Mirror of Justice

Friday, December 12, 2008

Dignitas Personae: A Christian Scientist Comments

<p>Scientist reacts to Vatican bioethics paper</p>

National Catholic Reporter
December 12, 2008

Scientist reacts to Vatican bioethics paper
By William B. Neaves

Scientific research and medical applications arising from such research should be guided by a moral framework that both values human life and protects the dignity of individuals. Dignitas Personae, the new Vatican bioethics document issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with the approval of Pope Benedict XVI, aims to do this. As such, it deserves thoughtful consideration by scientists who develop reproductive and therapeutic technologies, by physicians who apply them, and by the people who benefit from them.

Dignitas Personae catalogues the consequences of actions derived from a moral framework based on a point of view about personhood — a view that is not shared by all. This point of view accords the dignity of a person to the first cell that results from fertilization of an egg by a sperm. If this premise is accepted, all the consequences detailed in Dignitas Personae logically follow.

These consequences include the condemnation of any pharmacological intervention that prevents the products of fertilization from implanting in a womb (the document says anyone using such a pill “intends abortion”). It censures the use of in vitro fertilization (IVF), a process that has helped bring to birth 3.5 million children of infertile parents. It denounces the adoption of already-produced IVF embryos that will otherwise be discarded, even when these IVF embryos could enable infertile couples to bear children. Not surprisingly, it proscribes seeking cures to diseases through research with embryonic stem cells.

Christians, of whom this writer is one, can find scant guidance on when personhood begins by reading the Bible. Some cite Jeremiah 1:5 (“Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations”), but many readers find this to be a statement of Jeremiah’s preordination, not the inception of his personhood. Other find Ecclesiastes 11:5 more relevant (“As you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother’s womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things”).

Indeed, the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith noted more than three decades ago that it is not within the competence of human knowledge to determine when God infuses an immortal soul into a developing person. (See “Declaration on Procured Abortion [1]” by Sacred Congregation Prefect Franciscus Cardinal Seper, Nov. 18, 1974, footnote # 19)

Eight centuries ago, Saint Thomas Aquinas emphasized the importance of the embryo’s physical development in building a suitable home for the soul. The poet Dante Alighieri, who lived and wrote into the early 14th century, described the contemporary Catholic view of ensoulment in the following passage from the Purgatorio:

Open thy breast to the truth that follows and know that as soon as the articulation of the brain is perfected in the embryo, The First Mover turns to it, rejoicing over such a handiwork of nature, and breathes into it a new spirit full of power, which draws into its own substance that which it finds active there and becomes a single soul that lives and feels and revolves upon itself.
—Canto 25:67-75

The point of view articulated by Aquinas and Dante is still compelling, and it comports with recent insights from biology and medicine supporting the idea that personhood is established after the products of fertilization are implanted in the uterus. For example, it is well established that separately conceived fraternal twins occasionally fuse in the mother’s reproductive tract and merge into a single embryo that is implanted and gestated in the uterus. When the fraternal twins are of different sexes, the birthed child is a chimera, endowed with a mixture of cells carrying either the female sex chromosome or the male sex chromosome. If personhood is established at the time of fertilization, such natural chimeras pose the difficult question of how two people become a single person.

An alternative point of view to the Vatican’s, embraced by many Christians, is that personhood occurs after successful implantation in the mother’s uterus, when individual ontological identity is finally established. This way of thinking about when a person comes into existence reconciles another otherwise troublesome reality of normal, natural human reproduction: in many (and probably most) instances, the single cell resulting from fertilization of an egg by a sperm perishes in the woman’s reproductive tract and never implants in the uterus. Only after implantation does a birthed baby become highly probable. Would God have ordained that most people should die in the first two weeks of existence, long before seeing the light of day? No human being can know, but it seems unlikely.

If one accepts the viewpoint that personhood begins after implantation, the moral framework guiding the development and application of medical technology to human reproduction and treatment of disease looks very different from that described in Dignitas Personae.

In the alternative moral framework, taking a pill to prevent the products of fertilization from implanting in a uterus is morally acceptable. Using IVF to complete the family circle of couples otherwise unable to have children is an unmitigated good. Encouraging infertile couples with defective gametes to adopt already-produced IVF embryos that will otherwise be discarded is a laudable objective. And using embryonic stem cells to seek cures becomes a worthy means of fulfilling the biblical mandate to heal the sick.

William B. Neaves is president and CEO of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Mo.

NYT: Cardinal Dulles RIP

By Amy Uelmen

Here is a nice write-up in the New York Times on Cardinal Dulles and his passing.

Avery Dulles, R.I.P.

By Rick Garnett

Rocco has the story, here. Cardinal Dulles was, of course, an intellectual giant and, so far as I was able to tell, a deeply holy and faith-filled man. Given the nature of our enterprise here at MOJ, readers might want to pay their respects by (among other things) checking out his 2002 lecture, "Catholic Social Thought and American Legal Practice."

Dignitas Personae

By Richard Myers

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has just issued Dignitas Personae, an important new document on biotechnology. This document is a successor to Donum Vitae, which was issued in 1987. I haven't had a chance to read the document yet but I hope to have a comment soon. Here is a link to John Allen's commentary.

Richard M.

Thursday, December 11, 2008

What Does the Evangelical Leader's Resignation Mean?

By Thomas Berg

From Christianity Today:

Richard Cizik resigned Wednesday night as vice president for governmental affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) during a week of growing uproar over his comments that he is shifting his views on same-sex unions.

Cizik later apologized and said he was opposed to civil unions as well as gay marriage, but it's not clear how convincing the retraction could be. The resignation of Cizik, the strong evangelical advocate for anti-global-warming policies, could end up meaning any of several things. (1) The movement to mobilize evangelicals to take steps against global warming will lose credibility because one of its main voices has been discredited for suggesting he was moving outside the evangelical consensus against same-sex unions. (2) This is a sign of how strong that evangelical consensus remains. Or (3) Cizik's (temporary?) shift is a sign of where more and more evangelicals will go in the future. Or all of the above.

On the same radio program, Cizik also expressed openness to government-supported contraception to reduce abortions, saying that evangelicals "are not Catholics who oppose contraception per se." But the Christianity Today story suggests (though it does not explicitly say) that it was the civil-unions remark that caused the greatest disturbance.

Tom B.

Mike Huckabee and Jon Stewart on gay marriage

By Michael Perry

Here. The interchange, which took place this week, begins at about 13:50.

"Faith, Finances, and the Future"

By Rick Garnett

Those who are interested, as we all should be, in the state and future of Catholic education in the United States, might want to check out this new report, "Faith, Finances, and the Future: The Notre Dame Study of U.S. Pastors", just put out by my colleagues with Notre Dame's Institute for Educational Initiatives.

In (somewhat) related news, I was delighted to learn that the founder and energy behind Notre Dame's Alliance for Catholic Education program, Fr. Tim Scully, was awarded the Presidential Citizenship Medal by President Bush, for “committing his life to strengthening communities through faith-based education that prepares individuals for a lifetime of achievement, service and compassion."

The Irish are stinking up the football field, but moving the ball pretty well (sorry!) when it comes to Catholic schools.

Brewbaker on Law and Human Making

By Rob Vischer

Alabama law prof and friend of MoJ Bill Brewbaker has posted a new paper, Law, Higher Law, and Human Making. Here's the abstract:

This paper is a preliminary investigation of what Christian theology might teach us about the nature of human creative activity and its relationship to judging and lawmaking. Rather than attempt to survey and synthesize multiple theological accounts of human making, it focuses on just one - Dorothy Sayers' The Mind of the Maker. The foundational analogy that drives Sayers' account of human creativity is the relation between God's creative activity and that of human beings made in his image. Sayers argues that human creative activity has a trinitarian structure, which she identifies as Idea, Energy and Power. These three elements correspond roughly to (i) the whole Idea of the work in the mind of the artist, with reference to which the creative activity is carried out (Father), (ii) the creative Activity that makes the work incarnate (Son) and (iii) the work's Power to influence the human person and the community's public context (Spirit).

Sayers' account suggests an alternative to simple affirmations that law is either found or made. There may well be in a society a normative institution that we might call The Law - an accretion of cultural artifacts that form the context of public action, reflecting a community's values and particular circumstances - or at least those of its ruling elites or groups, as well as its rules, its legal traditions, and, in an incomplete way, the general loves and commitments of the community. While one might presume, on the basis of the Christian revelation, that there will always be some connection at some points with moral truth, there is no reason to presume that such a connection necessarily exists all the way down, or even very much of the way down, the chain of legal particularities. Yet it would seem to be undeniable that a community's traditions - though they themselves are shifting and changing - exert a remarkable pull in particular and identifiable directions at any given time. This pull may be strong enough that it is possible for judges to declare The Law, with the attendant goods of stability, predictability, consonance with existing social norms, etc. without equating The Law with transcendent moral truth.

This looks like a must-read for MoJers.

Newsweek on the Bible on marriage

By Rob Vischer

Newsweek's cover story on the Christian case for same-sex marriage has drawn a heap of criticism. Fanning the flames is editor Jon Meacham's introductory note stating that "No matter what one thinks about gay rights — for, against or somewhere in between — this conservative resort to biblical authority is the worst kind of fundamentalism." Get Religion criticizes the article and the editor's note here.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

An Important Anniversary

By Michael Perry

The Merton Institute for Contemplative Living

On this 40th anniversary of Thomas Merton's death, we offer a reflection by Frederick Smock, Chair of the English Department at Bellarmine University.

The monk/poet's journey toward silence

By Frederick Smock

Special to The Courier-Journal

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Thomas Merton's death, I want to think about silence. Certainly, Merton took a vow of silence, and he was occasionally silenced by the Vatican. But I am not thinking of those forms of silence. Rather, I want to think about silence and the poet's art.

Much of a monk's life is spent in silence. Much of a poet's life is spent in silence, too -- a poet spends a fraction of his time actually writing poems. Merton was both a monk and a poet, and thus well-acquainted with silence. Like meditation, and like prayer, poetry is surrounded by silence. Poetry begins and ends in silence. Silence is also inherent within a poem, like the silences between notes in music. As the great Chinese poet Yang Wan-li said, a thousand years ago, "A poem is made of words, yes, but take away the words and the poem remains."

Still, when we think of silence, we do not necessarily think of Merton. He was a voluble man, and a prolific writer. He continues to publish, posthumously. He always seems to be speaking to us. Bookshelves groan under the accumulating weight of his oeurvre. However, late in his life, Merton lamented the fact that he had written so many editorials, and not more poems and prayers -- forms that partake of silence. "More and more I see the necessity of leaving my own ridiculous 'career' as a religious journalist," he wrote in his journal (Dec. 2, 1959). "Stop writing for publication -- except poems and creative meditations."

"What do I really want to do?" Merton asked himself, in his journal (June 21, 1959). "Long hours of quiet in the woods, reading a little, meditating a lot, walking up and down in the pine needles in bare feet." What a man commits to his journal is, at once, the most private and the most authentic version of his self. Books written for public consumption are not errant, just not as heartfelt. In his journal for the Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas (March 7, 1961), Merton wrote, "Determined to write less, to gradually vanish." He added, at the end of that entry, "The last thing I will give up writing will be this journal and notebooks and poems. No more books of piety."

Life is a journey toward silence, and not just the silence of death. Youth talks a lot -- is noisy. Old age is reticent. There is so much to consider, after all. Older men tend to hold their tongues. They know the wisdom of forbearance. To have seen many things is to reserve judgment. In this modern era, when news and politics are dominated by endlessly talking heads, silence becomes a precious commodity. The mere absence of speech sounds like silence. But true silence is a presence, not an absence. A fullness. A richness that depends for its worth on the purity of intent, not just the lack of distractions.

In a late journal entry (Dec. 4, 1968), Merton wrote of visiting the grand stupas of Buddha and Ananda at Gil Vihara, Sri Lanka. "The silence of the extraordinary faces. The great smiles. Huge and yet subtle. Filled with every possibility, questioning nothing, knowing everything, rejecting nothing...." Speaking of the figure of Ananda, Merton concluded, "It says everything. It needs nothing. Because it needs nothing it can afford to be silent, unnoticed, undiscovered." He also photographed these statues, focusing on their beatific serenity.

When we are silent, we can hear the wind in the trees, and the water in the brook, and is this not more eloquent than anything that we ourselves might have to say? Of living in his newly-built hermitage, Merton wrote in his journal (Feb. 24, 1965), "I can imagine no other joy on earth than to have such a place and to be at peace in it, to live in silence, to think and write, to listen to the wind and to all the voices of the wood, to live in the shadow of the big cedar cross, to prepare for my death...."

Is it ironic for a writer to praise silence? No more so, perhaps, than to praise ignorance, which is what Wendell Berry does in his poem "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front." There Berry writes, "Praise ignorance, for what man has not encountered, he has not destroyed." So, perhaps we should praise silence, for as much as a man has not said, he has not lied.

Praise of silence runs throughout Merton's meditations. For just one example: of his teaching of the novices at Gethsemani, he wrote (July 4, 1952), "Between the silence of God and the silence of my own soul stands the silence of the souls entrusted to me."

Certainly, since his death, Merton has been silent -- if not silenced. There is also the soft rustle, just out of hearing, of the poems and prayers he did not live to write.

Frederick Smock is chairman of the English Department at Bellarmine University. His recent book is Pax Intrantibus: A Meditation on the Poetry of Thomas Merton (Broadstone Books).

Robert Toth
Executive Director
The Merton Institute for Contemplative Living