Recently my colleague E. Christian Brugger called attention to the threats to the Culture of Life posed by “Transhumanism.” After I read his thoughtful and thought-provoking article, I was reminded of the threats to “culture of life” issues and to the Christian faith by “Virtual Reality.”

Introduction
A short time ago my friend Mark Adler, a convert from Judaism to the Catholic Church and manager of the helpful Web site Christendom-awake.org, posted an essay “The Role of the Large Family” (http://www.christendom-awake.org). In his essay, originally written in 1987, revised in 1993 and again in June 2010, he noted that some fifty years ago relatively large families were not uncommon. I can bear witness to this myself; my older sister who was 21 years old when she married in 1947, had seven children, and after I married in 1957 my wife Patricia and I were blessed with seven children between 1958 and 1971. Today a family of 3 or 4 children is regarded as a pretty large family. There are many socioeconomic and cultural reasons for this, of which most of us are well aware. But the truth is that children are a blessing and not a burden; large families are needed for the good, socioeconomic and cultural, of our planet.  I will first debunk the falsehood spread by population controllers and then show the need for and blessings of a large family.

21st century Americans—and others, particularly in the “developed” nations—are deeply divided over issues central to the culture of life: contraception, the generation of human life, abortion, the care of seriously handicapped infants and of the dying, the meaning of sex, marriage, the family, and the kind of home best suited to help children grow into caring and responsible adults. There are many reasons supporting culture of life positions, but there is a need to show why these reasons are good and true and to help others see why. Moreover, sometimes advocates of the culture of life can and do disagree among themselves and/or find themselves perplexed about what is the right and good thing to do. Is there any way to resolve these disputes and overcome doubts?  

In an attempt to keep pace with the advocacy journalism of Time magazine, its rival liberal weekly Newsweek recently published an unflattering piece on the Catholic Church entitled “Banned by the Pope.”  It was written by, of all people, Rev. Charles E. Curran, now 80 years old, the controversial leader of the 1968 dissent against Humanae Vitae.

Should we adopt euthanasia to maximize our supply of available organs for transplantation?

For several decades transplant medicine has suffered from a critical shortfall in the supply of organs needed for patients with organ failure.  As a result thousands of patients die each year on waiting lists.  Presently there are over 100,000 patients awaiting donor organs in the U.S.; in 2007 alone, 18 patients per day died waiting for deceased donor organs.  The problem has given rise to significant milestones in end-of-life medicine.  For example, the shift in the 1960s from diagnosing human death in terms of the cessation of heart and lung function (cardio-pulmonary death) to neurological criteria (whole brain death) was motivated by a desire to preserve more transplantable organs.  Another idea that’s been debated over the years is “organ conscription.”  This very month, lawmakers in New York introduced an “opt out” organ conscription bill that would presume that all patients are organ donors unless they explicitly opt out on their driver’s license. [1]  Those of us whose organs are more or less healthy may not appreciate the distress that patients and their families feel knowing that their lives could be saved if only their names reach the top of the wait list.

It is not uncommon for parents of children or the care-givers responsible for older but incompetent persons to be asked by their doctors to allow these “voiceless” [1] subjects to take part in “non-therapeutic” experiments, i.e., experiments that are not designed to be of benefit to the children or incompetent persons but rather to gain knowledge that may be of great benefit to others. Such permission is called “proxy” or “surrogate” consent.

In this piece, we would like to define the condition to which the term "vegetative state" refers, discuss certain facts about the tragic condition, introduce key ethical principles for analyzing duties that we have to persons in it, and update our readers on the current state of Catholic teaching on providing food and water to patients in a persistent vegetative state.

The ideas of the young international movement known as "transhumanism" are beginning to characterize the thinking of an increasing number of clinicians and bioethicists. I thought therefore that our readers might profit from a brief introduction to them.

Introduction
My question is whether everyone has a unique, personal vocation. To prepare the way for answering this question I will first summarize what Christians believe about their personal vocation to follow Christ. It is likely that a majority of our readers are Christians, but I apologize to our non-Christian allies in the struggle to make ours a culture of life for some specifically Christian reflections at the beginning of this essay. I do so because as I hope then to show we can speak meaningfully of a unique personal vocation for everyone, including non-Christians.

Frequently elderly people like me (I will soon be 82 years old), some suffering from an assortment of health problems, are heard to say that they don’t want to be a burden on their families, especially their spouses and children. And there is surely some truth in this. But rightly understood—and I hope to make it so here—I want to be a burden to my loved ones.

In his eulogy for Karl Marx deceased on March 14, 1883, his friend and fellow revolutionary Friederich Engels wishfully prophesized that Marx’s name “will endure through the ages, and so also will his work.”  Hardly could he have imagined that his friend’s social vision would suffuse common political dynamics in the United States a little over a century later; that the eminent Speaker of the House would play his handmaid and the powerful President his dupe.  The disaster that played out last weekend set the high water mark of Marx’s influence on our great country.  If we don’t see this we won’t understand recent events.  His name wasn’t mentioned and his rhetoric wasn’t explicit.  But his vision was alive: a reckless mendacity in the pursuit of goals; an almost savage disregard for democracy; a savioristic reliance on politics to transform the social order; and a forceful use of naked power as the principle of social change. 

In an earlier piece posted here I noted that many elderly people, when interviewed by the Chicago Tribune, were horrified at the thought of lingering unconsciousness. As one of them said, "My pleasure is in being part of the human race. If that's gone, if I can't interact with other people, even if they could give me nutrition and keep me hydrated, I'm not interested in being preserved." I also noted that for many years I shared this point of view and thought that using various tubes to feed and hydrate permanently unconscious persons, i.e., those in the “permanent vegetative state,” was morally repugnant and imposed cruel burdens on them and their families.

 Health Care Action Alert 

We have a pro-life statesman in Washington.

And he’s a Democrat.

Why burden persons in the “vegetative” state and their families by keeping them “alive” by force feeding them through various kinds of tubes?
On February 8 the Chicago Tribune interviewed elderly Catholics who were horrified at the thought of lingering unconsciousness. "My pleasure is in being part of the human race," said one of them. "If that's gone, if I can't interact with other people, even if they could give me nutrition and keep me hydrated, I'm not interested in being preserved." This reaction is quite common and reflects the views, I think, of most ordinary men and women. I believe that most ordinary persons think that it is ridiculous to keep persons in the “persistent vegetative state” alive by “force feeding” them through various kinds of tubes. They believe that doing so is futile and in addition imposes horrible burdens on those kept “alive” in this way and on their families. I fully appreciate why so many people think this way. I did so for many years myself. I will tell you why I did in a future piece for the Culture of Life Foundation. In this one I will summarize recent scientific studies that bear on some of the reasons why I changed my mind.

Working at home last week, I heard my son’s voice penetrating the French doors of my office shouting, “You IDIOT!”  I gently called out, “Son, please come here.”  Knowing he’s not allowed to call his sister an idiot, he dutifully and somewhat nervously entered my office.  I got down on my knees to look him in the eyes at his own height, took his little hands lightly in my own, and said to my three year old boy: “Son, did you call your sister an idiot?”  He looked at me with his perfectly round eyes perched atop two perfectly round cheeks and centered in his perfectly round head, and said with solemn confidence, “No.”  I said, “You didn’t just shout ‘idiot’ to her in the kitchen?”  Unblinking, he repeated his confident denial.  With my disciplinary back to the wall, I decided to repeat firmly the family’s negative norm—“No call Maymay,” (his sister, Mary) “an idiot… Yes, daddy?”  “Yes, daddy,” he replied.  And I excused him.

Pro-Abortion Health Care Bill is Not Dead.

Three troubling facts you should know about:  

By now the whole world (and several worlds beyond) has heard the news that because of the upset election in Massachusetts yesterday, the Senate Democrats have lost their supermajority.  This is indeed extraordinary news, especially for critics of universal health care.

This is the subject of Chapter 3 of Meilaender’s Bioethics: A Primer for Christians (2nd ed. 2005). I devote one essay to this matter because in my judgment the chapter, while excellent in many respects, includes a defense of abortion in some very limited circumstances—when necessary to save the mother’s life and when the pregnancy results from forcible or incestuous sexual relations. Not only do I disagree with Meilaender here I also think that his defense of abortion in these circumstances is not compatible with his own basic convictions as expressed in other parts of the same chapter.

Introduction. This first part of a two-part essay addresses the matters identified in the title above. Part II will examine the thought of leading proponents of the “new biology’s” eugenic program.

Historical background
Definition and status during 19th, early 20th, and late 20th centuries
Eugenics is based on the  belief that it is possible to improve the human species by means such as discouraging reproduction by persons having genetic defects or presumed to have inheritable undesired traits (negative eugenics) or encouraging reproduction by persons presumed to have inheritable desirable traits (positive eugenics). Among early advocates of eugenics in the 19th century were Francis Dalton and Charles Darwin in England, and Margaret Sanger in the United States. A strong opponent of eugenics in the early 20th century was Gilbert Keith Chesterton, whose Eugenics and Other Evils unmasked this movement’s inhuman philosophy.  Hitler’s program of eugenics brought the movement into disrepute in the middle of the 20th century.

ETHICAL QUESTIONS A CATHOLIC SHOULD ASK

Dear Friends of a Culture of Life,

We think that significant moral questions are raised by the universal health debate and would like to formulate several for you.  Our purpose is not to draw a one-size-fits-all conclusion about the merits of all current health care bills.  These raise complex questions and there are reasons to support and/or oppose various pieces of different bills. 

The Catholic Church has affirmed for some time a right to a minimum of decent, humane and accessible health care.[1]  This does not imply that a nationalized health care system is a good idea, nor its establishment a fundamental right.  But it does imply that Catholics should work for some kind of improvement or reform in the current system on behalf of those who cannot afford adequate care.

First, I will present Pope Benedict’s teaching on life issues in the encyclical and then offer comments thereon.

The Pope’s Teaching
Pope Benedict XVI addresses issues related to the sanctity of human life and human sexuality in depth in three different areas of his new social encyclical, Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth).
In Chapter 2, titled “Human Development in Our Time,” the Pope begins by saying: “One of the most striking aspects of development in the present day is the important question of respect for life (emphasis in original), which cannot in any way be detached from questions concerning the development of peoples. It is an aspect which has acquired increasing prominence in recent times, obliging us to broaden our concept of poverty and underdevelopment to include questions connected with the acceptance of life, especially in cases where it is impeded in a variety of ways (emphasis added) (no. 28, 1). He then goes on to declare:

The Difference Between a “Right” and a “Liberty” and the Significance of This Difference in Debates over Public Policy on Abortion and Euthanasia

There is a great deal of talk in our society today about “rights.” Frequently, people talk about rights as a two-term relationship between a person (or persons) and a thing or an action. Thus pro-life people affirm the right of the unborn to life, whereas NOW and Planned Parenthood claim the right of women to have an abortion, workers their right to a just wage, smokers their right to smoke, some infertile couples their right to have a child, etc.

Joseph D’Agostinio says that Mosher, in his book Population Control, Real Costs, Illusory Benefits, “provides the material to counteract the overpopulation myth still dominant in the mainstream media,” and declares that his book “should be read by all those who want to know why thriving human populations are reasons to rejoice rather than fear” (in The Washington Times, July 27, 2008). I fear that, unfortunately, the major media will simply ignore this compelling book, one whose message sorely needs to be heeded and whose advice implemented for the good of our nation and of the whole world.

Chaput, Charles J., O.F.M. Cap., Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life. New York: Doubleday, 2008. 258 pp.

This timely book by the Archbishop of Denver is of crucial importance for all American Catholics, who should all be struggling to combat the “culture of death” and develop the “culture of life.” One of his major reasons for writing the book was that he was becoming increasingly tired “of the church and her people being told to be quiet on public issues that urgently concern us” (p. 3). He wrote it to challenge “all of us who call ourselves Catholic…to recover what it really means to be ‘Catholic.’…[and] to find again the courage to be Catholic Christians first—not in opposition to our country, but to serve its best interests” (p. 7). Although speaking as an American Catholic to American Catholics, he hopes “many other people of good heart will see the importance of these issues and find value in these pages” (pp. 6-7).

Initiative 1000 in Washington State would legalize assisted suicide, permitting a doctor to give a lethal overdose to a
patient if the doctor feels that the patient is likely to die within six months.

!!Action Item!!

Stand with us in support of the University of San Diego's decision to keep its Theology Department free from heresy.  It was the right decision, and shows the kind of academic leadership Pope Benedict asked Catholic educators to demonstrate when he visited the United States earlier this year.  Read more to sign the petition.

Although they were misleading, Senator Pelosi’s comments on Meet the Press were not entirely incorrect.  Responding to Tom Brokaw, who asked: “Help me out here, Madame Speaker.  When does life begin?”  Pelosi replied, “the doctors of the church have not been able to make that definition…  I don’t think anyone can tell you when life begins—human life.  As I say, the Catholic Church for centuries has been discussing this.”  When Brokaw countered saying, “The Catholic Church at the moment feels very strongly that it begins at the point of conception.”  Pelosi replied: “over the history of the Church, this is an issue of controversy.”  Strictly speaking, she is right; the precise moment of the beginning of human life was disputed by theologians for centuries.  John Connery’s classic work on the development of the Roman Catholic teaching on abortion makes this clear (see John Connery, S.J., Abortion: The Development of the Roman Catholic Perspective, Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1977).  The controversy concerned the question of the moment of ensoulment. A centuries old position, relying on Aristotelian embryology, was that the human soul was infused by God forty to eighty days after conception, depending on the sex of the fetus.  Some theologians held that before this time the fetus was not human.  Based upon the best empirical evidence available at the time, this was not unreasonable to hold.

 
“[T]he first thing I will do as President is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.”
Senator and Presidential Candidate Barack Obama
July 17, 2007, Address to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund

Just over a year ago, the public debate over abortion was irrevocably altered.  In the landmark Gonzales v. Carhart decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the federal ban on partial-birth abortion and, more importantly, abdicated, at least in part, its role as the “National Abortion Control Board.”

Contemporary Western societies such as ours are marked by what Professor Robert George has called the “Clash of Orthodoxies.” The dominant view among the elites of those societies can be, I believe, summed up in the slogan, rooted in the culture of death, that “No unwanted person ought ever to be born.” Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, offers Catholics (and in my judgment others of good will and open mind) a real challenge: to transform the world in which they live so that it is dedicated to the truth, central to the culture of life and civilization of love, that “no person, whether born or unborn, weak or strong, is to be unwanted, i.e., unloved.”

Denise M. Burke is the Vice President & Legal Director, Americans United for Life

Over the last few decades, abortion advocates and others have launched a concerted campaign to force hospitals, healthcare institutions, health insurers, and individual healthcare providers to provide, refer for, or pay for elective abortions, abortifacient drugs, contraceptives, assisted reproductive procedures such as in vitro fertilization, and sterilizations.  Their determined effort to eviscerate the concept of individual conscience and the freedom to follow one’s religious, moral or ethical beliefs from the medical profession has resulted in the following:

Translated by William E. May
Michael J. McGivney Professor of Moral Theology
John Paul II Institute for Studies on Marriage and Family at
The Catholic University of America

Author, Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life

Michael J. McGivney Professor of Moral Theology at the Pontifical John Paul II Institute at The Catholic University of America and Culture of Life Foundation Contributor

“Without dissecting in detail the ethical dilemma brought on by using vaccines originally developed from induced abortions, what are we as faithful Catholics to do? It is important to note that some countries have produced and are using vaccines derived from nonhuman tissue, such as the Japanese rubella vaccine grown with the use of rabbit kidney cells. Unfortunately, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) does not approve the use of these particular vaccines in the United States.”

As medical technology advances and the body of medical knowledge increases, the amount of medical information on the ability of a fetus to experience pain continues to grow as well. These scientific advancements have prompted medical, legal, and ethical dialogue on the following questions: At what stage in fetal development can a fetus experience pain, and what impact would this information have on women and abortion law in the United States?

"The Dictatorship of Relativism"

By Most Reverend Robert C. Morlino – Bishop of Madison

April 7, 2006

Bishop Morlino brilliantly explains the metaphor, 'The Dictatorship of Relativism' coined by Pope Benedict XVI, how it flourishes in our contemporary culture and how it undergirds the Culture of Death.

Officials at the National Institutes of Health conceded that the data necessary to replicate a New Zealand study linking abortion with depression do not exist in America. The admission came in a reply to a letter from Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN) seeking the NIH's "advice on searching out the best US research data on the effects of abortion on women in the United States."

Apparently responding to Catholic bishops who spoke out in 2004 about the obligations of Catholics in public life to oppose legal abortion, 55 Catholic Democratic members of Congress have released a "Statement of Principles." Though the letter attempts to declare the signatories strong support for the dignity of life the document refuses to call for outlawing abortion and instead declares that "we acknowledge and accept the tension that comes with being in disagreement with the Church in some areas."

We face an unavoidable problem once we accept the creation of a subcategory of human beings which we call "persons."