Homily 17th Sun. Yr. C (Humanae Vitae/In Vitro)
This past week I happened to read an article about Dr. Jerome Lejeune. Dr. Lejeune was a world-renowned geneticist, from France. In 1959, he discovered the genetic cause of Down syndrome – which results in a mental handicap – when he saw under a microscope the third little mark on the 21st chromosome, which came to be called trisomy 21.
Unfortunately, his discovery was used to search out and destroy, by genetic testing before birth, children with Down syndrome, so that a pregnancy could be “terminated” before the child was born. This is why we don’t see many people with Down syndrome around today: because their lives were ended before their birth.
This is very sad, because there are varying degrees of Down syndrome: some cases a very slight while others are more severe; but regardless of the degree of the handicap, individuals with Down syndrome are very loving and affectionate.
Is greatly pained Dr. Lejeune to know that his discovery was later used for this purpose; and until his death in 1994, he spent the rest of his life trying to discover ways in which Down syndrome could be cured, even before the birth of the child.
I had the great honor of meeting Dr. Lejeune in about 1990, when I was a seminarian. He gave an address at a Human Life International conference I attended. I must say that Dr. Lejeune was probably the most brilliant person I have ever encountered – and one of the most holy.
I remember his talk: he spoke on the relationship between genetic research and the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. I recall he apologized that he did not have much time to prepare his address with his travels; that he had prepared it only the night before.
I had just been studying, in the seminary, St. Thomas Aquinas and his masterful presentation on the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit – and I thought I knew this topic fairly well. But I was in utter awe at Dr. Lejeune’s talk – how he related principles of the science of genetics with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It was utterly brilliant, and demonstrated that Dr. Lejeune not only was an expert in genetics, but had a deep grasp of theology as well – much better than I!
But even more than his intellectual grasp of the gifts of the Spirit, I could tell by listening to him that he had interiorized those gifts and he lived them. I knew that I was in the presence of a man who was not only a genius, but a saint as well. What I recall most of all was his deep humility – the foundation of true sanctity. I was not surprised to learn recently that his cause for canonization has begun.
In his address to us in 1990 Dr. Lejeune shared with us that in the previous year, 1989, he had flown to the United States, to Maryville, Tenn., to testify as an expert witness in a rather famous court case, Davis v. Davis. If you’ve never heard of it you can look it up on the Internet.
The case concerned a young couple who had divorced but were battling for custody of seven frozen human embryos conceived by in vitro fertilization. The wife and mother wanted custody of the embryos so that she could later bring them to birth; but her husband and the father of those human beings in their embryonic state – who were his preborn children - wanted custody so that the embryos would eventually be destroyed.
Dr. Lejeune told us that with his testimony, he persuaded the judge in the case that these embryos in question were truly human beings at the very earliest stage of life; that these embryos contained all the genetic information they would ever have or need, and that if allowed to live and be implanted in the womb of their mother, they would one day grow from infancy, to childhood, and then into adult human beings.
The judge was persuaded and awarded custody to the mother, saying: “Mr. and Mrs. Davis have produced human beings, in vitro, to be known as their child or children.” One can obtain the transcript of the trial online, under the title: “What’s in the Fridge? Jerome Lejeune’s Expert Court Testimony.” There is a new DVD out about his life’s work which I have ordered.
The court battle in the Davis case resulted from another, more fundamental moral issue: the artificial separation of the unitive and procreative aspects of marital love; another way of saying it is: the artificial separation of love and life.
As human beings, we are made in God’s image, which means we must act like God and love as He loves. In God, love and life are inseparable. St. John tells us that “God is Love,” and God’s love is always fruitful and life-giving. This truth is seen if we look at the inner life of the Trinity itself: from all eternity God the Father begets his Son, the Word; and from all eternity the love between the Father and the Son is fruitful: it is, in fact, a Person: the Holy Spirit in theology is called the Fruit of the love of the Father and the Son. And love is always unitive: in God that fruitful love has for all eternity united the three divine Persons in a deep and unbreakable bond.
In God’s plan for love, life, marriage and the family, human, spousal love is intended to image and reflect divine love: it is intended to unite the spouses, but even more importantly, the marriage act is designed by God to be always potentially fruitful and life-giving: the creation of a new human being is the ultimate purpose of marital love.
This is precisely why so-called same sex “marriage” is a fallacy and why homosexual acts are inherently disordered, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches, and why God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah (as our first reading from Genesis tells – if you keep reading the story).
This truth is reflected in Genesis, where God says: “Be fertile and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28). The Church has always taught this truth. In 1968, in response to the sexual revolution which was fueled, in part, by the invention of the birth control pill, Pope Paul VI issued his famous encyclical Humanae Vitae (On The Transmission of Human Life), in which he infallibly taught that there is an “inseparable connection, established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break, between the unitive significance and the procreative significance which are both inherent to the marriage act.” In fact, Humanae Vitae was promulgated on July 25 – the anniversary of which is tomorrow.
Bl. Paul VI’s encyclical was truly prophetic. On the one hand, he taught that contraception or sterilization is inherently immoral because it intentionally separates and excludes the procreative or life-giving aspect of the marital act from the unitive or love giving aspect, and thereby rendering the marital act willfully lifeless. Contraceptive sex is lifeless sex, and lifeless sex is Godless sex; and in God’s plan, the marital act is intended to be a participation in divine love, and therefore a holy act; this is why contraceptive or sterile sex de-sanctifies the marital act, renders it unholy.
As I tell couples when I’m preparing them for marriage, it takes three to get married, because it takes three to love: the man, the woman and God. The marital act is intended by God to be a total gift of self between the spouses, holding nothing back – including their God-given fertility.
And this is why, as Paul VI teaches in Humanae Vitae, the Church promotes natural family planning: for a serious reason, couples may abstain from the marriage act utilizing knowledge of the wife’s monthly reproductive cycle. With natural family planning, every marital act remains open to participating in God’s potentially life-creating love and bringing forth new human life.
But Bl. Paul VI’s encyclical was prophetic for another reason as well. Not too long after 1968 so-called “reproductive technologies” became popular. Because there is an inseparable connection, willed by God, of the unitive and procreative aspects of the marital act, a couple may not create human life apart from the marital embrace.
The most popular reproductive technology is in vitro fertilization, where human beings are created in a petri dish. Commonly, as was the case with Mr. and Mrs. Davis, seven or eight human embryos are created, but only one embryo is placed in the mother’s womb; the rest of the embryos are usually frozen (in fact, there are tens of thousands of embryos now frozen in the United States alone); sometimes they are destroyed (which is really an abortion at the earliest stages) or stem cells are withdrawn from embryos for experimentation, which kills the new human life.
Research is now being done so that couples, through in vitro methods and genetic manipulation of embryos, can design their own offspring with certain traits and characteristics: “designer” babies. These are the modern day Dr. Frankensteins.
In this age of moral confusion and carelessness regarding the laws of God, we must remind ourselves that all of us began our human lives as embryos. This truth is seen in Mary’s Immaculate Conception: it was the person of the Blessed Virgin who was conceived without sin; and in the Incarnation: the Son of God became man in Mary’s womb at the Annunciation; Jesus began His human life as an embryo!
To freeze human beings in their embryonic state is a grave injustice; to destroy them, or to kill them by manipulating their genes or extracting stem cells from them, is murder.
The Catholic Church, infallibly guided by the Holy Spirit, makes it clear that creating human life outside of the marital embrace - whether it be in vitro fertilization, or cloning (which one day may come), is a grave moral evil.
Let us pray that those in the fields of medicine and science, our lawmakers, and husbands and wives, may look to the Church as a light and a guide regarding the transmission of human life; and that all in our society may come to acknowledge that human life is a gift from God, and that every life, from conception until death, has inherent dignity and value.