The church’s judgement on embryonic stem cell research is one that I am happy to accept, but I don’t understand it. I wouldn’t be able to explain it to others, if asked. I’m not having sleepless nights about it, but it does pop up in my head every so often. The Pope’s gift of ‘Dignitas Personae’ to the US president has made me think of it again. I haven’t yet read that, or the previous ‘Donum Vitae’ so those might answer my questions.
My qualms about the teaching run on two lines – church teaching on the sanctity of life, and the question of what is a human being.
To take the first, although the church indisputably teaches that life is sacred, in practice not all life is sacred to the church. Animal life is considered expendable for experimentation, as far as I can tell. And human life is not treated as sacred in times of war; a catholic cannot become an abortionist with any credibility, but they can become a soldier.
That isn’t an insurmountable problem. It may be the case that the church is inconsistent when it comes to allowing murder through military action, or the death of animals for the benefit of human medical advances. But it doesn’t follow that it should then be consistently inconsistent by sanctioning embryonic stem cell research, if you see what I mean.
The other question then is, what is a human? This is far murkier for me. It’s made me realise that I don’t really know what a soul is. Because I thought that what makes a life human is its soul, but the church has not pronounced on when a soul comes into being, so I don’t know why the church is so sure that human life starts from conception. What is a soul?
It’s not a question of ‘when does life begin?’. Allowing animal testing means that not all life is considered of equal value. So the question is, where do you draw the line between what life can be sacrificed and what can’t? It’s that line that I have a problem with.
15 Comments
You name the unspoken struggle of the majority of lay Catholics.
Some things must be accepted with faith, while others make sense in a very clear way.
If it helps, Noam Chomsky says that personal value systems are often inconsistent.
Comment by Thom July 11, 2009 @ 7:11 pmHuman life differs from animal life inasmuch as human beings are made in the image of God – “to the image of the Trinity”, Aquinas says – and are capable of sharing in the divine life by grace. So “sanctity of life” actually means “sanctity of the kind of life which is capable of sharing in the divine life.
As to the question of what the soul is, this is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say:
363 In Sacred Scripture the term “soul” often refers to human life or the entire human person. But “soul” also refers to the innermost aspect of man, that which is of greatest value in him, that by which he is most especially in God’s image: “soul” signifies the spiritual principle in man.
364 The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit…
365 The unity of soul and body is so profound that one has to consider the soul to be the “form” of the body, i.e., it is because of its spiritual soul that the body made of matter becomes a living, human body; spirit and matter, in man, are not two natures united, but rather their union forms a single nature.
Comment by Mark July 11, 2009 @ 7:22 pm“…to allowing murder through military action”
But of course the Church doesn’t allow this. A soldier has to obey the secular law, and in addition the law of the church, and even if the first (in some countries) was allowed, it would still be a sin in Church eyes. Legitimate killing in time of war is pretty closely circumscribed these days I think.
I struggle with the view that stem cell research should be unconstrained;usually the justification is that all science is good, therefore anything that can be done should be allowed; that way of course lies madness. The relatively large success of the non-embryonic stem cell research compared to the rather poor record of the embryonic forms seems to go unremarked by the commentators. I’m afraid that as in many fields of endeavour true merit runs a poor second place to vested interests and political needs.
Comment by Seeker July 11, 2009 @ 8:12 pmSeeker, I’m guessing we probably differ in the idea that there is such a thing as ‘legitimate killing in time of war’. Obeying secular law is always secondary to obeying God’s law, for Christians, so I find it difficult to reconcile Christianity with having a job that specifically includes murder, which I use here as a synonym for killing a human. This is one area where I believe Quakers offer the best example, as in the past they appear to have prefered to face prison as conscientious objectors rather than obey secular law by being drafted into the army.
As for the results of embryonic stem cell research: I agree with you entirely, but I do think the argument against it always has to be independent of the results. If it produces positive results in combating some previously fatal disease, that won’t make it right if the church has already decreed that it is wrong.
Mark, thanks for pointing me to those parts of the catechism. I will just have to hope that one day it’ll become clear! I still don’t really understand. Although your point about a human being defined as a life ‘capable of sharing in the divine life by grace’ is a very helpful one.
Thom, you’re so right, somethings are much clearer than others. Chomsky is right too, and thank goodness, otherwise we’d all be unyielding fundamentalists!
Comment by madame evangelista July 11, 2009 @ 9:06 pmSeeker, I think as a ps. to the above comment, a large part of the problem for me is that, if you asked me a couple of years ago whether I was against military action in all circumstances I’d definitely have said no – I wouldn’t have said I was a pacifist. But that’s because at that time, I’d think that we were fighting for rights in this, our only life. And that there could only ever be a human solution in a universe without God. ‘There’s no justice, there’s just us’ was definitely my motto. Now that I believe that there is such a thing as divine justice I find it very difficult to understand Christian involvement in war.
Comment by madame evangelista July 11, 2009 @ 9:28 pmI think your usage as the synonym is where we mostly diverge; the word murder to me embodies it as sinful and wrong, but there are forms of killing which would not meet the definition of murder. Whether and to what degree these legitimate is of course a difficult area. I would certainly struggle to see myself justify any such action, but can see that circumstances could arise – the defence of family or nation in extremis being the common one, nontheless even there I would share your misgivings.
Comment by Seeker July 11, 2009 @ 10:30 pmIt is a difficult area. And not without precedent – the Israelites are pretty bloodthirsty in parts of the Old Testament… I don’t really know what I think about that.
Comment by madame evangelista July 11, 2009 @ 11:37 pmWell, if everyone in what was the Allied countries agreed with you, and I’d still managed to be born, I’d either have been forcibly removed from my family and given to a German family to raise (on account of my blue eyes and blond hair) or I’d be living as a Slavonic Untermensch serving the higher Aryan race. Full disclosure, you see, before I express my support for the idea that maybe going to war is not always immoral.
Comment by berenike July 12, 2009 @ 1:09 amforgot the smiley –
Comment by berenike July 12, 2009 @ 1:11 am(“agreed with you” – re what you said in comment at 09:06, to which i suppose I could perfectly well have replied using the handy nested comments feature. Sorry about that.)
Comment by berenike July 12, 2009 @ 1:11 amBerenike – yes, absolutely. I personally am extremely glad that I don’t live in an openly facist country. BUT if all the Christians in both the Allied and the ‘enemy’ countries during WWII acted upon the idea that war was immoral, that wouldn’t be a scenario. It must be the case that English and German and Polish and Italian etc soldiers killed fellow catholics simply because of which country they happened to be born in. In bald terms, their actions showed that nationalism, and their life now, was more important than God’s kingdom, to the extent that they would deliberately break the commandment ‘thou shalt not kill’.
It’s the idea of sacrifice again. You can sacrifice the lives of your enemy soldiers for the sake of your country, for a better way of life here and now (if you’re lucky – otherwise the sacrifice will be your own) – but you can’t sacrifice embryos in the ‘war’ against cancer. I think this glaring inconsistency must at least partly contribute to the lack of credibility attributed to catholics in public debate regarding embryonic stem cell research.
Comment by madame evangelista July 12, 2009 @ 8:25 amI should add to that, this isn’t a slur on the bravery of soldiers. I do believe that soldiers are brave and it’s right to honour them. But I think that bravery is like sincerity – on its own, it doesn’t make something true.
Comment by madameevangelista July 12, 2009 @ 8:46 amI wonder if you’re really setting up equivalent situations here. In the case of soldiers fighting you (one would hope) would be in that situation as a last resort, that no other course was open (due to external agression) and that it was a case of self preservation. In scientific experimentation there is choice of method at all times, and a full knowledge of mechanism. [Clearly the case of pre-emptive defence would not come in this category).
Comment by Seeker July 12, 2009 @ 7:48 pmYes, that is an important difference. The other thing is that we have become used to the idea of war, and animal experimentation (which I mentioned earlier). These are things we’ve inherited, whereas here and now we have a chance to protest against another violation of life before it becomes familiar and commonplace.
Another issue, which I’d forgotten about (and that tells me something about the way I think now) is that when I first heard about embryonic research I thought it was a good thing because it might mean the end of animal testing. There are all sorts of things a person has to accept before one gets to the point where you value human embryonic life over an adult animal life, which I think is another difficulty in fighting embryonic stem cell research.
There’s so much background before you get to the point that it becomes clear that it’s wrong, and most people don’t share the beliefs that are necessary to come that conclusion. And because they can’t see it as part of a coherent faith, it just appears as a knee-jerk reaction to progress. I’ve been very aware of it this week, because it’s been a ‘cancer awareness’ week, and I’ve been wondering how I would explain it (or ‘bear witness’).
Comment by madameevangelista July 12, 2009 @ 8:23 pmum… that doesn’t really answer the killing in war question! But I think your differentiation between last-resort options in war and the pre-meditative nature of the killing of human embryos is a useful one.
Comment by madameevangelista July 12, 2009 @ 8:28 pm