The Seven Sorrows of Our Lady and Bioethics

Last September, on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, I put up a post relating the devotion to bioethics.

The feast day of September 15 was established in 1814 and occurs fittingly on the day after the Exaltation of the Cross. However, since the 17th century in various parts of the world and especially in devotions of several orders, the Seven Sorrows were commemorated on the Friday before Good Friday. It was extended to the whole Church in the early 1700s but in the 20th century it began taking a back seat to the feast in September. Today is that Friday this year, and it is still listed in the "old calendar" of saints.

Go to my post of last September for more about the devotion to the Seven Sorrows and links to the sites dedicated to it. I reproduce here some of that post pertaining to bioethics.

The first principle of ethics is "do good and avoid evil." Bioethics is the subset of ethics that deals with man's life and health, so this principle applies also to bioethics. But it must be applied to what constitutes man's true and highest good (and its opposite) pertaining to health and life.

"What man is" determines "what man ought to do." Secular bioethics is basically atheistic and has a concept of man as merely biological, a sophisticated body with bodily processes. Dislodged from any authority higher than man himself, indeed denying any moral authority higher than the individual who is contemplating what he should and should not do, ethics in general and bioethics in particular degenerates into a free-for-all, an ethical anarchy. Any semblance of respect for law and order comes only from the power of the forces of the law to punish lawbreakers, or from a personal decision that the laws make sense (as opposed to submission to universal principles of justice to which laws ought to conform). This power of law to coerce is not lost on secular "ethicists" as they play to courts and legislative bodies to get their way and force it on all of us, in the name of stopping others from forcing their views on them.

In the end, bioethics has largely become an exercise in finding a plausible rationale to justify what you want to do, to placate or intimidate naysayers into silence. The rationales employed by secular bioethics appear to be largely lip service to existing laws. In the end, secular bioethics can justify anything. It indeed justifies the complete destruction of the human race and its replacement by something that some few human beings deem in their idiosyncratic judgment to be a better life form. It's called posthumanism.

In secular bioethics there can be no agreement as to what constitutes man's highest good, because every individual will have his own idea of it. There can be no consensus except regarding the most general of platitudes, like the elimination of disease and aging (which some believe can be dealt with ultimately only by eliminating the human body altogether... but if man is only his body....) And, individuals find it difficult to separate their own personal highest goods (whatever they individually might decide them to be) from their goals for the human race. In the end, it is about the right of some few to impose their concept of the good and of morality on the whole human race, and to eradicate those who oppose them.

It is more complicated than that. I oversimplify. But that's the gist.

In contrast, an authentic bioethics has to consider an authentic anthropology, which is necessarily theological. Man is God's image. If so, then man's highest good is not determined by consensus or opinion dislodged from universal principles and from God but by the nature of man as image of God. And that highest good is God himself. The first principle of an authentic bioethics, then, is "refine and do not damage the image of God." Authentic bioethics must regard man's physical life and health as ordered to his spiritual life and health. People reveal and form themselves by their choices. They need to choose well, particularly in bioethics, if they are to reveal and form themselves as images of God. Otherwise, they reveal and form themselves in other ways, and field of bioethics will go astray in the ways noted above.

As an image of God, man is constituted as a union of body and soul, and not just a body, and not as a soul that happens to be locked in a body. The second principle of authentic bioethics -- "perfect and do not damage the union of soul and body" -- relates to this fact. Union of the soul and the body constitutes bodily life, the primary concern of bioethics. Separation of the body and soul constitutes death. Sin disrupts the union between the body and soul and is the cause of some degree of separation. Sin is the beginning of death in man. Because of this, sin is a legitimate concern of bioethics.

The devotion to Our Lady of Sorrows pertains to combating sin. It pertains to our individual battle against sin. It pertains to the general battle of God against sin and His gift of mercy and salvation to sinners. It is about our attitude to suffering and death and how these facts of life have spiritual value. 

Note, however, that if suffering and death have spiritual value, this does not justify imposing suffering and death nor in failing to relieve suffering and forestall death to the extent that we can. But we cannot eliminate either completely. To that extent, if we say suffering and death have no value as atheists must conclude, then we must also conclude that life has no meaning and our actions regardless of what those actions may be have no meaning and moral content whatsoever. If on the other hand we believe in God, then life and health, death and suffering, and all of our actions have meaning.

So I am beginning a novena to Our Lady of Sorrows today and ending it on Holy Saturday. On Good Friday begins the Divine Mercy novena. 

And boy does the world need both of these devotions.

"But they all ate organic rice!"

Woody Allen's Sleeper.

Haven't seen it in a LONG time, and if I saw it again now I would probably be shocked I liked it when I saw it last. On the other hand, there are some amazing jokes in it and one or two bits of prophecy. Like this:

Dr. Melik: [T]his morning for breakfast, uh, he requested something called wheat germ, organic honey, and tiger's milk.
Doctor: Oh yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life preserving properties.
Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak, or cream pies, or hot fudge?
Doctor: Those were thought to be unhealthy. Precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.

(Thanks to Dr. Sanity for pulling the quote a few years back on a related topic.)

OK, we're not quite there with deep fat frying, but depending on the fat you use, it is quite on the way to being rehabilitated. But FoxNews.com has a story on previously forbidden foods that are now considered good for you. Among them are eggs, nuts, chocolate, and potatoes. I am a fan of limiting carbohydrate intake -- not in an Atkins kind of way, but really downplaying carbs in meals. Meat and vegetables. Cheese. Eggs. Less pasta and bread (tough for me to admit, being of Italian descent) and rice (tough on my Asian wife and my kids). The article in question has rehabilitated pasta, but note, it is whole wheat pasta. Whole grains are way better as carb sources than refined grains for many reasons. And for potatoes, the assumption is that you're eating also the skins. And in any case, even if you include these in your diet, there is always the question of how much.

How and what we eat, and how much, are bioethical decisions. Very often, we wish to eat what we want and take a pill to treat the sicknesses we get from our eating. Overeat with the wrong things, too fast, too late at night, but that's ok, take a heartburn drug and feel fine. Eat tons of sweets and don't exercise, gain weight, and take a pill for diabetes, and another for blood pressure, and another for cholesterol.

Now, ok, sometimes these diseases occur also in people who eat right, control their weight, and exercise regularly. And they take medication. I'm not talking about them. And I know first-hand how hard it is to control weight and exercise consistently and to resist the left-over desserts from the big lunch meeting at the office. This isn't about judging anyone. It's about a propensity in our society to expect medication to cure the ills we create for ourselves.

I have been watching the news on what's been happening regarding Obamacare and the Supreme Court, and I have to say, a lot of people are talking about unnecessary drains on our health resources. On the one hand, as Wesley Smith points out, making everyone pay for everyone's health insurance means making healthy people resent those who actually use health resources and who got us into this mess, with lots of finger pointing as to who is a health parasite. On the other hand, our health system is inundated with avoidable diseases and their treatments. As Dr. McCoy will say in a few hundred years, "I can do more for you if you just eat right and exercise regularly."

My own cholesterol was well over 300 a few years back. What did I do? I exercised a lot -- did a lot of walking, used an elliptical machine a few days a week, lifted weights, took up fencing. I also cut WAY back on my carb intake, without restricting proteins and fats. I lost a little weight, mostly intra-abdominal fat (the bad kind). The subcutaneous protective padding to this day obscures my 6-pack abs, however. I also took supplements (fish oil, niacin, and red yeast rice, the latter having similar effects as statin drugs but much milder). My cholesterol went to 205. I slacked off and it went back up a bit, but it's back down again. My blood pressure is fine. My blood sugar is fine.

This is the way to fix our health system: For everyone to not need it as much as possible. Health care begins with people caring for themselves. Our dietary and other lifestyle choices are bioethical issues.

So back to Sleeper. I think the exchange above goes on to talk about how good cigarettes are for your health. That's not likely to pan out. But I think my favorite part was where Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are in the cave and find a 1970s VW Beetle fairly well preserved. They climb in and Allen turns the key and it starts right up. "Man, they really built these things," he said. Loved the original Beetle.

Is choice of car a bioethical issue? I dunno. Everything we choose to do reveals us to others and forms us as the kind of person to do that sort of thing. I drive a 13 year old Volvo station wagon. Geesh. I'm getting a Mustang in 2014 if I can afford it. (50th anniversary year for you non-pony fans.)

What's on Obama's Mind

As I said in a post the other day, I wonder what's on Obama's mind by a) requiring all health insurance to cover promiscuity-encouraging products and procedures and b) requiring everyone to have health insurance.

Well, Fr. Z relates his take on an interview done by Fox News' Bill Hemmer. The representative of the left side of the aisle has apparently unmasked the liberal agenda in this regard: Sex is for recreation and the Church is the enemy.

I guess I can stop wondering now.

Stem Cells and Creating Life

Two stories collected from the web by bioethics.com caught my attention today. The first one pertains to stem cell research and the other to genetic engineering.

The stem cell story comes from the Chicago Tribune. Researchers are using a patient's own stem cells to improve heart function in people with heart failure. They have used stem cells derived from the patient's bone marrow and fat tissue and have found that both kinds of cells offer benefit, but the cells from fat tissue work especially well. And no embryos were created or destroyed in the process. Any supporters for embryonic stem cell research reading this? Please post links to therapeutic successes using embryonic cells in the combox. Thanks.

The genetic engineering story comes from the BBC. Researchers are crafting new DNA sequences to modify existing organisms for particular purposes. On the one hand, this only represents an advancement of technique, not intent. The Bible relates the efforts of Jacob to breed sheep with a particular trait. Jacob used breeding to modify the DNA. Modern science simply modifies the DNA itself. I say "simply" in a relative sense, since the process is not really simple at all.

On the other hand, the potential for misuse and mistake is exceedingly high. Many of the organisms are bacteria. A nefarious person could easily create DNA for a highly infections germ that is also resistant to all antibiotics and which the human body cannot fight. Or a germ that transforms organic material into oil and somehow propagates on, say, vegetation and destroys all life as we know it. If you can dream it, you can make it. Such things can be weaponized or made by accident, and they can be unleashed by intent or by accident. It's not limited to bacteria, either. We already see in the news controversy over genetically modified foods and express horror over human and animal hybrids and so forth. And just as breeding techniques, which include preventing undesirable specimens from breeding, can be used to "improve" the human race, so can genetic engineering be used to create some sort of super-human or trans-human being. Think super-strong soldier or super-smart elitist politician.

I am not afraid of breeders doing things to come up with a meatier cow or a beta-carotene-rich form of rice for some reason. I guess because human breeding is left up to individuals. It is really hard to breed a special race of humans. But it would be easy to build one.

The thing about humans, though, is this. The way humans really improve themselves is spiritually, not physically. A new, genetically engineered body with a super-duper brain will still be a person who will be either good or evil, and if evil, that body will be just a bigger impediment than it would be for the rest of us. Harder to control, harder to restrain for the good.

Authentic bioethics has to keep in mind that human beings are spiritual. Whatever choices researchers make, they affect themselves as persons. Not bodily, but in their attitudes and inclinations. Choices reveal and reinforce a person. This happens spiritually. Bioethics is not only about what we do to others, but what we do to ourselves in our choices that affect others. Our ultimate good is God. Take God out of the equation, and there is nothing left to say but that man is god. And not man as a whole, but the individual "I" is god. Anarchy or totalitarianism of the powerful. Chaos or oppression. Only if there be a GOD is there any freedom and order. Bioethics has to include that perspective or it fails to be a system to guide or assess human action.

Some pondering as Obamacare goes to the Supreme Court

a) Obama has mandated that all health insurance policies include free contraception, sterilization, and other anti-reproductive products and procedures

b) Obamacare has mandated that everyone has to own health insurance

So I gotta ask: Does this guy have something on his mind?

Catholics are sometimes criticized for being preoccupied with sex. That's a myth of course. We're preoccupied with the context for having sex. It's gotta be just right. Circumstances do a lot to the ethics of a particular choice. Circumstances can make a good act, like sexual intimacy, to be bad. It's some other group, decidedly not Catholic, that is preoccupied with sex itself, making it a part of the educational system they control right at first grade, endorsing it as the content of TV, movies, internet sites, and so on. If Catholics, who say keep sex in the right context, seem preoccupied with sex, it's only because everyone else keeps shoving it in our face.

Now, the circumstances facing Catholics if the Supreme Court upholds Obamacare is this. It will be impossible for Catholics to offer or purchase health insurance that doesn't include costly coverage of undesired and unethical products and procedures. If you are courageous enough to pay the fine or go to jail over this, God bless you. I'm not so sure it's necessary to do that. Most of us who don't work for the Church already face this dilemma with our secular employers' health plans. It's like buying cable TV. It would be great if the cable company didn't offer objectionable channels and all the channels avoided objectionable content, but are you gonna do without ESPN and EWTN because you don't want MTV, which you can't not get? My family needs coverage. I cannot afford it otherwise. I'll save going to the rack for when they want me to deny my faith.

But that does not mean this is not an important matter. It is. It is a huge violation of the Constitution and a tyrannical governmental intrusion into private affairs. We must resist it vigorously.

Yet, if it's not our sin, then whose sin will this be? It will be on him who wrote the rules of the game.

Poor Obama. Poor, poor Obama. The sins of tens of millions of Catholics on his poor soul.

Do the Math on Contraception

Stacy Trasancos has a great blog called Accepting Abundance. She's a scientist and a homemaker and a convert to the Catholic faith. She has an interesting mathematical analysis about contraception.

If you recall, the Obama Propaganda Machine has said that 98% of Catholic women have used birth control at some point and that therefore Catholic women want free birth control just like everyone else. Of course, that number is just made up. But it is an "over time" number, not a "snap-shot" number. At some point between the ages of, say, 15 and 50, a woman who has ever been Catholic might use artificial birth control at least once. Yeah, that figure might just be up there in the high 90s. But look at it. If a woman was baptized Catholic and never set foot in a Church afterward, she counts. If she was a pagan prostitute her entire adult life and became a Catholic a year before hitting menopause, she counts. If she was engaged and used a condom once with her fiance and married the guy and never used birth control ever again, she counts. How many Catholic women (or men for that matter) are sinners? 100% of course (not counting Our Lady). How many who have any relation to the name Catholic have ever, ever used any kind of birth control ever? Quite possibly a very high number.

But how many active, devout, practicing Catholic women are using birth control right now? (I mean by "right now" not this exact second, but as part of their current way of living their lives.) That is, how many practicing Catholic women are actual, current users of birth control? I think that that number will be way less than 98%. I personally doubt that it is 0%, because none of us are perfect. But it is not 98%.

The difference is the over-time/real-world picture versus a focused, snap-shot picture. Birth control advocates play both sides, depending on how it suits them.

Birth control is usually presented in an idealized, snap-shot view. Birth control pills are claimed to have a success rate at preventing pregnancy also in the high 90s, for instance, 99% of women using the pill perfectly for one year (not counting mistakes, illnesses, other drugs that reduce the pill's effectiveness, etc.) will avoid pregnancy in that year. The question is, how many real women between the ages of 15 and 50, using the pill in real life (that is, imperfectly), will get pregnant over the years they use birth control, despite using birth control at the time of pregnancy?

Stacy does the math. It's a lot like compounding interested on your credit card. Assuming the birth control manufacturer's claim of 8% of real-world women will end up pregnant in one year, more than half will end up pregnant within 10 years. During 20 years of using the pill, and some women use it that long, 81% of women will have had at least 1 pregnancy they were trying to avoid. In those 20 years, 81% of sexually active women using birth control become potential customers of abortion providers at least once. The basic failure rate is even higher for teenagers.

There's also a lively discussion going on in her combox. (Lucky lady. My wife says that God reads my blog. He hasn't commented yet, though.) Some interesting objections, some good responses. There are a lot of assumptions with the model. A particular woman's likelihood of getting pregnant will be higher or lower depending on just how active she is, since the pill has to fail to prevent ovulation at the same time as she is, umm, active.

The one thing I want to focus on in terms of ethics (because there are very many) is why an outfit like Planned Parenthood would want to offer birth control if they make WAY more money off of abortions. They are banking on that birth control failure rate. They believe that a woman who comes to them for birth control will probably be back in a few years for an abortion.

Recently, the state of Texas has been criticized for de-funding PP through Medicaid, with the charge that poor women are ending up without birth control. That is, PP is turning poor women away because PP doesn't make any money off of them. Because of course PP is all about caring for poor women and making sure they get their birth control. It's a business ordered to a profit, and they would prefer to turn a poor woman away (expecting her to somehow afford an abortion when she needs one) than to offer her services out of charity.

So why doesn't PP just stop offering birth control altogether? They are afraid that if a woman cannot get birth control, she'll do something drastic, like not have sex at all, except with a man who loves her and who will stand by her and raise their child with her. Birth control (and abortion, by the way) does that. It makes it easier for more women who do not want to get pregnant to have sex, making the pregnancies that do occur all the more unwanted because they are seen as a bad outcome of sex.

The more people engage in sex not wanting a pregnancy, the more unwanted pregnancies that will occur. You do the math. PP has.

The Incarnation and Bioethics

The Feast of the Annunciation, the celebration of the Incarnation. God took to himself not only a human body, but a complete human nature. It's worth thinking about from a bioethical standpoint.

Bioethics as a field is primarily concerned with man's body, which is to say, that bioethics is not concerned primarily with man's soul. There are as many opinions as to the nature and dignity of man and his body and whether or not the soul is a real thing as there are bioethicists it seems. Depending on which opinion one holds, what is deemed ethical or not ethical can vary greatly. Even if the ethical reasoning were good and precise, the conclusions could be wildly wrong if the underlying opinion about man and his body are flawed. An authentic bioethics has to get to the root of the question, What is man? Not just which idea of man do I like best, nor which one best justifies what I want to do, but what is man, what is he really? It is a humbling question to ask because it requires humility to accept the possibility that one's treasured idea could be wrong.

I start with the premise that God exists, that God created man by intent, and that man of all bodily creatures shares in a preeminent way in some of God's highest attributes in a way that far surpasses all other known biological life. God is not bodily Himself, for if the divine nature were bodily, it would not be divine. Therefore, God's highest attributes are spiritual, meaning that man's highest attributes are also spiritual, although unlike God man's spiritual powers are dependent upon the body. I am talking about the power to think, to know, to reason, to imagine, to intend, to plan. It follows that man's ultimate destiny and his greatest good is God Himself, and that man's greatest welfare is spiritual and not bodily.

(Those who take the opposite view of God of course end up in a different place regarding man's greatest good. Man's greatest good for them can only be bodily. But they also undermine the authority of their conclusions, whether they believe so or not, because in denying God they deny any objective concept of good and evil, right and wrong, that compels assent by other reasonable people. If there is no God, there is no compelling basis for any ethical system. No matter what they say, one could always say, "So what?")

Man's greatest good may be spiritual, but man lives his earthly life in his body. Man's nature is to be bodily. We say that death occurs when the body and the spirit are separated; life for man therefore is the perfection of the union of body and soul.

Authentic bioethics must consider man as a whole, as a union of body and soul. Moreover, it must consider man's greatest good as being his union with God. What man does with his body reflects on the welfare of his soul. Authentic bioethics, in considering the right and wrong of human bodily life and health, needs to keep in mind man's authentic good, that bodily life is ordered to spiritual life. Since the Incarnation is the perfect union of man and God and the perfect union of human soul and human body, it reveals much to us about human nature and therefore authentic bioethics.

First of all, the Incarnation reveals how the human body has such dignity that it can be God. Now, we must be careful when we say that a bodily thing can "be" God. For one thing, properly speaking, what is united to God in the Incarnation is not merely a body, but a complete human nature consisting of body and soul. For another, only the body of Jesus Christ can "be" God in this way, since no other human body belongs to God in the same way as that of Jesus. The Incarnation shows, however, that the human body is in some sense able to be united to God through grace (that is, not by human power, an important point to keep in mind). Every human being that comes into existence from conception to death is capable of spiritual union with God. Every living human body manifests this capability and makes it visible. Every human being is thus also a sign of the Incarnation. 

Two important implications for bioethics can be mentioned in relation to this exalted dignity of the human body. One is that man’s general attitude toward the body has bearing on his general attitude toward God. We must treat human bodies with awe, including our own, and do nothing to any human body that impedes our or another person's capacity for union with God. If the body in general is abortable, manipulatable, a thing to be created at will, experimented upon, used, and finally killed when it becomes useless to others, then so would be Christ’s body. In a way, all disordered or inauthentic bioethical positions are a repudiation and disparagement of the Incarnation.

The second implication is that the body is not really the impediment that man thinks it is. So much in the area of trans- and post-humanism pertains to physical enhancements through drugs, surgery, genetic engineering, and so on. But physical enhancements are necessary only if the body is seen as a limiting factor for  happiness. Man's body and soul will be perfected in the resurrection in which the body will be physically perfected and subjected to the soul united to God by grace. Furthermore, participation in the divine nature (as in 2 Peter 1:4) entails participation of the whole human person in infinite life, power, and knowledge. Therefore, the ultimate goals--except for one--of trans- and post-humanism are superabundantly achieved not through technology but through holiness. The one goal that is not achieved is re-creating man in the image of man rather than of God.

            Holiness, however, is not easy and in the short term seems actually a failure. Holiness requires that man at least discipline they body and cultivate a life of grace. Man must at least discipline the body and strengthen the soul by not giving in to the body’s cravings and passions except insofar as they conform to reason (cf. I Cor 9:23-27). But it may also result in the ultimate sacrifice, the death of the body, a death that leads to greater life. Dying per se may not have any intrinsic value, not even dying by violent death, unless one pours out one’s life in sacrificial love. Such sacrificial love may be a single, fatal act, but even prior to that final act, it comprises a life-long commitment to serving God in which one’s whole life and not merely one’s death becomes an act sacrificial love. Man’s supreme vocation is to love, which Christ came to make clear. In sacrificial love, man is perfected as an image of God—man is not only the image of God insofar as God is Life, but also insofar as God is Love, love that is life-giving. Sacrificial love gives life to another. Man therefore perfects himself as the image of Life through imitation of Christ.

            Once again, disordered or inauthentic bioethical positions seem to focus on the self, what “I” want, rather than on self-discovery and self-fulfillment through self-gift and self-sacrifice, and therefore are anti-Incarnation and all that the Incarnation reveals to man. Death and suffering lose their significance in terms of self-gift, becoming things to be avoided. Suffering in particular is feared more than death and the value of death becomes merely its power to end suffering. Yet the suffering incurred in the imitation of Christ is the way to life. St. Paul tells us that we are “always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodies. For we who live are always delivered unto death for Jesus’ sake; that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our mortal flesh” (2 Cor 4:10-11).

            The life of Jesus was made manifest first by Jesus himself, of course, who stands as our model of holiness and its effects on the body. Prior to his death, Jesus' body was perfectly subordinate to his soul, but "perfectly" is used in a qualified and not absolute sense. His body was subject to weariness, hunger, and injury, but its cravings and passions were never disordered from reason and never overcame reason. This is what it means that Jesus was "one tempted in all things like as we are, without sin" (Heb 4:15). He gives us an example that human bodily life can be lived virtuously. In the Resurrection, Jesus' body and soul were united in absolute perfection, endowing the body with properties such as immortality and  ttained true life in the resurrection, with effects such that the body’s subordination to the soul enable it to defy its earthly material limitations. Many disordered positions in bioethics circumvent the ordering of the body to the soul and seek to dominate the body; instead of the integration of the human person, they seek to reveal and reinforce the rift between body and soul.

            Lastly, every human body is created by God for eternal life such as that enjoyed by Christ in the body: God wills that all be saved. Therefore, every human body from the moment it comes into existence until natural death must be fostered and nourished for eternal life. No human body is a legitimate object of exploitation.

            It is important to note, also, that bioethical decisions affect not only someone else, such as abortion or euthanasia involve taking someone else's life. These decisions also affect the one making the decision, and the one carrying it out. All of our acts reveal us as people who do those acts, and they reinforce or habituate us to similar sorts of actions in the future. Our actions also influence others. It's not only about "me," but about us all.

            On this feast of the Annunciation, let us keep in mind that our bodies are not strictly our own. They belong to God.