Natural Law uplifts the human condition

A complaint lodged deep within the mindset of Western society is that the Judeo-Christian God demeans the human person by restricting their freedom through the imposition of rules – principally the Ten Commandments – under the threat of ultimate punishment. Therefore, all morality other than self-made codes of behaviour should be rejected.

Unsurprisingly, the fruit of subservience to this concept of arbitrary rule-making that is imposed on us is the breakdown of social stability and the consequent personal distress we see mounting to unprecedented proportions today.

However, this concept could not be further from the truth. A profound insight into how God’s law enlivens rather than suppresses the human project is contained in a reflection on the experience of the Hebrews after their deliverance from slavery in Egypt:

God had promised to make Abraham’s descendants a great nation. He had called them out of Egypt and separated them from the gods and practices of the Egyptians. The Israelites must now learn to become a nation that will reflect the character of the one true God to the nations around them. God called Moses up on a mountain where He gave him the laws by which they are to live. This will become the moral guide they must follow in order to reflect the character of a holy God.

[…] If they were to be the nation that represented God to the world, then they must reflect His character to the world. But they, like us, sometimes struggled to live up to God’s standard.

[…] God took Moses up onto a mountain and gave him the standards by which the people should live. These standards would retrain them to reflect the character of a loving God, rather than that of the Egyptians and their many gods. 

Then the idea is presented that God employs His laws to form His people into an expression of His values. This is key: God is the Good, the True, the Beautiful; humans are created in the image of God; therefore, we are endowed with those same values and qualities. However, we are wounded in our nature – blame Original Sin – and need to be trained to live as fully as God has made us to live based on the qualities God and all humans share, a factor whereby the grace of God rescues the human condition.

God's laws as a mirror into our own self

From a linked video reflection on the topic: 

There is a long Biblical tradition that describes God’s laws as a mirror. The closer we look at what God wants, the more we understand Him [and, therefore,] we understand our own hearts and desires. We [also] catch a glimpse of how our own hearts distort the love and community God is calling us into.

The Ten Commandments are “staggering in their timelessness”, given that hearts and mind space of today’s restless generations – plural – are largely devoted to idols of self, money, fame or at least status, to pleasure, and appearances.

Notice how the Ten Commandments are expressed in the context of a relationship.

God spoke all these words:

“I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of that place of slavery. You shall not have other gods instead of me. 

“You shall not make idols or any image of things that are in the heavens above or that are upon the earth or that are in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow before them nor shall you serve them.

“You shall not take the name of the Lord, your God, in vain, for the Lord will not leave unpunished those who use his name in vain.

“Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath in honor of the Lord your God. 

“Honor your father and your mother so that your days may be lengthened in the land that the Lord your God, will give you.

“You shall not kill.

“You shall not commit adultery.

“You shall not steal.

“You shall not give false witness against your neighbor.

“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male slave, nor his female slave, nor his oxen, nor his donkey, nor anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

— Exodus 20:1-17 (edited). See also Deuteronomy 5.

These are the ways God wants His people to reflect His own qualities and so to live as a community in conformity with all that was right and just.

Just how far from the truth it is to see this set of 10 laws as mere dictatorial restrictions or limitations is made clear in the words of Jesus, who was challenged to identify the most important of the 613 Jewish commandments (mitzvot in Hebrew) extracted from the Old Testament. Jesus went to the heart of the matter:

When the Pharisees learned that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and, to test him, one of them, a lawyer, asked this question, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

Jesus said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ Everything in the Law and the Prophets depends on these two commandments.” 

— Matthew 22:34-39 

Elsewhere, the gospels say we are to love God and neighbor with all our strength, to be prepared to lay down our lives for our friends, to cross ethnic and social boundaries as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, and much more, as Jesus outlines in his Beatitudes discourse (Matthew Chapter 5).

The video reflection states that Jesus recognized that the Ten Commandments were not arbitrary restrictions but were “an invitation to live out what God valued: life, rest, respect, honor, worship, gratitude”.

This is what it meant to be God’s people, a new community for the enjoyment of his promised land.

Each of these commands had been designed to lead Israel into that promise, into its fullest enjoyment – the fullness of what God had called Israel to be.

The speaker quotes from the Letter of James (1:22-25):

Be doers of the word and not just hearers who only deceive themselves.  For anyone who listens to the word and fails to do it is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror. After seeing his reflection, he goes off and immediately forgets what he looked like. However, the one who looks intently at the perfect law of freedom and perseveres—not forgetting what he has heard but putting it into practice—will be blessed in everything he does.

This element of “Know God, and you will know yourself” is part of the richness of the Christian heritage, where, as stated in passing above, the concept is termed Natural Law. 

The conclusion is that God’s law has a decided purpose. Its call, to love God and love your neighbor, is a “call into a better way of living, of being, into a better community and a better life”.

To briefly lay out the classical principles of Natural Law I want to excerpt material from a book titled Made This Way. 

It states that we are made in such a way that we reflect God’s being. The universal moral law is of God and has been implanted in our being so it can be known by the use of reason alone. But we have to learn, by informing our conscience, how the moral law applies in particular cases. Our conscience also alerts us to issues that could harm our own moral decision-making and that of the whole of society. 

For the person with a good grasp of where morality comes from, it matters not one jot that the majority of people might disagree that abortion, for example, is a crime against the humanity of the embryo. Our reason (using scientific findings) tells us that from the moment of conception a new human being exists; this human, therefore, requires our respect and protection. That's where legislation, usually termed positive law, often based on political expediency or public opinion differs from God-given natural law.

Understanding Natural Law 

From Made This Way:

“If we want to know what is real and true, we must always ask, ‘What is the nature of a thing?’” Another way to put it would be, “What is this thing and what is it made for?” These questions unlock the force of the natural law. […]

America’s Constitution and [the US] system of laws were based on natural-law principles that transcend any merely human laws based on popular opinion or human will (what is called positive law). Abraham Lincoln, for example, cited moral truths that could be known through reason when he worked to deliver our nation from the evil of slavery. In a debate with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln said that slavery wasn’t just a political issue but one that represented “the eternal struggle between these two principles—right and wrong”.

 A century later, Martin Luther King, Jr. was told that racial segregation was the “law of the land” and must be obeyed. MLK replied that unjust laws may be disobeyed. As he sat in jail for disobeying those laws, he wrote: How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. 

Natural law is another term for the universal moral law of God. Thomas Aquinas said that the natural law “is nothing other than the light of understanding infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided.” This law is universal because everyone—including people who have never received divine revelation—can know it.

St. Paul proclaimed that even people who have never encountered something as basic as the Ten Commandments can still apprehend God’s important moral truths, because “what the law requires is written on their hearts” (Romans 2:15). 

[…] Robert Cardinal Sarah has affirmed that “the Church’s social teaching argues on the basis of reason and natural law, namely on the basis of what is in accord with the nature of every human being.” It is because of the natural law that Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and even atheists and agnostics can hear their consciences tell them what they may do, what they must do, and what they must never do.

Natural law explains people’s deep-seated understanding that crimes like murder and theft are wrong, whereas charitable acts like feeding the hungry and clothing the naked are right. It helps us instinctively relate such actions to the way human beings have been made. When we ask, “What is human life for?” or “What is the nature of a human being?” we want to know our ultimate goal in life and how to reach that goal. Natural law shows us both, or as Professor Charles Rice says, it’s “a set of manufacturer’s directions written into our nature so that we can discover through reason how we ought to act”.

Just as we would not harm our car’s mechanical nature by putting molasses in the tank—which is made for gasoline—we should not harm our human nature by acting immorally; that is, in ways that contradict its design. 

What Natural Law is not

Natural law is not the same as the “laws of nature”. Scientific laws explain how matter and energy behave in the physical world. These laws cannot be “disobeyed” because they describe what usually happens rather than what should happen. For example, the law of gravity (science) describes how a falling bomb accelerates toward the earth. Natural law (morality) tells us whether it is right or wrong to drop the bomb on a certain target.

Natural law is not “what happens with other mammals in nature.” When Christians say that certain human behaviors go against nature, they mean that those acts contradict how human beings ought to act, not merely what happens in the natural world. Humans are animals, but we are rational animals, and so we should not make the behavior of lower animals our standard of morality. 

Lots of behaviors are “natural” for other animals, like stealing, forced sex, or infanticide, but that doesn’t make those behaviors natural for rational human beings. 

Natural law is not “what feels natural to me”. A person may have a strong inclination to eat a whole box of cookies or a persistent desire to cheat on a spouse, but the consequences of those decisions show that we shouldn’t always follow our “natural feelings”. This doesn’t mean we should never follow our instincts and feelings; it just means we should use our minds to tell us which of them we should follow. 

C.S. Lewis used the analogy of a piano to explain the relationship between our animal instincts that tempt us to do evil and our rational minds that know the moral law. He said that instincts are like the keys on the piano, and morality (the natural law) is like the sheet music that tells us when to play the keys at the right time. For example, the fight instinct is good for a young boy if a stranger is trying to pull his sister into a car and abduct her; it’s bad if he is frustrated with his sister during play and uses fists to settle the matter. Likewise, the flight instinct is good when running away from a tsunami; it’s cowardly when running away from an infant drowning in a play pool. 

Unlike the lower animals, we human beings are created with an intellect and a will (made in God’s image), which means that we are the only ones with the ability to reason morally—to choose between right and wrong. According to Thomas Aquinas’s classic definition, natural law is man’s participation in God’s eternal law, an intersection between human reason and divine wisdom.

The benefits of Natural Law 

Although natural law originates with God, it is not strictly a religious concept. Some truths of the Faith can be known only through divine revelation (e.g., the Trinity, the nature of the sacraments), and divine revelation—such as the Ten Commandments—can also more clearly reveal the truths of the natural law. 

[…] Each soul is designed by God to be attracted to truth, and we all have brains that can reason. Natural law is the only firm foundation that can ground a debate (try debating based on “feelings” and see how far you get!). We can also appeal to natural law when secularists accuse Christians of “imposing” morality on them. We can show them that natural law prevents the unjust imposition of an unsound morality, because it is a safeguard against tyranny and oppression. 

The convictions of Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg Trials were not based on man-made law (everything they did was perfectly legal in Germany), but rather on a universal morality that was recognizable by the world community.

[Of the twenty-four prominent members of the political and military leadership of Nazi Germany charged in the initial Nuremberg trial, twelve were sentenced to death by hanging and executions were carried out for 10 of them. In other trials, especially related to the Holocaust, more death sentences were handed down. See here.]

The greatest benefit of natural law is that it is not arbitrary. Some people think that Catholics blindly follow whatever the Bible or the pope says, but our faith does not consist of such commands. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (1994) says, “God’s almighty power is in no way arbitrary: ‘In God, power, essence, will, intellect, wisdom, and justice are all identical. Nothing therefore can be in God’s power which could not be in his just will or his wise intellect’” (271). 

God loves us, so not only his positive commandments but also the moral laws we discover through reason will always correspond to what is good for us as human beings; they will never just be a set of nonsensical, disconnected, inconsistent, incoherent rules. If anything, it is our culture that is arbitrary, because it reduces morality to mere popular opinion or the will of the powerful (“might makes right”). 

Children who are raised in this culture of moral relativism, especially those who lack the stability of an intact family, can quickly become disoriented and lost. Yet, if we can provide them a moral foundation through the natural law—if we can help them see that the way they should act corresponds to the way they are made—they will feel safe and secure in the truth, even as the rest of the world stumbles in darkness. Children who understand God’s created order and how “everything fits together” are more likely to become holy, healthy, and happy adults [...]. 

 KEY POINTS…

• The natural law is simply the universal moral law, accessible to all people by the light of human reason. 

• Natural law is not the same as the “laws of nature” like gravity, nor is it simply “what happens in nature” or “what feels natural to me”. It is the law of God revealed in our very humanity, written in our consciences. 

• Natural law is not an arbitrary set of rules. Instead, it is like an “instruction manual” that tells us how to live according to the design of our human nature, providing our lives with meaning, peace, and joy. 

SEE ALSO:

💢 Martin Luther King Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”.  

💢 Does Natural Law Need Theology?

💢 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Natural Law Ethics

💢 No Natural Law? Danger alert for society!

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Eat my body, drink my blood. Really?

A portion of the host and heart tissue from Poland, 2008

Among the drama of Easter: "Take and eat; this is my body ... This is my blood..." [!!!!! How many are sufficient?]

The drama is not diminished by the intervening millennia. It remains a dramatic declaration, as Gavin Ashenden, for one, can relate. He was the Anglican Church's chaplain to the Queen from 2008 until his resignation in 2017. He is now a Catholic layman. One reason he decided to become Catholic was because of Eucharistic miracles — specifically, one that happened in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in the 1990s.

From the testimony of a physician involved with the case:

On August 15, 1996, in the Parish of Santa Maria, a parishioner received the Consecrated Host in his hands during Communion, but inadvertently dropped it on the floor and thought not to pick it up because it seemed soiled to him. Another more pious person realized what had happened, picked up the host and put it aside, while quickly informing the Parish priest, Father Alejandro Pezet. The priest, following the instructions of the Church in these circumstances, put the Host in a container filled with water, which stayed in the tabernacle waiting for the Host to dissolve.

On August 26, the tabernacle was reopened to remove the fallen Host from the container, and it was found that the Host had not dissolved and had some reddish stains that were growing day by day. The Parish priests hurriedly went to the Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, to tell him what had happened. It was decided that they wait before proceeding with investigations. After the Archbishop learned that I was freely following these scientific investigations, he asked me to take care of the present case.

The next step had a mind-blowing result: "A sample of the material was sent to a world-renown cardiologist in New York City, Dr. Frederick Zugibe, who did not know where the bleeding flesh came from. He reported that it was heart muscle from a man who died in torment." Dr. Zugibe reported:

The analyzed material is a fragment of the heart muscle found in the wall of the left ventricle close to the valves. This muscle is responsible for the contraction of the heart. It should be borne in mind that the left cardiac ventricle pumps blood to all parts of the body. The heart muscle is in an inflammatory condition and contains a large number of white blood cells. This indicates that the heart was alive at the time the sample was taken. It is my contention that the heart was alive, since white blood cells die outside a living organism. They require a living organism to sustain them. Thus, their presence indicates that the heart was alive when the sample was taken. What is more, these white blood cells had penetrated the tissue, which further indicates that the heart had been under severe stress, as if the owner had been beaten severely about the chest.

The author of Living In Wonder, Rod Dreher, writes in his (paywalled) daily newsletter:

Do you understand what he says here? That the sample was taken from the heart that was still beating when it was harvested!

The blind scientific investigation determined that the man was alive at the time the sample was taken. The blood type was AB — the same, by the way, as from all other Eucharistic miracles, and the same as found on the Shroud of Turin.

Once he was told what he had, Dr. Zugibe, an atheist, converted to Catholicism.

Other examples of the extra-ordinary continue in Dreher's account:

In Poland, something similar happened in 2008, in Sokolka. Two independent scientific experts examined the material:

The results of both independent studies were in perfect agreement. They concluded that the structure of the transformed fragment of the host is identical to the myocardial (heart) tissue of a living person who is nearing death. The structure of the heart muscle fibers is deeply intertwined with that of the bread, in a way impossible to achieve with human means, according to the declaration of Prof. Maria Sobaniec-Lotowska.

The host and heart tissue from Sokolka in 2008

The same thing happened in Tixtla, Mexico, in 2013:

There are four scientifically inexplicable dimensions of the Tixtla host:

1. There is a thin filament of tissue in the center of the Host from which blood is exuding. Histochemical tests indicate cardiac tissue (Sánchez Loza et al). The tissue seems to be integrated with the Host which is scientifically inexplicable.

2. The cardiac tissue is alive – presence of active red blood cells, and white blood cells/ macrophages in the process of healing. Since tissue dies shortly after being disconnected from a body and circulatory system, the presence of living tissue and blood (after three months – time between the miracle and the tests) is scientifically inexplicable.

3. The Host-tissue is exuding fresh blood from the inside to the outside. Blood on the exterior of host is produced in 2006 while blood on the inside of host is fresh as of 2010. The pressure of natural flow is from the inside to the outside. Which is scientifically inexplicable.

4. The DNA conundrum – DNA material, but no amplifiable profile.

The point that the last line highlights is, as Dreher reports, "the very strange fact that in all these Eucharistic miracles, scientists see DNA material, but can’t create a DNA profile of the person who shed the blood. Perhaps this is what you would expect from a man who has no human father."

He concludes: 

See, we do live in an enchanted world. And all the failures, sins, and even crimes of the clerics, and the people in church, and even of you and me, cannot deny the power of Emmanuel — God among us. They can only blind us to the truth.

See also: 

💢 Eucharistic miracles from the last 20 years

💢 Evidence still with us from 1300 years ago

💢 Eucharistic miracles around the world

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To feel, feel, only feel - never think!

Herman Melville (1819-1891) used well his own experience among the primitive conditions of life on sailing ships to describe the nature of the human heart. Most clearly, in his Moby-Dick, also known as The Whale, he writes of Captain Ahab's state on the third day of stalking the ghostly white monster that had enslaved Ahab's mind and soul. Melville expresses a premonition of the state of the soul of so many in our time.

Here's what Melville saw in the heart of a man who had lost control of himself:

Here’s food for thought, had Ahab time to think; but Ahab never thinks; he only feels, feels, feels; that’s tingling enough for mortal man! to think’s audacity. God only has that right and privilege. Thinking is, or ought to be, a coolness and a calmness; and our poor hearts throb, and our poor brains beat too much for that. 

As would be expected in any time but our own, the outcome of Ahab's self-obsession was tragedy. His decision to reject appeals to desist in his lust for the life of the whale that had deprived him of one leg and the respect of his men concluded with the loss of his ship, his crew (bar the narrator), and his manic self.

I read that excerpt and then the account of the paralysed man blessed with friends, who Jesus cured with the additional promise: "Courage, child, your sins are forgiven" (Matthew 9:1-8). The account seemed to have something to say about Ahab and the condition of many in our era.

What a commentator finds links the passages:

The man is told to complete his experience of healing by abandoning a life of sin, bringing body and spirit into full harmony and wholeness. This is not to say that Jesus is implying that the man had been unable to walk because of his sin. Jesus did not teach that. But what he is saying is that physical wholeness needs to be matched by spiritual wholeness, the wholeness of the complete person.

The issue of May 20, 2013

I note that, as far as the West is concerned, social observers identify that it was with the Baby Boomers that the rot set in. They (which includes me) were the first to be tagged the Me Generation, because they took delight in sloughing the discipline that enables social norms, in order to join the narcissistic Sexual Revolution. Subsequently we have had Me Me Me Generation, that is, the Millennials, and now Generation Z, with the degree of self-absorption growing, and social dis-ease mounting.

That Ahab's soul and that of our society in its state of ship-wreck are carved from the same block is certain. Ahab was called out by a plucky subordinate but he persisted on his deranged path. For our part, we have a tendency to identitfy our wants as an essential "human right", no matter the wider harm. Our society has a formidable challenge to realise it is not a mere collection of atomised personalities but that it is a living entity with members committing themselves to a bond of peace, as Augustine has it. Bon voyage!

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It was fitting that God suffer for us

A Good Friday re-enactment in San Antonio, Texas. Photo: Source

Did Christ have to suffer as he did to accomplish our salvation? Or could that purpose have been achieved another way? 

At this time each year as we enter into the passion and death of Jesus—the long-awaited Messiah, God and man, two natures in the one person—these questions arise for fresh reflection. 

Many have offered answers, basing their considerations on the foundation for Christian belief that though God works in mysterious ways and we will never comprehend the infinite reaches of God's "mind", we can explore possibilities because whatever comes from God is not capricious but in accord with reason, though revelation may often be necessary for a fuller understanding. 

The mystery is conveyed in these words from the Letter to the Hebrews, chapter 2: 

9 But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honor because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.

10 In bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through what he suffered. 

It was "fitting" that Jesus should die by torture and crucifixion, the Roman manner of execution for slaves and criminals—Why? What follows is from one of the best considerations of this question:

It’s an age-old question. Sixteen centuries ago, when Augustine addressed the matter, he noted that he was not the first person even back then to discuss it. “There are those,” the bishop wrote, “who say, ‘What? Did God have no other way to free men from the misery of this mortality? No other way than to will that the only-begotten Son . . . should become man by putting on a human soul and flesh, becoming mortal so he could endure death?’”

Then, as now, Christians seemed to face a dilemma. If God could have made salvation possible for us some other way, why would he choose the way of so much blood, so much pain, so much agony? Wouldn’t something less frightful have been better?

To some observers, there are only two possibilities here: If the Crucifixion was the only means God could find to redeem us, then he must be limited in his power and wisdom. Surely an almighty, all-wise deity could have found a better way! 

On the other hand, if God preferred choosing a horrible death for his own Son over other options, then he must be wicked. How could he possibly will such a thing if he could have fulfilled his purposes otherwise?

In some ways, it’s a variation on the question long familiar to Christians: If God is all-powerful, all-wise, and all-good, then why is there suffering in the world?

Alternative strategies certainly possible

Typically, Augustine and other Doctors of the Church who followed his thought, such as Thomas Aquinas, saw right through the dilemma. They challenged the notion that, in light of Christ’s Passion, Christians serve a God who must be either a bumbling wimp or a repulsive sadist. No, they insisted: Our God is indeed all-powerful, all-wise, and all-good. But we must examine more closely, ponder more deeply, the true nature of divine power, wisdom, and goodness, as these attributes are revealed in the terrifying Passion of our Lord.

Both saints were both firm on this matter: They insisted that God is God, and his wisdom and might know no bounds. Of course he could have found another way to save us.

Augustine summed it up this way: “Other possible means were not lacking on God’s part, because all things are equally subject to his power” (On the Trinity 8:10). When examining the question many centuries later, Aquinas quoted Augustine and added scriptural support: “It was possible for God to deliver mankind otherwise than by the Passion of Christ,” he concluded, “because nothing shall be impossible for God (cf. Luke 1:37).”

Aquinas admits that some scriptural texts seem to say God had no choice in the matter (cf. Summa Theologiae 3:46:2). On several occasions in the Gospel accounts, Jesus himself spoke this way. For example, after declaring Peter to be the “rock,” our Lord said to the disciples: “The Son of Man must suffer many things . . . and be killed, and on the third day be raised” (Luke 9:22).

Again, as Jesus walked with two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus, on the evening of the day he had risen from the dead, he rebuked the men for their lack of faith: “O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:25–26).

Necessary under certain conditions

Nevertheless, as Aquinas pointed out, there’s a difference between being absolutely necessary and being necessary given certain conditions. In the case of Jesus’ Passion, by the time Christ had come into the world, certain crucial conditions were already in place: God the Father had already ordained that this was the way our salvation would be accomplished. And his foreknowledge of these events had already been manifested in divine revelation to the prophets and recorded in Scripture.

Given these conditions, Aquinas concluded, it was correct for Christ to say that he must suffer, that it was necessary, because at that point the matter was already settled: What the Father ordained could not be avoided, and what he foreknew could not be mistaken. As our Lord put it at the Last Supper, “The hand of him who betrays me is with me on the table. For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined” (Luke 22:21–22).

This conclusion is strengthened when we observe that Christ’s statement on the Emmaus road was made with reference to Old Testament prophecies. (See also his words on the day of his ascension, Luke 24:44–46.) God had chosen the way—he had revealed it to the prophets—so this was how it had to be. We can see then that rather than implying some limit to God’s power (as if he couldn’t have chosen otherwise), these scriptural passages actually affirm God’s power and sovereignty.

This is not to say, of course, that Christ was somehow forced into such a terrible fate. Some have tried to deduce that meaning from passages such as Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane to have the “cup” of suffering removed (cf. Luke 22:42). But the truth is that, from before all time, God the Son had lived in perfect union with God the Father: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Together they had willed our redemption and determined that, in order to accomplish it, he would come to earth and suffer for us.

It’s true that in Gethsemane we hear Christ crying out as his human nature recoils in horror at the prospect of such awful suffering. But even then, our Lord wanted above all what the Father wanted: “Not my will, but thine, be done” (Luke 22:42). As the writer of Hebrews reminds us, Jesus “endured the cross” not because he was forced to do so, but rather “for the joy that was set before him” (Heb. 12:2)—winning the victory he had come to achieve.

A choice both good and fitting

Because of his sovereign power, Augustine and Aquinas thus concluded, God could have found another way to save us. But Christ’s making satisfaction for the penalty of our sins through suffering was in fact the way God chose to make possible our salvation. Given this reality, we should examine it more closely to discern some reasons that it would be in accordance with the Father’s perfect wisdom and love.

Recall the dilemma we described earlier. If we hold that God could have chosen an alternative means to our salvation, then we seem to be left with a disturbing conclusion: God must be wicked to have willed such suffering for his Son. How could he have done such a thing when he had other options?

Against such objections, Augustine wrote, “We assert that the way in which God deigned to deliver us by the man Jesus Christ, who is mediator between God and man, is both good and befitting the divine dignity. . . . There neither was nor need have been any other means more suitable for healing our misery” (On the Trinity 8:10).

How could this be? What was good and fitting about Christ’s Passion? The bishop continued: “For what else could have been so necessary to build up our hope, and to free the minds of mortals despairing because of their mortality, than that God should show us how highly he valued us, and how greatly he loved us? And what could be more clear and evident proof of God’s great love than that the Son of God . . . so undeserving of evil, should bear our evils?” (ibid.).

Many of the Christians who have viewed Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ report that it brought them to tears to realize what our Lord did for us. More than ever before, they have been made aware of just how high a price was paid by God the Son—and God the Father—to save us. They have been inspired to a stronger faith in God’s love and a firmer hope in his desire to bring them to heaven.

Augustine would not have been surprised at their response. He was certain that anyone who meditated for long on Christ’s Passion would experience the same overwhelming sense of faith and hope. The Father had no greater gift to give us than his Son, the bishop insisted—and that’s precisely the gift he gave.

As Paul had put it long before: “If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him?” (Rom. 8:31–32).

 Inspired to respond with grateful love for God

Aquinas developed this line of thought more thoroughly. He noted that our reconciliation with God and becoming like him requires more than simple forgiveness. He wrote that, in the Passion, “many other things besides deliverance from sin came together for man’s salvation.”

First, he observed, Christ’s Passion moves us not only to have faith and hope in God, as Augustine had pointed out; it also motivates us to a grateful love for God. “By this, man knows how much God loves him, and is thus stirred to love him in return. In this loving response lies the perfection of human salvation. That is why the apostle says, ‘God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us’ (Rom. 5:8).”

Our salvation isn’t complete without our learning to love as God loves. So in Christ’s Passion, said Aquinas, we aren’t simply pardoned. We are given a convincing reason to devote our whole hearts to God.

More reasons why the Passion was fitting

Yet there is more. Christ’s suffering doesn’t just move us to respond in love. It shows us how to love in a world that is broken.

The means God used to redeem us, Aquinas continued, tells us what we ourselves must do to love as God loves in the face of natural and moral evil. Christ “set us an example of obedience, humility, constancy, justice, and the other virtues displayed in his Passion, which are also necessary for man’s salvation. Thus it is written: ‘Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps’ (1 Pet. 2:21).” 

If we are to grow up into “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph. 4:13), then we must imitate him. The Passion shows us most clearly what attitudes and actions we are to imitate. “Have this mind among yourselves,” wrote Paul, “which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God . . . humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil. 2:5–6, 8). The Passion demonstrates that love is costly to God, and it will be costly to us as well.

A great reward all humanity shares

A third reason God ordained that the Passion would take place is that, through it, Christ merited a great reward. Since Christ humbled himself so extravagantly, Paul added, “therefore God has highly exalted him” (Phil. 2:9).

Aquinas quoted Augustine’s comment on these words of the apostle, adding his own remarks: “Augustine says, ‘The humility of the Passion merited glory, and glory was the reward of humility’ (Tractate on John civ). But he was glorified, not merely in himself, but also in his faithful ones, as he himself says: ‘I am glorified in them’ (John 17:10)” (ST 3:48:1). Because Christ is the head of the Church, his merit overflows to the members of his body. So Christ shares his reward with us as justifying grace and the glory of blessedness in heaven.

Aquinas insisted that a fourth reason God sent his Son to suffer is that it created what can be seen as a debt to Christ’s holiness. When we recognize the debt, we see ourselves obligated to pay it by avoiding evil—and that avoidance contributes to our salvation. Because of the Passion, then, man is all the more bound to refrain from sin, according to 1 Corinthians 6:20: ‘You were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body’”.

A boost to human dignity

Finally, both Augustine and Aquinas concluded that God ordained the Passion of Christ “because it redounded to humanity’s greater dignity” (ST 3:46:4). Of course, to simply have God become man in the Incarnation was an honor beyond all telling. But in Christ’s suffering, our race was granted more honor still.

How could that be? Aquinas wrote: “Just as man was overcome and deceived by the devil, so also it should be a man who should overthrow the devil. And since man deserved death, so it should be a man who, by dying, vanquishes death. That is why it is written: ‘Thanks be to God, who has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ’ (1 Cor. 15:57)”

The human race had been left in bondage to sin, death, and the devil by the Fall. So it was a fitting irony—a kind of poetic justice on God’s part—to use a member of that race to conquer sin, death, and the devil. The tables were turned; the roles were reversed; the victor was vanquished. Satan, who had fallen away from God through pride, was humiliated.

We might still be tempted to ask: If God wanted Christ, as a representative of mankind, to defeat Satan, and Christ had available to him all the power of God, why couldn’t Christ simply crush the devil in combat? Why submit himself to such torment?

In addition to the reasons we’ve already noted, Augustine offered this one: “The devil was to be conquered not by the power of God but by his righteousness. . . . For the devil, through the fault of his own perversity, had become a lover of power and a forsaker and assailant of righteousness. . . . So it pleased God that, in rescuing man from the grasp of the devil, the devil should be vanquished not by power but by righteousness. In the same way men, imitating Christ, should seek to conquer the devil by righteousness, not by power” (On the Trinity 13:13). 

Everlasting glory and grace

In all these ways Augustine and Aquinas concluded that God’s decision to have Christ suffer to save us was good and wise. Aquinas wrote: “It was more fitting that we should be delivered by Christ’s Passion than simply by God’s good will.” Augustine summed it up this way: “Why, then, shouldn’t the death of Christ come to pass? Why shouldn’t an all-powerful God have decided against innumerable other ways to free us in order to choose this death? For in this death, nothing was lost of Christ’s divine nature, and from the human nature he took for himself, how great a benefit was bestowed on us men!” 

The everlasting glory of the way of salvation the Father chose far outweighs the horrors his Son had to endure—and the resulting grace overflows in abundance to us all. 

Therefore, all of us can see in the cross the power and wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:23-24) and, along with Paul, we can boast in the cross because of all that it demonstrates of God's love for us. The compelling response from each of us ought to be gratitude to God in all humility. 

As the Church sings on the Easter Night liturgy:

Ω Listen here  to the whole chant (with words). The chant, the Exsultet – named after its first word “Rejoice!” – is an ancient hymn of praise. It seems to have its origins in the 4th and 5th centuries in the churches of Spain, Italy and France.

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Happy and religious: the picture is clear

Photo: Airam Dato-on

Is this a matter of cause and effect? See the following two headlines appearing adjacent to each other on news sites:

Gallup poll: More than half of Americans rarely go to church 

Less Than Half of Americans "Very Satisfied" With Own Lives

Religion News Services reports the findings this way, with the Nones ‒ those mainly young people who have no religious affiliation ‒ the standouts:

More than half of Americans (56 per cent) say they seldom or never attend religious services, according to new data from Gallup. Less than a third (30 per cent) say they attend on a weekly or almost weekly basis.

Gallup found that almost all of the so-called Nones (95 per cent) say they seldom or never attend services. More than half of Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Orthodox Christians say they rarely attend as well.

Overall, the percentage of Americans who never attend services has more than doubled since the early 1990s.

Weighing on this question is this:

The difference between how older and younger people in the U.S. rate their lives, according to the 2024 Gallup World Happiness Report. Americans over 60 rated their lives at an average “life evaluation” of 7.2 on a scale of one to 10, the 10th-highest globally, while the average evaluation for those under 30 stood at only 6.4. Low youth sentiment dragged down the U.S.’s overall happiness ranking, pulling it out of the top 20 “happiest” countries for the first time. ‒ Semafor

The RNS article continues:

Gallup Senior Editor Jeffrey Jones said the decline in attendance is driven mostly by generational shifts. Not only are younger Americans less likely to identify with any religion, they are also less likely to have been raised with a religion.

“If you were raised in a religion and you have fallen away, you can come back to it,” he said. “Younger people, a lot of times, weren’t brought up in any religion. So they don’t have anything to come back [to].” 

Gallup’s findings echo the data from other major organizations, such as Pew Research Center, that track religion and other cultural trends and have found both religious identity and participation are declining.

A recent Pew study found that most Americans believe religion’s influence is waning. Half think that is a bad thing. The other half think the decline is good or don’t care.

If they believe the decline in religious practice doesn't matter, they should take note of the findings of the second article, which Gallup presents in this form:

 STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• 47% “very” satisfied with their personal lives; one point shy of record low
• 78% very or somewhat satisfied; down five points since last year
• Satisfaction highest among upper-income, married, religious adults

The factors relating to the highest satisfaction warrant a mention. Those with higher education, and therefore with a higher income, are the people who make a commitment in marriage, and they are also alert to the value of religious participation.

According to a 2017 study by the Pew Research Center:

💢  American Christians are more likely to have college degrees than the general population. 

💢 Highly educated Christians in the United States are more likely to attend church than those with lower education levels. 

💢 On a scale measuring levels of religious commitment, over 70% of Christians in the United States who are educated demonstrate high levels of religiosity.

From a more recent Pew study, these comments:

💢 “Nones” tend to vote less often, do less volunteer work in their communities and follow public affairs at lower rates than religiously affiliated people do.

💢[P]eople who describe their religion as “nothing in particular” tend to have lower levels of educational attainment than religiously affiliated U.S. adults.

💢 By a variety of measures, religious “nones” are less civically engaged and socially connected than people who identify with a religion. On average, they are less likely to vote, less likely to have volunteered lately, less satisfied with their local communities and less satisfied with their social lives.

💢 When asked how they decide between right and wrong, 83% of “nones” say the desire to avoid hurting other people is a key factor. And 82% of “nones” say logic and reason are extremely or very important when they decide between right and wrong.

This chart from Gallup of its latest findings shows how personal lives are shaped for the good by a willingness to marry and to put one's life in the hands of a divine being, the pre-eminent markers of a person who puts the other, the community before self.

With the World Happiness Report we get confirmation that those who most ignore the religious or transcendental dimension—speaking of the young—fail to gain from the solid foundation it provides to build personal meaning and a sense of direction in life. 

Professor Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, the director of Oxford's Wellbeing Research Centre and another editor of the World Happiness Report, said the research should ring an alarm for policy-makers.

"We documented disconcerting drops especially in North America and Western Europe," he said.

"To think that, in some parts of the world, children are already experiencing the equivalent of a mid-life crisis demands immediate policy action."

Policies that promote respect for religion and the parental involvement in care of children are what is needed. As to the first element, such policies are unlikely when the unhinged ideology of self-invention has infiltrated so many key social institutions. 

Secondly, the policies needed urgently are like that instituted in Florida and other states where parents are required to take a more involved role in their children's use of social media. On that, see these news reports: here and here; and this interview with Jonathan Haidt, the foremost researcher into why the West's young people are so depressed and confused.

Grace builds on nature, and that's where we have to start, that is, in ensuring the basic virtues of a life in which parents look after their children, and young people show a willingness to take part in caring for the welfare of the whole of society, with less focus on themselves. In that way, the goodness of God reveals itself.

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Gender theory's Butler fails new-book test

Andrew Sullivan reports in his weekly blog* that he finds something to celebrate in Judith Butler's new book Who's Afraid of Gender? 

Sullivan is known for his influential work as a journalist and writer, particularly on British and American political and ⁣social ⁣issues. He has long had an online voice, often viewing issues with a countercultural perspective. 

Butler is an American philosopher and gender studies scholar whose work has influenced much of the Critical Theory ideology that now holds sway in academia and, as a consequence, in the upper echelons of Western society. Her domain is political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory. She is distinguished professor in the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley. She was a founding director of the Critical Theory Program there. 

Both Sullivan and Butler have had same-sex spouses.

Sullivan's celebratory note arises from the nature of the discourse manifest in Bulter's book and other sources that he discusses. He puts it this way:

It’s telling, it seems to me, that we’ve begun to see a shift in the tactics of critical queer and gender theorists. They are beginning to make actual arguments in the public square, instead of relying on the media, the government, and the courts to impose their ideas by fiat. 

The arguments presented, however, are intellectually pathethic, Sullivan seems to say: 

Reading [Butler] again after a few years, it becomes clearer and clearer why she is so hard to engage. This is a work so embedded in neo-Marxism it’s impossible to grasp it without accepting its collectivist and revolutionary premises. For Butler, in matters of sex and the body, nothing is as it appears, the individual has no independent existence or capacity for reason outside social and cultural forces, and even the basics of anatomy, like a penis, are just socially constructed all the way down. There is no independent, stable variable like nature or biology or evolution that can help us understand our bodies, and our sex. Everything is in our heads, and our heads are entirely created by others in the past and present:

Nature is not the ground upon which construction of gender happens. Both the material and social dimensions of the body are constructed through an array of practices, discourses, and technologies.

The material dimensions of the body are just ideas: “Anatomy alone does not determine what sex a person is.” You might think, for example, that when a baby is born with a vagina, we are observing her sex. But for Butler,

sex assignment is not a simple description of anatomical facts, but a way of imagining what they will mean, or should mean. The girl continues to be girled; the boy continues to be boyed; sex assignment, understood as an iterative process, relays a set of desires, if not fantasies, about how one is to live one’s body in the world. And such fantasies, coming from elsewhere, make us less self-knowing than we sometimes claim.

Later on, Butler warmly approves of this quote from Catharine MacKinnon:

Women and men are made into the sexes as we know them by the social requirements of heterosexuality.

This is Blank Slatism in its ultimate form, a denial of any independent biological influence on human nature or behavior. The fact that we are a species of mammal, organized around a binary reproductive strategy for millions of years, in which we are divided almost exactly into male and female, and in which there are only two types of gametes, eggs and sperm — and no “speggs” — is, for Butler, irrelevant. It is not even a fact. The sex binary is, rather, a human invention — specifically, a product of American “white supremacy.” I kid you not:

The hetero-normative framework for thinking of gender as binary was imposed by colonial powers on the Global South, to track the legacies of slavery and colonialism engaged in brutal surgical and sexological practices of determining and “correcting” sex in light of ideals of whiteness … Gender norms were created through surgical racism. Black bodies were the experimental field from which white gender norms were crafted. Dimorphism serves the reproduction of the normative white family in the United States.

The golden rule of the woke applies: everything is a product of white supremacy! But of all the things you could call “socially constructed,” the sex binary is the least plausible. It existed in our species before we even achieved the intelligence to call it a sex binary. It existed before humans even evolved into the separate and mostly distinct genetic clusters we now call race. How’s that for pre-cultural! It is in countless species that have no access to an array of “practices, discourses, and technologies.” It structures our entire existence. Not a single cell in the body is unaffected by our sex. Our entire reproductive strategy as a mammal is rooted in it. If you can turn even this into a human invention — malleable and indeterminate and a “spectrum” — there is nothing real outside us at all.

This is the anarchy and nihilism intrinsic to critical theory in all its toxic forms. It deconstructs everything and constructs nothing. It is a negation of humanity’s signature mixture of the earthly and the divine, the instinctual and the intellectual. In this grim, neo-Marxist dystopia, the individual is merely a site where various social and collective powers impose their will.

Science therefore has no autonomy beyond politics; art becomes a mere expression of power dynamics; there are no stable truths — which is how critical theory has destroyed the humanities, replacing them with nihilist word-games. So the penis is female. Yeah, you heard that right, bigot. And the proof that it is female is that some people with penises say it is. And that’s it. No other form of evidence is allowed. Orwell presciently described this grotesquery:

The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.

But this party command is the central message of Butler’s work, 40 years after 1984. Here she is on why a dude with a beard, a rock-hard cock, and a luxuriantly hairy back is actually a woman:

[Gender-critical] feminists would claim that being a woman is not a feeling, but a reality. For trans women and men, though, being a woman or a man is also a reality, the lived reality of their bodies. The category of “woman” does not say in advance how many people can participate in the reality it describes, nor does it limit in advance the forms that that reality can take. In fact, feminism has always insisted that what a woman is is an open-ended question, a premise that has allowed women to pursue possibilities that were traditionally denied to their sex.

But if the open-ended question of what a woman is includes being its opposite, a man, then both categories, male and female, effectively evaporate into thin air. It is like saying that white must include black if it is to be white. That is why Butler and the TQ+ movement are trapped by their logic into being homophobic: they have to deny that gay men can exist at all, because men cannot exist at all, unless they include women in the definition of man.

Sullivan is scathing over what he shows is Butler's non-engagement with the central issues of support for those contending with gender confusion, whether identifying as gay in some form because it's fashionable, or young people being caught up in the trans groundswell. He writes:

On the most blazing practical issues of our current gender debate, Butler has little to say. Can children really give informed consent to irreversible re-ordering of their entire endocrine system before they’ve gone through puberty or even had an orgasm? She offers this non-answer:

Of course, there are serious discussions to be had about what kind of health care is wise for young people, and at what age. But to have that debate, we have to be within the sphere of legality. If the very consideration of gender-affirming care is prohibited, then no one can decide which form is best for a specific child at a certain age. We need to keep those debates open to make sure that health care serves the well-being and flourishing of the child.

This is an evasion worthy of the most craven politician, not an argument by an honest intellectual. What about the fact that 60 - 90 percent of kids grow out of gender dysphoria, as JK Rowling has noted? Another non-answer from Butler: “She does not tell us whether those referenced are tomboys, sissies, genderqueer people, cross-dressers, trans people, or something altogether different.” This is pedantic whataboutism. Almost all of them are gay, as Butler surely knows.

As to other issues: 

Is it fair to have trans women who went through puberty as men compete against women in athletics? Butler cites a single outlier study using unreliable markers claiming that among top athletes, there is considerable overlap in testosterone levels between men and women. But of course, there is no such overlap in any other study — and there are countless of them. The highest testosterone levels among women are far below the lowest for men. They differ so much in degree they differ in kind.

Is the insistence by doctors that if you don’t trans your child he will kill himself, ethically defensible, as Rowling has asked? Butler responds: “She acts as if the claim is unfair or untrue, but what if it is true?” Memo to Butler: it isn’t true 99.7 percent of the time, making the “do you want a dead boy or live girl?” blackmail all the more ethically despicable. This easily found fact is something that Butler didn’t even feel the need to research. 

What they want is an abolition of biological sex

Despite all this, Sullivan is optimistic about a truly human outcome after Critical Theory in all its mutations and displays of hubris is dismantled from the leading heights of Western culture. Sullivan says:

The truth is: we have come a long way in understanding and respecting the unique human experience of being transgender. In the US, trans people are protected by the gold standard of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They are everywhere in our popular culture. An entire generation has even been told that being trans is the most glamorous thing you could possibly be. But none of this is sufficient for the transqueers.

What they want is an abolition of biological sex for everyone; the end of men and of women as separate categories; the sex reassignment of children on demand; the destruction of the nuclear family; an end to the Hippocratic Oath; the abolition of homosexuality; the presence of male bodies in women’s showers, prisons and shelter; the creation of fantastical post-everything genders and pronouns; and the criminalization of anyone who would ever question this cultural revolution.

They are not winning, but it is not for lack of trying. The pseudoscience behind child transition is beginning to be exposed and puberty blockers are now banned in the UK outside clinical trials. A new lawsuit is being filed against the National Collegiate Athletic Association for destroying women’s sports. Public opinion has responded to the transqueer ideology by moving in the opposite direction, and now gay people are being caught in the queer crossfire.

Newspapers like the New York Times have refused to be intimidated into suppressing coverage of the debate. Detransitioners are increasingly public about the medical abuse they were subjected to and still suffer from. Leaked files from WPATH have proven that doctors know full well their patients can’t give informed consent and still trans them. Comedians have poked fun at the entire mountain of incoherence and emotional cray-cray of the transqueer. And even gay men and lesbians are beginning to cotton on to the homophobia implicit in all of it. 

An end to the cultural colonialism that washes from Western academia over most of the world is needed urgently. Also needed are people who are willing to show strength of character in joining the mounting numbers exposing the harm done to the vulnerable in society, harm caused by the fallacies inherent in the neo-Marxist ideology of self-invention.

* The Weekly Dish blog is largely behind a paywall.

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IVF: An industry built on death

Photo by Nadezhda Moryak

All is not smooth-sailing at present for those involved in receiving or delivering IVF treatment. The Alabama Supreme Court's ruling that the fertilised egg, the embryo, is a human being highlighted the contradiction at the heart of this process of dealing with infertility. 

On the one hand the providers, a lucrative branch of the healthcare industry, offer a child on the receipt of an egg and sperm and the production of an embryo, while, on the other, they typically discard as medical waste the embryos not required.

The starkness of the ethical offence on this point, without regarding other violations spurred by the commerical nature of the business (see here, here and here), is dramatic. The same entity, the embryo, is both a child and merely mattter to be discarded, whether with the parents' consent or not.

That's why moral clarity, when it is offered, is valuable. The American Catholic bishops issued a statement that lays out the key ethical and moral issues of the IVF procedure. Within that context, what is possible and legal is not necessarily moral or ethically justifiable.

The Catholic Church, whose teachings lay the foundations for the concept of the basic human rights, defends the stance that each person’s life is a unique gift and has immeasurable value from the moment of conception. It is for that precise reason that the people of good will should not condone procedures such as in vitro fertilization that result in a loss of life at a massive scale.

The bishops' statement is worthy of examination:

The national conversation in the news about laws related to in vitro fertilization and other technologies creates an opportunity and a necessity to speak about protecting the gift of life itself. Each of our lives has immeasurable value from the moment of conception. In this way, we know that the deeply-rooted desire to bring about new life by having children is good. As priests and bishops, we grieve with and accompany in hope and love the increasing number of families suffering with an experience of infertility. We also encourage restorative, often-overlooked, treatments that can help to address the root causes of infertility.

It is precisely because each person’s life is a unique gift that we cannot condone procedures that violate the right to life or the integrity of the family. Certain practices like IVF do both, and they are often not effective even for their own purposes.

Children have a right to be born to their married mother and father, through a personal act of self-giving love. IVF, however well-intended, breaches this bond and these rights and, instead, treats human beings like products or property. This is all the more true in situations involving anonymous donors or surrogacy. This of course does not mean that our brothers and sisters who were conceived by IVF are somehow ‘less than’ anyone else. Every person has immeasurable value regardless of how he or she was conceived – and that applies, absolutely, to all children created through IVF, the majority of whom have not been and may never be born.

The fact is that, in the IVF industry, many embryos are never transferred to a mother’s womb, but are destroyed or indefinitely frozen, and, of those who are transferred, only a fraction survive to be eventually born. All told, there are millions of human beings who have been killed or potentially permanently frozen by this industry. This cannot be the answer to the very real cross of fertility challenges. In efforts to bring about new life, we cannot turn our face from the many more lives that are cut short and extinguished in the process.

The IVF industry in its extended form operates procedures that are regarded as unethical but which are touted by some who have, not so much a scientific interest, but a commercial enthusiasm for destroying ethical boundaries. These enthusiasts aim "to fabricate and impose new rights to human cloning, gene editing, making human-animal chimeras, reproducing children of a parent who is long deceased, engaging in the buying and selling of human embryos, commercial gestational surrogacy, and more." 

The bishops emphasise their main concern for the human being with these words: 

Among those to whom we and our parishes minister, we know well the deep yearning and even suffering of families struggling with infertility. We seek to ameliorate that personal suffering. Yet we cannot condone a practice and an industry that is built on millions of children who are created to be destroyed or abandoned. 

💢 For more on infertility, including ethical restorative reproductive medicine and research, see    here 

💢 For more on the dark side of the IVF industry, see here, here, and here 

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