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PAGE 5—August 7,1975
Respect For Life And Reconciliation
BY WILLIAM E. MAY
We live in an age when millions die of
starvation and exploitation, when other
millions perish in the ravages wrought by war,
when the mutilated corpses of many others
bear eloquent testimony to the tragic aftermath
of automobile, train, and airplane disasters. We
live too in an age when millions of human
fetuses are killed because they are unwanted. In
the midst of all this death we are urged, and
rightly so, to respect life. But why are we to
respect life, and how does respect for life relate
to the subject of reconciliation?
As Catholics we believe that every human
being is precious, priceless, a being of infinite
and transcendent value. We believe this because
we believe that a human being is different in
kind from other kinds of beings, and that a
human being is different in kind precisely
because he is the living image of God. Thus we
believe that human life is something sacred,
something that participates in the sanctity of
God Himself. Life itself is a gift from God. We
do not believe that life as such is the highest
good, for God Himself is the highest good, and
our moral good or our willingness to do what is
right and our unwillingness to do what is wrong
is the way that we respond to His call to
perfection. Thus we are ready, or should be
ready, to sacrifice our lives, if necessary, rather
than to be willing to betray His trust by doing
wrong. But human life, precisely because it is
life in God’s image, is a real good. To have our
hearts and wills set on its destruction, thus, is
to be willing to do something that is wrong.
Life is a good of human beings, but it is a
good that we possess at the mercy of our
fellowmen. It is for this reason, I believe, that
the fetus symbolizes our humanity and our
attitudes toward life. No one who takes
biological evidence seriously denies that the
fetus is a human being, a living member of the
human species. But some claim that the fetus is
not a person or a subject of rights, simply
because the fetus is not a conscious self with
interests of its own and with the capacity of
relating to other selves. For them it is not a
“meaningful” human being, a “meaningful”
human life.
But when we think of it no one who reads
these words -- no human being anywhere -- was
a person or a personal subject at birth, if by
person one means a self-conscious being aware
of itself as a self and capable of communicating
with other selves. For us to develop into
conscious selves, other human beings had to let
us develop, had to let us be. What this shows us,
I believe, is that human existence, as a personal
existence, is inescapably and necessarily a
co-existence or, to use biblical language, that it
is covenantal in character. To be human in the
sense that to be human means being personal is
to exist with other human beings and by leave
of other human beings. Personhood, in other
words, is a gift. It is a gift that we receive
ultimately from God who has made us in His
image and has thus made us to be the kind of
beings with the capacity for personal
development. And it is a gift that we receive,
directly and immediately, from the parents who
conceived us in an act that was at the very same
time, one hopes, an act expressive of the love
they had for one another.
No one of us would have any notion
whatsoever of himself as a self had it not been
for the help given him by other human beings.
No one of us lifts himself up to the level of
personal existence by his own bootstraps, as it
were. There must be a boot to which our straps
can be attached, and that boot is the human
community, a community that first of all lets
us to be and enables us to be ourselves.
An attitude that despises life tears at the
heart of human community, at the covenantal
bond that ought to exist in and among men and
between men and God. It is an attitude that
gives rise to hatred and enmity, to jealously and
possessiveness, to sin and death.
On the contrary, an attitude that respects
life, yes loves life and seeks to affirm it, is an
attitude that provides the climate wherein love
and justice can flourish. It is an attitude that is
willing to forgive and to heal the wounds
inflicted by sin. It is an attitude of
reconciliation and self-sacrificial love that will
create a community in which human beings are
wanted and can be given the root room in
which they can flourish, where they can be
made to feel “at home” and be given the
strength to suffer injustice rather than inflict
injustice, where they can be faithful images of
the living and loving God.
Of Death Or Life
BY REV. PAUL F PALMER, S.J.
When I was a child in Catholic grade school I
was given a hand-sized box to fill with pennies.
Sister said that the pennies would be sent to the
foreign missions to save unwanted babies -
particularly girl babies - who would otherwise
be exposed to death and allowed to die. It was
called a “mite” box, a place where children
rather than the widow of the Gospels,
contributed their mites.
I didn’t understand at the time why our
Catholic missionary priests, Brothers and Sisters
were interested in saving lives when they were
supposed to save souls, why they didn’t simply
baptize the babies, let them die and go straight
to heaven.
But I have learned since that Christians have
always been interested in human life in all the
stages of development, from the womb to the
tomb, as well as beyond. This would explain
“ISN’T IT STRANGE that the
Catholic Church has been so
vehemently criticized for the emphasis
that it places on life to come, when in
fact it has taught the world to be
sensitive and concerned for life that is
present?” One of Mother Teresa’s
Sisters cares for a child who had been
abandoned on a roadside in Bangladesh.
(NC Photo)
why Christians were the first to open
orphanages, to build hospitals for the poor,
leprosariums for the social outcasts, and homes
for the aged.
Isn’t it strange that the Catholic Church has
been so vehemently criticized for the emphasis
that it places on the life to come, when in fact
it has taught the world to be sensitive and
concerned for life that is present? Anyone at all
familiar with the history of Western civilization,
as contrasted with the practices of those lands
where the Gospel has not been preached, will
recognize the criticism as a gross caricature.
Love of God and love of neighbor has been
the great commandment of the Jewish-Christian
tradition, but Jesus made “love for one
another” the test of one’s love to God, the
hallmark by which the world would know that
Christians are His disciples.
This concern for the needs of others,
including the primary need to live, is stressed in
the earliest catechism that has come down to
us, the second century Didache or Teaching of
the Apostles. “The second commandment of
the Teaching is: You shall not commit
murder . . . You shall not kill an unborn child
or murder a new born infant” (Ch. 2).
Distinguishing between the Way of Life and the
Way of Death the catechumen under
instruction was warned that “killers of
children” walk the way of death (Ch. 5).
In the most eloquent apologia or defense of
the Christian religion, the unknown author of
the second century “Letter to Diognetes” tells
a Roman judge that his correligionists are not
fanatics. They are more human, because more
humane, than their pagan countrymen:
“Christians are not different from the rest of
men in nationality, speech or customs; they do
not live in states of their own, nor do they use a
special language, nor adopt a peculiar way of
life . . . They marry like the rest of men and
beget children, but they do not abandon the
children that are born. They share a common
board but not a common bed. In the flesh as
they are, they do not live according to the
flesh” (Ch. 5).
Contributing to the decline and ultimate fall
of Roman civilization in the West was the all
but total disregard in pagan society for the life
of the unborn and newly born. Abortion and
infanticide were not only unpunished but
approved by the philosphers or wise men of the
day (cf. “Contraception,” by J. T. Noonan, Jr.,
pp. 33-46).
It is in this context that we must read the
classic condemnation of the anti-life mentality
of pagan society, penned by the great
Augustine in the late fourth century:
“Sometimes this lustful cruelty or cruel lust
comes to this, that they even procure poisons
to induce sterility;, and if these do not work
they extingush or destroy the fetus in some
fashion in the womb, preferring that their
offspring die before it lives, or if it is already
alive in the womb, to kill it before it is born.
Assuredly, if both husband and wife are like
this ... I dare to say that the wife is in some
respects the harlot of her husband and he the
adulterer of his own wife” (“On Marriage and
Concupiscence,” 1,15,17).
Some would write off the warning of
Augustine as an example of the Catholic
Church’s pessimism in matters of sex. But they
miss the point. Augustine and the Church for
which he speaks are more concerned with
respect for life than for the virtue of
continence, even though it is often “cruel lust”
which leads to the killing of the unborn and the
murder of the newly born.
Children are no longer asked to give their
Lenten pennies to save unwanted babies. Rarely
are the unwanted babies given the chance to
live and to be wanted. They are aborted, at
home as well as abroad. The United States is
fast rivaling Japan in its claim to infamy as the
“abortion paradise.”
The abortion fall-out is rapidly engulfing the
world. But an equally ominous cloud is on the
horizon. The children who have survived the
present fall-out will inherit the anti-life
mentality of their elders. The unwanted will no
longer be just babies, but the mentally retarded,
the physically handicapped, the incurably sick,
irrespective of age. But the callous disregard for
human life will be turned principally against the
aged who will become an increasing burden to
the family and society.
A nation that has come to legalize the killing
of the unwanted in the sanctuary of the womb
will be less hesitant to legalize killing of the
unwanted even in the sanctuary of the home.
And yet there is reason for hope. The way of
Death was effectively challenged by the Way of
Life in our Christian past. It can and must be
challenged with the same vigilance and vigor by
Christians today.
Little People In Laboratories
BY REV. DONALD McCARTHY
Last week in this column we compared the
little people who populate mothers’ wombs to
the six-inch-tall people who populated the
fictitious island of Lilliput in the famous book
“Gulliver’s Travels.”
Science gives us no indications of some
“magic moment” when these real live fetuses
suddenly become human. Therefore from the
very moment of conception they already are
human and endowed with pent-up energy for
growth and development. Curled up in their
maternal spaceships for nine months they do
what comes naturally - they realize the powers
already given to them. They are not dormant
acorns but sprouting saplings.
Grown-up human beings have become
ecologically self-conscfdus in our generation -
they would not think of uprooting thousands
of healthy, flourishing little saplings. But the
ill-fated Supreme Court decision of Jan. 22,
1973, launched a massive deforestation
movement called abortion on request that now
uproots a million of these little people each
year in the United States.
High-sounding phrases like “a woman’s right
to choose” cloak the brutal reality of abortion.
The Supreme Court decision rejected these
little innocents from the protective shield of
American law. Each pregnant woman can now
exercise the power of life or death over the new
human being cuddled inside her.
Unfortunately the present climate of public
opinion often pressures women contrary to
their unselfish maternal instincts. It encourages
them to do this deadly deed in the name of
population control, eugenics, and “liberation”
from the burden of motherhood, especially
motherhood outside marriage.
Now in the past two years public opinion has
begun to hear about an abortion corollary - the
uses of aborted fetuses or fetuses about to be
aborted for scientific experimentation. The
logic behind this practice simply holds that if a
fetus can be killed then surely he or she can be
used for important research. In other words,
doing the greater evil makes the lesser evil
inconsequential. Or does it?
In July 1974, the U.S. Congress passed a law
declaring a moratorium on fetal
experimentation until a government
commission could prepare ethical guidelines.
This National Commission for the Protection of
Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral
Research submitted its recommendations this
May.
These included seven basic guidelines. The
first two approved in principle forms of
experimentation on fetuses and pregnant
women which are immediately therapeutic, that
is, they can benefit that very woman or that
ver> fetus.
The more critical issue is non-therapeutic
experimentation - the kind performed on
fetuses destined for abortion or already aborted
but alive, with hope of putting the information
gained to good use for the benefit of other,
wanted fetuses. The other five guidelines dealt
with these situations. In general they preclude
procedures which would be excessively risky or
harmful if the fetus were not to be or had not
been aborted, and they set certain requirements
for the informed consent of the mother.
So apparently the National Institute of
Health will hesitate to support research on
aborted fetuses which would be unethical on
wanted fetuses. Much will depend, however, on
the interpretation of the fine print in these
guidelines. Following them faithfully may
indicate a residual respect for the little people
who can still be legally sacrificed by their
mother’s choice, but may not be subjected to
vivisection or its equivalent.
The Catholic Hospital Association has
founded the Pope John XXIII Medical-Moral
Center to study issues like this one. A
comprehensive report entitled “A Christian
Evaluation of Fetal Experimentation” edited
by this author will be available in October from
the Center at 1438 So. Grand Blvd., St. Louis,
Mo. 63104.
“WE BELIEVE THAT LIFE, human
life, is something sacred, something
that participates in the sanctity of God
himself.” A modern sculpture using
castoff materials was made by Jerome
Winkler of Holdingford, Minn., as a
pro-life expression. Starting from a
copper tank base, the sculpture moves
to symbols of man and woman and into
their “flowering,” two roses. (NC
Photo by Vern Bartos)
Know
Your Faith
(All Articles On This Page Copyrighted 1975 by N.C. News Service)
4
“NOW IN THE PAST TWO YEARS
public opinion has begun to hear about
an abortion corollary -- the uses of
aborted fetuses or fetuses about to be
aborted for scientific
experimentation.” Tiny fetuses such as
this nine-week-old one have been the
subjects of experimentation. (NC
Photo)