Yes, organ transplants are unnatural acts.I For instance, how natural are organ transplants? It certainly seems to go against the plan God had for our biological nature to be walking around with other people’s organs inside us, yet this is OK.
The Church does not object to procedures that facilitate normal marital relations and allow for fertilization in the context of this union. It recognizes that medical procedures and devices are not “normal” per se. Neither is surgery to relieve a blocked fallopian tube. They are correcting a medical defect. But for things like penile implants, the sperm is still given to the mother by the father by the marital act and fertilization still occurs within the mother’s womb/fallopian tube. I have never heard of a uterine transplant. It is an interesting question. My guess would be that the Church would find this acceptable.…tell me, how ‘normal’ are penile implants?) under any circumstances. For instance, how natural are organ transplants? It certainly seems to go against the plan God had for our biological nature to be walking around with other people’s organs inside us, yet this is OK.
All I can do is obey and hope to come to some understanding.
And other relevant information:
Hope that helps!
I agree with you on technology blurring Church teaching. I think it has already occurred when it comes to sterility. It is my suspicion that the Church’s long held teaching on impotence had as much to do with the resultant infertility as it did with the inability to consumate, both aspects of intercourse were made impossible. However, the Church (not having any way to know the 2 conditions were not related) focused on just the impotence in it’s theology. So when science came up with a way to examine semen and determine they existed separately, the Church was ‘stuck’. Since there was no theology developed on infertility they had to allow infertile but potent men to marry while continuing to deny marriage for those who were fertile but impotent. A distinction and a separation of the procreative and unitive aspects of intercourse that I doubt the Church of even 200 years ago would have accepted in theory.
Hi Dr. Paul,
The Church moreover holds that it is ethically unacceptable to dissociate procreation from the integrally personal context of the conjugal act.[29] Cf. Pius XII, Address to the Second World Congress in Naples on human reproduction and sterility (19 May 1956): AAS 48 (1956), 470; Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Humanae vitae, 12: AAS 60 (1968), 488-489; Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Donum vitae, II, B, 4-5: AAS 80 (1988), 90-94.
So you think.
Quite right. The fertilization must be restricted to the exact number of embryos that will be implanted, and “selective culling” must be recognized for the abortion that it is. As a “pro-lifer” I cannot countenance any destruction of “extra” embryos, even as I celebrate the fact that more souls are brought into the world to be raised in Christian families.
Thanks for the link to the National Catholic Bioethics center. There I found a very good article by Fr. Tad Pacholczyk that is very helpful in explaining the why in the Church’s teaching on IVF. This was the type of information that I was hoping to find by posting my original question.
I’ll give you something, you’re stubborness in the face of unchanging Church teaching is certainly, umm, disturbing. Your further leading others astray into sin is also very disturbing.
Wow, really? Yes. Interviewing people and writing about it is what I do. “Cruel generalization?” You have *one *very unusual circumstance that the outcome may or may not be harmful in the long term, and the reality of IVF is a “cruel generalization?” That is not a healthy way to look at morality.
I accept that you know more about people who seek IVF than I do as I don’t know anyone, nor have I studied the issue. But I strongly disagree with the conclusion you wrote above. It’s way too simplistic and I don’t even think it’s a good generalization. NFP can also result in sex without babies, and IVF couples can use the technology with limited interruption in their conjugal relationship. I don’t think arguments like this help anyone understand the Church’s teaching. I would see surrogacy as having far greater detrimental effects both on the marriage and the child than IVF alone.
I’m sorry you are disturbed, but that is, of course, your right to be so!
I certainly agree that surrogacy is even more detrimental than IVF alone. The Church has made that very clear. Surrogacy is two immoral acts, not just one. I have been studying the issue for years. In fact after I posted I went back and read one of the articles that Dr. Paul had liked. The priest also said IVF and contraception were two sides of the same coin. I promise I didn’t plagiarize, it is a commonly known fact.