Soul of unborn baby or child

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adrian1

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Can a soul of unborn baby or child to grow and forward to God without a body?
Can soul participate and use free will, and have spiritual struggle for virtue without a body, în case of unborn baby or child?
Can a soul receive knowledge of God without use the senses and the rational mind of the soul through the brain? We know that the soul can exist without the body, but can develop life and use free will and pursue virtue without a earthly body and earthly life? Can receive knowledge without material form of life and body?
 
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Unborn children who die have bodies. They may be very small, but they are bodies. Even a zygote is still corporeal matter, IOW, a body.

How about people who are born with mental disabilities? They might have as ‘full’ a body as any other born person but can their soul participate in and use free will? Can they have 'rational knowledge"? Are they any ‘less human’?

I think you’re a little confused here.
 
A soul can receive knowledge and can have spiritual struggle without having a body? A baby can develop his soul without having a mature body and a mature brain? Because his body sas killed until the soul can use the brain.

A soul can be active without a mature brain?
 
A human soul by definition is joined to a body, whether that body is a simple zygote or a fully formed ‘born’ body, whether the body itself is perfectly functioning or not, whether the body lacks arms, legs, organs, etc.
 
You’ve got two things: a soul and a body.

Your body is limited by its senses. You learn, you grow, you develop, you change. Your body at conception isn’t the same as your body at birth. Your body at your first birthday isn’t your body at your fifth birthday. Your body when you graduate high school isn’t your body when you have your first grandchild.

But that doesn’t mean that you’re a lesser “you” at conception than you are when you have your first grandchild, just like it doesn’t mean you’re a lesser “you” when you have your first birthday versus when you graduate college. You’re just different-- in your experiences, in your understanding, in your development, in your role in life, in your capacity to think things through and make judgement calls.

But your “self” doesn’t hinge on your ability to think things through or make judgement calls— or else there’d be a whole lot of adults with poor decision-making skills who would be in trouble! 😛

Your soul, on the other hand, isn’t limited by senses, or experiences, or maturity, or what it’s learned. So the soul of someone who’s been dead for a day isn’t much different than the soul of someone who’s been dead for a thousand years. The time for growth and development is during life— when you actively choose God, and cultivate virtue, and love, and perform acts of charity, and earn grace and merit.

So— an unborn baby has a body. It just happens to be inside of someone else’s body at this moment in time. 🙂 And so you have things like the Visitation, which indicate that it’s not beyond possibility for a baby in utero to be just as spiritually engaged (in whatever way God dictates) as a scholar who’s studied his whole life. Because didn’t the unborn John the Baptist recognize Jesus, whereas the Pharisees and Sadducees couldn’t? 🙂

But once you die-- and once you no longer have that earthly body-- there’s no more spiritual struggle, because you see things as they are. There’s no more desire to choose evil because it’s been disguised as good. You’ve had your chance to pursue virtue and accumulate merit. And that’s why it’s such a terrible thing to cut someone’s life prematurely short— because you rob them of that opportunity to accumulate spiritual treasure.
 
The question is: Can a baby or a child develop spiritual life without a functional body?
 
The answer is yes.
We don’t know everything there is to know about the human body. We also don’t know everything there is to know about the human soul.

We don’t know what people might be experiencing ‘in utero’. We don’t know what a person born with say trisomy 21 might be experiencing in his/her mind and soul. We don’t know exactly how God communicates with us (which He certainly does) so if our bodies or minds are not somehow quite the same as the ‘standard’ one, God will be able to ‘work with’ what we have.
 
What does a “non-functional body” mean?

Does that mean they’re dead?

Or could you specify what part doesn’t work properly?

Suppose you go into a vegetative state around dinnertime tonight. Your body is a prison— but your soul and awareness are still there.

If someone can hate Barney while in a vegetative state, why not be able to pursue virtue and struggle spiritually?
 
It may be…but not by definition.
The Church taught the contrary for 1700 years.
 
Obviously we do not know the answer to that question.
But more importantly, why do you ask?
 
Really?

“I don’t know how a dead person different from a damaged person”?

“I don’t know how a dead person different from a childlike person”?
 
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the development of the soul depends on the body’s development or the soul can develop into a nonfunctional or childlike body?
 
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We’ll find out after we die. 🙂

But the Catholic viewpoint is generally that during life, we need to spend time cultivating our souls, and then after death, we deal with the fruits of what we’ve cultivated. So as long as there’s mortal life, there’s the opportunity for growth and progress. Once we’ve crossed into eternity, there’s no further chance for growth or progress.
 
No.
I am talking about what the poster really means by “human soul” at conception.

It is not defined Church teaching that it must be an immortal, intellective, spiritual “human soul”.
It could be a progressing vegetative “human soul” (or maybe “human soul” is not quite the right word (though technically valid it may be better to say “human live”).

The Church only clearly taught that Jesus received a fully intellective, spiritual human soul at the very moment of conception.
 
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