The Catholic Church and Cloning

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Where is the Church’s best and most official statement on cloning?

Thank you.
 
The cloning of plants and animals is okay, but not human cloning.
 
For me, the difficult question is, Would God COOPERATE WITH human cloning? To put it another way, let’s say Hugh Jackman and Amanda Riguetti are having dinner together in a restaurant.

The busboy manages to sneak out of the restaurant with their spoons, and manages to turn the epithelial cell from Hugh Jacman’s mouth into 6,000 Hugh Jackman clones, ready for implantation, and epithelial cells from Amanda Riguetti’s mouth into 6,000 Amanda Riguetti clones, ready for implantation.

Will God give each of those mouth cell clones a soul?

I actually ran into this difficult question in a case, as an attorney.

While he was still an embryo in his mother’s womb, the twinning process somehow “went crazy,” and he was born with about 50 copies of himself distributed throughout his flesh. When he reach puberty, once every few months one of the clones “activates” and starts becoming a baby.

Did God give each oif those clones souls?
 
Uzziah1 said:
For me, the difficult question is, Would God COOPERATE WITH human cloning? To put it another way, let’s say Hugh Jackman and Amanda Riguetti are having dinner together in a restaurant.

The busboy manages to sneak out of the restaurant with their spoons, and manages to turn the epithelial cell from Hugh Jacman’s mouth into 6,000 Hugh Jackman clones, ready for implantation, and epithelial cells from Amanda Riguetti’s mouth into 6,000 Amanda Riguetti clones, ready for implantation.

Will God give each of those mouth cell clones a soul?

I actually ran into this difficult question in a case, as an attorney.

While he was still an embryo in his mother’s womb, the twinning process somehow “went crazy,” and he was born with about 50 copies of himself distributed throughout his flesh. When he reach puberty, once every few months one of the clones “activates” and starts becoming a baby.

Did God give each oif those clones souls?
Click to expand...
ALL humans have a soul.
 
Uzziah1 said:
For me, the difficult question is, Would God COOPERATE WITH human cloning? To put it another way, let’s say Hugh Jackman and Amanda Riguetti are having dinner together in a restaurant.

The busboy manages to sneak out of the restaurant with their spoons, and manages to turn the epithelial cell from Hugh Jacman’s mouth into 6,000 Hugh Jackman clones, ready for implantation, and epithelial cells from Amanda Riguetti’s mouth into 6,000 Amanda Riguetti clones, ready for implantation.

Will God give each of those mouth cell clones a soul?

I actually ran into this difficult question in a case, as an attorney.

While he was still an embryo in his mother’s womb, the twinning process somehow “went crazy,” and he was born with about 50 copies of himself distributed throughout his flesh. When he reach puberty, once every few months one of the clones “activates” and starts becoming a baby.

Did God give each oif those clones souls?
Click to expand...
ALL humans have a soul.
 
thistle said:
ALL humans have a soul.
Click to expand...
I see that even your proclamations are cloning themselves.

In any event, then, you are saying that God is the cloning scientists’ slave?

Do you have a reason for declaring God to be enslaved?
 
Uzziah1 said:
I see that even your proclamations are cloning themselves.

In any event, then, you are saying that God is the cloning scientists’ slave?

Do you have a reason for declaring God to be enslaved?
Click to expand...
I don’t understand your sarcasm.
Every single human life has a soul and obviously that includes a human who has been cloned.
If you have some Church documents which say otherwise then please direct us to them.
 
thistle said:
I don’t understand your sarcasm.
Every single human life has a soul and obviously that includes a human who has been cloned.
If you have some Church documents which say otherwise then please direct us to them.
Click to expand...
Why is “X” true unless the Catholic Church says otherwise?

In other words, WHY do you say, “Unless the Catholic Church says otherwise, then ALL CLONED HUMANS HAVE SOULS.”

Cloning is a new thing. Why should God cooperate with it? Ensoulment is a separate process taking place at conception.

What conception, in the case of a clone?
 
1ke

Thank you for referencing that source. I’ll check it out! 👍
 
thistle said:
Every single human life has a soul and obviously that includes a human who has been cloned…
Click to expand...
I realize that this is just speculation at this point because actual human cloning is not yet known to be possible. But how do you know that such a thing as a clone really is a human? If a skin cell were taken and grown in the lab to make more skin cells, you would not call that clump of skin cells a “human” with a soul. It is just a clump of skin cells. But if those skin cells were somehow made to start differentiating and forming what looked like a human, is that the point at which you would call the clone “human”? But if we base our judgment of humanity of a thing based on what it looks like then we would have a hard time justifying calling an ordinary conception a human until it starts to look like one. The justification for calling a normal conception human is based on the manner in which the conception was formed - the joining of sperm and egg. In the case of cloning there is no joining of sperm and egg. So why call it human? Again, this is all make-believe because there is no such thing as a complete human clone and hopefully there never will be. But as a thought experiment it is may be useful to see what the foundation really is for our ideas on what is human.
 
While individual cloning might produce positive results, like more Einsteins, it could also produce negative results, like more Hitlers. :eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

If variety is the spice of life, cloned humans will be bland indeed!
 
Uzziah1 said:
I see that even your proclamations are cloning themselves.

In any event, then, you are saying that God is the cloning scientists’ slave?

Do you have a reason for declaring God to be enslaved?
Click to expand...
Of course, God is enslaved to no one. But He has thus far proven willing to ensoul even those conceived in circumstances opposed to His will. Fornication, adultery, and even rape produce perfectly ordinary children.

When IVF first became a thing in the 1970s, some people briefly questioned whether those “test-tube babies” would have souls. It soon became obvious that they did.

Cloning is yet a further step, in that it doesn’t involve ordinary sperm-plus-egg conception. But based on the precedents above, I think it’s safe to lean strongly in the direction that God would grant a soul to a cloned human. A clone is a delayed identical twin, and we know God gives individual souls to twins (even though twinning happens some time after conception).

The most important point is that we’re never going to wind up with beings walking around that look and act human but are secretly soulless. The rational soul is what differentiates us from other animals. Anything that can reason like a human, whether a cloned human, an alien species, or even an advanced artificial intelligence we might someday create, has by definition been provided with a rational soul by God. Even if we are surprised that He has chosen to do such a thing, we must never treat a rational being as less than us or deny its God-given rights.
 
Usagi said:
Anything that can reason like a human, whether a cloned human, an alien species, or even an advanced artificial intelligence we might someday create, has by definition been provided with a rational soul by God.
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Wow, my desktop computer needs to have the Gospel preached to it, go to mass on Sunday, and look forward to eventual union with God in heaven! I can’t begin to tell you how very wrong that is.
 
Usagi said:
Of course, God is enslaved to no one. But He has thus far proven willing to ensoul even those conceived in circumstances opposed to His will. Fornication, adultery, and even rape produce perfectly ordinary children.

When IVF first became a thing in the 1970s, some people briefly questioned whether those “test-tube babies” would have souls. It soon became obvious that they did.

Cloning is yet a further step, in that it doesn’t involve ordinary sperm-plus-egg conception. But based on the precedents above, I think it’s safe to lean strongly in the direction that God would grant a soul to a cloned human. A clone is a delayed identical twin, and we know God gives individual souls to twins (even though twinning happens some time after conception).

The most important point is that we’re never going to wind up with beings walking around that look and act human but are secretly soulless. The rational soul is what differentiates us from other animals. Anything that can reason like a human, whether a cloned human, an alien species, or even an advanced artificial intelligence we might someday create, has by definition been provided with a rational soul by God. Even if we are surprised that He has chosen to do such a thing, we must never treat a rational being as less than us or deny its God-given rights.
Click to expand...
You start out cautious – by talking about how so far it appears that God has cooperated with more and more “extremified” versions of reproduction – but then you re-enslave God by saying, “We’re NEVER going to wind up with beings walking around that look and act human but are secretly soulless.”

You should probably make no assumptions.

(1) Do you really think that God would ensoul Hugh Jackman and Amanda Riguetti photocopies mass-produced by cloning from mouth cells with no conception process?

(2) It may already have happened.

There are some interesting pre-End Times predictions by Catholic saints involving a soulless human possessed by a demon.
 
Your desktop computer doesn’t, since it shows no sign of human-level awareness.

But if such a being should someday come into existence (and I am not saying that is even possible; it certainly could be as ludicrous an idea to God as it is to you), then by definition that being has at some point been provided with a rational soul.

How the economy of salvation would apply to such a being is unknown. The angels, the only other rational beings that definitely exist, praise the salvation won for humans by Jesus but don’t partake of its benefits themselves, as far as we know.

My primary point, though, was that we will easily be able to tell whether a human clone is soulless or not. The soul is an integral part of our humanity, not just an add-on whose absence would leave a being creepy-but-functional.

Usagi
 
Well, if nothing else, this is a very interesting and provacative subject. Without an intellectual basis for saying so, I think it’s a foregone conclusion that God would grant such a being a soul. His mercy and love is boundless. We should be careful to not limit God to the passions and prejudices that plague humanity.
 
Uzziah1 said:
You start out cautious – by talking about how so far it appears that God has cooperated with more and more “extremified” versions of reproduction – but then you re-enslave God by saying, “We’re NEVER going to wind up with beings walking around that look and act human but are secretly soulless.”

You should probably make no assumptions.
Click to expand...
The only assumption I’m making is that we’re right about the definition of the rational soul (the kind humans have).

The rational soul is the principle that differentiates humans from other animals. Unlike a sensitive soul (which all animals have) or a vegetative soul (which every living thing has), the rational soul is immaterial, immortal, and individually created by God. You can’t get one anywhere else.

If a cloned human’s behavior turns out to be limited to that of a plant or nonhuman animal, then we can say with some confidence that it lacks a rational soul.

Conversely, if a cloned human grows up to act like every other human, we ought to grant that it has been granted a rational soul by God. By the very definition of rational soul, you can’t lack one and still be outwardly indistinguishable from a human being.

Yes, it is also possible that a pre-existing rational soul or spirit (an angel or fallen angel) could possess a creature without its own rational soul and produce the behavior that way. But if you consider “that guy is a human-looking ape being driven around by a demon” to be a more likely explanation than “God gave that guy a soul” for a being that acts perfectly human despite an unusual origin, then we just have to disagree. Once you introduce that option, you could question whether any of us was created with a soul, rather than being some kind of demon-primate conglomeration just mimicking humanity.

And, yes, if hundreds of Hugh Jackman’s younger clone siblings were brought into existence and grew up to act like everyone else, I would have to conclude that God had ensouled them all despite their unfortunate and sinful origins. Hurrah, more potential citizens for Heaven.

Usagi
 
Since Mary knew not a man, was Jesus literally cloned from Mary? :confused:
 
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