single news source is comprehensive and infallibly objective are probably even more frustrated by folks who think the same about a different news source.
Friday, August 04, 2006
Catholic Coke Commercial
I'm not up on embedding YouTube clips, so here's an old-fashioned link to a Coca-Cola commercial I first saw on a blog I've already forgotten the name of.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Today's Gospel reading, as you should know by now, was from John 6, about the multiplication of the loaves.
I've heard the notion that the real miracle was the sharing of food that people had already brought, but today was the first time I heard it suggested in the homily.
"We can take it to mean that God created the bread from nothing--after all, he turned the water to wine at the wedding in Cana," he started. Well, yes enough.
He did describe, though, the alleged act of sharing as a miracle of generosity, of God acting through us--instead of upon us--to do more good than we would have otherwise. He gave some other examples, which I don't feel like typing up right now, that made this particular idea more clear
His point's a good one, that we should become instruments of God's grace for one another, rather than simply sitting around and waiting for grace to happen. Without any grace, we can't do anything, but once we have some, we can do good, we can spread the grace around.
On the other hand, making people feel guilty so they share what they have is a little mundane. I have no objection to mundane miracles, but if almost everyone did plan ahead and brought enough food to fill twelve baskets after being shamed into sharing with the folks who didn't plan ahead, wouldn't the really remarkable thing be that so many people were hiding so much food (and hidden so well that none of the Apostles noticed, save for one boy's stash) that they'd have leftovers of that magnitude? Did the crowds really show up that day with lunches prepared but still hoping Jesus would be catering?
I know the Bible's pretty lean on incidental detail, but if we take the less dramatic and less direct interpretation, don't the crowds seem to be a little something other than lucid?
I've heard the notion that the real miracle was the sharing of food that people had already brought, but today was the first time I heard it suggested in the homily.
"We can take it to mean that God created the bread from nothing--after all, he turned the water to wine at the wedding in Cana," he started. Well, yes enough.
He did describe, though, the alleged act of sharing as a miracle of generosity, of God acting through us--instead of upon us--to do more good than we would have otherwise. He gave some other examples, which I don't feel like typing up right now, that made this particular idea more clear
His point's a good one, that we should become instruments of God's grace for one another, rather than simply sitting around and waiting for grace to happen. Without any grace, we can't do anything, but once we have some, we can do good, we can spread the grace around.
On the other hand, making people feel guilty so they share what they have is a little mundane. I have no objection to mundane miracles, but if almost everyone did plan ahead and brought enough food to fill twelve baskets after being shamed into sharing with the folks who didn't plan ahead, wouldn't the really remarkable thing be that so many people were hiding so much food (and hidden so well that none of the Apostles noticed, save for one boy's stash) that they'd have leftovers of that magnitude? Did the crowds really show up that day with lunches prepared but still hoping Jesus would be catering?
I know the Bible's pretty lean on incidental detail, but if we take the less dramatic and less direct interpretation, don't the crowds seem to be a little something other than lucid?
On another note, why don't we call them embryonic humans instead of human embryos?
I briefly locked antlers with Innocencio over at Jimmy Akin's blog (there is some related followup) over embryo adoption. I refrained from posting after a few exchanges because I've been a bit edgy lately so I found it difficult to keep treating Innocencio with the respect he (I presume Innocencio's male) deserves. It's probably from spending too much time watching debates on ISCA get obnoxious and drag on for weeks.
I'll try to clarify why I think the EA-prohibitive arguments are inadequate and then drop the whole matter. If you're interested, you can visit Jimmy or see my older post from a couple months ago to weigh the specific arguments. I'm trying to stay brief here.
Donum Vitae is very specific about how many fertility-influencing techniques are immoral for dissociating various components of the conjugal act, such as the unitive and procreative natures. However, the blacklist isn't exhaustive; there's a thread of silence regarding actual EA. The prohibitions on other techniques are banned on grounds that really don't apply. EA isn't IVF so the fertilization question is moot; it's not surrogate motherhood because it's not pregnancy for a third party. DV does mention embryonic transfer, which would cover EA, but it always cites embryonic transfer with IVF as a single illicit technique, not something condemend by itself.
Not stand-alone proof, but the holes in DV do leave an EA-shaped gap we should examine. Maybe EA's not morally tenable--there are two arguments I still find considerable--but DV doesn't close the book. It would be sloppy reasoning to suggest that DV certainly bans EA even though Cardinal Ratzinger didn't seem think of that possibility, or that he meant to but was also being sloppy.
CCC 2376 (also 2377) says, quoting DV in part, "Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife betray the spouses' right to become a father and a mother only through each other.'" It sounds pretty cut and dried, but it's not that simple. 2376 specifies these dissociative techniques as heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization, neither of which is EA. If it only used these two techniques as examples and intended to rely on the rationale of DV itself, then we're back where we started, except for the two arguments I referred to.
One comes from the DV quote in 2376 about dissociative interference violating the spouses' right only to become parents together. I don't have a solid rebuttal, but maybe someone else could make hay of the few escape hatches I can see. For one thing, a married woman who is raped by a stranger doesn't have the option of "allowing" a child so conceived to die in the interest of maintaining her marriage's integrity. For another, DV is emphatic about protecting life, not just protecting its dignity, so we should hesitate before literally throwing out the baby with...okay, the metaphorical bathwater. For yet another, traditional adoption also circumvents the normal order of a married couple raising the child they conceived normally. I'm not sure the differences from traditional adoption are that meaningful; a child's origin, proper or not, is historical and remote from the adoptive act, and the parents can accept the disruption (albeit a different sort) that opening their home to a needy child would cause. One can also suggest pregnancy itself is sacrosanct, but in light of the rape example and the uniformity of the silence in DV otherwise, I don't think this concern is developed enough to stand on its own.
The other comes from the Magisterium itself. I don't fully grasp how the Holy Spirit works, but it may very well be that CCC 2376 was a comprehensive extrapolation, a small leap of faith and logic to ban the things unspecified that resemble or relate to the things specified. Then again, 2376 and 2377 don't leave room for technological assistance in conception, which DV does provide for.
I'll try to clarify why I think the EA-prohibitive arguments are inadequate and then drop the whole matter. If you're interested, you can visit Jimmy or see my older post from a couple months ago to weigh the specific arguments. I'm trying to stay brief here.
Donum Vitae is very specific about how many fertility-influencing techniques are immoral for dissociating various components of the conjugal act, such as the unitive and procreative natures. However, the blacklist isn't exhaustive; there's a thread of silence regarding actual EA. The prohibitions on other techniques are banned on grounds that really don't apply. EA isn't IVF so the fertilization question is moot; it's not surrogate motherhood because it's not pregnancy for a third party. DV does mention embryonic transfer, which would cover EA, but it always cites embryonic transfer with IVF as a single illicit technique, not something condemend by itself.
Not stand-alone proof, but the holes in DV do leave an EA-shaped gap we should examine. Maybe EA's not morally tenable--there are two arguments I still find considerable--but DV doesn't close the book. It would be sloppy reasoning to suggest that DV certainly bans EA even though Cardinal Ratzinger didn't seem think of that possibility, or that he meant to but was also being sloppy.
CCC 2376 (also 2377) says, quoting DV in part, "Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife betray the spouses' right to become a father and a mother only through each other.'" It sounds pretty cut and dried, but it's not that simple. 2376 specifies these dissociative techniques as heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization, neither of which is EA. If it only used these two techniques as examples and intended to rely on the rationale of DV itself, then we're back where we started, except for the two arguments I referred to.
One comes from the DV quote in 2376 about dissociative interference violating the spouses' right only to become parents together. I don't have a solid rebuttal, but maybe someone else could make hay of the few escape hatches I can see. For one thing, a married woman who is raped by a stranger doesn't have the option of "allowing" a child so conceived to die in the interest of maintaining her marriage's integrity. For another, DV is emphatic about protecting life, not just protecting its dignity, so we should hesitate before literally throwing out the baby with...okay, the metaphorical bathwater. For yet another, traditional adoption also circumvents the normal order of a married couple raising the child they conceived normally. I'm not sure the differences from traditional adoption are that meaningful; a child's origin, proper or not, is historical and remote from the adoptive act, and the parents can accept the disruption (albeit a different sort) that opening their home to a needy child would cause. One can also suggest pregnancy itself is sacrosanct, but in light of the rape example and the uniformity of the silence in DV otherwise, I don't think this concern is developed enough to stand on its own.
The other comes from the Magisterium itself. I don't fully grasp how the Holy Spirit works, but it may very well be that CCC 2376 was a comprehensive extrapolation, a small leap of faith and logic to ban the things unspecified that resemble or relate to the things specified. Then again, 2376 and 2377 don't leave room for technological assistance in conception, which DV does provide for.
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Since I feel something more serious brewing, here's a dream I had last night to tide us over
The beginning was unclear. I was in the back yard of the house I grew up in. Many weedlike plants appeared to be under cultivation. They were about waist high, but once my sister watered them they soon grew into mature sunflower like plants, and then into ponderosa pines that looked to be almost a century old.
Somehow, as dreams do, things shifted, and I was at some religious...well, it wasn't a retreat in that it was open to the public rather than only to people who'd registered in advance. Most of the people about seemed to be youthful, perhaps college age young adults.
For some reason I decided to go to confession, even though my usual confession day wasn't too long from then. My confessor was the Pope. We didn't have a confessional, but he was sitting behind a fancy desk that would look at home in any church if they made altars out of ebony or mahogany, and I brought one of those portable kneelers up from someplace and set it in front of him.
As I confessed, I saw him taking notes, as if making a list of my major sins (or at least their categories) and then adding details, looking for patterns, or something. My confession wasn't remarkable, for me, but it seemed to drag on, especially because we kept getting interrupted by throngs of youths seeking the Pope's input on one social-spiritual exercise or another. For some reason I wasn't bothered by the fact that many people were overhearing bits and pieces of my confession; maybe I had figured it's just how things are when you try to confess to someone as busy as the Pope.
At one point, the throngs managed to call him away from his desk, and I looked over to see the notes he was taking, but they weren't notes at all. They were drawings.
I'd seen him doodling a bit, but when I first noticed it it looked more like he was sketching ideograms encoding my confession and his assessment thereof. Now that he'd completed many of them, they looked more like coats of arms; not just a decorated shield surrounded by symbolic figures, but a helmet and whole cuirass in fancy textures and colors.
Never figured out what he was on about. I woke up before receiving absolution.
Somehow, as dreams do, things shifted, and I was at some religious...well, it wasn't a retreat in that it was open to the public rather than only to people who'd registered in advance. Most of the people about seemed to be youthful, perhaps college age young adults.
For some reason I decided to go to confession, even though my usual confession day wasn't too long from then. My confessor was the Pope. We didn't have a confessional, but he was sitting behind a fancy desk that would look at home in any church if they made altars out of ebony or mahogany, and I brought one of those portable kneelers up from someplace and set it in front of him.
As I confessed, I saw him taking notes, as if making a list of my major sins (or at least their categories) and then adding details, looking for patterns, or something. My confession wasn't remarkable, for me, but it seemed to drag on, especially because we kept getting interrupted by throngs of youths seeking the Pope's input on one social-spiritual exercise or another. For some reason I wasn't bothered by the fact that many people were overhearing bits and pieces of my confession; maybe I had figured it's just how things are when you try to confess to someone as busy as the Pope.
At one point, the throngs managed to call him away from his desk, and I looked over to see the notes he was taking, but they weren't notes at all. They were drawings.
I'd seen him doodling a bit, but when I first noticed it it looked more like he was sketching ideograms encoding my confession and his assessment thereof. Now that he'd completed many of them, they looked more like coats of arms; not just a decorated shield surrounded by symbolic figures, but a helmet and whole cuirass in fancy textures and colors.
Never figured out what he was on about. I woke up before receiving absolution.
Monday, July 24, 2006
Because I haven't been as whimsical or fun lately as I'd like...
You scored as Neither. You think neither like a man or a woman. What you are you may decide for yourself. Most people will consider you strange, alien, weird or funny. You are probably quite interesting.
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Should you be MALE or FEMALE?* created with QuizFarm.com |
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Gender-specific abortions go unnoticed
Maybe it's one of those things where nobody reports on it until a few grassroots organizations start clamoring to bring global attention to it. They tried to do it in Afghanistan around the turn of the century, with the mistreatment of women by the Taliban, but Osama bin Laden brought attention to himself there before anyone else had much of a chance. They've been doing it all over the blogosphere and now in the national media for Darfur. They did it for the Mexican border porosity issue...well, all right, Bill O'Reilly isn't exactly grassroots, but a few other people were making noises about it as early as the last quarter of 2001.
Read for yourself at Mercatornet about societal pressure decreasing live female births in Asia (yeah I know I'm falling behind), with minimal attention from women's rights groups. Maybe the issue hasn't reached a critical mass in the media yet.
Maybe, though, it's pro-choice people who are being consistent in their philosophy. If a fetus isn't a human, or isn't worth considering as a person, what would the gender matter?
(If you're thinking of a mail-order bride from one of these countries, you better hurry up. There may not be many more coming down the pipe)
Read for yourself at Mercatornet about societal pressure decreasing live female births in Asia (yeah I know I'm falling behind), with minimal attention from women's rights groups. Maybe the issue hasn't reached a critical mass in the media yet.
Maybe, though, it's pro-choice people who are being consistent in their philosophy. If a fetus isn't a human, or isn't worth considering as a person, what would the gender matter?
(If you're thinking of a mail-order bride from one of these countries, you better hurry up. There may not be many more coming down the pipe)
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Worth repeating...
As we all know, some activist atheist is suing to have the cross removed from the Mount Soledad monument in San Diego because it offends him. I don't know what the current status is.
Since when does anyone have the right not to be offended in this country? What happened to "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it?" Does it have to do with the ascention of Tolerance to the pinnacle of all virtues, so that if someone is offended, it is ironically the offender who is not tolerating something about the offendee? I sure don't see it taken seriously in the public sphere the other way around very often.
Oh, he's just looking out for the Separation of Church and State, you say? You mean the Separation of Religion from Society at Large?
What will it take for us to find standing in court to file a suit claiming that the detheization of all things in our society is tantamount to enforced cultural atheism? What will it take to show that this phenomenon will leave us with nothing distinct from a prohibition of the free exercise of religion?
Since when does anyone have the right not to be offended in this country? What happened to "I may disagree with what you have to say, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it?" Does it have to do with the ascention of Tolerance to the pinnacle of all virtues, so that if someone is offended, it is ironically the offender who is not tolerating something about the offendee? I sure don't see it taken seriously in the public sphere the other way around very often.
Oh, he's just looking out for the Separation of Church and State, you say? You mean the Separation of Religion from Society at Large?
What will it take for us to find standing in court to file a suit claiming that the detheization of all things in our society is tantamount to enforced cultural atheism? What will it take to show that this phenomenon will leave us with nothing distinct from a prohibition of the free exercise of religion?
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Bleg, as they say
I could use your prayers.
I've been tapped to help someone who got himself into a bit of a crisis. He's the one who needs your prayers, really, but while I'm sympathetic, I'm not always the most helpful person when it's not a matter of "can I help you carry heavy objects and give you a lift across town?"
So, for both of us. That I can help point him to the graces he needs, and that he'll be ready and willing to accept it.
I've been tapped to help someone who got himself into a bit of a crisis. He's the one who needs your prayers, really, but while I'm sympathetic, I'm not always the most helpful person when it's not a matter of "can I help you carry heavy objects and give you a lift across town?"
So, for both of us. That I can help point him to the graces he needs, and that he'll be ready and willing to accept it.
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Belated Happy Independence Day
Not just the Fourth of July.
Call it so if you like--sometimes even I am too tired and lazy to use four-syllable words, and I enjoy them more than I should--but don't forget what it's supposed to mean. Remember the reason for the season.
Easter ain't just about eggs and candy, Christmas ain't just presents and an evergreen tree, and the 185th day of the year ain't just fireworks and picnics and the occasional Sousa march.
(Not that the third holiday's in the same league as the first two.)
Remember what we're commemorating, and why it was ever important. Remember it's not just the Memorial Day analog to Sweetest Day alongside February fourteenth.
Call it so if you like--sometimes even I am too tired and lazy to use four-syllable words, and I enjoy them more than I should--but don't forget what it's supposed to mean. Remember the reason for the season.
Easter ain't just about eggs and candy, Christmas ain't just presents and an evergreen tree, and the 185th day of the year ain't just fireworks and picnics and the occasional Sousa march.
(Not that the third holiday's in the same league as the first two.)
Remember what we're commemorating, and why it was ever important. Remember it's not just the Memorial Day analog to Sweetest Day alongside February fourteenth.
Monday, July 03, 2006
Monday, June 26, 2006
Apologetic for a Random Reader (I)
I'm going to try making an irregular series of posts on apologetics. I have a few ideas in mind, but if or how often I come up with new ones is yet to be seen. We may not need yet another blog going on about Catholic apologetics, especially in the shadow of Jimmy Akin, but I figure scattering the occasional capsulized (if not comprehensive, judging from how this post is shaping up) treatment of some poorly understood, highly maligned, or just widely discussed topic a little more widely across the Internet wouldn't hurt; trying to write something capsulized would probably also be a good exercise for me, especially in light of that last post.
I'm going to start with something simple: Galileo.
Back in the day, the Church had much more of a hand in the goings-on of culture. The Church, in short, is in the business of truth, whether it be worldly or otherworldly. Thus did it take great and skeptical interest when Galileo started preaching heliocentrism: based on plainer readings of the Bible, geocentrism seemed more scripturally sound.
If Galileo were right, then what was the Church's beef with him?
For one thing, he was right for the wrong reason, which used to be something people understood. For another, he could be kind of a jerk.
Galileo came to the conclusion of heliocentrism by observing the orbits of the Jovian moons about their planet and by the observation of the phases of Venus. Robert Cardinal Bellarmine was dispatched to evaluate Galileo's science, having dealt with related issues in the past. Bellarmine was cautious, noting the gaps and flaws in the theory and lack of any conclusive evidence, but conceded that heliocentrism did not necessarily contradict the Bible, yet should not be taught until some proof could be found.
Proof would take the form of the discovery of stellar parallax, but in the early 17th century, telescopes were too crude to detect it. Galileo thought he was right anyway--he had been teaching his misfounded hypotheses as fact all along--but he relented.
In 1623, a friend of Galileo's and a scientist became Pope Urban VIII, and Galileo looked forward to no longer censoring himself over cosmology. Urban gave his blessing for a treatise on the movement of astronomical bodies, with the caveat that Galileo give a balanced treatment of geocentrism next to heliocentrism, and to point out that heavenly motions may not be properly understood by earthbound astronomers.
Galileo agreed, but his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems consisted of a debate between an erudite heliocentrist--a Copernican--and a dullard of a geocentrist--a Ptolemist--in whose mouth he put the pope's words.
The pope, whose position on these matters was well-known, was quite upset, brought Galileo to Rome for an explanation, and eventually put him under house arrest for the remainder of his life--not for his cosmology, but for his attitude.
He continued his research, and wrote the Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Science, in which he took the first steps into modern science by presenting some quantitative analysis of kinematics and materials science.
I'm going to start with something simple: Galileo.
Back in the day, the Church had much more of a hand in the goings-on of culture. The Church, in short, is in the business of truth, whether it be worldly or otherworldly. Thus did it take great and skeptical interest when Galileo started preaching heliocentrism: based on plainer readings of the Bible, geocentrism seemed more scripturally sound.
If Galileo were right, then what was the Church's beef with him?
For one thing, he was right for the wrong reason, which used to be something people understood. For another, he could be kind of a jerk.
Galileo came to the conclusion of heliocentrism by observing the orbits of the Jovian moons about their planet and by the observation of the phases of Venus. Robert Cardinal Bellarmine was dispatched to evaluate Galileo's science, having dealt with related issues in the past. Bellarmine was cautious, noting the gaps and flaws in the theory and lack of any conclusive evidence, but conceded that heliocentrism did not necessarily contradict the Bible, yet should not be taught until some proof could be found.
Proof would take the form of the discovery of stellar parallax, but in the early 17th century, telescopes were too crude to detect it. Galileo thought he was right anyway--he had been teaching his misfounded hypotheses as fact all along--but he relented.
In 1623, a friend of Galileo's and a scientist became Pope Urban VIII, and Galileo looked forward to no longer censoring himself over cosmology. Urban gave his blessing for a treatise on the movement of astronomical bodies, with the caveat that Galileo give a balanced treatment of geocentrism next to heliocentrism, and to point out that heavenly motions may not be properly understood by earthbound astronomers.
Galileo agreed, but his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems consisted of a debate between an erudite heliocentrist--a Copernican--and a dullard of a geocentrist--a Ptolemist--in whose mouth he put the pope's words.
The pope, whose position on these matters was well-known, was quite upset, brought Galileo to Rome for an explanation, and eventually put him under house arrest for the remainder of his life--not for his cosmology, but for his attitude.
He continued his research, and wrote the Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Science, in which he took the first steps into modern science by presenting some quantitative analysis of kinematics and materials science.
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
Archived embryos
I just read an article at Lifeissues by Fr. Alain Mattheeuws, S.J. about The Freezing, Implantation, and Adoption of Embryos. While I'm generally in agreement, and I'm not really in a good position to criticize Fr. Mattheeuws' work, I'd like to emphasize a few things he didn't, and demur on a few related things I've seen elsewhere. You can sort them out for yourself if I'm ambiguous at any point; fair warning.
The first question he covers is whether embryos may be frozen. Donum Vitae appears to be pretty clear:
The first part of this argument is, I think, contingent more on the limits of technology than on the limits of moral behavior. We now induce hypothermia in adults for certain medical procedures, and the risk of dying therefrom is quite small, especially next to the benefits to be gained by surgery.
I'm not condoning, however, any experimentation like what the Nazis did to bring us what we know about hypothermia today. I'm only saying that medical technology has gotten us this far, and in the future, something mundane, safe, and materially identical to the cryosleep featured in the Alien and 2001 movies might be feasible for a human at any point in development.
Justifying the extraction and preservation in the first place is another matter. If it's not disproportionately dangerous--which is a big if, one our state of the obstetric art can't yet practically answer, and no valid reason for which I can even think of--then I'm not sure how the deprivation of "maternal shelter" would be materially different from having your five year old spend a weekend in the hospital (which, I can personally attest, is sometimes necessary). We don't think that much of a kid getting homesick. Technical problems aside, would an extraction and reimplantation be significantly different? I'm not asking rhetorically. While there can be no tangible emotional trauma if there's no differentiated neural tissue, there are still spiritual matters that might be significant, and I'm less qualified to judge those than I am Fr. Mattheeuws' article (and less qualified to judge them than he is).
(I'm not sure if I'm using such words as "material" in the proper philosophical way, but I trust you'll take my meaning. Feel free to correct me where appropriate; there are, I'm sure, other places where I mean ontology when I say reality...)
I've piled high quite a few contingents, though, so don't think I'm actively dissenting from Donum Vitae. Outside of the unlikely confluence of a successor of Peter saying I can do so and some incredibly bizarre medical condition developing in my wife, none of my unborn kids is going to take a detour through the freezer section.
What about embryonic children who have already been cryopreserved? Let me address a few excerpts directly:
Here he's saying that parents cannot store or give them away like mere objects. Entirely true, but there is such a thing as adoption, and it is legitimate. Giving up only the second of five children for adoption in order to keep the bills low would be an unconscionable breach of the family, but it only demonstrates that the appropriateness of adoption would depend on the circumstances.
Okay: in vitro fertilization sinful? Check. Freezing them evil? Check, but not necessarily with more advanced technology; DV prohibits risky operations and zygote-affecting operations that are experimental for the sake of experiment, and not all medical intervention across the board. Leaving them indefinitely on ice sinful? Check: they're placed in an unnatural and isolated state, most often for no primary reason. Harvesting for stem cells or cloning sinful? Check. All things we need not cooperate in. Keeping these points in mind, we move on...
If it weren't for the idea that a couple doesn't have to have every child they could possibly have, then NFP would be on the rocks; but on the other hand, they have already conceived children, and if parents weren't obligated to make at least a reasonable effort to bring their unborn children to term, then we wouldn't be opposing abortion, either. We don't have to guarantee success to make an effort; God only expects us to be faithful. How many miscarriages happen in the first week of pregnancy, anyway? Are we to sit on our hands because we haven't yet brought the failure rate well below these natural levels? If we do forsake every possible solution, then we are automatically assuring their death.
First, yes we can, if we put our minds to it. The age of the child need not matter, and kids don't exactly come with 18-year warranties, let alone nine-month ones. Second, no, the way things are, it's not the most realistic response. No matter how many willing couples we'd be able to find, at this rate we'd never be able to give every embryonic child a chance at development and birth. It's possible that IVF could lose popularity or be banned, but unless such unlikely events transpire, embryo adoption will never be sufficient. Let me know if sufficiency becomes the primary moral consideration for an act.
I think we're at the crux of the biscuit. By accepting the final act in a process that on the whole is immoral, are we formally cooperating with the evil? Not necessarily. Hearken back to the hypothermia example I gave earlier. Would it be immoral for me today to use that knowledge to save someone's life? No. What about my doctor in saving mine? Perhaps I'd be biased, but I'd again say no. What about the first doctor to read journal articles on the effects of prolonged cold on the human body, based on Nazi research? Not if that doctor is truly--primarily--interested in helping a patient keep his life or regain his health.
Where are we left when it comes to embryonic children? The science is not mature, and the technology is not what I'd like to call robust, but saving the life of a child is prima facie a good thing.
If I had to pay an open clinic to get an embryo and have it implanted, I'd probably pass because payment would constitute material cooperation, in the form of financially enabling an embryo mill to continue its work. If I felt an embryo mill were just another resource for fertility treatment, one that let me keep a little distance from the obviously immoral activity, then I'd still share the culpability.
If, however, I knew that there were frozen children--children who shouldn't exist, but God permitted to bring to the world anyway--and that they would definitely die if I did nothing, eventually discarded during an inventory purge or donated for ESCR or lost during a power failure or natural disaster; then I would really be inclined to give them something they could still have. They may have been denied a natural conception, but technically it wouldn't be too late to give them a chance at an otherwise normal gestation, and hopefully a full life.
Fr. Mattheeuws himself makes what is to me the same point in another part of the article, pointing out that adopting a child conceived by rape does not make one in any way complicit with the rape.
Generally agreed. We can't just have lone people going around adopting embryonic children any more than we can have them adopting air-breathing children. Children are more than pets, and women are more than baby-making machines. Marriage provides for the procreation and raising of children, but it too is more. However, I'm still not seeing a durable difference between the goodness of a married, conjugally active, yet childless couple adopting an air-breather and a married, conjugally active, yet childless couple adopting an embryo. A woman's condition as a person, as a spouse, as a mother, should be considered along with her teleology even in the intent of conceiving her own children normally. I won't be so quick as to say these considerations for embryonic adoption are illusory, but it would be possible to commodify motherhood if we follow that path.
I still don't think it's enough to condemn the idea, though. It's not like the "right becomes obligation" argument against euthanasia, where a bad thing gives way to something worse. We just have something that could be very good, which is vulnerable to exploitation. Maybe weighing the quality of the technology, the likelihood of success, against the degree of moral vulnerability should be a judgment of prudence, but the possibility of exploitation doesn't make the matter different from anything else; it makes it just like everything else.
I submit, however, that embryo adoption is not surrogacy. Fr. Mattheeuws permits the distinction from traditional surrogacy, but insists that the similarity in the substitutiveness of both EA and surrogate motherhood are definitive and thus morally prohibitive. Let’s let DV define surrogate motherhood for us:
DV explicitly leaves room for technical assistance to conception for conjugating spouses (see question #6 under Homologous Artificial Insemination), we can obviously distinguish IVF itself from surrogacy, and we can see that surrogacy as here defined is a commoditization of the woman’s childbearing capacity, a reduction of it to a mere social service.
I’m not trying to argue that the only problem with surrogacy is the objectifying aspects of the practice. Children have a right to be conceived in love by their parents and carried to term by their mothers. Surrogacy deliberately deprives children of at least one and often all of these things.
Embryonic adoption, on the other hand, does not. It bears little similarity outside of some technological aspects, which DV does not prohibit just for being technological. Embryonic children have already been conceived; the likelihood of their conception having been in vitro, while probable, is moot. If it were merely a matter of being something between regular adoption and custom-genotype surrogacy, then it would be a bad thing. Embryonic adoption won’t save every child, even if we found an adoptive mother for every one, but again, we shouldn’t refuse to try saving any lives just because we can’t save all of them.
Doesn’t saving lives often require the tolerance of lesser “evils?” A woman in a car accident requires a leg amputation. A man having a heart transplant receives an organ cut from another’s corpse, is given a highly addictive narcotic to alleviate the pain. A child is removed from an abusive household. Dangerous mentally ill people are institutionalized against their wills. In all such cases “adding one evil on top of another” really doesn’t suit. All the evils are already added up and piled on top of the child. The child was already conceived by IVF; any siblings have already been implanted or killed or are also awaiting adoption; the genetic mother is not coming back; the child has probably already been archived in a fancy freezer somewhere. The only variable is setting the Petri dish out on a counter and letting the children die today, or waiting until next week for the adoptive parents to come in for implantation. I don’t know about spiritually, but biologically, even an adult who could be successfully frozen would not notice the passage of time. Given sufficient scientific advancement, it might be no more violent than general anesthesia.
DV spells out how we shouldn’t procure children. It does not say there is some point during the accretion of material evils against a child that a third party is morally obligated to throw up his hands, refuse to take part in anything even tangentially related, and let the child die. This attitude strikes me as little different from one where a parent treats a child drinking some under-the-counter chemical the same way he’d treat his keys dropped in lava.
“Shouldn’t we call the Poison Control Center?”
“Don’t bother; he’s as good as gone.”
“This stuff might only be a slow toxin!”
“I said don’t bother.“
If I were a zygote stashed in a freezer somewhere, I’d be pretty hard pressed to come up with a course of action that would be worse than nothing. I’d also be pretty hard pressed to overlook the suggestion that I should die because I would be starting life deprived of too many good things.
The first question he covers is whether embryos may be frozen. Donum Vitae appears to be pretty clear:
The freezing of embryos, even when carried out in order to preserve the life of an embryo - cryopreservation - constitutes an offence against the respect due to human beings by exposing them to grave risks of death or harm to their physical integrity and depriving them, at least temporarily, of maternal shelter and gestation, thus placing them in a situation in which further offences and manipulation are possible.
The first part of this argument is, I think, contingent more on the limits of technology than on the limits of moral behavior. We now induce hypothermia in adults for certain medical procedures, and the risk of dying therefrom is quite small, especially next to the benefits to be gained by surgery.
I'm not condoning, however, any experimentation like what the Nazis did to bring us what we know about hypothermia today. I'm only saying that medical technology has gotten us this far, and in the future, something mundane, safe, and materially identical to the cryosleep featured in the Alien and 2001 movies might be feasible for a human at any point in development.
Justifying the extraction and preservation in the first place is another matter. If it's not disproportionately dangerous--which is a big if, one our state of the obstetric art can't yet practically answer, and no valid reason for which I can even think of--then I'm not sure how the deprivation of "maternal shelter" would be materially different from having your five year old spend a weekend in the hospital (which, I can personally attest, is sometimes necessary). We don't think that much of a kid getting homesick. Technical problems aside, would an extraction and reimplantation be significantly different? I'm not asking rhetorically. While there can be no tangible emotional trauma if there's no differentiated neural tissue, there are still spiritual matters that might be significant, and I'm less qualified to judge those than I am Fr. Mattheeuws' article (and less qualified to judge them than he is).
(I'm not sure if I'm using such words as "material" in the proper philosophical way, but I trust you'll take my meaning. Feel free to correct me where appropriate; there are, I'm sure, other places where I mean ontology when I say reality...)
I've piled high quite a few contingents, though, so don't think I'm actively dissenting from Donum Vitae. Outside of the unlikely confluence of a successor of Peter saying I can do so and some incredibly bizarre medical condition developing in my wife, none of my unborn kids is going to take a detour through the freezer section.
What about embryonic children who have already been cryopreserved? Let me address a few excerpts directly:
[Parents] cannot relinquish the responsibility that they have taken on in conceiving these embryos, even if it was with the help of doctors....
Here he's saying that parents cannot store or give them away like mere objects. Entirely true, but there is such a thing as adoption, and it is legitimate. Giving up only the second of five children for adoption in order to keep the bills low would be an unconscionable breach of the family, but it only demonstrates that the appropriateness of adoption would depend on the circumstances.
[T]hey should bring their embryonic children back to the dimension of time and take them out of their frozen state. It is in their hands to avoid adding one evil on top of another: to create a surplus of embryos and freeze them is one evil, to keep them in this state is another. To decide to make them material for science is also an evil.
Okay: in vitro fertilization sinful? Check. Freezing them evil? Check, but not necessarily with more advanced technology; DV prohibits risky operations and zygote-affecting operations that are experimental for the sake of experiment, and not all medical intervention across the board. Leaving them indefinitely on ice sinful? Check: they're placed in an unnatural and isolated state, most often for no primary reason. Harvesting for stem cells or cloning sinful? Check. All things we need not cooperate in. Keeping these points in mind, we move on...
But are they to be expected to implant every embryonic child in the body of its mother in view of bringing it into the world? I don't think this should be a 'moral obligation' for them....The only possibility open to them is implantation and gestation in the uterus of a woman. This possibility moreover does not automatically assure their survival.
If it weren't for the idea that a couple doesn't have to have every child they could possibly have, then NFP would be on the rocks; but on the other hand, they have already conceived children, and if parents weren't obligated to make at least a reasonable effort to bring their unborn children to term, then we wouldn't be opposing abortion, either. We don't have to guarantee success to make an effort; God only expects us to be faithful. How many miscarriages happen in the first week of pregnancy, anyway? Are we to sit on our hands because we haven't yet brought the failure rate well below these natural levels? If we do forsake every possible solution, then we are automatically assuring their death.
"What is more, can we really speak of adoption in a strict sense?...I do not believe that this would be a realistic 'response.'
First, yes we can, if we put our minds to it. The age of the child need not matter, and kids don't exactly come with 18-year warranties, let alone nine-month ones. Second, no, the way things are, it's not the most realistic response. No matter how many willing couples we'd be able to find, at this rate we'd never be able to give every embryonic child a chance at development and birth. It's possible that IVF could lose popularity or be banned, but unless such unlikely events transpire, embryo adoption will never be sufficient. Let me know if sufficiency becomes the primary moral consideration for an act.
Certain moralists consider that adopting embryonic children merely consists in moving a piece of a complex and absurd puzzle within a system that does not respect the origin of human life. It is a delicate question of a material cooperation with a technique which, in itself, is a means disrespectful of man. Others think that a massive and visible adoption of these embryonic children would testify to the respect we owe them and would favor, in the long run, a recognition of the evil that has been done to them and thus of the deadly character of these diverse techniques.
I think we're at the crux of the biscuit. By accepting the final act in a process that on the whole is immoral, are we formally cooperating with the evil? Not necessarily. Hearken back to the hypothermia example I gave earlier. Would it be immoral for me today to use that knowledge to save someone's life? No. What about my doctor in saving mine? Perhaps I'd be biased, but I'd again say no. What about the first doctor to read journal articles on the effects of prolonged cold on the human body, based on Nazi research? Not if that doctor is truly--primarily--interested in helping a patient keep his life or regain his health.
Where are we left when it comes to embryonic children? The science is not mature, and the technology is not what I'd like to call robust, but saving the life of a child is prima facie a good thing.
If I had to pay an open clinic to get an embryo and have it implanted, I'd probably pass because payment would constitute material cooperation, in the form of financially enabling an embryo mill to continue its work. If I felt an embryo mill were just another resource for fertility treatment, one that let me keep a little distance from the obviously immoral activity, then I'd still share the culpability.
If, however, I knew that there were frozen children--children who shouldn't exist, but God permitted to bring to the world anyway--and that they would definitely die if I did nothing, eventually discarded during an inventory purge or donated for ESCR or lost during a power failure or natural disaster; then I would really be inclined to give them something they could still have. They may have been denied a natural conception, but technically it wouldn't be too late to give them a chance at an otherwise normal gestation, and hopefully a full life.
Fr. Mattheeuws himself makes what is to me the same point in another part of the article, pointing out that adopting a child conceived by rape does not make one in any way complicit with the rape.
The personal conditions of [embryo adoption]--her condition as a woman, as a mother, as a spouse--seem little considered. With the 'rescue' option, the ethical illusion is profound: a sign of this is that even outside of the conjugal connection, the body of the woman can serve to this end.
Generally agreed. We can't just have lone people going around adopting embryonic children any more than we can have them adopting air-breathing children. Children are more than pets, and women are more than baby-making machines. Marriage provides for the procreation and raising of children, but it too is more. However, I'm still not seeing a durable difference between the goodness of a married, conjugally active, yet childless couple adopting an air-breather and a married, conjugally active, yet childless couple adopting an embryo. A woman's condition as a person, as a spouse, as a mother, should be considered along with her teleology even in the intent of conceiving her own children normally. I won't be so quick as to say these considerations for embryonic adoption are illusory, but it would be possible to commodify motherhood if we follow that path.
I still don't think it's enough to condemn the idea, though. It's not like the "right becomes obligation" argument against euthanasia, where a bad thing gives way to something worse. We just have something that could be very good, which is vulnerable to exploitation. Maybe weighing the quality of the technology, the likelihood of success, against the degree of moral vulnerability should be a judgment of prudence, but the possibility of exploitation doesn't make the matter different from anything else; it makes it just like everything else.
Donum vitae tells us 'surrogate' motherhood is not morally licit. It is contrary "to the unity of marriage and to the dignity of the procreation of the human person."
I submit, however, that embryo adoption is not surrogacy. Fr. Mattheeuws permits the distinction from traditional surrogacy, but insists that the similarity in the substitutiveness of both EA and surrogate motherhood are definitive and thus morally prohibitive. Let’s let DV define surrogate motherhood for us:
By “surrogate mother” the Instruction means:
(a) the woman who carries in pregnancy an embryo implanted in her uterus and who is genetically a stranger to the embryo because it has been obtained through the union of the gametes of “donors.” She carries the pregnancy with a pledge to surrender the baby once it is born to the party who commissioned or made the agreement for the pregnancy.
(b) the woman who carries in pregnancy an embryo to whose procreation she has contributed the donation of her own ovum, fertilized through insemination with the sperm of a man other than her husband. She carries the pregnancy with a pledge to surrender the child once it is born to the party who commissioned or made the agreement for the pregnancy.
DV explicitly leaves room for technical assistance to conception for conjugating spouses (see question #6 under Homologous Artificial Insemination), we can obviously distinguish IVF itself from surrogacy, and we can see that surrogacy as here defined is a commoditization of the woman’s childbearing capacity, a reduction of it to a mere social service.
I’m not trying to argue that the only problem with surrogacy is the objectifying aspects of the practice. Children have a right to be conceived in love by their parents and carried to term by their mothers. Surrogacy deliberately deprives children of at least one and often all of these things.
Embryonic adoption, on the other hand, does not. It bears little similarity outside of some technological aspects, which DV does not prohibit just for being technological. Embryonic children have already been conceived; the likelihood of their conception having been in vitro, while probable, is moot. If it were merely a matter of being something between regular adoption and custom-genotype surrogacy, then it would be a bad thing. Embryonic adoption won’t save every child, even if we found an adoptive mother for every one, but again, we shouldn’t refuse to try saving any lives just because we can’t save all of them.
Doesn’t saving lives often require the tolerance of lesser “evils?” A woman in a car accident requires a leg amputation. A man having a heart transplant receives an organ cut from another’s corpse, is given a highly addictive narcotic to alleviate the pain. A child is removed from an abusive household. Dangerous mentally ill people are institutionalized against their wills. In all such cases “adding one evil on top of another” really doesn’t suit. All the evils are already added up and piled on top of the child. The child was already conceived by IVF; any siblings have already been implanted or killed or are also awaiting adoption; the genetic mother is not coming back; the child has probably already been archived in a fancy freezer somewhere. The only variable is setting the Petri dish out on a counter and letting the children die today, or waiting until next week for the adoptive parents to come in for implantation. I don’t know about spiritually, but biologically, even an adult who could be successfully frozen would not notice the passage of time. Given sufficient scientific advancement, it might be no more violent than general anesthesia.
DV spells out how we shouldn’t procure children. It does not say there is some point during the accretion of material evils against a child that a third party is morally obligated to throw up his hands, refuse to take part in anything even tangentially related, and let the child die. This attitude strikes me as little different from one where a parent treats a child drinking some under-the-counter chemical the same way he’d treat his keys dropped in lava.
“Shouldn’t we call the Poison Control Center?”
“Don’t bother; he’s as good as gone.”
“This stuff might only be a slow toxin!”
“I said don’t bother.“
If I were a zygote stashed in a freezer somewhere, I’d be pretty hard pressed to come up with a course of action that would be worse than nothing. I’d also be pretty hard pressed to overlook the suggestion that I should die because I would be starting life deprived of too many good things.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Birmingham abortion clinic surrenders license after baby's death
From the article:
We have two victories here, my friends. One, an abortion clinic has shut down for the foreseeable future. Two, an abortion clinic has been held legally responsible for medical negligence.
The second point may be more far-reaching than the first. Progressives in America will always have an uphill battle when trying to enshrine a social service as a basic human right, especially when they're explicitly pushing one that's only appicable to half of all humans, like abortion. Well, half of all adults. You know what I mean. Anyway, from what I've seen in the lawsuits being brought against Planned Parenthood (see here, here, and here for starters), they've been carrying on as if this "social service" really were some transcendent phenomenon, too important or too ubiquitous to be infringed by the banalities of sanitation mandates, rape reporting, and the like.
Now there's a precedent for not looking the other way in the interest of protecting the idea of "choice" over the fact of it. Now there should be no secrets, no mistakes, no deceptions, to distract from the fact that in a time when appropriate medical (physical and psychological) care is easy to obtain, abortion has not made women safer and healthier than they were thirty-four years ago.
A Birmingham abortion clinic has surrendered its license amid allegations that a woman delivered a nearly full-term stillborn baby after a clinic staffer gave her an abortion-inducing drug and performed other medical treatments without a doctor present, health officials said Wednesday.
We have two victories here, my friends. One, an abortion clinic has shut down for the foreseeable future. Two, an abortion clinic has been held legally responsible for medical negligence.
The second point may be more far-reaching than the first. Progressives in America will always have an uphill battle when trying to enshrine a social service as a basic human right, especially when they're explicitly pushing one that's only appicable to half of all humans, like abortion. Well, half of all adults. You know what I mean. Anyway, from what I've seen in the lawsuits being brought against Planned Parenthood (see here, here, and here for starters), they've been carrying on as if this "social service" really were some transcendent phenomenon, too important or too ubiquitous to be infringed by the banalities of sanitation mandates, rape reporting, and the like.
Now there's a precedent for not looking the other way in the interest of protecting the idea of "choice" over the fact of it. Now there should be no secrets, no mistakes, no deceptions, to distract from the fact that in a time when appropriate medical (physical and psychological) care is easy to obtain, abortion has not made women safer and healthier than they were thirty-four years ago.
Monday, June 05, 2006
Relevant Radio had someone on this weekend discussing the constitutional emasculation of modern men. I didn't catch the whole thing, but the guy was talking about how one battlefront in the fight against manliness was fashion: starting with male models, longer hair and earrings were introduced, and so on and so forth, until the sight of men dressing and primping themselves as women do seems perfectly natural, making the next step in the progression seem relatively small, blah blah blah. 1980s hair rock bands with their frilly sashes and animal skin print blouses and such probably have something to do with it, too, but I digress.
It's a bit of a hand-waving argument, I'll admit. Long hair was popular in the 60s to spite convention at least as much as to explicitly subvert gender roles, if such a distinction is meaningful. Jewelry, even on the ears, has not always been the bailiwick of women, nor always strictly decoration. French voyageurs sometimes took multiple piercings to indicate their skill in paddling on one side of a canoe or the other--next best thing to a resume in a society of low literacy.
Still, in modern society, long hair and jewelry have been predominantly the decorations of women.
I think the guy on Relevant Radio was overlooking something else, though, and perhaps it was just a matter of topicality. I don't think it's as simple as emasculation; I think it's the neutering of humans, men and women alike. It's not a new idea, but I'm not coming from the usual "feminism is about making women into better men than men themselves" angle.
We see men who are "metrosexual," adopting both the practices and styles of women. What about women? I don't mean the ones with short hair and combat boots. Look instead at many today's models.
They're thin, painfully so, resembling gangly boys as much as girls. Although the clothing they feature is often girly, it billows around them like they're coathangers on legs. Tops are low-cut or splayed open, revealing more ribs than a barbecue shack and nothing else (not that excessive cleavage is actually appropriate). Nominally hip-hugging slacks or skirts don't hug anything at all, which may be deliberate on the part of the designer as well as on the model. They wear makeup, but not so much anymore to look particularly alluring. All the fashion show footage I've seen in recent years, save for a few ad campaigns for a certain brand of underwear, has featured underfed women, and increasingly, girls who appear to be delaying puberty rather than fighting it off, with little more than mascara to make it look like they're coming off the cover of Crack Whore Magazine instead of making their debut in Milan.
It's a bit of a hand-waving argument, I'll admit. Long hair was popular in the 60s to spite convention at least as much as to explicitly subvert gender roles, if such a distinction is meaningful. Jewelry, even on the ears, has not always been the bailiwick of women, nor always strictly decoration. French voyageurs sometimes took multiple piercings to indicate their skill in paddling on one side of a canoe or the other--next best thing to a resume in a society of low literacy.
Still, in modern society, long hair and jewelry have been predominantly the decorations of women.
I think the guy on Relevant Radio was overlooking something else, though, and perhaps it was just a matter of topicality. I don't think it's as simple as emasculation; I think it's the neutering of humans, men and women alike. It's not a new idea, but I'm not coming from the usual "feminism is about making women into better men than men themselves" angle.
We see men who are "metrosexual," adopting both the practices and styles of women. What about women? I don't mean the ones with short hair and combat boots. Look instead at many today's models.
They're thin, painfully so, resembling gangly boys as much as girls. Although the clothing they feature is often girly, it billows around them like they're coathangers on legs. Tops are low-cut or splayed open, revealing more ribs than a barbecue shack and nothing else (not that excessive cleavage is actually appropriate). Nominally hip-hugging slacks or skirts don't hug anything at all, which may be deliberate on the part of the designer as well as on the model. They wear makeup, but not so much anymore to look particularly alluring. All the fashion show footage I've seen in recent years, save for a few ad campaigns for a certain brand of underwear, has featured underfed women, and increasingly, girls who appear to be delaying puberty rather than fighting it off, with little more than mascara to make it look like they're coming off the cover of Crack Whore Magazine instead of making their debut in Milan.
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