The Catholic Church on infertility

Everyone knows that the Catholic Church considers children to be “the supreme gift of marriage” – in fact the Church says “By its very nature the institution of marriage and married love is ordered to the procreation and education of the offspring and it is in them that it finds its crowning glory” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1652).  What then of married couples who struggle with infertility?  Many Catholics are not clear as to what the Church permits in this case.  If children are such a good thing, then surely medical practices to help couples conceive must be good?  If not, why not?  What are Catholics “allowed” to do about infertility?  Is this a grey area?

In fact the Church’s teachings are clear even in the face of all the scientific progress that has been made in this area and the various medical techniques available.  Any medical procedure must be evaluated in the light of the fundamental teachings of the Church’s gospel of life: 

Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception.  From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognised as having the rights of a person – among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life (CCC 2270).  This is specifically extended to embryos created in a laboratory:  “Human embryos obtained ‘in vitro’ are human beings and subjects with rights: their dignity and right to life must be respected from the first moment of their existence” (Donum Vitae I). 

Every human being is to be respected for himself, and cannot be reduced in worth to a pure and simple instrument for the advantage of others (DV I). 

Sexual intercourse has both a unitive and a procreative significance which “man on his own initiative may not break” (see CCC 2366).  This means that procreation cannot be separated out as an independent process; see point below.

Every human being is always to be accepted as a gift and blessing of God. However, from the moral point of view a truly responsible procreation vis-à-vis the unborn child must be the fruit of marriage (DV II).  Thus “the only acceptable way of conceiving a child is through sexual intercourse between a husband and wife” (Pope Benedict XVI, Pontifical Academy for Life General Assembly February 2012). 

A child is not something owed to one, but is a gift... In this area, only the child possesses genuine rights. (CCC 2378). 

Couples who discover that they are sterile suffer greatly. (CCC 2374)

Looked at in the light of these basics, most fertility treatments are easily enough understood in terms of their moral status.  The gravest difficulty with IVF is that it involves the destruction of human beings.  The woman is given a hormone to stimulate her ovaries to produce several eggs because, as the HFEA website puts it, “with more fertilised eggs, the clinic has a greater choice of embryos to use in your treatment”.  From the eggs that are successfully fertilised in the laboratory with sperm (from the woman’s partner or a donor), “the best one or two embryos” are chosen for transfer into the womb.  Remaining embryos can be frozen for the future use of this or another couple and destroyed at a later date if not used, or destroyed straight away.

As well as the destruction of human life, of course, IVF also involves conception outside of the context of sexual intercourse, and often use of sperm from a third party outside the marriage.  It should also be remembered that it has a relatively low success rate, can be catastrophically expensive and is not without medical risk.

Some Catholics, realising that IVF treatment involves the creation and destruction of “spare” embryos, ask what the problem is with techniques like GIFT (Gamete Intra-Fallopian Transfer) where the healthiest eggs and sperm harvested as above are placed together into a woman’s fallopian tubes for fertilisation to happen “naturally”, or artificial insemination using eggs and sperm from the couple only and no third party.  Especially in the case of artificial insemination where no surplus embryos are produced, they ask what the problem is.  Surely all that is happening is that a certain mechanical act is being bypassed?

This is a harder one to understand and explain, especially to non-Catholics who do not share a conviction that the two aspects of sex – procreation and intimacy – should not be artificially separated.  It is here that we need to explore the idea of the meaning of sex as the context in which a child is conceived.  Sex is an expression of the total self-giving of a man and a woman to each other, holding nothing back, with the inclusion of their fertility.  A baby is the fruit of this self-giving and thus natural conception speaks of the nature of the human being, created in, through, because of and for love.

Natural conception also speaks of the nature of the human being as an end in him/herself, a gift arising out of  the couple’s mutual love but not “something” they have a right to claim. The human person has a greater dignity than that.  For the same reason that we do not have a right to manipulate our fertility through artificial contraception, we do not have a right to “play God” through the use of artificial reproductive means to ensure a child.  We are, as Humanae Vitae prophetically claimed, “ministers not masters” of a plan bigger than us.  Once we start to regard ourselves as masters, to consider even our own biology as raw material for the use of our intellect – however worthy we feel our motives to be – and having no value or meaning inherent in itself, we are on that notorious "slippery slope".  This is why Pope Benedict XVI recently spoke (addressing the Pontifical Academy for Life General Assembly) of  “temptations leading scientists to offer unacceptable infertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization [which] include ‘easy money or, even worse, the arrogance of replacing the Creator.’  He noted that such pride endangers humanity itself.” (LifeSiteNews.com, 27 Feb).

So is that it?  Does the Church say something about the “great suffering” of infertile couples and then, feeling she has done the sympathy bit, get on with her scientist-bashing?  Not at all.  The human person’s rational intellect and creativity are gifts from God and reflections in us of God’s image.  The Pope also said, when making the remarks above, that medical research and treatment is “scientifically the correct approach to the issue of infertility,” but that it must respect the natural moral context for the creation of children.  He expressed fears that concentrating resources on the development of methods of assisted reproduction had led to a situation where “scientism and the logic of profit seem to dominate the field of infertility and human procreation, to the point of limiting many other areas of research”.

This view was echoed, on the same occasion, by Dr Thomas Hilgers (who opened the Pope Paul VI Institute for the Study of Human Reproduction in 1985 to develop infertility treatments which respect the dignity of human life).  Hilgers remarked, “Were it not for the race to create children artificially, we probably would have had a cure for infertility by now.”

So what of ethical fertility research?  It exists and its fruits can be found in NaPro Technology which, in the words of Chelsea Zimmerman, “can and has helped women successfully achieve and maintain pregnancy without having to resort to manufacturing their children in petri dishes or inject themselves with a stranger’s sperm. Using this technology, couples respect and cooperate with [God’s] divine plan for the creation of human life rather than taking the matters of life in their own hands and forcing God to cooperate with them.” It works with the woman’s natural cycle to identify and treat various causes of infertility and recurrent miscarriage and is available in the UK; see http://lifefertilitycare.co.uk/

For those needing persuasion, Chelsea links to a page which lists peer-reviewed academic papers supporting NaPro’s efficacy: http://www.naprotechnology.com/references.htm

I close with some more words from Chelsea, because I can’t put the case better than she does.  “To those who struggle with infertility, the Catholic Church is not your enemy. She wants what is best for both you and the children you so desire...  Never forget that no prayers go unanswered and all suffering, given over to the Lord bears fruit in some form... Whether you seek to welcome a new member to your family through (ethical) fertility treatment or even the always loving option of adoption,  remember that children are a gift, not a right. Keep the focus of your marriage on you and your spouse giving and receiving the total gift of self while loving God and trusting Him for the timing of children – if they should ever come.”  

"The Myth of Sex"

I came across this today at Reflections of a Paralytic.  It is by Tim Muldoon and can be found at Pantheos, where Tim is described as "a Catholic theologian, author, speaker, and retreat leader specializing in the ways that Church traditions speak to contemporary life. He has written extensively on the themes of young adult spirituality, Ignatian spirituality, theology in postmodernity, sexuality and marriage, and adoption issues".

This is the myth of all myths: that people could use each other and still remember what compassion and tenderness looked and felt like.
 
In the beginning, the LORD created man and woman in his image.

He blessed them and made them fruitful. Among his many gifts he gave man the gift of physical strength to work, and he gave woman the gift of compassion to cultivate relationships.

Together, man and woman learned each other's gifts. Woman developed strength and offered her work as an act of compassion. Man learned compassion with his wife and child.

And they and their offspring numbered like the stars in the heavens, and they were happy. And the LORD saw that it was good.

But the serpent, the most cunning of creatures, was jealous of their happiness, and he resolved to put enmity between the men and the women.

So he whispered in the ear of the men as they lay asleep: "You are a man. Use your power to control the woman."

And he whispered in the ear of the women as they lay asleep: "You are a woman. Use your body to control the man."

So the men began to use their power to control the women. They kept the women away from their work. And the women stayed at home.

And the women began to use their bodies to control the men. They seduced the men and made them do their bidding.

And the men became rivals with one another over the women.

And the women became rivals with one another over the men.

The men sought more and more power over their rivals so they could have the best women.

The women sought more and more beauty than their rivals so they could have the best men.

So the men began to fight and kill. The strongest men lay with many women, but did not know them, and did not learn compassion for them or their children. Over time, they forgot what compassion was like and wanted only to lay with the best women. But the poorest men remembered.

And the women began to seduce men and subdue them. The most beautiful lay with many men, and they too forgot what compassion was like and wanted only to control the men. But the poorest women remembered.

And the children of the strongest men and the most beautiful women did not learn compassion. They learned only competition, and they were fierce.

These children grew into men and women who believed that the world was a battleground.

The men learned the arts of war to defeat their rivals. Their descendants learned the newer arts of war in the stock market, the boardroom, the athletic field.

The women learned the arts of seduction to defeat their rivals. They painted their faces; they bound their feet; they wore corsets. Their descendants learned the newer arts of seduction with plastic surgery and fashion.

For both the men and the women, fertility became the enemy of their lust for power. Instead of learning compassion, they learned more and more how to subdue their fertility. And when their fertility was fruitful, they killed the children they conceived.

But the poor men and women remembered the original gifts.

The men did not learn the arts of war. They worked with the women and became more compassionate. They gave thanks for their shared work, their shared fertility, and their shared compassion.

The women did not learn the arts of seduction. They worked with the men and became strong. They too gave thanks for their shared work, their shared fertility, and their shared compassion.

And the LORD said of them: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven."

Sex, idols and the meaning of life

So much of the abortion debate has been made necessary by the skewed way in which we, today, view sex and the human body.  Sex, it seems, is not only a “right” – any time, any place, anywhere, like a nice Martini – but the ultimate form of fulfilment and pleasure.  It’s the end goal of just about everything.  Why buy shampoo?  So that you can toss your super shiny hair around and bring square-jawed male models to their knees.  Why shave?  So that a glamorous girl in a towel will undulate up to you as you gaze in the bathroom mirror and drape herself suggestively against you.  Why keep clean and nice-smelling?  So that persons of the opposite sex will fly through shop windows and glue themselves to your body... And so it goes on. 

It’s not surprising, then, that the very idea of suggesting abstinence to young people is laughed out of town.  Pardon?  It’s obvious they’re going to “do it”, don’t be so silly.  Well, they will given the fact that we are blasting “sex is everything” at them 24 hours a day via all their senses (in other contexts, that would be called indoctrination).  And as for suggesting someone should embrace celibacy for any period of time... p-lease.  Why would their life be worth living?  The fundamental right to life is a debatable concept but the fundamental right to have sex is beyond question.

Unfortunately, of course, sex sometimes leads to pregnancy (that being a big part of what it was designed for).  And if you haven’t had sex in a context in which you would be open to nurturing a new life, then abortion so often rears its ugly and painful head.

The saddest thing is that all of the above attitudes are not usually consciously held.  They are the result of the mis-moulding of our minds and hearts over several generations.  Most women who have abortions are not hard-edged, thoughtless pleasure-seekers.  They are victims of a warped worldview that they were born into, within the terms of which they may have seen themselves as acting perfectly normally and responsibly, indeed may well have taken positive steps to do so.  The trouble is, we have got sex, its nature and its importance, way out of proportion.

I say that, but in another way sex is fundamentally, beautifully, hugely important and has foundational, earth-moving things to say about us as human beings and as men and women.  It’s just that we don’t hear it right these days.  For me, Blessed Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body (TOTB) came as a revelation in this respect.

I don’t know how to make a synopsis of such a big topic as TOTB in a paragraph – I’ve talked on it, but summarising it is a different matter!  Many people who might be reading this post will be familiar with it anyway.  Essentially, our bodies are speaking about who we are, about our fundamental vocation in life: that is, we were made to love.  Each other, and ultimately God.  That’s why we were made male and female, for “it is not good for man to be alone”.  Sex between a man and a woman is the ultimate expression, in physical terms, of this vocation; that makes it an incredibly precious and dignified, symbolic action (in terms of Catholic Christianity, in fact, it has been raised to the dignity of a sacrament through marriage, a source of divine grace like baptism or priestly ordination).  

Intrinsic to this view is that our bodies, far from being things we “have” or “own” and can dispose of as we wish, are inherently a part of us as whole people.  We are not souls in bodies, or minds that happen to have a torso and limbs at our disposal – we are a unity of spirit and flesh, or as the Catechism of the Catholic Church puts it, “in his own nature [the human being] unites the spiritual and material worlds” (CCC 355).  What we do with, or rather in, our bodies is important.  It has meaning, it speaks volumes about who and what we are, and it has a profound effect on our minds, our souls, our emotions and our wellbeing.

This way of seeing the human person is in direct contrast to many of the assumptions that underlie our modern-day thinking.  Since the not altogether appropriately-entitled “Enlightenment” of the 18th century we have progressively excluded the spiritual from human identity and seen ourselves primarily as biological entities with rational minds.  Our reason has primacy over this biology and so we can use our bodies and those of others as we will, be it genetic engineering, abortion, sex, embryonic stem cell research, whatever.  Alongside this is the tendency to regard the “person” or “self” as a psyche, a collection of feelings and emotions, which are conditioned by a number of factors such as societal pressures, and thus morality and identity tend to get defined by “how we feel” as individuals about ourselves and others. 

The union of man and woman has meaning

All this makes a lethal and rather confused cocktail of materialistic rationality and illogical subjectivity, but the taste that it leaves in the mouth is above all that of a debasement of the body.  The body is there to be used for our profit or our pleasure.  There is no value or meaning inherent in the biological because the biological is merely matter and has whatever value we as individuals assign to it.   What a contrast to the beautiful vision offered by the Theology of the Body.

I believe that many others would find TOTB as much of a revelation as I did, if they were only introduced to it.  Neither do I think it’s something that only has meaning for people of religious belief, because many of every faith and none profess themselves to be open to a holistic view of mind, body and (maybe!) soul and therefore to the view that the body has a very personal dignity, which can be compromised by certain ways of thinking and acting.  It’s a sort of divinisation of sex and sexuality, if you like – but it’s the right sort, which doesn’t make sex an idol and the answer in and by itself to the meaning of life.

If you would like to know more about TOTB, read Christopher West’s Theology of the Body for Beginners – you might just have your eyes opened to a whole new way of seeing the world!  One that, you’ll realise, you always kind of understood really, deep down, always glimpsed – but could never before quite nail...

“The call to nuptial love and communion revealed by our sexual bodies ‘is the fundamental element of human existence in the world,’ ‘the foundation of human life,’ and, hence, ‘the substratum of human ethics and culture.’  Indeed, the human project stands or falls based on the proper ordering of love between the sexes.  Thus, it ‘is an illusion to think we can build a true culture of human life if we do not... accept and experience human sexuality and love and the whole of life according to their true meaning and their close interconnection.”  (Christopher West, quoting Blessed Pope John Paul II)