How can you possibly support circumcision?

[dpauljl]

I ask that the staff reconsider and retract/correct the answer given by Michelle Arnold to a question in the March 2005 issue of This Rock about whether parents have the moral right to permit a doctor to perform an elective (non-therapeutic) circumcision on their son. According to what I have been reading (for example, see links to many articles on www.CatholicsAgainstCircumcision.org and also Doctors Opposing Circumcision), this routine surgery is practically never for the benefit of the child, but is done in the vast majority of cases strictly for social and cosmetic reasons. It involves the directly deliberate amputation of a normal healthy body part created by God for very specific reasons, which are thwarted by this unnecessary cutting and removal of complex tissue, therefore constituting mutilation, which is forbidden by the natural law and by definitive Church teaching as gravely immoral.

Moreover, it causes overwhelming pain to the child, since general anesthesia is never given (at most, only in recent years, a local anesthetic), sending the child into paroxysms of screaming agony and sometimes a numbed shock – something that is forbidden even for veterinarians operating on family pets. (Yes, this country has been treating baby boys worse than animals for a century, which Europeans regard with horror as utterly barbaric.) In fact, there are studies proving that the brain is actually detrimentally altered by this assault on the defenseless infant – with long-lasting psychological impact for many men who suffer chronic and profound emotional issues (mistrust, sexual anxiety, vulnerability) on account of this assault on their bodily and personal integrity when they were boys. It is without question a form of child sexual abuse leaving permanent physical scars (and emotional scars for many), just as bad as the publicized sexual abuse that is perpetrated for the pleasure of the attacker, though here the motives are social and financial (doctors get higher fees for male babies when they perform this surgery). This American practice should be condemned and banned as an abominable human rights violation.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

The Q&A in the March 2005 edition of Quick Questions in This Rock does not carry a byline. That column was a collaborative effort of the Catholic Answers staff.

Your opinion is a common one in today’s society, and I am not entirely unsympathetic. To some extent, I personally agree with you that elective circumcision often is unnecessary and, when unnecessary, should be seriously reconsidered. But I cannot agree with you that circumcision is mutilation, and I think the sensationalistic charge that it is “child sexual abuse” trivializes actual cases of sexual assault on a child. I fear that it is possible that passion on this issue has led its opponents to grossly overstate their case.

Please remember that circumcision is an action God enjoined upon his chosen people, the Jews, as a sign of his covenant with them. To this day, observant Jews circumcise their sons, often without anesthesia as they find it to be safer and unnecessary (example) since they can routinely perform circumcision in under a minute (whereas a hospital operation can take a half-hour or more).

Christians do not need to circumcise their sons for religious reasons, but some do so for cultural reasons. Whether or not we agree that circumcision should be done for cultural reasons, it is unjust to accuse parents of “barbarity,” “abuse,” and “immorality.” Where the Church allows for a range of permitted opinion – as it does in the case of elective, non-religious circumcision – it is wrong for anyone to try to bind the consciences of others where the Church does not do so.