CNA Columns: With Good Reason

Final column — at least for a while

Tue, 21 Dec 2010 00:00:00 -0500

By Father Thomas Berg

I penned my first 'With Good Reason' column a bit over four years ago in November of 2006. At the time, my hope was to make a solid contribution toward curbing our cultural malaise which is, in myriad ways, so adverse to reasoned consideration of our beliefs, policies and behaviors. Such a culture-as I suggested at the time-cannot sustain for long a thriving and well-ordered democratic way of life.

And so it is, in that deeper-than-usual nostalgia and spirit of reflection which envelopes most of us (or me at least) at this time of year, that I now sit me down to pen my final WGR column.

No, I have not given up on the battle for reasoned discourse in the public square! On the contrary, of late I have had reason to be encouraged. And over the past four years, there have been any number of indicators that reasoned public discourse on moral matters is experiencing a refreshing revival of sorts. One might consider, for example, how the advent of embryonic stem cell research occasioned the lively and vigorous public debate about the moral status of the human embryo, a debate that had been effectively squelched during the first decades of the debate over abortion.

In ending my monthly columns, I am certainly not disappearing from the ethics scene. On the contrary, other commitments (the ethics boards on which I sit, research and writing commitments-including my hopes of publishing a book or two-as well as teaching and pastoral work) are simply occupying my time to such an extent that I have elected to give them greater attention. Publishing will continue, of course, albeit in other venues.

But back to that reflective mood.

I write on a day that the headlines tell us: Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo (himself jailed and his wife under house arrest) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia in Oslo; pressure mounts in Washington to cut federal spending as lawmakers finally step up to take action at the prospect of hitting national bankruptcy by 2025; 16 year-olds are conducting a cyber war on major American businesses; scientists have created a mouse whose genetic makeup comes from two males; the debate over the military's 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' policy is at the forefront on Capitol Hill even as our service men and women continue to be killed by IED's; and North Korean aggression toward South Korea is growing, not diminishing.

Plenty to write about.

Truly, there's never an end to the challenges facing humanity and which call for reasoned moral discourse in the public square.

Looking back on four years of non-stop "issues" to which I dedicated my key pad and best mental energies, I can't help but wonder again at those enduring questions that underlie the issues: What is truth? Why am I here? Why do we suffer? Is there a God?

Now, if truth be told, any day of the week, we can glance at the news and wonder if the headlines do not portend a new and rapidly advancing dark age, or whether — as the philosopher Aladair MacIntyre already opined three decades ago in his now classic "After Virtue" — that the new dark age is already upon us, and whether its barbarian doyens "are not waiting beyond the frontiers [but] have already been governing us for quite some time."

However one parses the present age, as Christians we are called — in the spirit of St. Augustine — to sing, and not curse the darkness, as we strive to build the City of God, and journey toward the consummation of all times. We are called to hope, and hope entails patient expectation.

To borrow again from MacIntyre, however, we are certainly not waiting for Godot; Christian expectation is infused, through and through, with meaning. As to MacIntyre's suggestion that we are rather awaiting a new St. Benedict, well, that would surely be nice.

But far more importantly, all of us are hopefully awaiting "the blessed hope — the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ."

He alone is the Word of the Father, the Logos through whom all things were made.

He alone is the font of Wisdom in whom we participate through our right use of reason.

He alone is the ultimate answer to the deepest questions of the human heart.

That's why, at Christmas 2010 we cry, once again: "Marana tha! Come Lord Jesus!"

God bless you.

And... P.S....As one smidgen of that hope, treat yourself to this on YouTube. Merry Christmas!

Knowing right from wrong

Tue, 16 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0500

By Father Thomas Berg

American culture is happily awash of late with appeals to human reason.

Case in point is a new book by ultra anti-religionist Sam Harris. Although the fundamental thesis of The Moral Landscape -- that "science should one day be able to make very precise claims about which of our behaviors...are morally good" -- is quite a stretch even by secular standards, Harris nonetheless does a couple of remarkable things for a leading public atheist.

First he insists that a knowledge of right and wrong should be a matter of objective, straightforward human knowledge, thus dismissing three centuries of philosophers who, in one form or another, have insisted that 'the good' does not name some objective quality at all, but only serves to euphemistically veil our own personal preferences: 'X is morally good' means nothing but 'I like X and I want you to like X too'.

More fascinating still is his insistence that both sides of the culture wars -- the Evangelical Christian right just as surely as the hard core champions of reductionist evolutionary psychology -- have erred in their notions of how we determine right from wrong, and this because they have failed to understand the full possibilities of human reason. "[A] shared belief in the limitations of reason," affirms Harris, "lies at the bottom of [our] cultural divides." Both sides of the 'culture wars', he insists, "believe that reason is powerless to answer the most important questions in human life."

One cannot read this without the uncanny sense that Harris was somehow channeling another renowned critic of western thought, and one of Harris's own arch nemeses -- Benedict XVI. Readers of this column will already be familiar with similar assessments of western thought penned by Benedict (then Joseph Ratzinger) in his seminal work Christianity and the Crisis of Cultures:

It is true that the positivist philosophies contain important elements of truth; but these are based on a self-limitation of reason that is typical of one determined cultural situation, that of the modern West, and, as such, certainly cannot be considered the last word of reason... This is why they are not the philosophy which one day could enjoy validity throughout the whole world.

With Harris, Benedict roundly rejects the misshapen conceptions about human reason on both sides of the culture wars. Our highly technological and procedural western culture has found great use for reason in an era dominated by largely pragmatic concerns; but it has found little use for reason on the big questions like the existence of God, and what ultimately constitutes right and wrong moral choices. And this is as true of the staunchest secularists as of many of the most Bible-based Christian evangelicals: reason is of little help on these matters.

Now, when Harris speaks of 'human reason', he means the drawing of conclusions from empirically based knowledge -- that and nothing more. When Benedict, and more broadly the natural law tradition, speaks of 'human reason', we mean, in addition to this, our ability to grasp innate truths about ourselves which are manifest to us independently of empirical evidence. For example, I do not need to be taught, much less convinced by recent studies, that the trafficking of children to fuel the international porn industry constitutes a grave moral evil. While Harris would undoubtedly concede trafficking of children is manifestly evil, he would hold, however, that such evidence is based on centuries of accrued human experience, not on the almost instantaneous insights of human reason.

True to form, Harris' disparagement of religion in The Moral Landscape is as boundless as his exaltation of the hard sciences. Yet, Harris, Benedict and the tradition actually agree that (a) morality is ultimately rooted in an objective understanding of what fulfills us as human beings; and that (b) an understanding of the behaviors that are corrosive to that fulfillment can be known objectively and transculturally. That's not bad for two otherwise highly disparate thinkers. It is a crying shame in fact that Harris is apparently so clueless about the Catholic natural law tradition. If he would just for a moment set aside his over-the-top diatribes against formal religion, and read his Benedict more carefully, he might just find good reason to think perhaps we believers are not so wacked after all.

Researchers create artificial human ovary

Thu, 14 Oct 2010 00:00:00 -0500

By Father Thomas Berg

A recent study published in the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics described the scientific manufacture of an artificial human ovary which in turn produced a viable human egg. Begun from real human ovarian tissue and grown on a prefab laboratory matrix, the artificial ovary was hailed as a major breakthrough. As the authors observed, the experiment is proof of principle that an artificial ovary "can be created with self-assembled human theca and granulosa cell micro tissues," and can produce viable human eggs for reproductive and other purposes. The researchers went on to affirm that "theoretically, in vitro maturation of primordial [eggs] promises to yield the greatest number of fertilizable [eggs] for future reproduction."

It should be noted that history has already seen one gravely disordered use of related biotechnology on the occasion of an American medical first: a pregnancy achieved through a sibling to sibling ovarian transplant -- in this case, between identical twin sisters. The moral disorder in this case should be apparent: ovaries, because of their intrinsic link to human life and specific human identity (both of the woman and her eventual offspring) are not on a par with other non-vital body parts which could be reasonably donated to a person in need. Notwithstanding the genetic proximity of identical twins, the twin sister's ovary is nonetheless bound up in her own identity; her eggs are her eggs, with their unique genetic signature. Consequently, procreation here occurs with the egg of another woman, thus involving a third party in the procreation process and rendering grave harm to the marital unity of the infertile sister and her husband.

By the same token, we have also witnessed an amazing, wonderful and morally licit use of related technology. In 2005, Stinne Holm Bergholdt had six strips of her own ovarian tissue returned to and transplanted onto her own ovaries. She had the tissue frozen before starting chemotherapy treatments which can cause sometimes irreversible damage on human ovaries, rendering a woman infertile. Since then, Stinne has had two children.

As with most biotech developments, the achievement of artificial human ovaries presents possible benefits, but also an alarming potential for scientific depravity. On the positive side, the artificial ovary could assist the study of the early genesis of human eggs and offer a new research tool for the study of anomalies in the human reproductive process. But beyond this potentially good application, the prospect of artificial ovaries constitutes a watershed opportunity for researchers to go mainstream with the dark project of human cloning.

Up until now, the lack of human eggs -- or oocytes -- has hampered attempts at successful human cloning. At the present state of the art, approximately 60 to 100 oocytes would be required to produce a single cloned human embryo. Artificial ovaries could supply in spades the heretofore dearth of eggs available for research. IVF clinics commonly discard many of the eggs retrieved for fertility treatments because they are too immature. The new technology would allow for such eggs to be matured in vitro and consequently hugely increase the supply of available eggs.

As reported three years ago, some of the remaining hurdles to successful human cloning have already been surmounted. Readers will recall the announcement, published in the journal Nature in November, 2007, that Oregon-based scientist Shoukhrat Mitalipov successfully cloned monkey embryos and derived embryonic stem cells from them.

Mitalipov's success with monkey embryo cloning provides the theoretical foundation for scientists to pursue so-called "therapeutic" cloning in humans. Embryonic stem cells derived from a cloned human embryo, because they would be genetically identical to a patient, could be used in potential treatments without prompting an immune rejection response -- overcoming one of the greatest hurdles for researching and developing therapeutic applications for human embryonic stem cells.

In a recent poll published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 76 percent of Americans express their opposition to human cloning for research purposes. While reassuring, such a statistic hardly constitutes a solid assurance that Americans are truly poised to effectively prohibit dark projects, such as human cloning, that would render the use of mass quantities of human embryos for biomedical research common-place. Such is the prospect we face. It will take the sustained efforts of pro-life advocates at the grass roots level to translate adverse attitudes toward embryo-destructive research into an effective and national legislative prohibition of such research.

A Legal Bombshell Hits Stem Cell Science

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0500

By Father Thomas Berg

On August 23, Chief federal Judge Royce C. Lamberth of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Obama administration's guidelines for funding embryonic stem-cell research (which went into effect on July 7, 2009) violate federal law. He then placed a temporary injunction on any further funding. On Tuesday August 31, the administration filed a motion to stay that decision while a case challenging the funding policy makes its way through the courts.

Lamberth took up the case after a court of appeals determined that plaintiffs James L. Sherley and Theresa Deisher, both adult stem-cell researchers, had standing to challenge the guidelines because these arguably discriminate against scientists seeking stem cell funding for projects that do not involve human embryonic stem cells. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, Deisher explained that, "Any adult stem cell scientist is disadvantaged, and that's because there is a deliberate focus to fund embryonic stem cell research and a focus away from adult stem cell research." And as Samuel Casey, counsel for the plaintiffs observed in a letter to the editors of the journal Nature, in so ruling:

The court faithfully applied a long line of cases, stretching back to the early 1970s. These consistently held that participants in regulated markets suffer injury when illegal changes in the regulatory scheme alter the competitive landscape -- in this case, the increased competition for funding to support research on adult (as opposed to embryonic) stem cells.

At the heart of the matter in Lamberth's ruling is the Dickey-Wicker Amendment (DWA) which has been attached to the Health and Human Services appropriations bill every year since 1996. As written, it prohibits federal funding for "the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero under [current federal law]."

For 14 years, DWA has effectively prohibited the use of federal funds to support any research that would directly endanger or destroy human embryos. Beginning in 1999 under the Clinton administration, however, DWA has been interpreted as restricting federal funding only for the research in which human embryos are actually created and destroyed.

Lamberth noted that the defendants in the case were insisting that DWA presupposes this same putative conceptual distinction between: (a) research directly on embryos, and (b) research on hESCs as if the two were wholly distinct research endeavors. Resting their defense, as did the decade-old legal loophole on a much narrower interpretation of the phrase "research in which," they argued that DWA prohibits funding of the former, but allows funding of the latter.

Lamberth for his part -- in a ruling that is breathtaking in its clarity, absent of any hint of judicial activism -- determined that, on an objective reading of the plain language of DWA, such a distinction is unsustainable:

[T]he language of the statute reflects the unambiguous intent of Congress to enact a broad prohibition of funding research in which a human embryo is destroyed. This prohibition encompasses all "research in which" an embryo is destroyed, not just the "piece of research" in which the embryo is destroyed. Had Congress intended to limit the Dickey-Wicker to only those discrete acts that result in the destruction of an embryo, like the derivation of ESCs, or to research on the embryo itself, Congress could have written the statute that way. Congress, however, has not written the statute that way, and this Court is bound to apply the law as it is written.

And further:

If one step or "piece of research" of an ESC research project results in the destruction of an embryo, the entire project is precluded from receiving federal funding by the Dickey-Wicker Amendment.

It comes as no surprise that Reps. Dickey and Wicker, who crafted and sponsored the amendment in the first place, have insisted repeatedly over the years that their amendment was always meant to be read in just this fashion. Until now that intent had been ignored by the NIH. Those days, it seems, are over, at least until Congress takes steps to enact new legislative remedies to open the funding again -- a step they should consider with extreme caution since a majority of Americans ( 57% according to a new poll) oppose federal funding for hESC research. For over a decade, DWA faithfully reflected a nation's conscience on this issue, a conviction now shared by most. Let's see if Congress gets it.

Have Stem Cells Become Passé?

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 00:00:00 -0500

By Father Thomas Berg

I last wrote an update on stem cell research in December. On that occasion I explained that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had announced the approval of thirteen new lines of human embryonic stem cells for use in NIH-funded research under the new NIH Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research published in July of 2009.

What has been happening in stem cell science over the past six months to a year?

For the better part of the past two years, scientific attention has focused on comparing the traits and capabilities of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) with the putative "gold standard" human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). Unlike hESCs, which are obtained by destroying live embryos, iPSCs are made directly from adult cells -- such as skin cells -- by adding a small number of factors to these cells in the laboratory. These factors remodel the mature cells and convert them into stem cells that are functionally identical to stem cells obtained from embryos. No human eggs are required and no human embryos are generated or destroyed in the process.

Several recent side-by-side comparison studies of both hES cells and iPS cells have been conducted to evaluate which types of stem cells might be best suited to which tissue-generating tasks. The most recent research has brought to light two potential hurdles for the use of iPS cells. On the one hand, because iPS cells are derived from adult -- which is to say, fully determined -- cells, they often "remember" their cell-type of origin and revert back to it. Another recent study suggested that iPS cells may actually have an entire series of genetic switches turned "off" and that this might explain why they sometimes fail to robustly generate more specific types of tissues.

Since 2007, there has been steady progress in using iPS cells as models for the study of diseases. iPS cells derived from both animals and human adults have been isolated which bear the phenotypes (structural characteristics) found in several diseases including Alzheimers, Parkinson's, Huntington's, Multiple Sclerosis, Type 1 Diabetes and Sickle Cell Anemia. Because these lines of cells exhibit disease-specific phenotypes, researchers are able to study disease mechanisms, and use them for drug screening.

Another important inroad in iPS research has been continued confirmation by independent teams of scientists that the reprogramming of adult cells can be accomplished without having recourse to viruses as vehicles for transporting the reprogramming agents into the cells. Rather than having to manipulate the genome itself by inserting viruses into the cells to be reprogrammed -- hazardous to humans -- researchers have identified ways to turn on the pluripotency genes in those cells simply by manipulating the chemical environment of the culture surrounding the cells. In 2009, researchers were also able to reduce the number of reprogramming factors necessary for accomplishing the task down to only one from the original four used by Dr. Yamanaka in 2007.

Yet, the biggest stem cell news seems to be that stem cells have largely disappeared from the news. Two factors have contributed to the dearth of headline grabbing stem cell news of late. Despite advances summarized above, the most recent progress is cloaked in such technical complexity that, understandably, journalists have been unusually challenged to make the news accessible to the average reader.

The second factor, more notably, is that stem cell fervor has waned and public frustration over the lack of tangible progress in stem cell science is growing.

To be sure, criticism of the lack of progress in the translation of stem cell research to therapies has arisen from surprising sources. In March of 2009 Dr. Bernadine Healy, director of the National Institutes of Health under the first Bush adminstration, wrote in her U.S. News & World Report column that "embryonic stem cells, once thought to hold the cure for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes, are obsolete." An editorial last January in Investor's Business Daily angrily criticized California's Proposition 71. This was the 2004 State law which allotted $6 billion of California taxpayer money to primarily embryo-destructive stem cell research over the next decade, an initiative that rode a tremendous wave of hyped advocacy for embryonic stem cell research. "Five years after a budget-busting $3 billion was allocated to embryonic stem cell research," wrote the editors, "there have been no cures, no therapies and little progress." Writing earlier this month in the Los Angeles Times, one science reporter felt it was time to offer her own mea culpa: don't blame the scientists for hyping the potential of hESC research; blame us, the reporters.

Illegal Immigration and Catholic Social Teaching

Tue, 18 May 2010 00:00:00 -0500

By Father Thomas Berg

Arizona governor Jan Brewer signed the Arizona Immigration Bill (SB 1070) on April 23. The Catholic bishops of Arizona and an interfaith network of Arizona religious leaders responded with an emotionally charged statement accusing the governor of sacrificing "political courage for political expediency" and suggesting the law is an affront to human dignity and runs afoul of the basic moral precept directing us to welcome the stranger.

I must admit I have been taken aback at how many Catholic voices have been making fine arguments about a proper, genuinely Catholic attitude toward immigrants (presumably those who enter the country legally), while entirely missing (and arguing right past) the issue at hand, namely, illegal immigration.

And I confess to have problems with all the invective coming from Catholic sources and directed at the Arizona law, particularly when it rests firmly on the principle of rule of law which is in turn itself derived from the natural moral law.

That this invective has been disproportionate (to not say misguided) becomes evident when we stop and consider what the Arizona law actually says: when law enforcement officers have a reasonable suspicion that a person is an alien unlawfully present in the U.S., they may demand to see immigration papers on the spot, and may detain a suspected illegal alien who fails to present appropriate documentation. National Review's Rich Lowry has explained how such "reasonable suspicion" might work in practice -- his point being that it is quite readily workable and has legal precedence and praxis. So in looking at the text of the law on its merits, we must ask: is there anything unreasonable about it, much less draconian, fascist or grossly abrasive to human dignity? Arguably, according to a recent poll, 61% of Americans don't think so.

How then does Catholic social teaching confront the question of immigration, broadly speaking, and illegal immigration more specifically?

The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church structures a discussion of "immigration" by placing it in the section under the "right to work," a fundamental human right affirmed by the Second Vatican Council in its Apostolic Constitution Gaudium et Spes. It notes that "in most cases...immigrants fill a labor need which would otherwise remain unfilled in sectors and territories where the local workforce is insufficient or unwilling to engage in the work in question." It then calls for host countries to be vigilant to protect against the exploitation of laborers, to treat them with "equity and balance," to strive to integrate them into society, to defend the right of immigrants to be reunited with their families, and to promote work opportunities for them.

To my knowledge, however, the Compendium does not suggest that the principle of rule of law should be subordinated somehow to the exigencies of the above mentioned rights. SB 1070 does no injustice to an illegal immigrant forced to forfeit his presence in the U.S. even when that means a temporary separation from family members already here. Such an eventuality is -- for any illegal alien -- a foreseeable potential consequence of breaking the law; responsibility for the attendant hardships brought about by such a breakup rests squarely on the shoulders of the illegal alien, not on the community where he resides and into which he has patently failed to integrate through the observance of the law.

To be sure, ideal immigration laws will uphold the principle of rule of law while taking into account the impracticality and imprudence of simply deporting thousands of illegal aliens who have already integrated themselves into the U.S. work force. On this score, SB 1070 is perhaps an imperfect law, but its measured application under the rubric of "reasonable suspicion" does not, in principle, harm the common good or constitute an affront to justice or personal dignity.

That said, it is by now obvious that SB 1070 is nothing less than an act of legislative exasperation in the face of federal policies which have failed miserably to protect state borders and impede the flow of drug traffic through the State. We might hope that SB 1070 can serve in the long run to catalyze the push for effective and just national immigration policies -- policies that will deal effectively with our porous national borders; get at the roots of drug and human trafficking; and lower barriers to immigration to those persons who honestly seek to work in the U.S. and integrate into American society abiding by the rule of law.

The Difference God Makes

Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0500

By Father Thomas Berg

Last week I initiated some reflections on evangelization based on Francis Cardinal George's new book The Difference God Makes.

As I noted, the seminal point of the entire book is that all human persons - and in a particularly transcendent way, the baptized - are beings in relation. We simply cannot hope to invite others to the communion - communio - that is the Church if they are unable to grasp how, from the moment of their own conception, they exist in a radical relatedness to a world which is at the same time creation and gift, and to the human family on multiple levels of relation. It is this understanding of our being-in-relation which can overcome modern radical individualism and open hearts to a profound understanding of their place in a God-given, person-centered cosmos, in which God himself has become incarnate to invite all human persons into intimate communion with God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

The Cardinal believes that renewed meditation on this profound truth can also have a significant impact on our ability to evangelize American culture. On that point, allow me to summarize some of the Cardinal's more salient points. First, he makes an observation early on in the book which deserves the attention of any American Catholic who consciously assumes the responsibility of evangelization. His Eminence observes:

A faith that demands that culture change is sometimes called "countercultural." The adjective is unfortunate if it leads believers to see themselves on one side, and their culture on another. Our culture is as much in us as we are in it... The evangelizer begins by taking responsibility for the culture to be evangelized.

In other words, while 'in the world, but not of the world', the evangelizing, committed American Catholic embraces his culture, understands its roots, and works with and from within that culture to imbue it with the message of Jesus Christ.

In The Difference God Makes, Cardinal George actually proposes an outline of a plan for

1. Love deeply and prayerfully. "A program for evangelizing American culture... begins, continues and ends with love for the people and their culture." The people we evangelize must be in our prayers; and he notes that prayer itself evangelizes "by introducing a rhythm that opens daily life to the transcendent."

2. Be present in the public square. The evangelizer of culture will look for the places where significant conversations take place: in other words, the multiple forums and formats of the public square.

3. Return to reason. American Catholics need to enlarge their culture's appreciation of human reason. "A shriveled intellect," affirms the Cardinal, "fails to recognize its natural ability to seek a transcendent God." This has also been a constant theme in the thought of Pope Benedict who refers to this phenomenon as the "self-limitation of reason." The Holy Father has cogently observed that, left to itself, the further our understanding of reason becomes impoverished, the more we conceptually distance ourselves from the Creator, and the greater the danger that we will end by destroying ourselves.

4. Imbue essential relationships with Christian message. "Because the dominant culture in the United States privileges voluntary relationships to the detriment of others, the evangelizer works to strengthen relations that are given rather than chosen: family, race, linguistic group, the land, and nation itself."

5. Purify our sense of mission. Beyond service-oriented expressions of Christian mission, we must challenge our culture on an intellectual plane to honestly confront the possibility of a transcendent truth - religious truth. We must seek to foster a culture in which the proposition of such truths is truly welcomed in the public square.

Finally, the Cardinal observes, with obvious realism, that "evangelizers need a broad vision and strength for the long haul." Evangelizing culture is, in the end, a contemplative activity. "The dialogue between Catholic faith and American culture takes place in the media, in the schools and the marketplace, and in the public square," observes the Cardinal, "but it begins in the heart of every American Catholic who loves both faith and country."

How are Christians to Engage the Culture?

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0500

By Father Thomas Berg

Whether it is opposing Obamacare provisions for federally funded abortions, fighting to curb embryo-destructive research, protecting women from biomedical research that would exploit them for their eggs, or struggling to reawaken consciences to the evils of abortion, in vitro fertilization, and contraception: these are touchstone instances in which committed pro-life Catholics engage the "culture of death."

Perhaps we have not thought enough about how we are to engage that culture. A new book can help us on that count.

I had the opportunity of late to read most of Francis Cardinal George's The Difference God Makes. Its 342 pages are drawn from conferences and lectures given over the past several years, all centered on "a Catholic vision of faith, communion, and culture" as the subtitle has it. [Note to potential reader: while generally accessible to the informed Catholic reader, this tome is not light reading; the Cardinal moves from metaphysics, to the history of Western ideas, to ecclesiology, to Trinitarian theology, to the thought of John Paul II, Hans Urs von Balthazar and more.]

The seminal insight which informs the entire book is that all human beings -- but in a transcendent and singular way the baptized -- are beings-in-relation. And that, in a word, is the 'difference God makes': He creates us profoundly -- metaphysically -- in relation to himself and others.

Consequently, the Cardinal holds that a renewed meditation on this truth can be of great help in overcoming the maladies that befall our culture, especially due to our Enlightenment inspired hyper-individualism.

How do such considerations have a bearing on evangelization, and more importantly, on pre-evangelization? For starters, let's explore just one of the important applications suggested by the Cardinal.

The world to be evangelized understands itself as a conglomerate of single -- if you will -- Cartesian individuals seeking their own individual pleasures and preferences, expecting government to allow and ensure maximum pursuit of those pleasures, with minimum restraint (except for consensually and legally determined limitations on personal liberty).

Such a conception of self gives rise to a supposed thoroughly secular space in which religious questions and concerns are too often unwelcome and perceived of as antagonistic to individual pursuits. That secular space -- the 'naked public square' as the late Richard John Neuhaus called it -- presupposes this thoroughly modern conception of self in which a "private and interior dimension... can be cleanly distinguished from the public" domain as the Cardinal points out.

On such a vision of things, the classical and Christian understanding of freedom becomes transformed into the secular notion of 'autonomy' which drives the pursuit of personal preference and is perceived of as existing above and beyond and isolated from the created world, ungrounded in a given state of truth and meaning. So much so, that it is today considered a veritable "right" of autonomous individuals to "define" their own reality and their own meaning. The self exists apart from the truth of 'how things are' in reality.

Consequently, when attempting to evangelize a world of autonomous selves, and to propose the truths of Christian faith, our efforts are easily perceived of as uncomfortably invasive, if not entirely threatening. As the Cardinal aptly points out, "truth -- once the domain of human flourishing, has become the perceived and arch-obstacle to the exercise of autonomy...Now any and every truth claim puts personal freedom in jeopardy." Indeed, as he further notes, "the culture of death is none other than that 'world' generated by the separation between freedom and truth."

If evangelization of such a culture is to be effective, we must understand that it is incumbent upon us to present a vision of human life and civil order which constitutes an attractive and compelling alternative to the modern ethos that has ruptured freedom (understood as autonomy) from truth, and which has hyper-focused on individualism.

In The Difference God Makes, Cardinal George actually proposes an outline of a plan for evangelization which would seek to accomplish just that. It is based on the core task of helping humanity rediscover the essential related-nesswhich characterizes human existence at its metaphysical roots. I hope to explore that plan in greater detail next week.

In Vitro Fertilization - Why Not?: A refresher on the Church's teaching

Tue, 06 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0500

By Father Thomas Berg

The faceoff a couple of weeks ago between the Catholic Healthcare Association and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops over the senate healthcare bill underscored the reality of deep-seated disagreements and confusion over Catholic teaching on key moral issues. Of the many we could list, perhaps no other has been so under-taught and consequently misunderstood than the Church's stance on in vitro fertilization (IVF).

The Catholic Church teaches that IVF is morally illicit without exception, even when the couple uses their own egg and sperm, and without super-ovulation of the mother or the creation of multiple embryos for implantation. Catholics and non-Catholics alike have struggled to understand this moral teaching and wonder how the Church can condemn a medical procedure aimed at bringing about new human lives.

The answers lies in even deeper reasons for this moral teaching which reach down into the very core of what it means to be husband and wife. The 1987 Instruction Donum Vitae (DV) by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith contains the Church's most complete articulation to date of those reasons.

(1) First we must begin with marriage, the exclusive and permanent one-flesh union of a man and woman. Marital love, by its very nature, tends toward a two-fold fruition: toward the ever deeper, loving union of the spouses, and the unfolding of that love in the procreation of new human life.

The moral significance of these two dimensions - the procreative and the unitive dimensions of marital love - becomes most clearly manifest in marital sexual intercourse. In this context, it becomes easier to understand why the unitive and procreative dimensions of marital intercourse may never be intentionally separated.

Such was the core teaching of Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae. Human beings cause themselves and others grave harm when they sever the "unbreakable connection" between the unitive and procreative dimensions of marital sexual intercourse.

Consequently, as explained in DV, it is morally wrong for married couples or anyone to attempt to generate human life outside of, or apart from, the act of marital sexual intercourse because to do so severs those dimensions: in IVF, procreation takes place in a Petri dish, apart from the unitive dimension of conjugal act.

(2) A second argument is based on considerations of the dignity of the child conceived by these means. DV argues that bringing a child into existence as a product of a technique is to render that child an object. Children brought into the world through IVF are arguably not generated, but manufactured. While the couple provides the 'materials' (ovum and sperm) for the creation of the child, it is a laboratory technician who brings about a new human life in a laboratory dish. The Church further teaches, that in light of this same human dignity, every human being possess a right to be "conceived and born within marriage and from marriage."

(3) A further argument against IVF has to do with the consequences of the procedure. There are well documented health risks -- which have on occasion been lethal -- to women who undergo super-ovulation for the retrieval of their eggs for IVF purposes. Add to this, as reported in Scientific American last February, mounting scientific evidence points to the troubling fact of genetic abnormalities in children born through recourse to IVF. At present, some three million IVF children have come into the world since the procedure was first used in 1978. While most are healthy, studies indicate that they are at risk for certain kinds of birth defects and for the onset later in life of obesity, hypertension and type 2 diabetes. Finally, even if these risks were nonexistent, IVF still normally brings about the grave injustice of leaving an orphaned population of unwanted embryos to the absurd fate of frozen storage and eventual destruction.

The Church fully supports the endeavors of physicians such as Dr. Thomas Hilgers, director of the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction. His natural methods of overcoming infertility, known as NaPro Technology, have helped hundreds of couples to achieve a pregnancy without recourse to illicit means. While no couple has a 'right' to a child, they should be afforded all the means licit and available to help them achieve a pregnancy to the extent possible.

The Long Ascent to Calvary

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0500

By Father Thomas Berg

At Holy Week, the Church throughout the world, rosery through liturgy and personal meditation, accompanies Christ on the long, arduous road to Calvary. Last week, for all those whose lives have been scarred directly or indirectly by the crime of clergy sexual abuse, that road became even more onerous.

A front page story in the New York Times last Monday presented an account of a group of men who were sexually abused as children by the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy at a school for the deaf in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

This story was preceded by allegations that the Pope had mishandled an abusive priest when he headed the Archdiocese of Munich-Freising. It was followed last Friday by a statement from the Legionaries of Christ - a religious congregation to which I belonged for twenty-three years - admitting and recognizing that its founder, Fr. Marcial Maciel, had sexually abused seminarians for years and fathered at least three children. All of this has contributed to a maelstrom of controversy around Pope Benedict, and the reopening of the terrible wounds of so many victims of this abuse.

There is no denying that the Church's handling of cases of sexual abuse and pederast priests was for years more than deplorable. The acts of these priests have been criminal. Changes in the manner of handling these tragedies have come far too late.

Objectivity and intellectual honesty require us to insist, however, that those changes have nonetheless come.

As George Weigel put it in an article appearing yesterday in First Things:

Reprehensible patterns of clerical sexual abuse and misgovernance by the Church's bishops came to glaring light in the U.S. in 2002 ...That the Catholic Church was slow to recognize the scandal of sexual abuse within the household of faith, and the failures of governance that led to the scandal being horribly mishandled, has been frankly admitted - by the bishops of the United States in 2002, and by Pope Benedict XVI... It took too long to get there, to be sure; but we are there.

As for the New York Times article, numerous commentators have pointed out significant inaccuracies and omissions. Fr. Raymond D'Souza notes among other problems:

[Documents made available at the NYT website supporting the story] show that the canonical trial or penal process against Father Murphy was never stopped by anyone. In fact, it was only abandoned days before Father Murphy died. Cardinal Ratzinger never took a decision in the case, according to the documents. His deputy, Archbishop Tarcisio Bertone, suggested... that more expeditious means be used to remove him from all ministry...The charge that Cardinal Ratzinger did anything wrong is unsupported by the documentation on which the story was based.

As for Pope Benedict's broader role in changing the Church's way of handling abuse cases, a recent article by John Allen in the National Catholic Reporter describes a Cardinal Ratzinger who, after the CDF took charge of handling the Church's abuse cases in 2001, became "a Catholic Eliot Ness" in terms of handling high profile abuse cases. And in a follow up op-ed in the New York Times on Sunday, he affirmed:

The outside world is outraged, rightly, at the church's decades of ignoring the problem. But those who understand the glacial pace at which change occurs in the Vatican understand that Benedict, admittedly late in the game but more than any other high-ranking official, saw the gravity of the situation and tried to steer a new course.

And the Pope's recent pastoral letter to the members of the Church in Ireland, though widely criticized by victims groups and the secular press, attests to that new course. Shockingly blunt at times, it represents a real break with previous protocol.

***

In my own life, I have been given at least a small glimpse of the unspeakable hell that victims of priest sexual abuse have lived. The rage, and raw emotions, the sense of crushing betrayal that I personally felt upon discovering the double-life lived by the founder of my own religious congregation have afforded me that. To those victims, I pledge in this Holy Week my own acts of reparation, prayer and atonement, desiring to accompany them with eyes fixed on the triumph of Christ's resurrection, and on the Kingdom "where every tear will be wiped away."