Anniversaries, Juxtaposed and Commemorated

I’m disinclined right now to do much with this information, but there have been a number of articles posted in the last month on contraception, IVF, and abortion. I’m going to link them for now, and perhaps someday I’ll have the time, inclination, and courage to go back to them and comment.

Kathryn Jean Lopez posted an article on the 30th anniversary of IVF’s first use, here, and it is one of the few out there that, however briefly, gives attention to the notion of “giving yourself totally to your spouse — not putting up barriers and introducing artificial methods and procedures into your reproductive lives.” As to what the barriers introduced by IVF are, she does not say, and I’m not sure I see IVF as creating barriers, exactly. (Already I’m getting nervous about even posting these, since I feel like I ought to have a treatise-level opinion on each one.) A mostly coherent response came through and is posted here, testifying to, though not proving scientifically or theologically, the wisdom of waiting for God’s hand to work. (It also makes a distinction between giving physically and giving more deeply that I’m not sure I can countenance, since it seems to set adoption up as a higher good than giving life.)

Earlier, observing the fortieth anniversary of Humanae Vitae, Lopez published “Holy Sex@40,” an affirmation of the encyclical’s teachings, turning the words of feminist Jessica Valenti against her, somewhat effectively, I think, to remind her readers of the racist usages to which the pill has sometimes been put, and to remind her of the hardly-lessened burden for the responsibilities of pregnancy that women still face. K-Lo is apparently hitting this issue hard this year, as she has another article out that I’ve not even read, here. If the title and abstract are any indication, it’s a jujitsuistic attack on the pill for what it’s doing to the environment, not so much a first principle attack as a piling-on of all available forces (not that I mind – this is a time-honored political and military tactic, and is consistent with honesty so far as the things said are true).

Also, from July 5, at 1:18AM, see this article for link between contraception and abortion. It’s a bit surprising for me to see it in there, given America’s reputation for opposition to the more conservative sorts of Catholicism, but I’m not an expert on the subject of America and its leanings, so perhaps my expectations are malformed. And there is a First Things article in the current edition, called, rather resoundingly, “The Vindication of Humanae Vitae,” now posted here. I’ve not read it yet, having too many magazines laying about, delivered, bought, and largely unread.

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.

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.

First Thoughts on IVF

I probably have not made this entirely clear in my postings so far, but in order to be sure: the biggest question in my life right now is whether or not to use in-vitro fertilization to get pregnant. My wife and I are at odds over this, as, while we both desperately want to have children, she is willing to use IVF and I am not. Most of the substantive communication we have done on this so far has been through writing, and little of it has happened recently, for two reasons: one, we are incredibly busy with school. Two, I am an avoider by nature. I avoid that which will be troublesome. It is probably my greatest flaw and my greatest sin, for I do not make use of my given talents nearly as often as I should.

I am in the midst at the moment of writing my third missive on this issue, this one in response to part of a book by Fr. Genovesi, S.J. For now, I will contribute to this blog with part of my first letter, one that reached to fifteen pages, and is in many ways flawed. It is a response to my father's first letter, and so you as readers will have to deal with the ambiguities of listening to a monologue when a dialogue would be so much clearer. You will also have to deal with a slightly more impersonal tone than that in which it actually was written, for I will not be disclosing the names of my family members, and so instead of something like "Joe," you'll get, "my brother."

What follows is the first section of my letter, in which I try to mitigate the harm of anything painful I might say in the spirit of honesty, in which I try to show my father that I am trying to act out of love, and in which I address his first point that the consequences of an act should have an effect on how we think of the morality of the act.

Dad,

These are some thoughts regarding your letter. They are not necessarily my final thoughts on the subject. Some of them, responding as they do to illustrations you have made from your own life, will be critical of choices you have made. These views will probably not be entirely a surprise to you, but I don’t know that I have ever stated them outright. Please do not think that I am trying to set myself up in judgment over you, or that what I say means I love or respect you any less than I do. In many ways you were and are a model for me and the way I live my life. I love and respect you immensely, and only write what I do to think through this conundrum and your points as honestly and fully as I can.

Regarding your first point, that I may be endangering my marriage, I agree that is a possibility. My wife has already said somewhat vaguely that she does not know what sort of reaction will come about from her or her parents as a result of this. She has also said that she doesn’t want to emotionally blackmail me, and she realizes that she also fears what reactions may come from me if I decide to do something that I believe to be wrong for the sake of pleasing her and others. I don’t want to downplay the consequences of my decision, because my whole course of thought and feeling on this issue has been full of foreboding about what people will think, how they’ll be hurt, and how they’ll react, people such as my wife, first of all, her parents, who have only one child to give them grandchildren, my parents, who would love to see me have children, my grandparents, who feel the same, my friends, who may be critical of my choice, even if it doesn’t concern them, and any number of relatives who may have any number of things to say about it. That said, I don’t think anyone would bring up this issue if they believed the action to be truly wrong. Perhaps you could have appeased Mother’s angst about not living a more posh lifestyle by becoming a dishonest businessman. But no one, even one who was under the impression that that was the sole cause of the downfall of your marriage, would ever dare accuse you of doing wrong by being honest, because they admire you for your honesty and there is no true dispute about whether you should or should not be honest.

A few paragraphs later you say, “Here's my gut advice to you. A successful, loving marriage for you is much more important than any Catholic teaching on this particular matter.” Again, I don’t think you would say that if you agreed with the Catholic teaching. It’s like a sermon I heard from the head pastor at my wife’s Presbyterian church. He spoke about how Jesus was tolerant, and therefore we should be tolerant in the same way, and erect no barrier to letting active homosexuals become ordained ministers in the Presbyterian Church. I felt that argument was seriously flawed because it totally ignored the morality of the teaching in question – had we been discussing the advisability of putting known, current, and unrepentant wife-beaters in the ministry, tolerance never would have come up as an issue. On a side-note, and addressing a comment you make somewhere else in the letter, wife-beating and use of IVF within marriage are obviously not analogous in their levels of iniquity – I’m not making that argument. But even if the use of IVF within marriage is a venial sin, I think “sin” is the operative word here. I don’t buy the argument that the label “venial” makes something ok.

Finally, the success of my marriage does not rest on my shoulders alone. My wife has vows that she has to respect, vows that require her to avoid as much as possible the paths of thought and ways of acting that cultivate resentment. And my decisions are not made without thought or without love. There is a poem by Richard Lovelace, a British Cavalier during the English Civil War, called, “To Lucasta, Going to the Wars,” that basically encapsulates my thoughts on this issue:

Tell me not, sweet, I am unkind,
That from the nunnery
Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind,
To war and arms I fly.

True, a new mistress now I chase,
The first foe in the field;
And with a stronger faith embrace
A sword, a horse, a shield.

Yet this inconstancy is such
As you too shall adore;
I could not love thee, dear, so much,
Loved I not honor more.

He essentially tells Lucasta, his wife or lover, that he loves something else more than her: war, or more specifically, the reasons for going to war: honor. Now I don’t know whether he means the earthly honor of reputation, or the more spiritual honor of doing right no matter what others think of him, but the point remains: true love consists in doing what is right, even if one’s beloved does not agree with that action. Hence young adults marrying despite the unjust prejudices of parents; hence young men going off to just wars despite the sorrow of their mothers and wives. I don’t think my stance so far is selfishness (I sure don’t feel like I’ve done myself a favor with it, in part because I have looked forward to raising children since I was in college). I think it’s the proper action of putting what is all-important – God and his will – before what is immensely, but not quite, as important – my own and others’ preferences, desires, or possibly even needs. I do love my wife, far more than I can explain, and she loves me too. When we’ve discussed the issue of resentments lingering after these decisions are made, she has said that she has no intention of leaving me and reiterated how much she loves me. And when I asked her whether she was sorry she married “a crazy Catholic,” she said, “No, because that is what makes you the good person you are.”

I don’t think you disagree in essence with what I’m saying. The real disagreement obviously lies in two things: the authority of the Church and the morality of IVF.

The next section of my letter is a series of piecemeal responses to claims my dad makes.

Last night I began reading the chapter on contraception that my wife has asked me to read. It's giving me an education in the history of my Church's theology, and forcing me to think more deeply than I have. Whether or not it will change my mind is another story.