From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Subject: Re: Cath. Christianity 101 - Church on artificial insemination, etc
Organization: LLNL
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 07:16:16 GMT

In article <l8os3iINNojo@skat.usc.edu> kriz@skat.usc.edu (KRIZ) writes:

>Recently Loren posted that an objection of the Church to artificial
>insemination was that it involved masturbation on the part of the
>male.

>Actually, the primary difficulty the church has with artificial
>insemination is that it places the creation of human life under
>domination of technology.

	I almost cannot believe that I am reading this argument, since
it is posted by a true-blue computer geek (well, I'm a true-blue
computer geek, also).

	Someone who wears clothes, eats cooked food, lives inside of
structures built for that purpose, moves around in vehicles driven by
internal-combustion engines or electric motors, and sends messages
across computer networks cannot complain too much about dependence on
technology :-)

...Second, REGARDLESS OF HOW the male's 
>sperm fertilizes the woman's ovum, if the two are not spouses,
>the Church will ALWAYS consider the act or procedure performed 
>to be contrary to moral law.

	Why's that?

	I would consider it against "moral law" _only_ if artificial
insemination or IVF took place without both sides agreeing for the
procedure to take place.

	And that applies even _inside_ of marriage.

Third, the Church is opposed to 
>the use of artificial insemination IN PLACE of normal conjugal 
>relations between spouses:

	Can't those aged celibates use the phrase "have sex"?

	Is the thought of it too revolting for them?

>   [The Church teaching on human sexuality] is founded upon the
>   the inseparable connection, willed by God and unable to be
>   broken by man on his own initiative, between the two meanings
>   of the conjugal act: the unitive meaning and the procreative
>   meaning (Pope Paul VI Encyclical HUMANAE VITAE , #12; the 
>   CDF's Instruction on Respect for Human Life at its Origin
>   and the Dignity of Procreation, III, 4).

	The Vatican is awfully prissy about reproduction, it seems to
me.

	And has God told the bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees) that it's a
no-no to have all the non-reproductive sex that they have?

	Male dolphins will sometimes mate with other male dolphins;
does God ever complain?

	And since I'm not "man", I can do whatever I want to :-)

>Fourth, the Church does not recognize the parents >>RIGHT<< to
>have a child:

>   The suffering of spouses who cannot have children or who
>   are afraid of bringing a handicapped child into the world is
>   a suffering that everyone must understand and properly 
>   evaluate.

	Do those old men _practice_ crying their crocodile tears?

... Nevertheless, marriage does not confer
>   upon the spouses the right to have a child, but only the
>   right to perform those natural acts which are *per se*
>   ordered to procreation.

	Talk about heartlessness.

	One must perpetually _act_ as if one was trying to produce a
child even though one can't.

...For this
>   reason, the child has the right, to be the fruit of the
>   specific act of the conjugal love of his parents; and he 
>   also has the right to be respected as a person from the
>   moment of conception.

	"Right" to be conceived in a certain way?

	I personally just don't care, just so long as I don't get too
many bad genes.

	It wouldn't matter to me if the sperm and egg cell that
produced that zygote that grew to become me were united in a Petri
dish.



>Finally, the reason why the Church insists on the child's
>right to be conceived in the specific act of conjugal love

	Can't they say "having sex"?

>of its parents returns to safeguarding the origin of the
>human person from technological domination:


...The one conceived must be the fruit of his
>   parents' love.

	Does that mean that if one's parents just did it for the fun
of it, then that screws up one's genes? Same for artificial
insemination or in-vitro fertilization.

...He cannot be desired or conceived as a 
>   product of an intervention of medical or biological techniques;
>   that would be equivalent to reducing him to an object of 
>   scientific technology.

	Those old men are sounding like big babies. They need to do
some growing up.

	Is adoption illegitimate?

	Do parents of a child conceived _in vitro_ hate their
children? I've never heard of any such thing.

...No one may subject the coming of a child
>   into the world to the conditions of technical efficiency which 
>   are to be evaluated to standards of control and domination.

	What's wrong with producing children free from defective
genes?

	And that's a strange objection from a bunch of control freaks.

...I do think it is an intrinsic good for the
>readership here to learn about what the Church actually 
>teaches on these issues, rather than rely only on what
>someone says it does.  

	After reading these documents, I really must ask whether or
not it was worth the trouble. All my second-hand sources turn out
correct.

	[Embryos at the blastocyst stage fully human...]

	A strange absurdity. I fail to see much difference between a
blastocyst and a scraping of skin, except for where they are headed,
development-wise.

	[Complaint about their destruction...]

	Some sizable fraction, about 2/3, don't implant under
"natural" conditions, and the non-implanted ones die. Should every
woman examine her menstrual blood under a microscope to look for
un-implanted blastocysts and have a funeral for each one that she
finds? Tossing it into a garbage can is no way to treat a dead human
being, as I'm sure you will all agree.

	[Long rant about how it is wrong to perform artificial
insemination or IVF when the sources of the sperm and the eggs are not
married to each other]

	Well, there are interesting questions about paternity, but I
don't think it absolutely _wrong_.

	[How surrogate motherhood is wrong]

	Tell that to the surrogate mothers of the Bible. :-)

	Examples:

Surrogate motherhood -- (Genesis 16:1-4) Since Abraham's wife Sarah
was barren, she gave Abraham her maid Hagar, to have children for her.
She produces a son, Ishmael. There is even surrogate fatherhood (the
Levirate). (Genesis 38) Onan refuses to have sex with his brother's
widow, and God strikes him with lightning.

	And they weren't even artifically inseminated!

	[Even between husband and wife it is wrong...]

	Well, we went over that earlier :-)

>  Contraception deliberately deprives the conjugal act of its
>openness to procreation and in this way brings about a voluntary
>dissociation of the ends of marriage.

So "Natural Family Planning" is just plain wrong?

...Homologous artificial
>fertilization, in seeking a procreation which is not the fruit of
>a specific act of conjugal union, objectively effects an analogous
>separation between the goods and meanings of marriage.

	So women are not allowed to try to make themselves "virgin
mothers"?

	I'm sure that those old men must be burning with jealousy over
what modern medicine has been able to achieve -- a woman being able to
have children without having sex, just like what they believe about
Jesus Christ's mom.

	And why are a bunch of aged celibates like them so _obsessed_
with marriage?

	[If one is sterile...]

...Spouses who find themselves in this sad situation are
>called to find in it an opportunity for sharing in a particular way
>in the Lord's Cross,...

	Religion is to be the opium of the people.

	I see.

	Swearing by Loki,

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