Category: Moral Theology

A reader writes:

I happened to bump into someone’s blog, and I was just curious about her personal blogs about what she plans with her husband. What she stated is below.  Can you please advise about the Church’s stance if any on what she is referring to below, which is "In Vitro Fertilization Adoption."  Correct me if I’m wrong, but adopting embryos still seems like its morally unacceptable or at least questionable according to Catholic Moral Theology, since you’re still harvesting them?   

"Yes I am Catholic. And yes I know that in vitro is wrong. That is why I want to adopt an embryo. I told my husband before I married him that I didnt feel right about in vitro because I hold to the doctrine of the church. My husband just converted and is more of a liberal catholic. I have already talked to a priest about our situation. Adopting an embryo is taking the embryos that other couples that did in vitro didnt use and instead of throwing them away or giving them to research, couples can adopt. I find this a better alternative for these little lives then letting them stay frozen, die, or even to research."

Thanks, please advise,

Rome has not yet issued a finding regarding the moral acceptability of adopting embryos who would otherwise die in the freezer or be actively destroyed. I anticipate a decision in the coming years, quite possibly during the current pontificate, but for right now Rome is letting moral theologians kick this one around and work out the issues involved.

At present the community of orthodox moral theologians is split: Some have the intuition, as you do, that this is wrong–not because it involves harvesting embryos (implanting them isn’t harvesting them; "harvesting" refers to killing them so that they can be used for possible medical treatments) but because they feel it is intrinsically wrong to implant an embryo from one woman into another. In arguing this, they may appeal to the idea that the development of the child in the womb is part of the reproductive process and is thus inviolable.

Other moral theologians have the opposite intuition, that embryo adoption is morally justifiable in this case becaues the alternative is letting the child die (or be actively killed when the embryo bank decides to junk it). This is not the same situation as surrogate motherhood, where one woman has a child on behalf of another and thus circumvents the normal reproductive process. It is allowing one’s womb to be used to rescue a child who has already been created and who would otherwise die.

Catholics are permitted at present to take either view.

My own instincts are with the second group–that it is morally permissible to adopt embryos in order to keep them from dying.

To my mind, the definitive moment of reproduction is conception. When that happens is when you have a new human being. What happens to it next is not reproduction, because the reproduction has already taken place and we have a new person. What follows (implantation in the womb and subsequent gestation) is simply caring for a new person who already exists and thus is not subject to the same kind of moral unalterability as the act of reproduction itself.

In other words, human reproduction is inviolable, which is why IVF (like adultery) is wrong, but most of what is happening during pregnancy is not reproduction. A new human is produced–and thus reproduction takes place–at the very beginning of pregnancy. What follows is growth, development, and care.

I would analogize the frozen embryo adoption situation to that of a wet nurse. If a child’s own mother is unable or unwilling to nurse the child, it has been a practice throughout human history to have another woman–who is willing and able to nurse the child–to do so. The second woman thus provides the nourishment from her breasts that the child needs when the biological mother is unable or unwilling to do so.

Adopting a frozen embryo strikes me as the same thing, morally: In this case a second woman provides the nourishment and protection from her womb that the child needs and that the biological mother is unable or unwilling to do so.

In both cases care is being provided for the infant by a second woman, the difference being the age of the infant and thus which organs of the overall reproductive system (breasts or the womb) is being used to provide the care that the infant needs at that stage.

This, from my perspective, deals with the intrinsic moral nature of the act. Some might wish to bring in extrinsic considerations, such as whether doing this would encourage people to create more snowflake babies (as they are called).

I do not think that this argument has weight for two reasons;

1) The number of children who can be so-adopted is miniscule compared to the number of frozen embryos that there are. There is no way that anything more than a small fraction of them could be adopted, and thus I do not see that allowing embryo adoption would have an appreciable effect on the number that are created.

2) It could likewise be argued that allowing wet nurses–or even adoption–also encourages people to create children that they are unable or unwilling to care for. No doubt some people do–and certainly they historically have been–sexually looser than they otherwise would have been, in the knowledge that they could put the children that might result up for adoption. That doesn’t mean you let the resulting kids die of neglect. You do what you can to save them, even if you can’t save all of them. In fact, historically Christians were known for picking up foundlings, caring for them, and raising them as Christians.

To my mind, this is a high-tech version of the same thing.

A reader writes:

It is my understanding that the Church tells us to pay taxes and obey our
civil government EXCEPT when the civil government is asking its citizens
to sin.  I base this off CCC 2242:

"The citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of
civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral
order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the
Gospel. Refusing obedience to civil authorities, when their demands are
contrary to those of an upright conscience, finds its justification in the
distinction between serving God and serving the political community.
"Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the
things that are God’s." "We must obey God rather than men":

When citizens are under the oppression of a public authority which
oversteps its competence, they should still not refuse to give or to do
what is objectively demanded of them by the common good; but it is
legitimate for them to defend their own rights and those of their fellow
citizens against the abuse of this authority within the limits of the
natural law and the Law of the Gospel."

Now, with that stated, if I know that my money I pay to taxes is
supporting mass murder of innocent humans, should I pay taxes?  By paying
taxes I am indirectly supporting the actions of the government in this
injustice.  For example, I know that taxpayer money is supporting the
blood thirsty abortion mill Planned Parenthood:

"Finally, the Planned Parenthood empire has been built and sustained in
large part by money from the U.S. taxpayers. Planned Parenthood’s own
annual reports indicate that it received $2.2 billion of taxpayer money
between 1987 and 2001. Thirty percent ($202.7 million) of Planned
Parenthood’s income ($672.6 million) in its 2000/01 fiscal year came from
government grants or contracts. Incredibly, PPFA made $454 million of
profit from 1987 to 2001!" – American Life League

Thus, should I continue to pay taxes?  Thanks.

The argument that you are making faces several hurdles.

The first is that the passage in the Catechism that you cite involves disobedience in matters in which you are directly being commanded to do evil (e.g., if you were being ordered to perform an abortion or abort one of your own children).

Catholic moral theology recognizes a distinction between different forms of cooperation with evil, ranging from immediate, personal action to what is known as remote material cooperation. This passage is dealing with things toward the former end of the spectrum: Things you are being personally ordered to do that are evil.

Giving money to the government is not evil. If the government then takes it–against your wishes–and does something evil with it then your cooperation is both material and–given the way the government works–remote. Thus if you pay taxes and your taxes go into a government fund and then the government takes some of the money from that fund and gives it to Planned Parenthood then your cooperation with the evil that Planned Parenthood does is (extremely) remote material cooperation.

Catholic moral theology acknowledges that remote material cooperation is morally justifiable when there is a proportionate reason. So: Is there a proportionate reason to pay your taxes, knowing that a tiny fraction of them may go toward Planned Parenthood?

It would seem that there is, and it may be articulated as follows:

1) The government will ruin your life if you don’t pay your taxes.
2) By ruining your life, the government will also gravely harm the lives of any who are financially dependent on you (e.g., your children).
3) You have a duty to protect yourself and those who are dependent on you from being needlessly ruined.
4) Failure to pay your taxes will not materially decrease the money that is given to Planned Parenthood. They’ll get their money anyway.
5) If you are convicted of a felony you may lose your right to vote, which is a tool you possess to bring about change within the system.
6) By refusing to pay your taxes, you deprive the government of money that would be used for good as well as evil, including the basic good of maintaining civil order that is the foundation of civic and economic life for the populace.

It thus seems to me that, in the American setting, the kind of tax protesting you are talking about would not be authorized by Catholic moral theology.

If we had an "opt-out" box on our tax forms that let us withold money from Planned Parenthood (or any other evil thing that is receiving government money) then we would be morally obliged to use it, but since we do not have such a box then–given our inability to disentangle money from going to bad as well as good causes and given the fact our cooperation would be (extremely) remote and material and given the existence of a proportionate reason (having our lives ruined, if nothing else) then it seems to me that Catholic moral theology requires the payment of taxes in the American context.

The Church acknowledges that there are situations in which governments may be so horrible that they may be legitimately overthrown, and if you’re in a situation like that (e.g., Nazi Germany, Pol Pot’s Cambodia ,the Taliban’s Afghanistan) then it seems that you would be warranted in withholding taxes from the government as well as taking up arms against it. However, the conditions that have to be met for that are exceedingly high. The Catechism explains:

CCC 2243 Armed resistance to oppression by political authority is not legitimate, unless all the following conditions are met: 1) there is certain, grave, and prolonged violation of fundamental rights; 2) all other means of redress have been exhausted; 3) such resistance will not provoke worse disorders; 4) there is well-founded hope of success; and 5) it is impossible reasonably to foresee any better solution.

Here in the United States those conditions are simply not jointly fulfilled. Certainly the pope isn’t going to agree that they are.

Therefore, I would say that you are morally obliged to pay your taxes and do what you can within the democratic process to end government funding for evil programs and organizations.

You’ve got a vote and the ability to make your voice heard in the public square. Make the most of them.

Note for purposes of historical comparison: The basis of the "Render unto Caesar" passage was the question of tax protesting against the Roman Empire, which Jesus’ questioners recognized as an evil abomination (see Revelation chapter 13 if you’d like heaven’s perspective on it).  Yet Jesus said that one should "render [taxes] unto Caesar"–despite the horrendous evil that the Roman Empire represented and inflicted on its subject nations.

A reader writes:

I know that The Church allows for cremation, and that there is a law that says that the ashes must be buried.  Is this a moral issue?

I ask because my recently-passed-away mother was cremated, and my sister has the ashes in her house and wants to keep them.  I have expressed my desire to have them buried, but she does not want to bury them.  My mother was not Catholic, so should I be concerned?

First, let me say that I am sorry for your loss and will pray for the repose of your mother’s soul and for your family.

There is ecclesiastical law that requires the burial or other interment of the cremated remains of an individual. According to the Order of Christian Funerals:

"The cremated remains of a body should be treated with the same respect given to the human body from which they come. This includes the use of a worthy vessel to contain the ashes, the manner in which they are carried, the care and attention to appropriate placement and transport, and the final disposition. The cremated remains should be buried in a grave or entombed in a mausoleum or columbarium. The practice of scattering cremated remains on the sea, from the air, or on the ground, or keeping cremated remains in the home of a relative or friend of the deceased are not the reverent disposition that the Church requires. Whenever possible, appropriate means for recording with dignity the memory of the deceased should be adopted, such as a plaque or stone which records the name of the deceased." (Order of Christian Funerals, Appendix No. 417)

If your sister, like your mother, is not Catholic then neither of them are bound by this norm legally. That still leaves the other question you ask, which is whether your sister is bound by it morally.

The answer appears to be no.

What natural law requires is that the remains of the dead be treated with reverence, and the above norm expresses the way in which reverence is to be shown to cremated remains in Catholic circles. However, it does not appear that natural law requires that reverence be shown in this particular way.

It may be helpful here to realize that there is an enormous amount of diversity in different cultures regarding the proper way to show reverence for the remains of the departed.

This was made clear to me a number of years ago when I was talking with a friend of mine who as raised in a different culture and she expressed horror at the idea of archaeologists digging into graves to learn about previous cultures. To her this was an unacceptable desecration, and the respectful thing to do would be to leave the graves alone.

Coming from an American cultural perspective, my reaction was exactly the opposite: Opening the graves (e.g., tombs in Egypt) so that we could learn about past cultures was precisely the means needed to honor the people who built them. Examining the tombs of past cultures would enable us to learn more about them and thus appreciate and respect them more fully. For some of these cultures, their tombs were the best-preserved things about them we had, and to refuse to examine them would deprive us of precious knowledge about a people who would otherwise be lost to history.

There are many other examples of how respect for the remains of the departed varies from culture to culture. In Jesus’ own day–as you may recall from the "St. James ossuary" incident–it was customary for some individuals to be placed in a tomb while their bodies decayed and then, a year later, their relatives would clean the bones and place them in an ossuary.

In Rome it is customary to honor the dead in the catacombs not just by doing archaeological excavations in them but by going on pilgrimages through them.

There is also the Capuchin church of Santa Maria della Concezione, where the bones of numerous Capuchins (some collected as late as 1870) are displayed in the most striking fashion.

Now, as an American, I find some practices that other cultures use as creepy as I’m sure many readers do, but the point is that there is a huge amount of variation culturally in how respect for the dead is to be shown to their remains.

And then there is the whole custom of venerating the relics of the saints, which are parts of their remains that are not buried.

Thus when we get to the question of what natural law requires interment it seems that it does not.

If it did then the Church would not have the relics of the saints on display in reliquaries. They would all have to go into graves or tombs.

To look at it another way, there is nothing about the molecules that once formed part of a person’s body that requires that these molecules be housed in a particular structure, such as a grave or a tomb. We the living can show our respect for the dead by so housing them, but this is a means of showing respect–and thus subject to cultural variation–rather than something required by the molecules themselves.

If your non-Catholic sister (assuming that she is non-Catholic) wishes to keep your mother’s cremated remains in a sealed container in her house the way that you as a Catholic might keep the relic of a saint in a reliquary in your house then there is not a violation of natural law here. Both are ways that respect can be shown for the dead. Her way is not the Catholic way of doing it–and I personally would not show my respect in that fashion even if Church law permitted me to–but it is not prohibited by natural law.

As to whether you should be concerned about the situation, I would say two things: (1) You need not be concerned that the natural moral law is being violated by your sister’s proposal but (2) it would be desirable if a solution could be found that was acceptable to all of the surviving relatives (assuming that your mother didn’t herself indicate what she wanted the final disposition of her remains to be). One sibling being the exclusive arbiter of what happens to the remains is not the most desirable solution. Whether a mutual solution could be reached and whether it would be prudent to push for it would be a judgment that those involved in the situation would be in the best position to make.

A reader writes:

Jimmy (may I presume to use your first name? If not, Mr. Akin):

I love listening to you on Catholic Answers — as they say in talk radio, I’m a long time listener, first time talker. Anyhow, your excellent discussion of the stem cell issue leads me to ask a different question on Catholic medical ethics:

Ken Lay died of a heart attack recently. If he had stopped taking heart medicine, thus hastening his death, would that be suicide? To what extent is someone required to take life-saving medicine?

The Catechism does not seem to contain a technical definition of suicide, so I’m going to have to fall back on my own understanding of the term, which is that suicide is undertaking a course of action in order to bring about one’s own death.

By undertaking a course of action, this doesn’t have to mean taking positive action, like putting a gun to one’s head or injecting a toxic drug into your body. It can also be refusing to do those things that would reasonably be expected of a person in an effort to preserve his life.

For example, if you found yourself in the middle of a busy street with a bus bearing down on you and you refused to step out of the way so that you could get run over and die then I would say that was suicide even though the "action" you performed was a refusal to do something (i.e., step out of the path of the bus).

For someone taking heart medicine (and I notice that you didn’t say Ken Lay was or that he discontinued taking it, you just used him as a hypothetical example), a refusal to take the medicine would seem to count as suicide if two conditions were fulfilled:

1) The person discontinued the medication in order to bring about their death, and
2) The personal was morally obligated to take the medication.

A person could discontinue taking the medicine without fulfilling condition (1) if there was some other reason for the discontinuation. For example, the person may have run out of the medicine and didn’t have the money to buy more and couldn’t find a source that would donate it to him. (This might be the case for many people with heart problems in the third world, for example.) It might also be that the heart medicine was causing horrible side effects (let’s say he developed a severe allergy to it) and the motive was to stop the allergic reactions rather than to bring about his own death. He might also have joined a religion that forbids the use of medicine.

If his motive was something other than bringing about his own death then I wouldn’t be inclined to call it suicide. I think that the intention to kill oneself is an indispensible part of suicide in the proper sense. It’s that intention that distinguishes suicide, for example, from recklessly endangering one’s life (i.e., taking unacceptable risks with it in the absence of the intention to kill oneself).

Note that the motive might or might not be a good one. If he has a good reason for discontinuing the medication (like, he simply can’t get any more) then if he dies as a result of not taking it then he has no moral culpability in his death. On the other hand, he might have a bad motive (like he just doesn’t like the color of the pills). In the latter case he would bear moral culpability for his death, though the sin would not be suicide in the proper sense since there was not an intent to bring about his own death (the intent being not to take pills of that color).

All this deals with the first condition necessary for suicide. Now let’s look at the second:

What medical treatments are morally obligatory? Historically, this question has been answered in terms of "extraordinary" vs. "ordinary" treatments. Those treatments that were ordinary were ones that a person was morally expected to perform, whlie extraordinary ones were not morally obligatory.

This distinction worked well in the 1500s, when medicine wasn’t changing very fast. People had an intuitive sense of what procedures were ordinary vs. extraordinary, but with the massive change in medical technology that we are currently in the middle of, treatments that were once not just extraordinary but impossible are now totally ordinary (e.g., taking your insulin if you’re a Type 1 diabetic).

Consequently, Catholic moral theology has been reframing the discussion not in terms of what is ordinary vs. extraordinary but what is proportionate vs. disproportionate. The Holy See’s 1980 Declaration on Euthanasia takes note of this:

In the past, moralists replied that one is never obliged to use "extraordinary" means. This reply, which as a principle still holds good, is perhaps less clear today, by reason of the imprecision of the term and the rapid progress made in the treatment of sickness. Thus some people prefer to speak of "proportionate" and "disproportionate" means.

The distinction between what is proportionate and what is disproportionate is dealt with by what the declaration goes on to say:

In any case, it will be possible to make a correct judgment as to the means by studying the type of treatment to be used, its degree of complexity or risk, its cost and the possibilities of using it, and comparing these elements with the result that can be expected, taking into account the state of the sick person and his or her physical and moral resources.

In other words, there is a cost:benefit analysis that needs to be performed, comparing the costs (pain, discomfort, side-effects, money) to the benefits he will receive. If the benefits clearly outweigh the costs then the procedure is proportionate to the problem it is trying to address. On the other hand, if the costs clearly outweigh the benefits then the procedure is disproportionate.

Now, whenever the word "proportionate" gets involved in a moral discussion, some folks are inclined to start lobbing accusations of "proportionalism," so I need to issue

THE BIG RED DISCLAIMER: What I am talking about here is not proportionalism. Proportionalism is a system of thought that makes the proportions of costs and benefits the ONLY criteria to be taken into account in a moral appraisal. That’s why it’s got the -ism tacked on to the end of "proportional," because it makes proportionality the be-all and end-all of moral theology.

Under proportionalism one could not only forego treatment if the costs outweighed the benefits, one could positively kill the patient–put a gun to his head and pull the trigger–if it were deemed that the benefits of doing so (ending suffering) were greater than the costs (one bullet).

Proportionalism is a false moral system, but not all discussion of proportionality means that someone is advocating proportionalism. Orthodox Catholic moral theologians discussion proportionality all the time. It’s just when it gets made into the exclusive criteria of morality that we have proportionalism.

And the Holy See is not averse to taking the proportionality of the costs to the benefits into account, as see from the quotation above and from what the Declaration on Euthanasia goes on to say:

It is also permitted, with the patient’s consent, to interrupt these [advanced or even experimental] means, where the results fall short of expectations. But for such a decision to be made, account will have to be taken of the reasonable wishes of the patient and the patient’s family, as also of the advice of the doctors who are specially competent in the matter. The latter may in particular judge that the investment in instruments and personnel is disproportionate to the results foreseen; they may also judge that the techniques applied impose on the patient strain or suffering out of proportion with the benefits which he or she may gain from such techniques.

The document also says:

Therefore one cannot impose on anyone the obligation to have recourse to a technique which is already in use but which carries a risk or is burdensome. Such a refusal is not the equivalent of suicide; on the contrary, it should be considered as an acceptance of the human condition, or a wish to avoid the application of a medical procedure disproportionate to the results that can be expected, or a desire not to impose excessive expense on the family or the community.

When inevitable death is imminent in spite of the means used, it is permitted in conscience to take the decision to refuse forms of treatment that would only secure a precarious and burdensome prolongation of life, so long as the normal care due to the sick person in similar cases is not interrupted. In such circumstances the doctor has no reason to reproach himself with failing to help the person in danger.

So: It seems to me that whether a refusal to take one’s heart medicine is suicide will depend (1) on whether the persons is discontinuing it precisely in order to cause his death and (2) whether the use of the heart medicine is proportionate to the benefits it will give the patient.

If a person can reasonably afford the heart medicine and it is expected to keep him alive without causing horrible suffering then it seems to me that the use of the medicine is proportionate to the benefit to be achieved and thus he is morally obliged to take it.

If he refuses to take it in order to kill himself then it’s suicide. If he refuses to take it for some other inadequate reason then it is something else, such as reckless endangerment of his life.

Hope this helps!

A reader writes:

I wanted to pose a question given the Church’s teaching on embryonic stem cell research. I have a good friend that is suffering from a serious illness that will likely end her life earlier than average. This is an illness that, valid or not, numerous claims about stem cells being the source of a cure for this illness. For purposes of this question, let’s set aside the current practical understanding (ESCR hasn’t yielded any successful advances at this point, while adult stem cell research is more promising). Let’s assume that, at some point in the future (as ESCR is unfortunately likely to happen in private labs at the least), such research yields a complete cure for this illness. How does the current Church teaching extend to that scenario?

Currently, it is sinful for researchers to perform this and (correct me if I’m wrong) sinful to encourage or provide funding for it.

How does that apply to someone whose life would be extended if they receive that cure? If a cure is made available, does the Church teach that an individual will be committed a grave sin in receiving the cure?

Does it matter how the cure is developed (i.e., research yields a method that does not require killing off embryos – the initial research is sinful, what does that make the resulting method)? I’m not trying to look for a “loophole” here…I’m trying to grasp a better understanding of the application of the Church teaching so I can explain it better to my friend. Any help you could provide in explaining this better would be greatly appreciated.

This is an area of ongoing doctrinal development, so the best I can do is sketch the current shape of my own understanding of how to apply the relevant principles to this area. There may be medical facts I am unaware of, and the Church may later clarify things in a way that is different than what I sketch below.

Let’s start by being clear about what is intrinsically wrong here: killing embryonic human beings. That is the thing that is intrinsically wrong. Other things in this area are not intrinsically wrong–or have not been said by the Church to be instrinsically wrong–but may be extrinsically wrong based on how they relate to the killing of embryonic humans.

It is thus wrong to kill an embryonic human in order to develop a cell line out of his body, but it is not wrong–or has not been judged by the Church to be wrong–to extract stem cells from an adult (without killing him) in order to generate a cell line.

Once you’ve got the cell line, it is intrinsically possible to experiment on it and try to develop cures from it. The cell line is not a human being (unless you are culturing it in a way that results in the creation of zygotes, which may be the case in some instances) and so the cell line has no rights to be violated. Whether the cell line originated from an embryo who was killed or an adult who was not killed does not affect the moral character of experimenting on it as long as it does not give rise to new humans.

The source of concern at this point is whether conducting such experimentation–which is morally permitted in principle–is whether doing so will reward/encourage those who have killed embryos.

The Church is concerned to avoid the creation of widespread baby farming in order to get new cell lines for research. If allowing research on cells lines that came from murdered babies is something that will result in the murder of thousands or millions of more babies then–as a practical matter–refusing to allow the research may be the best way to protect human life (taking into account the lives that might not be saved because the research doesn’t get done). In this case doing/funding the research would be extrinsically wrong, meaning that it is not wrong in itself but is wrong because it promotes something that is wrong in itself.

Unfortunately, when things are extrinsically wrong it often is unclear what their moral status is. If something is wrong in and of itself then we can be more definite about its moral status than if we’re trying to figure out what kind of cooperation is involved in an action that is wrong. There is thus often a judgment call that has to be made when it comes to whether an immoral form of cooperation is present.

Thus far the Church has not issued a judgment that experimenting on cell lines from embryos is (a) intrinsically evil or (b) always extrinsically evil due to an inadmissable form of cooperation with embryo killing. In the absence of such a judgment, Catholic researchers would be allowed to hold the position that it is permissible for them to conduct research on embryonic stem cell lines as long as they are not creating zygotes or otherwise encouraging the destruction of embryos.

I strongly suspect, though, that if pressed the Vatican would also protect the right of Catholic researchers not to hold this opinion and to refuse to participate in the research.

Why do I say that?

Because there is also the question of how this impacts your friend: Supposing a cure were developed from such a cell line, could it be used?

Well, right now there are some treatments out there that, in one way or another, involve cells from aborted kids and the Holy See has defended the right of Catholics not to use these treatments even if they are required by local laws (e.g., as part of childhood vaccinations).

The current state of affairs is thus that the Church seems to permit Catholics to hold either position: that it is permissible to fund, research, or take treatments based on stem cell lines coming from embryos as long as one isn’t improperly cooperating in the deaths of new humans OR that one should refuse to fund, research, or take treatments based on such cell lines in order to avoid rewarding/encouraging those who would kill babies.

This is a tricky area, and I espect we will get more clarification from the Church in the future, but that is what seems to be the attitude it is taking for now.

Incidentally, this is not the only time that this kind of situation has come up. It also came up after World War II when it was discovered that the Nazis had done all kinds of medical experimentation on Jewish individuals and there was the question of what to do with the research they had amassed: use it or not?

We can adapt that situation a little bit to the case of stem cells in order to get at the central dilemma. What I’m about to say will be nightmarish, but we’re dealing with a nightmare scenario here, and it helps to remember that and to put a human face on it.

With embryonic stem cell research, what we’re talking about it killing children in order to get medical consumables from them that may then save lives.

Okay: So suppose that you are an Allied pilot who gets shot down over Nazi Germany and you are badly in need of a transfusion, without which you will die.

A Catholic doctor takes pity on you and offers you the transfusion, but he feels that you ought to know the source of the blood, and it turns out that the Nazis have been killing Jewish individuals specifically to get their blood for use in transfusions.

This morning the doctor received a shipment of blood of your type that was extracted from a little girl–Anne Frank–who was killed so that people like you could have her blood.

Do you take the transfusion or not?

It’s a nightmare scenario, but that’s the kind of thing we’re talking about.

Incidentally, one might note that Nazi Germany wasn’t a democracy and wouldn’t care about whether you refused the transfusion or not. On the other hand, we might note that while we are living in a democracy here in America, if widespread baby farming gets started then the drug companies and research labs won’t care about your individual refusal to take their treatments, either.

That’s the situation we’re left to wrestle with.

BUT HERE’S SOME GOOD NEWS.

A reader writes:

I’m a teenager that needs money for college, is it a sin to work on Sunday?  I will fulfill my Sunday oligation to go to Mass.   I’m involved in activities after school that might restrict the amont of hours I can work and will probably have to work on Sundays.  I would appreciate any light that you can shed on this. 

It is not a sin to work on Sunday if you are required to do so by your employer. If you need to make money and your employer requires you to work on Sunday then you work on Sunday. It is not a sin.

That said, one would want to try to find a job that doesn’t require one to work on Sunday. For most people–at least after their college years–this is achievable. But for many folks who are still in school or just starting out, it is not.

The Catechism states:

Family needs or important social service can legitimately excuse from the obligation of Sunday rest. the faithful should see to it that legitimate excuses do not lead to habits prejudicial to religion, family life, and health [CCC 2185].

It also says:

Traditional activities (sport, restaurants, etc.), and social necessities (public services, etc.), require some people to work on Sundays, but everyone should still take care to set aside sufficient time for leisure [CCC 2187].

Now, getting money for college is an important need and would clearly allow for Sunday work. Getting a college degree will open innumerable doors that would otherwise be closed to you in later life, so the gravity necessary for Sunday work is clearly present.

Assuming that there isn’t another possibility.

And here’s where we get to a judgment call: You mention that you are participating in activities after school that may be pushing you toward working on Sundays.

I don’t know what these activities are. They may be things that are themselves important to making your school record look good (so as to get into a better college) or they may be things that will look good on future job resumes (e.g., social service things) or they may just be personally psychologically important to you. So you may have reason to keep doing them on weekdays and then going to work on Sunday.

But I’d at least ask the question of whether the afterschool activities are of sufficient value that they should be done instead of Sunday work. If it were possible to get an afterschool job on weekdays and then rest and do leisure activities on Sunday, that would be preferable.

What the right thing to do in this situation is a judgment call, and I can’t make that for you. I’d therefore advise you to talk it over with your parents and see what they think.

Just make the best judgment call you can and act on it, entrusting the situation to the Lord.

Those three things–using our reason to make judgment calls, acting on them, and trusting God with the results–bring glory to the Lord for they show the attitude of faith coupled with the exercise of the gifts that God gave us to employ.

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