This morning I was on the Mike Church Show discussing IFV. Scroll down for a YouTube video of the interview, followed by a list of some of what was discussed.
Two things first:
I. Before I get questions about my statements critical of Pope John Paul II’s personalism (his views as a philosopher, nothing of binding magisterial weight), let me refer readers to my interview with a theologian on this very subject: What’s Wrong with Personalism and ‘Theology of the Body’? An Interview with Dom Pietro Leone.
II. I referenced several pertinent passages from the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) on air. I read some, but not all. Here they are, for easy reference:
2363 The spouses’ union achieves the twofold end of marriage: the good of the spouses themselves and the transmission of life. These two meanings or values of marriage cannot be separated without altering the couple’s spiritual life and compromising the goods of marriage and the future of the family.
The conjugal love of man and woman thus stands under the twofold obligation of fidelity and fecundity.…
2373 Sacred Scripture and the Church’s traditional practice see in large families a sign of God’s blessing and the parents’ generosity.162
2374 Couples who discover that they are sterile suffer greatly. “What will you give me,” asks Abraham of God, “for I continue childless?”163 and Rachel cries to her husband Jacob, “Give me children, or I shall die!”164
2375 Research aimed at reducing human sterility is to be encouraged, on condition that it is placed “at the service of the human person, of his inalienable rights, and his true and integral good according to the design and will of God.”165
2376 Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife, by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus), are gravely immoral. These techniques (heterologous artificial insemination and fertilization) infringe the child’s right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage. They betray the spouses’ “right to become a father and a mother only through each other.”166
2377 Techniques involving only the married couple (homologous artificial insemination and fertilization) are perhaps less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable. They dissociate the sexual act from the procreative act. the act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons give themselves to one another, but one that “entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children.”167 “Under the moral aspect procreation is deprived of its proper perfection when it is not willed as the fruit of the conjugal act, that is to say, of the specific act of the spouses’ union …. Only respect for the link between the meanings of the conjugal act and respect for the unity of the human being make possible procreation in conformity with the dignity of the person.”168
2378 A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift. the “supreme gift of marriage” is a human person. A child may not be considered a piece of property, an idea to which an alleged “right to a child” would lead. In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights: the right “to be the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of his parents,” and “the right to be respected as a person from the moment of his conception.”169
2379 The Gospel shows that physical sterility is not an absolute evil. Spouses who still suffer from infertility after exhausting legitimate medical procedures should unite themselves with the Lord’s Cross, the source of all spiritual fecundity. They can give expression to their generosity by adopting abandoned children or performing demanding services for others.
Brother Andre on X: IVF is the flip side of the contraception coin: Contraception is sex without babies; IVF is babies without sex. Both separate what God has joined together. Both are wrong. Only the Catholic Church as an institution maintains moral sanity on these issues.
If the Church were the evil anti-sex organization her libertine critics make her out to be, she would love to have found a way to have babies without the carnal pleasures of the marriage bed. But, being bound to the truth taught her by her Bridegroom, she maintains her insistence on the “one flesh” procreative union of matrimony (cf. Gen. 2:24, Matt 19:5-6, Mark 10:8, Eph. 5:31).
HEADLINE: What Is the Catholic Church’s Position on IVF? by Peter Pinedo
Let’s just witness to the truth.
Minds get opened by using this technique.
The Church has multiple reasons why She opposes IVF.
9 out of 10 children will die after the successful implantation of the ONE and the rest are either frozen and kept or they are destroyed.
We don’t know the long term effects of freezing a conceived child much less for many many years.
This alone makes it completely unethical.
