First Thoughts on IVF, Part V

This next section, a short one, is on something I get into a bit more in my next letter, this notion that sex and all aspects of it are not supposed to be shared with more than one person.

Near the end of your letter, you quote Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk, who says that IVF "undermines the meaning of sex. It violates the exclusivity of the couple's marriage covenant.” You call this ridiculous. There are people out there who make the argument that various forms of infidelity, such as occasional sexual threesomes or open marriages, enhance the love the married people feel for each other. They argue that these situations are the result of consensual decisions, that they are done openly and honestly, that they increase the pleasure and therefore the unifying factor of the sexual act, and that they ensure the unending quality of the marriage by doing away with dissatisfaction based on the undeniable human need, or at least intense desire, for variety. But the Church, and I have no doubt, you, would reject such reasoning because it brings a third person, even one who conceivably could have purely altruistic purposes, into the innermost sanctum of the marriage, that innermost sanctum being the sexual act with its twin purposes of unifying the couple and creating children. To say that bringing another into the 2nd purpose, that of creating children, constitutes a violation isn’t ridiculous, but instead seems to me eminently logical, at least if we accept the first premise.

Where this runs into difficulties I admit, and am not at the moment entirely sure how to resolve, is in matters of degree. Is it permissible for me to tell my buddy, or a therapist, that I don’t know how to satisfy my wife in bed, and to ask for advice on what I should do to increase her happiness in that aspect of our lives? I don’t think that you, I, or the Church would have a problem with that. Is it permissible for my wife to take a drug that helps the ovary expel eggs more readily? It seems clear that no one has a problem with that. Perhaps the difference is this (this is just a guess): in the threesome, and in IVF, the action, either the giving of pleasure, or the joining of the egg and sperm, is actually accomplished by the third party. But when one talks to one’s therapist, or takes a drug that increases egg production, one is not substituting for the sexual act.

I think my notion of substitution takes care of the potential problem of going to see a gynecologist or urologist - one may allow another to touch oneself or one's spouse in an intimate manner, but one would not allow even a medical doctor to engage in the giving of pleasure or the act of procreation in such a situation.

Elizabeth Anscombe

Briefly, something I read over the weekend and intend to return to is Elizabeth Anscombe's article on the Church's ruling on contraception, "Contraception and Chastity." I'm putting it up simply to increase its exposure on the web, even though I do not know one way or the other whether I am able to accept everything it says. It's apparently quite a famous essay, and Anscombe is apparently quite a famous woman, which doesn't speak well to my studies in philosophy in college, especially since I took a class on Wittgenstein, on whom Anscombe is an acknowledged expert. (I always felt that if I had only read Wittgenstein about ten or fifteen more times, instead of only once, and only partially, that I would have come to understand him. There may be something to that belief.) You may have heard of Anscombe, as I had without recollecting her name, if you are a fan of C. S. Lewis, and know that he was humbled in philosophical debate with a young woman philosopher.

Rockaby, Baby.

Doing a bit of websurfing, and ran into an article on Jewish approaches to abortion, from First Things magazine, published during the summer of 2005, in which Eric Cohen says the following:

Some Jewish thinkers, including Dorff, argue that the embryo ex vivo has limited moral standing because it cannot develop to term outside the womb. But surely all human beings deprived of the environment they need to flourish have “limited potential for life.” A bird trapped in a cage may never learn to fly, but it is no less a bird for the harm we caused by putting it there. A grown woman without food or water will surely die, but this lack of sustenance does not make the doomed person less than human. If anything, it challenges the humanity of those who left her there to die in the first place.

I think the logic impeccable, as you might expect, and suggest the following image: Earth as womb. Forget for now the implications of what we might be "delivered" into if we followed the whole logic of this image. Concentrate on what the earth means to us in terms of our comfort and nourishment, in short, in terms of our survivability. Sans Earth, yanked by whatever means from it, our womb, we flail for a moment and die, saved only by a metal case, an incubator, that is nonetheless ultimately dependent on that womb for its life-saving energies.

Without meaning to degrade the quality and importance of mothers and motherhood (for they are obviously of unfathomable and infinite importance), our mothers and our Earth are, on one level, simply containers for beings that are wholly independent of them in the matter of life. That is, mothers are sources of goods, but they are not the motive force behind the division and formation of our cells. We have not yet discovered - scientifically - what that motive force is, nor will we.

Hypocrisy - a Parenthetical Observation

This is an overly-long parenthetical break in one of my sentences from the last post, so I thought I would isolate it as a separate post:

An interesting side note on what occasions hypocrisy, which I think I am reporting accurately, though it has been a long time since I read it: C. S. Lewis says somewhere that he will not speak in judgment upon those sins to which he is somewhat impervious – he will only speak to those sins which he finds himself tempted by and sometimes acting out. Some would regard this as hypocrisy – how dare he judge those who do what he has done? But his rationale is that he cannot account for what motivates those who commit sins that do not tempt him. He can only understand the weaknesses that he himself possesses. He can speak to the sinfulness of those actions because he knows it at first hand. I guess he avoids hypocrisy by being honest about his own shortcomings. My college girlfriend refused to identify anything as sinful which she did herself. She thought it was hypocrisy to do so. I thought it was a kind of solipsism that turns objective categories into subjective ones, that defines the world by one’s own personality.

There are some other interesting observations by Robert Miller and Richard John Neuhaus, over at First Things's blog. The substance of Miller's entry is best summed up by this line from his entry: "A man is not a hypocrite because he violates a moral norm in which he sincerely believes." Neuhaus moves off into the wider implications of the situation of Ted Haggard.

The Sin of Onan?

This is the section I wrote on masturbation, in response to some point of my father's, I forget which. Perhaps it was his attack on the claim that IVF is necessarily immoral because it involves masturbation. I don't know that that is the case, but I have a hard time disagreeing with the Church on self-gratification, as seen below. As my subject line implies, I realize my blanket statement about the Old Testament banning masturbation is at least open to question. It's something that, since I've written it, I have realized is at least controversial, but I have not yet taken the time to look into it, so I'm offering it here unexpurgated, sort of an archaeological shard of my mindset at the time this letter was written (sometime last summer).

Regarding masturbation, I have come to believe it is immoral. This is not an easy thing to say, and I suppose could be regarded as hypocritical, because it is an action I have had a hard thing keeping myself from. These are the reasons I do believe it is immoral: for one, it is expressly rejected in Scripture (at least in the Old Testament – I don’t know whether it is mentioned in the New Testament, nor what qualifies something spoken of as a sin in the OT as a sin in the NT – I understand that the coming of Jesus means a sea change in the way we think about God, but I don’t know the rationale behind the rejection of some prohibitions and the keeping of others). Two, it uses the sexual faculty for the purpose of personal pleasure alone, and, in my case at least, can be a very powerful lure, to the point that many hours over one’s life are wasted in daydreaming about an ever-widening series of encounters, each of which loses its charm after awhile and has to be replaced by some other, quite possibly stranger and more immoral encounter. That which is not sexual comes to seem useless in a world where this need dominates, and giving into it does not satisfy, but only increase the urge. If you’ll forgive me more poetry, C. S. Lewis has a poem called “Lilith” that a scholar named W. W. Robson thinks is about the temptation to and the sterility of (in more ways than one) masturbation:

When Lilith means to draw me
Within her secret bower,
She does not overawe me
With beauty’s pomp and power,
Nor, with angelic grace
Of courtesy, and the pace
Of gliding ships, comes veiled at evening hour.

Eager, unmasked, she lingers
Heart-sick and hunger sore;
With hot, dry, jeweled fingers
Stretched out, beside her door,
Offering with gnawing haste
Her cup, whereof who taste,
(She promises not better) thirst far more.

What moves me then, to drink it?
— Her spells, which all around
So change the land, we think it
A great waste where a sound
Of wind like tales twice told
Blusters, and cloud is rolled
Always above yet no rain falls to ground.

Across drab iteration
Of bare hills, line on line,
The long road’s sinuation
Leads on. The witch’s wine,
Though promising nothing, seems
In that land of no streams,
To promise best — the unrelished anodyne.

Three, in a saying by Jesus that you yourself have quoted to me, “‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall not commit adultery.” But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart’” (Matthew 5.27-8). Masturbation, at least for me, pretty much requires that I commit adultery in my heart, as images of women I have known and seen are instrumental to the act. And before I was married it pretty much meant that I committed fornication in my heart.

Since I have been accused of the faults of the Pharisees, hair-splitting and unthinking rule-following, I would like to explain what I think is the spirit, rather than the letter of this law. First, I don’t think that Jesus thought committing adultery in the heart to be wrong, but committing fornication in the heart to be permissible. Second, I don’t think this line condemns those who look at a woman and find themselves momentarily enraptured, even momentarily caught up in a fantasy. I think it condemns those who cultivate such thoughts, dishonoring the independence and privacy of those they use in their daydreams, wasting the time of their brains and bodies, directing their desires towards that which is sinful.

I have from time to time been successful in resisting this temptation, but the only recent success has been the last two-to-three weeks. Thinking on how much my attempt to adhere to the Church’s teaching has angered and saddened my wife, her parents, and perhaps others, I realized that, if only out of justice to them, I need to resist the sins that are so easy for me to accomplish, and which are so self-serving in their aims. My other great sin is my laziness, or, if laziness is too strong a word, my resistance to getting things done, which allows me to be behind when I am at work, and allows me to accomplish very little of enduring consequence during the summer months, when I have talents and abilities that could be put to more use.

Regarding masturbation as a means to an end, as it is in the case of IVF, I would have a harder time judging it as immoral. If testicular cancer, for instance, could only be cured by an operation preceded by masturbation, I doubt there would be moral condemnation of the act. This agrees with what you have said about the intention of the act being important in the definition of sin.

One last comment: I have been somewhat faithful in my rejection of this action, but often only in a somewhat painful, legal sense. I still have not purged my mind of "the witch's wine," and will undoubtedly continue this struggle for much of my life.

A Con

As he left the room, it exploded with cries of "Mr. Gilhooley! Mr. Gilhooley!" cheers for the teacher who had just passed him.

"Subs!" he thought to himself.

He squeaked down the linoleum floor towards his office until he heard one of Mr. Gilhooly's current charges behind him calling his name. Undoubtedly the sub had no idea he was gone. He turned: "Yes, Mr. Fretetto?"

"Um, sir," said Fretetto, looking serious, "is this the homework due today? I found it under my desk. It's not mine" - this last said in response to his teacher's quizzical look.

The student caught up with him and handed him the paper. He looked at the name first: Farmer, a perpetually non-achieving student, a young African-American male with occasional cornrows, a too-ingratiating smile, and a mother disappointed in his effort. He had just complimented Farmer on his improved outlook in class. For a few days now, since the meeting with his mother and sister, he had been serious and on time, though still had had little to say.

The teacher thought for a second, then grinned and shook his head just slightly. He looked at Fretetto, himself an amiable ne'er-do-well, and said, "You guys are pretty clever." He held his gaze long enough to force a smile to the surface of the boy's face. "You can give this back to him."

"I should tell him I failed?" confessed Fretetto, who knew from experience that his pedagogue didn't accept late homework. He received a nod in reply, and went on his way.

SmartBoard, Smart-ass Students

Among the lines that I have heard from kids while I've been using the SmartBoard recently:

"Well, at least we know the school is putting the tuition money to good use!"

"Good thing we have the SmartBoard, since you can't use the white board for that!" (Said when I write on the SmartBoard with styluses (styli?) that look like colored markers.)

"Good thing we have the SmartBoard, since you can't use the projector for that!" (Said when I type notes into the computer from my desk and have them appear on the SmartBoard.)

All this means, of course, is that I have to come up with better ways to use the SmartBoard - but I already love that I get to save my daily notes and so have something to look back at when I try to remember what the hell I was talking about. I don't have to spend the extra time recording my recollections of class after the fact. (No, I don't plan very well - that's for another post.)

First Thoughts on IVF, Part IV

This next section directly addresses the question of IVF and whether it can ever be appropriate. It addresses some of the indirect objections to IVF, such as the moral quality of the industry and its actors, the question of the Procreative and Unitive natures of sexuality, the relationship of the Church's ban on IVF to its ban on Contraception, a misconception that both my father and wife had that the Church felt that using IVF would somehow deprive my wife's and my sexual union of its Unitive aspect, and the Church's notion that the use of IVF will give us into the "domination" of technology.

I’m finally turning to your discussion of IVF. Much of what I say here will be me thinking out loud, so some of these thoughts may change or be discarded. When you turn to IVF directly, you quote Bishop O’Malley, saying, “Marriage and its indissoluble unity are the only venue worthy of truly responsible procreation,” and mention that you agree. So do I.

Regarding the talk of the domination of technology, I agree that this seems like an overstatement of the case. One possible way of understanding it is a distrust of the people involved in the business, who readily offer disposal as an option for fertilized eggs that will not get used, or who may make on-the-spot decisions about the viability or worth of a particular embryo without your consent, or who may try to persuade you that certain of the embryos are not worth implanting because they are in some way faulty even though they have not ceased to grow (i.e., died). But I realize that this is not a reason for a ban on the action – it’s simply a call for tighter rules and guidelines surrounding the practice, and for Catholics to have nothing to do with those who will not abide by those guidelines. You wouldn’t put your born children into the custody – under the domination – of a babysitter you knew nothing about – but that’s not an argument against babysitters as such.

IVF is an act of procreation alone. Sex with a condom is an act of unification alone, of which pleasure is an important part. But the Church rules that these must be unified in the sexual act in part because they are essential to each other. The unification caused by giving each other pleasure still exists – witness the pain caused by modern breakups in which the participants are sexually active. But the unification is not as complete as it would be because there is no willingness to procreate, there is no willingness to give a physical part of oneself to the other, and not just to the other but to a third who is part the husband, part the wife. You quote the following: “The Church has always taught that there is an ‘inseparable connection established by God between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act’ (Humanae Vitae 12). In this sense in Vitro fertilization, by doing away with the unitive meaning, is the mirror image of contraception which suppresses the procreative meaning of the conjugal act.” You then ask, “Why and how does In Vitro fertilization do away with the unitive meaning of the marriage act.” I’m not sure what the source of this text is, so I can’t look at the whole context, but I do not think the text is saying that IVF does away with the unitive meaning of the conjugal act. I think it is simply saying that IVF does not contain the whole of the unitive abilities that the sexual act does. It doesn’t destroy the unity gained by the married couple’s participation in the sexual act, but it doesn’t have that ability either, and so, analogously to the act of sex with birth control, it leaves out one of the essential aspects.

After some more language about domination and dignity, you ask, “Again, what domination? Only you and your wife have the power. You have the power over technology. You are the one using it, it is not using you.” I understand what you are saying here. Here’s a potential explanation of this, which sort of aligns with what I said above about distrust of those companies that are willing to dispose of embryos. As mentioned, sin is about intention; sin is not mortal unless one knows one is doing something wrong. But as you know, there is a concept known as “the near occasion of sin,” and entering into such an occasion is held to be a sin itself. For instance, it is probably not a sin to play poker and risk only $5 in a night. But it may well be a sin if you know the people you are playing with are generally much more serious gamblers, are interested in getting you to play more often and for higher stakes, have shown themselves to be persuasive in other venues to the point that you have trouble resisting them, and if you have relatives, especially a parent or sibling, with a gambling problem. Twenty years down the line, when you blow a third successive rent payment and get yourself and your family evicted, it might be true that you were so in the grip of your addiction or compulsion that you cannot be legitimately blamed for what you did. But you would not be able to argue, based on what you were aware of at the time, that you deserve no blame for putting yourself in the situation.

My point? In Humanae Vitae, section 16, Paul VI wrote, “Let them consider, first of all, how wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality.” Now, I don’t know how many Catholics had pre-marital or extra-marital sex before the Sixties versus how many did after the Sixties. But I do know that since then divorce within the Catholic community has become far more rampant, that most Catholics my age, including most of your parents’ grandchildren, think nothing is wrong with pre-marital sex, that abortion is far more common, that homosexuality is basically approved of and often celebrated by our society, and that our Church has been mired in a sexual scandal that very few bishops were willing to speak out about, in part because of fear for their jobs or the jobs of their friends, but perhaps also in part (as some have theorized) because of more permissive attitudes about sexual acts and experimentation. I know that the pre-Vatican II Church wasn’t heaven on earth, because that will never exist without the Second Coming. But I do think either one of these situations was the case: that fewer people were involved in these situations, that those people who were involved in those situations were involved less often, or that however often these things did happen, people felt far less complacent about them and sought healing for their souls by confessing their wrongs – and if there’s any truth to the Church’s designation of confession as a sacrament, then that’s a very important distinction.

My point here is that at least part of the argument by the Church consists not in the inherent wrong of birth control or IVF (although that is part of it), but in the danger it causes us by setting up temptations in a position that they can far more easily achieve dominance over us. Thomas Aquinas is lauded for rejecting the advances of the beautiful harlot his family thrust into the locked room with him; he would be ridiculed if he had had himself locked into the room with her just to see how strong he was. So we should not, the Church is saying, put ourselves in a situation where, perhaps not today, but someday, the creation of an embryo is viewed not as a child, a living being created by God through the loving act of its parents, but as an object that has many uses, one of which is to satisfy the natural and justifiable urges for parenthood, but another of which is to mine for stem cells or body parts, or to make experiments on, or to effect some ersatz resurrection of a person of whom the embryo is a clone. Obviously this world is already upon us in part, and may be supported and encouraged by Catholic acceptance of even those aspects of it that are viewed as more innocuous.

The rest of the letter, which I'll probably post in two more selections, goes back to side issues raised by my father's letter, including masturbation, the way in which the Church changes or "develops" dogmatically, and a conclusion.

Chesterton on Love

I was originally going to title this passage from G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy, "Chesterton on Politics, and Other Things." I think the current title is more appropriate, despite being originally struck by the passage for its elucidation of various debates that have been going on for a few years now between pro- and anti-war groups (I won't call them "factions" for fear of tarring them with the brush from Federalist 10, though some are undoubtedly factions in that sense). I am essentially a Conservative, but I am not going to comment on which politicians or policies I feel this may apply to. I think it can probably apply to at least some on both sides, and would rather you decide for yourselves whether what Chesterton says is wise, and to whom it applies.

What is the matter with the pessimist? I think it can be stated by saying that he is the cosmic anti-patriot. And what is the matter with the anti-patriot? I think it can be stated, without undue bitterness, by saying that he is the candid friend. And what is the matter with the candid friend? There we strike the rock of real life and immutable human nature.

I venture to say that what is bad in the candid friend is simply that he is not candid. He is keeping something back — his own gloomy pleasure in saying unpleasant things. He has a secret desire to hurt, not merely to help. This is certainly, I think, what makes a certain sort of anti-patriot irritating to healthy citizens. I do not speak (of course) of the anti-patriotism which only irritates feverish stockbrokers and gushing actresses; that is only patriotism speaking plainly. A man who says that no patriot should attack the Boer War until it is over is not worth answering intelligently; he is saying that no good son should warn his mother off a cliff until she has fallen over it. But there is an anti-patriot who honestly angers honest men, and the explanation of him is, I think, what I have suggested: he is the uncandid candid friend; the man who says, "I am sorry to say we are ruined," and is not sorry at all. And he may be said, without rhetoric, to be a traitor; for he is using that ugly knowledge which was allowed him to strengthen the army, to discourage people from joining it. Because he is allowed to be pessimistic as a military adviser he is being pessimistic as a recruiting sergeant. Just in the same way the pessimist (who is the cosmic anti-patriot) uses the freedom that life allows to her counsellors to lure away the people from her flag. Granted that he states only facts, it is still essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive. It may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham are down with smallpox; but we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher who wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants to help the men.

The evil of the pessimist is, then, not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises—he has not this primary and supernatural loyalty to things. What is the evil of the man commonly called an optimist? Obviously, it is felt that the optimist, wishing to defend the honour of this world, will defend the indefensible. He is the jingo of the universe; he will say, "My cosmos, right or wrong." He will be less inclined to the reform of things; more inclined to a sort of front-bench official answer to all attacks, soothing every one with assurances. He will not wash the world, but whitewash the world. All this (which is true of a type of optimist) leads us to the one really interesting point of psychology, which could not be explained without it.

We say there must be a primal loyalty to life: the only question is, shall it be a natural or a supernatural loyalty? If you like to put it so, shall it be a reasonable or an unreasonable loyalty? Now, the extraordinary thing is that the bad optimism (the whitewashing, the weak defence of everything) comes in with the reasonable optimism. Rational optimism leads to stagnation: it is irrational optimism that leads to reform. Let me explain by using once more the parallel of patriotism. The man who is most likely to ruin the place he loves is exactly the man who loves it with a reason. The man who will improve the place is the man who loves it without a reason. If a man loves some feature of Pimlico (which seems unlikely), he may find himself defending that feature against Pimlico itself. But if he simply loves Pimlico itself, he may lay it waste and turn it into the New Jerusalem. I do not deny that reform may be excessive; I only say that it is the mystic patriot who reforms. Mere jingo self-contentment is commonest among those who have some pedantic reason for their patriotism. The worst jingoes do not love England, but a theory of England. If we love England for being an empire, we may overrate the success with which we rule the Hindoos. But if we love it only for being a nation, we can face all events: for it would be a nation even if the Hindoos ruled us. Thus also only those will permit their patriotism to falsify history whose patriotism depends on history. A man who loves England for being English will not mind how she arose. But a man who loves England for being Anglo-Saxon may go against all facts for his fancy. He may end (like Carlyle and Freeman) by maintaining that the Norman Conquest was a Saxon Conquest. He may end in utter unreason — because he has a reason. A man who loves France for being military will palliate the army of 1870. But a man who loves France for being France will improve the army of 1870. This is exactly what the French have done, and France is a good instance of the working paradox. Nowhere else is patriotism more purely abstract and arbitrary; and nowhere else is reform more drastic and sweeping. The more transcendental is your patriotism, the more practical are your politics.

Perhaps the most everyday instance of this point is in the case of women; and their strange and strong loyalty. Some stupid people started the idea that because women obviously back up their own people through everything, therefore women are blind and do not see anything. They can hardly have known any women. The same women who are ready to defend their men through thick and thin are (in their personal intercourse with the man) almost morbidly lucid about the thinness of his excuses or the thickness of his head. A man's friend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wife loves him and is always trying to turn him into somebody else. Women who are utter mystics in their creed are utter cynics in their criticism. Thackeray expressed this well when he made Pendennis' mother, who worshipped her son as a god, yet assume that he would go wrong as a man. She underrated his virtue, though she overrated his value. The devotee is entirely free to criticise; the fanatic can safely be a sceptic. Love is not blind; that is the last thing that it is. Love is bound; and the more it is bound the less it is blind.

I most enjoy that last sentence. True love, whether personal, political, metaphysical, or cosmological, does not blind itself to its beloved's faults, else no parent would parent, no spouse would ever try to turn the other from the wrong path. True love criticizes when, but not more than, necessary, but does not abandon. As a brief illustration, my wife says that when she met me, and first started dating me, she thought she may just have met the perfect guy. (This was after realizing that my suggesting a second pitcher of sangria, on our first date, was not a sign of alcoholism, nor was it an attempt to get her drunk for devious purposes.) By the time we married, she knew better, but she married me anyway. Now she is trying very hard to change my mind about IVF, which she thinks I am profoundly wrong on, but she shows no signs of leaving me, and has said (when I've asked, in my more fearful moments) that leaving is not something she wants to do or will do. I feel profoundly lucky at this, as I think many women would choose to have done with their husbands in this situation.

First Thoughts on IVF, Part III

What follows is the weakest part of my letter to my father, the part where I try to refute his claim that Church teaching has changed, as opposed to "developed" (a technical term meaning, off the top of my head, "to change in such a way that the new belief does not contradict but merely refines the earlier belief into a deeper understanding of what God intended than before") through history. I am not nearly educated enough, and Newman's An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine did not help me particularly when I read it this past summer (but after I wrote the letter). That may be because I am dense enough to always require a second reading of Newman before I quite get him - he is known as a prose stylist, but I have always found his prose, how to say this, uneventful, which may be the point of those who praise it. Anyway, if you are in the mood to comment, feel free to tell me how I'm wrong.

Regarding the ways in which Church teaching has changed, I am not educated enough to say I am refuting your claims, because I don’t know for sure. I’ll merely tell you the way I understand them, and could be wrong about them. First, I don’t think the morality of the Crusades as such has been disputed. I think that the Church has apologized for any atrocities and wrongs committed by those undertaking the wars, not the wars themselves. Regarding limbo and the necessity of baptism to get to heaven, the latest Catechism makes the following statements:

“Born with a fallen human nature and tainted by original sin, children also have need of the new birth in Baptism to be freed from the power of darkness and brought into the realm of the freedom of the children of God” (§1250).

Original sin: “a deprivation of original holiness and justice, but human nature has not been totally corrupted; it is wounded in the natural powers proper to it” (§405).

“Original sin entails ‘captivity under the power of him who thenceforth had the power of death, that is, the devil’” (§407).

More to the point, it still quotes the teaching from the Council of Trent: “Baptism is necessary for salvation for those who have not yet been reborn” (§980). I was interested in this issue awhile ago, while I was teaching the Inferno, and my research, while not exhaustive, talked about Limbo (which, you are right, does not seem to be mentioned in the Catechism) as essentially a theory, i.e., a potential way of accounting for the fate of unbaptized infants, which is not accounted for in Scripture or tradition. The way Dante has Virgil describe Limbo, which corresponded with what I read in my research, was as a place without punishment, but with the infinitely sad knowledge that one cannot be with God. The research I did also suggested that this teaching was not final, insofar as it has been stated that one needs Baptism to be saved, but no one has ever stated the converse: that a lack of Baptism condemns one to hell. Nor has anyone ever stated that God will not find another, unrevealed, way of solving this problem. In other words, Revelation and tradition require us to confess we don’t know exactly what happens to the unbaptized, but also leaves a space that allows us to consider the theory of Limbo, and to hope and pray that whatever limbo (small “L”) that the unbaptized appear to end up in has already or eventually will be destroyed by the mercy and saving power of God. This knowledge was probably obtained by reading online the Catholic Encyclopedia (at NewAdvent.org), which was written around 100 years ago, so this is not a post Vatican II change, as far as I can tell.

The celibate priesthood is a matter of policy, not truth, and that has been known since it was first mandated in the 1000’s. That has changed, and could change again, but that would not change the teachings of the Church on marriage and virginity, which say that the first is a sacrament while the second is a mandated state for the unmarried, and a special state for those who accept it as part of their vocation.

I don’t know much about the Galileo situation, but the position of the Earth in the cosmos is not an issue of faith and morals, nor does it impact our definition of God. The little I have read defending the Church on this issue claims that the situation was more a battle among scientists who used the political power of the Church to ruin a smarter competitor. I would have to learn more about it, though.

I remember reading a quotation from that Cardinal who talked about the use of condoms. I don’t believe he said it would not be wrong; he said it might be considered less wrong than, for instance, letting one’s marriage fall apart over a lack of sex forced by the husband going and getting himself a case of AIDS from a prostitute. Of course, the sin that may result in the marriage falling apart would be his adultery, plus whatever lack of forgiveness led in the end to divorce, not the choice not to have sex. So I think the Cardinal is wrong, and one Cardinal does not a Magisterium make. There are Church priests and theologians, many, no doubt, men who love God, who have taught what the Church has condemned as wrong, even if they’ve taught many other things in line with the teachings of the Church.

I think you are right to say, “the manner in which the Church has come to decisions about moral teachings has changed over the centuries.” This is one of those areas that would probably be defined as “development,” rather than change. I think the definition of development is that which refines or enlarges the understanding of an earlier judgment by the Church, rather than that which changes an earlier judgment. (Newman wrote a book I own but have not read that is about this subject.) Those who defend the primacy of the Pope obviously use the teaching from the Gospel read in the last few weeks (it was a weekday – I went the next morning after a fairly emotional conversation with my wife the night before) about Jesus founding his Church on Peter his Rock, and how he gave to Peter “the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven,” and told him that “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19). Without knowing the specifics, I do know that the argument is made that even in the early, largely unrecorded days, between the Acts of the Apostles and the first councils of the Church, that other bishops would often apply to the bishop of Rome to settle debates. I don’t know if this is settled history or not.

Is it possible that the Church that Jesus instituted is prey to the same problems as the church that had Him killed? Perhaps in some ways, but remember a couple of things: that Jesus established this Church, that he gave to Peter and the apostles the powers described above, that he promised the guidance of the Holy Spirit (who, for instance, helped humans to decide what counted as Scripture, and what did not). Why would Jesus establish a Church prey to the same problems as the one he left behind? Jesus did not change human nature, and so I understand that just as there were sinful Pharisees and Sanhedrin, so have there been sinful Popes, Bishops, and Priests. And just as the institution of the Temple permitted wrongs, so too has the Church of Christ bowed to temporal powers, such as in allowing the practice of granting indulgences in return for sacrifices made to become a business – a repetition of the money-lenders in the Temple, in a way. But Jesus did leave us a new world. The Church teaching on indulgences was not inherently flawed: the sacrifice of money is praised by Jesus when he tells the disciples to observe the little old lady giving her last pence to the poor box. As you no doubt know from your economics classes and your professional life, money is simply a symbol of our labors, a way of transforming them into goods they do not directly produce, so that sacrifice of money is sacrifice of labor. The actions of many individuals within the Church, like bishops who wanted to build a new church to attract tourists, or friars who wanted an easy life instead of the hard, trudging, begging life of poverty and prayer preached by St. Francis, took advantage of this. Irish folk-tales tell of credulous peasants afraid the parish priest will turn them into rabbits if they fail to do what he tells them. Abuses, obviously, but not perpetrated by the Magisterium, by the teaching ability of the Church.

This I don’t understand: you describe what led to your second marriage, what the Church has to say about it, and say: “I understand the reasons for Church rules in this matter; as a matter of fact, I agree with them. However I do not believe I have committed a sin.” I can’t figure that out, Dad. You agree with the Church’s teaching, but you don’t think it applies to you? The teaching does not exist because some people might take advantage of easier rules on divorce (which I know you did not). It exists because the action is held to be inherently wrong. What you say here is probably true (certainly you are a better judge than I): “My marriage to my second wife is more perfect and a more spiritual union that I ever did have with your mother. In sum, I seriously considered the rules and teachings of the church, and then made my own decision to disregard Church rules.” Then you say, “I consider myself to be a good Catholic.” Please do not be angry at me for saying this, but this is what I think will be the case for me: if I change what my mind has been so far and decide it is moral for me to use IVF with my wife, I will not be able to say that. I will be able to say “I consider myself to be a good person,” and maybe even, “I consider myself to be a good Christian,” but I think I will have separated myself somewhat by disagreeing with the teaching of the Church, and my definition of “good Christian” will be thenceforth different from my definition of “good Catholic.” Right now I believe that Catholicism is the most perfect (not totally perfect, because nothing short of heaven ever will be) manifestation of the faith taught to us by Christ, and that “good Catholic” is synonymous with “good Christian.” Perhaps I am wrong about this.

I don’t think the Church has lost its compassion. Jesus himself advocates excommunication, which is today seen as very uncompassionate. In Matthew 18 he says, “If a member of the church [my Bible mentions that this is also translated, “If your brother …”] sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone.” Eventually, if the member does not listen, he tells them to bring it to the church [here there is no alternative translation offered for the word], “and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector” (18:15-7). If, like Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, the Church forebears to teach the Word of God, whether that is discerned through Scripture, tradition, or reason, the church is not being compassionate, because it is allowing us to be separated from God. The example of Jesus and the martyrs shows us that ease of practice is not a necessary quality of Christian morality (nor, obviously, is it excluded as a quality of Christian morality).

The next section will finally get into addressing the question of IVF directly, now that I have gotten to the part of my letter to my father where he does so. All of what came previously were my attempts to address the earlier points he was making to prepare the ground for his main argument: opposing my refusal to participate in In Vitro Fertilization with my wife.

Smart Board, Stupid Students

Just got a SmartBoard today (I'm sure there's supposed to be a little TM after that - as convinced as I am that it's one word), and don't really know how to use it, but I'm enjoying the process of learning. I'm a first-year teacher at this school (sixth-year overall), which raises the question how I earned this privilege. I didn't do it by buttering anyone up, or by conniving and telling lies. I think the process had three steps:

1. Mention the SmartBoard in your interview as a way of looking up on the latest classroom technology.
(a). Do so when making mention is relevant, i.e., when they ask you how you would like to incorporate technology into the classroom
(b). Do so honestly - if it is the case, say you have never used one, but would love the opportunity, because you could imagine the number of uses to which it could be put.

2. During the first few days of in-services preceding the beginning of classes, pester the science teacher who's been strong-armed into being the tech coordinator (you know he's actually happy to have been strong-armed into this position, don't you?) to let you practice with the SmartBoard after hours, even though it's sitting hooked up in the library, not in your room.

3. Never ask for the SmartBoard to be put in your room, but never say you don't want it when they offer it. Do suggest that, as a first-year, perhaps others should have the opportunity to get the first SmartBoard in the school in their rooms - but don't be insistent.

4. Schedule time in the library to use the SmartBoard, even if you only do it once because, not knowing how to use it particularly well yet, you find it not to be all that useful.

5. The day you show up for school planning on using the regular board, only to find an uncalibrated SmartBoard sitting on top of it, don't complain. Start messing around with it, learn how to calibrate it on your own (it's not too hard - if you can't figure it out, just type your notes into the notebook page), and start earning a reputation as the most tech-savvy teacher in the school.

6. Plan to bring a gun, or many detention sheets, to convince students not to press the SmartBoard at the beginning of class when you're trying to use the computer at your desk but your projector is still on. Also useful for convincing students during study not to stand up, while you're looking at the SmartBoard, and place their hands in front of the projector.

That's six steps, for those of you who don't teach math. Also, step 6 supplied me with my post's title.