Hi TJ:
Well, I’m of an open mind about IVF anyway, so these things don’t really disturb me much. Things are changing so much in reproductive technology these days, that it is quite conceivable that morally licit forms of this may someday be developed (from the Catholic perspective, that is. An example might well be treatments such as GIFT). It’s very hard for me to judge anyone who takes this on, as they have (usually) exhausted all other options, and are desperate. It is an interesting question just how culpable someone really is for a particular sin when they are “backed into a corner” and have no other choice.
I can’t speak for others, but I do know that many Catholics at our Church do think we are not following Church teaching (the assumption is, that if we aren’t having children, then we must be contracepting). The centrality of procreation to marriage is commonplace throughout all the Church Fathers…if you’re sufficiently inclined, most of them are all online, but it’s tough slogging, and my latin is not the best.
There’s a handy database of them here:
cyprianproject.info/PL.htm
And the Catechism sorta summarizes the themes of the Church Fathers in 2373-2379 anyway. 2373 tells us that large families are a great blessing, and 2374 says that sterile couples suffer greatly, quoting Rachel’s own “give me children, or I shall die”. 2375 seems to say that medical research to reduce infertility is a good thing (thus validating the medical model of infertility as disease) 2376-2377 go into the nitty gritty of what fertility treatments are permissible and which are not. 2378 reminds us that children are a gift, and we have no right to demand them; and 2379 tells us that “sterility is not an absolute evil” (where I got yesterday’s pull quote from) but rather it is a cross to bear. It suggests instead we adopt, or serve others.
I’m interested in your quote that “the particular status of our child-rearing capabilities must be part of some great plan, part of the tapestry of which we can only glimpse pieces.” I do believe there is such a plan, as God controls and knows all things, but it is, all the same quite discouraging. The article you posted earlier I think has come up before, in the first pages of this monster-thread…Babies Deserve Better, from “This Rock” (1996). I actually wrote a small piece in this magazine many years ago, but on other topics. Your article is here:
catholic.com/thisrock/2006/0604fea3.asp
Here’s the relevant section:
"Children, though, are not the only gift of marriage. Infertility, too, is a great and mysterious blessing. Just as much as fertility, infertility is a gift husband and wife give one another. It is an affirmation that “I still love you. I love all of you. And I refuse to allow anything to come between us.” Infertility is also a gift couples can give to God and to the world. Like Christ’s crucifixion, infertility is a sign of contradiction in a culture in which human life has lost its value.
As Fr. Mitch Pacwa once remarked to us, it seems as if God is asking infertile couples to fast for the sins against life committed by others. Instead of giving children to God, infertile families can give their suffering to him, their unfulfilled longing to conceive a baby. God will use this suffering to glorify his name and bring about the salvation of souls (John 9:1–3). Likewise, infertility is the gift God gives couples for the salvation of their own souls as well as the souls of any children they might eventually adopt. To reject this gift is to reject the specific means by which God wills to lead us to heaven."
This view is a charitable one, but VERY recent, and frankly is not typical of most of the Church’s history of writing about this topic. I’m disturbed about the notion that we should see this as a blessing, particularly when the Church promotes the efforts of doctors to research ways to get rid of it. If it’s really a blessing, surely we would encourage it, and pray for more and more people to become infertile, which is false. The idea of “gifting” here is strange.
The whole point of a gift is that it is something valued, desired, wanted. You can only give a gift “to God and the world” if the world realizes they’ve received it, and they don’t. Most Catholics I know think we’re on birth control, and others don’t consider it a gift at all (the whole point of a gift is that it is intended to make its recipient better off, happier, less sad, if you will). The “gift”, if it exists at all, is spiritual/invisible, so nobody even knows it’s there. As for God, I find it hard to believe He would seriously want a “gift” of this type; in the first passage, it’s supposedly a gift we give God, and in the second, it’s a gift He gives us. As I said, on it’s face the argument makes no sense at all, so either it hasn’t been carefully thought out, or it hasn’t been explained very well. But I’m glad you reposted it all the same, because it is one of the most positive and charitable of all the recent articles I’ve seen on this. “Embracing the Cross of Infertility” is another such effort; it is here:
hli.org/files/infertility_transcript.pdf
web.mac.com/johnmallon/Site/Cross_of_Infertility.html
You write, “I wonder why the mods turned the idea down in the past and I wonder if the request was couched in similar terms.” You can have a look if you like. I mined this huge mega-thread, and found the relevant posts, here. I don’t know if anybody turned things down, officially…rather, it was suggested, objections were thrown at the idea, and it died in the entropy of the thread, just as ours will.
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=108039&page=52
Good luck, I hope your effort works.
Jacques
