The perils of blogging morality

It's quite often the quick posts that cause the reaction.

Little did I know on Sunday morning when I typed out a hurried post while I ate my breakfast before I left home for the day, that condemning IVF as totally immoral would have the usual suspects calling me sick, and new commenters telling me I'm being judgemental and real Christians don't do that, and then those that leapt on the "against nature" comment, trying to make it more that it was.

Right, real Christians stay silent when couples mistakenly think that it's perfectly fine to buy a woman's eggs, possibly causing her to become infertile herself, and use those eggs to artificially create children, most of whom never get the chance to be born because most women just want to bear one child, not twenty. So, the excess become expendable. And it's the right thing to not condemn this, to not point out the immorality of treating children like production line goods.  That sounds like an inverted morality, where the good stay silent so the evil and the ignorant can go about their merry way.

I've had a commenter tell me he is Catholic and that he sees nothing wrong with IVF and that his parents had him artificially created through IVF, as if what I've said somehow casts doubt over his right to be alive. To him, I say, what's done is done. You're alive, you're here. Your life is miraculous. I do not condemn you or your parents. However, if you are Catholic and your parents are Catholic, they absolutely have to go to a priest and confess how they conceived you. Even if an act is done in ignorance, it's still important for them to gain absolution. You'll see from the quotes below, that IVF being immoral is not just my personal opinion, it is the position of the Catholic Church:

The "Catechism of the Catholic Church," quoting from the Vatican document Donum Vitae, (Instruction on respect for human life in its origin and on the dignity of procreation) asserts: "Techniques that entail the dissociation of husband and wife by the intrusion of a person other than the couple (donation of sperm or ovum, surrogate uterus) are gravely immoral. These techniques infringe on the child's right to be born of a father and mother known to him, and bound to each other by marriage; moreover, these methods betray the spouses' right to become a father and a mother only through each other" (#2376). Indeed, in the act of procreation the spouses are called to cooperate with God; therefore, the Church teaches that a child's coming-to-be should be sought only as a fruit of the spouses' personal loving union in the marital act.

The "Catechism of the Catholic Church" also addresses those cases where the techniques employed to bring about the conception involve exclusively the married couple's semen, ovum, and womb. Such techniques are "less reprehensible, yet remain morally unacceptable." They dissociate procreation from the sexual act. The act which brings the child into existence is no longer an act by which two persons (husband and wife) give themselves to one another, but one that "entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of the doctors and biologists, and establishes the domination of technology over the origin and destiny of the human person. Such a relationship of domination is in itself contrary to the dignity and equality that must be common to parents and children" (#2377).

This is one of the major problems, once a number of the other issues are moved aside, that the dignity of the person who is alive thanks to IVF is compromised.  Their creation is somewhat suspect, even though as a human being I would affirm completely their total right to be alive, there could always be a level of uncertainty on their behalf.

I'm generally a live and let live type person.  If someone condemns me for a position I have, then if I have certainty in that position, I am completely unaffected.  I am not bothered too much that Big Bruv considers me evil and pops out of the woodwork to say so at any opportunity.  I just think he has a problem that I'm not a part of.

So when people appear to overreact about a post here that is not specific about any particular person, and condemns a procedure and not the people that are involved, then I realise that there is an uncertainty within themselves that requires external validation in order to quiet the voice that they'd rather not hear.

I'm sorry, I can't help that.  I'm not going to stay silent about an immoral procedure just people can feel better about themselves.  The only one that can give them the total acceptance that they need is God Himself.  I would strongly recommend anyone who feels this way to pray to Him and asks for help.

What I do know is that every person alive today was in the mind of God from the beginning, no matter how you were conceived.  Take comfort in that.

Before I formed you in the bowels of your mother, I knew you

Priusquam te formarem in utero, novi te

(Jeremiah 1:5)