How could a human individual not be a human person?

[Ender]

Right, just like the Church never officially taught geocentrism for 1500 years?

Does the church teach heliocentrism now, or does she simply accept what she believes is scientifically accurate? I’m sure she believed in geocentrism, because that’s what everyone accepted as true, but believing it is fact is not the same as teaching it as doctrine. Maybe she did, but I’m not aware of it, so if you have something you can reference I’d like to see it.

 

[Ender]

It is still debated in Catholic scholarly/philosophic circles.

The old delayed hominisation view has never been denied by the Church, though its certainly on the back burner like limbo.

So you are certainly entitled to this view, but do realise the delated hominisation view is still acceptably held.

You’ve made a number of assertions about what the church taught; I would like to see some evidence of it. Give us a citation showing exactly what the church said that supports your claims.

 

[BlackFriar]

I’m sure she believed in geocentrism, because that’s what everyone accepted as true, but believing it is fact is not the same as teaching…

Have you read the formal postumous apology over the Galileo incident? Condemning someone for teaching the opposite sounds like a preceeding active teaching and active belief to me, maybe not for those with a set position. Nobody said if was dogma. But like limbo it was clearly taught and held even more widely and strongly.

if you have something you can reference I’d like to see it.

Here you go:
http://www.patrickleebioethics.com/AQUINA~4.htm

Surely you know Aquinas was systematically taught at the highest learning institutions of Catholicism and to seminarians until recent times?

 

[BlackFriar]

How does one provide proof the Church has never condemned the teaching?

Perhaps by finding a single condemnation…I have never been able to find one. Maybe you can.

 

[Benadam]

Yep, because it’s impossible for a vegetative soul to be the substantial form of a human body…As Aquinas teaches,

If we suppose that the intellectual soul is not united to the body as its form, but only as its motor, as the Platonists maintain, it would necessarily follow that in man there is another substantial form, by which the body is established in its being as movable by the soul. If, however, the intellectual soul be united to the body as its substantial form, as we have said above (Article 1), it is impossible for another substantial form besides the intellectual soul to be found in man.

 

[BlackFriar]

And yet Aquinas is known to teach delayed hominisation regardless.

I may be mistaken on the finer details, you are welcome to reference Aquinas so I can refresh my own undsrstanding and see how you arrived at your more subtle views which likely is too much on a SJ thread.

I believe you confuse a human individual with a human body.

 

[Benadam]

There is this too in the Summa. I’m not familiar with his thoughts on delayed hominisation.

Whence we must conclude, that there is no other substantial form in man besides the intellectual soul; and that the soul, as it virtually contains the sensitive and nutritive souls, so does it virtually contain all inferior forms, and itself alone does whatever the imperfect forms do in other things.

 

[Benadam]

If a body is animated by an intellectual soul it is a person. If an intellectual soul does not have material extension (a body) it is not a person.

Edit: if a body is united to rather than animated by is more accurate as it pertains to the subject

 

[DanielJohn2300]

Respiration. That’s it! When we die, every cell of our body stops undergoing cellular respiration. How could a human individual not be a human person? By lacking the characteristic of personhood, which is to have every cell of the body undergoing cellular respiration. The human embryo gains this characteristic the moment implantation has occurred (about a week after fertilization), because that’s when the embryo starts taking in oxygen and food from the mother’s blood and giving out carbon dioxide and waste to her blood. Every person has this characteristic from implantation until death. This is how we prove that it is murder (the killing of an innocent person) to kill a human embryo after implantation in the mother’s womb has occurred.

 

[Benadam]

This is how we prove that it is murder (the killing of an innocent person) to kill a human embryo after implantation in the mother’s womb has occurred.

Unfortunately, abortions after conception but before implantation is common.

 

[Benadam]

some interesting reading about catholic thought on the subject

http://ldysinger.stjohnsem.edu/ThM_599d_Beg/03_Hist-Theol/05_delayed-homin.htm

 

[BlackFriar]

There is this too in the Summa. I’m not familiar with his thoughts on delayed hominisation.

Ok, then your quotes obviously cannot mean what you want them to mean.
Aquinas is in fact the DH goto theologian!

Unless youve been trained in his system its dangerous to just go in as a layman with a proof texting approach.

 

[phil19034]

In section 60 of Evangelium Vitae, the pope mentions personal human life. Then he explains how a human individual exists from the moment the ovum is fertilized. Then he asks, “How could a human individual not be a human person?” But then he doesn’t answer it. What’s the answer?

It was a rhetorical question. Of course a human individual is a human person.

 

[Benadam]

I agree, because I found some of his thinking about delayed hominisation. You are right. I want to find more because so far what I’ve found isn’t very comprehensive

 

[tweedlealice]

By lacking the physical characteristics of personhood, which is: the five senses(physical characteristics)
If one lacks physical traits of personhood, one can’t justifiably be a complete person.??
Helen Keller. After years of teaching, her nurse taught her how to be human.
Just thinking!! God Bless You
Tweedlealice

 

[Ender]

Have you read the formal postumous apology over the Galileo incident?

No.

Condemning someone for teaching the opposite sounds like a preceeding active teaching and active belief to me, maybe not for those with a set position. Nobody said if was dogma. But like limbo it was clearly taught and held even more widely and strongly.

Your assumption is not supported by evidence. It is quite clear what the church believed, but that says nothing about what she taught. Her interpretation of Scripture was based at least in part by what “science” believed, but unless you can show where geocentrism was proclaimed a doctrine then there is no more reason to believe she “taught” it then than to claim she has a teaching on evolution now.

Surely you know Aquinas was systematically taught at the highest learning institutions of Catholicism and to seminarians until recent times?

Again, your evidence does not support your contention. From your source:

In the course of history, the Fathers of the Church, her Pastors and her Doctors have taught the same doctrine [that human life must be protected and favored from the beginning, just as at the various stages of its development] - the various opinions on the infusion of the spiritual soul did not introduce any doubt about the illicitness of abortion. It is true that in the Middle Ages, when the opinion was generally held that the spiritual soul was not present until after the first few weeks, a distinction was made in the evaluation of the sin and the gravity of penal sanctions… (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1974)

I think we can safely distinguish between doctrines and opinions, and understand why there was in fact no doctrine - because the questions had not been resolved.

 

[JimG]

An ovum is a specialized cell of the mother. It is not a separate human being.
A sperm is a specialized cell of the father. It is not a separate human being.

When the sperm and ovum combine, they are fused into a new, unique, genetically distinct, separate new individual human being. The zygote has a teleology, and begins the process of development. Everything that is needed for this new and unique individual is now present. All it needs is nutrition.

Every unique human being has a human soul. Soul’s being spirit, do not evolve, do not develop. ’

“Delayed hominisation” is untenable. It was based on faulty biology.

Every human being has a beginning. A new human being comes into existence at conception.
From the standpoint of Catholic philosophy, every human being is a human person. Personhood is not established by what a human can do; it is not establishd by consciousness or mental ablity. It is established by the fact of one’s humanity.

 

[Ghosty1981]

By lacking the physical characteristic of personhood, which is __________________.

How do we fill in the blank?

The body, if I had to answer.

I do think that this was a rhetorical question on the part of the Pope, intended to highlight the absurdity of the proposition that a living human, which a fetus certainly is, could be anything other than a human person.

Depending on how we define “individual”, however, we might argue that when a person dies and their soul leaves the body they are, prior to the Resurrection, a human individual while not being a human person. They would be lacking the physical characteristics of human personhood.

I don’t see any way, however, that we could reasonably argue that a living human body, which we now know begins at the very moment of conception, is not a human person. It is biologically alive, indicating the presence and activity of a soul, and is biologically human. One doesn’t even have to believe in an immaterial soul to accept this, as pro-life atheists can attest.

Other related issues, such as the relationship between identical twins, need not come into the picture, nor do they need to raise particular difficulty. If we like we can simply say that a new soul is created when the embryo splits, or that the original dies and two new ones are born. Chimera, when two embryos fuse together in the womb and produce a person with two sets of DNA don’t seem to be a whole lot different than cases of organ donation, at least insofar as ensoulment is concerned.

 

[BlackFriar]

It is true that in the Middle Ages, when the opinion was generally held that the spiritual soul was not present until after the first few weeks …

I rest my case, delayed hominisation was generally held and so taught.

Nobody said it was a dogma or a unanimlus doctrine.
But it was taught and was the common opinion.

It is still validly held even if it is no longer mainstream like limbo, geocentrism, Mary died, and there are no exceptions to absolute usury used to be mainstream teachings.

If your set views on the matter so distort your reading of your own texts further converse with you is pointless.

BTW if you havent read the apology for the way Galileo was treated then you as yet have nothing credible to say re the Church’s teaching on the matter of geocentrism. Why regret something that was never taught and commonly held and was merely the unsanctioned opinion of a few influential officials?

Lets get real my friend, nobody said all teachings are infallible doctrine.

 

[BlackFriar]

An ovum is a specialized cell of the mother. It is not a separate human being.

The question is a philosophic one of when we may or may not apply the word “human” to living tissue.

Until we agree on that we will discuss in circles what human being, human individual, human life, human person, human vegetative soul and human intellective soul really means. They all mean different things in theology.

To just blurr them altogether as if they are the same colloquially is to misunderstand Church documents and wallow in pointless discussion.

Consequently it seems clear to me the ovum deserves the name human in so far as it derives from a human.

It is living so perhaps it is technically correct to call it a form of human life…just as a butterfly might be said to be a form of caterpillar.

The problem of course is that words are breaking down here. We dont often have conversations involving transformations like this.

Is ice water? In one sense no, in another sense yes.
Is barbeque charcoal the same as diamond? In its micro level yes, at a crystaline level no.