A Prophecy Buried in a 50-Year-Old Medical Journal

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"Since the old ethic has not yet been fully displaced it has been necessary to separate the idea of abortion from the idea of killing, which continues to be socially abhorrent. The result has been a curious avoidance of the scientific fact, which everyone really knows, that human life begins at conception and is continuous whether intra- or extra-uterine until death.

The very considerable semantic gymnastics which are required to rationalize abortion as anything but taking a human life would be ludicrous if they were not put forth under socially impeccable auspices. It is suggested that this schizophrenic sort of subterfuge is necessary because while the new ethic is being accepted the old one has not yet been rejected."

 
What about baptism of fetus? Can the priest give baptism to the fetus (egg) (inside the womb) during the first hours after consummation? I guess that today technologies allow the exact infusion of holy water, e.g. with the help of nanoparticles or with the help or proteins that deliver the molecules of holy water directly to the fetus via the usual circuitry that feeds the fetus? So - if technology is available, can the priest give baptism to the fetus inside the womb, e.g. when there are risks of abortion, miscarriage etc?
 
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JimG said:
What does that have to do with the posted article?
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The answer to my question tests the integrity of the the article - if the fetus requires the full rights of the man then he/she can receive baptism if the technology is available. If there are exemptions, then they will appear in Your answer to my question.
 
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The article is from a medical journal, not a religious journal. The Church decides when sacraments are given.
 
Well, we are making rationing everytime when the world allows the man or woman of child to die from hunger, there are millions of such deaths each year even today. And we can use sattelites to spot the places, remote villages where people are starving and we can use drones to deliver food cheaply. But this is not happening. And rationing regarding the poverty, the unavailability of education, healthcare - isn’t it the culture of death and should that not be targeted?
JimG said:
The article is from a medical journal, not a religious journal. The Church decides when sacraments are given.
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I am reading academic journals a much, including Nature, Lancet and NEJM - there are quite a lot non-peer-reviewed articles, editorials, opinions and news in them. The majority of journals of very focused and with peer-reviewed content only, but the top journals allow this exploration. In fact - some months ago Nature Machine Intelligence has article by academicians of one of the pontifical academies - it was about the contribution of the Church to the advancement of the ethical Artificial Intelligence.

So, you decided not to answer my question.
 
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Baptism can be conferred any time from a few days to a few months after birth, or a few years, or in middle or old age or on one’s death bed. It is not given in utero. Again, that is entirely unrelated to the article. The writer of the article in the old medical journal did not address the question of Baptism. Nor should he.
 
Well - about the sentiment of our times which the article so clearly pictures. My guess is that it is less connected to the abortion and more connected with the general cruelty of the current state of capitalism. The first editorial of The Economist, International news magazine, after the Trump’s victory cited remarkable fact - 50% of US society - with the least resources - today are living worse then people 50 years ago. The capital income vs wage income ration has never been so large in the history than it is now Wage share - Wikipedia, the inequality is incredible, the jobs prospects are bad due to the automation and globalization, the social structures of the job market are eroding and the gig economy and precariat is emerging. The current state of capitalism is cruel indeed. You can check the warehouse workers in the big e-commerce firms or the immigrants and poor peoples in agriculture and abbatoires. Such cruelty, such incredible cruelty due the the margin-squeezing greed.

And you expect the respect for life in these times?

You should mend markets and economy and only then the people can regain dignity and humanity.
 
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Regarding my statement about the state of capitalism - well, I am quite well off. Thanks God, I am not the one experiencing the greatest hardships. But I see so many people, I read about them who suffers in this life. We can follow the social teaching of the Church, we can use technologies and science to advance prosperity and humanity of jobs. That is possible. But so many of those opportunities are lost when we follow the divisive agenda of some politicians. That was my cry.

Of course - my question about baptism was pure casuistics, but it may be helpful in the cases of risks of miscarriage, I have heard, that priests can refute to give baptism to miscarried baby if it is deemed to be dead. So - in-uterus baptism can solve this painful situation.

When I will pray Rosary next time, I will pray for peace, for unity of minds and souls, for actual charity. We can and we should to so much to make this world better, to allow people have more opportunities and less pain. Let’s just put divisiveness behind. There are bright spots in this world, science is strong, medicine is strong, overall prosperity is possible. Just be open to it!
 
arvo said:
Why it is not given in utero? Is there any theological distinction?
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For most of the Church’s history, baptism couldn’t practically be given in utero even if that were desired.

As a result, the way in which baptism is administered (immersion or pouring of water – not necessarily holy water) is something that can’t easily be done to a child still in the womb. Not to mention that a medically unnecessary intrusion into the uterus while a child is gestating in there seems risky.

I have read, back when I was first becoming a Catholic, that there is an emergency procedure for baptizing a child in the event that it is outside the mother’s body too early to survive but might still be alive – it involves adding “if you are alive” to the usual baptismal formula, just as the more common kind of conditional baptism adds “if you are not baptized,” since you cannot baptize the dead or the already baptized. I don’t know how often the circumstances line up to make that practical, though.
 
The 50-year-old editorial and the modern commentary each repeats a regular error: that ‘human life’ begins at conception. Both sperm and egg are ‘human life’. They were alive before conception. What they each are not is ‘a human being’ which by most definitions requires at least a full set of chromosomes, or some variation on that. What more, if anything, it requires is a philosophical, not medical issue. The Church’s view is philosophical. The Church holds that an individual is created at the moment of conception and receives an immortal soul at that point. That soul is what, to a Catholic, makes the cell(s) a human being, or, in the case of later twinning, two human beings with two souls.

This view does not contradict anything we know from science. But it does not derive from science.
 
Sperm and ovum are specialized human cells. When they combine they form a new and genetically distinct individual of the human species. That new individual will contiue to develop through all the stages of embryogenesis and will continue to develop into adulthood, as the same genetically distinct individual. It’s how we all began. Yes, it is the start of a new human being.
 
Well said. Gametes cannot grow, more so, they lack chemical information to grow, since they only have 50% of the genome.

The ability to grow, to develop into a mature state, is necessary for life (and yes, definitions of life are philosophical, even if consensed among biologists, but they are rational). As such, sperms and ovums are just parts of a human life, but they are not independent human life, unlike a cygote.
 
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