Sunday, October 2, 2016

The Rocks of Madness

From Crisis:
Thus is the brave new world in which we live, the fruit of the tragic 2004 Assisted Human Reproduction Act, permitting certain in-vitro fertilization practices in Canada: Unlike our neighbors to the south, we cannot buy or sell sperm or eggs, but we can use them. A number of Catholics supported the Bill back then, as at least prohibiting some of the worst evils. However, contrary, I would argue, to Pope John Paul II’s teaching in paragraphs 73-74 of Evangelium Vitae, we introduced into positive law some other grave evils, as we see in the case of the prolific Aggeles who, it seems, will not be charged, as not compos mentis enough to understand what he was doing....

Recall the host of evils that arise from this practice: children who know not their fathers, nor their (surrogate) mothers; multiple siblings who know not they are siblings; lack of genetic diversity;  technological manipulation and control of human reproduction. And perhaps the most disturbing: thousands, if not millions, of non-transferred embryos left in cold storage, left to what the Church has called an “absurd” fate, likely eventual death, as they are abandoned and forgotten. For a Magisterial and theological take, see the trivium of documents:  Humanae Vitae (1968), Donum Vitae (1987) and Dignitatis Personae (2008) all well worth a read.

Thus is the Promethean Age of Man, or, in this case, Woman: If Woman wants a child, and has no Man, then a child must be given her, in a twisted parody of Luke’s Gospel, where a Woman conceives of the Holy Spirit, without a Man. And, lest we forget, this Woman had the help and support of one of the greatest of Men, Saint Joseph.

I keep hoping we might return to some sort of sanity and reason in our world, but, ten years after Benedict XVI’s crisp, clear, and direct Regensburg Address calling for such a return, my hopes keep getting dashed on the rocks of madness. An article this morning announced that they now may be able to use sperm alone to fertilize “any cell of the body.” Hence, we may soon have children without mothers, along with children without fathers. All you men out there, we may even be able to conceive our own children, quite literally ourselves, in a bizarre twist to cloning, the ultimate vanitas vanitatis. (Read more.)
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