Category: Moral Theology

Scientists are beginning to discover a link between killing fertility and killing sexual desire. Next to be studied: Is there a link between regular watering and the growth of plants?

"Taking the Pill for as little as six months could destroy a woman’s sex drive for ever, say scientists.

"The oral contraceptive dramatically reduces the levels of a hormone responsible for desire and simply stopping taking it fails to reverse the effect, it is feared.

"A survey produced such dramatic results that lead researcher Dr. Irwin Goldstein advised any woman on the Pill who has sexual problems to stop taking it and try another method of birth control.

"’There is a possibility it is imprinting a woman for the rest of her life,’ he said."

GET THE STORY.

(Nod to Zippy Catholic for the link.)

Hmmm. I wonder if scientists will eventually offer an apology to the Church for the secular world’s scorn of the Church’s age-old teaching on artificial contraception…. After all, fair’s fair. John Paul II apologized for the Church’s handling of the Galileo affair.

Remind me when I can let out that gulp of air I’m holding.

In regard to a previous post, a reader writes:

Ever since I got your response to my question, I was greatly troubled.  Can you clarify a point for me?  In the beginning of your answer, you said it would NOT be sinful to marry if the 4 conditions in canon law were met by the Catholic party.  However, later on in your post, you said it would besinful to marry if the non-Catholic party did not also meet those 4 conditions.  Could you clear this up for me?
(I’m determining if i have to break up with my one true love (my only chance of getting married, probably!), so please help me with this.)

Thanks for writing back. I know this is a difficult time for you as making the kind of decision you are facing is very hard emotionally.

The conditions affect your potential spouse in different ways. In particular, the three exclusionary reasons do.

1) The first exclusionary reason involves you making a firm commitment to removing all danger of your own defection from the faith *and* doing everything in your power to see that the children are raised Catholic.

The non-Catholic party is not required to make these commitments himself (he is not, as used to be the case, required to promise to raise the children Catholic, nor to become Catholic himself). But since the question was "Is it sinful to marry this gentleman?" it seems that his foreseen response to these commitments on your part is something that affects the moral character of your act.

If, for example, you reasonably foresee (or if you should reasonably foresee) that he will attempt to undermine your Catholic faith (either overtly or subtly) then are you really removing all dangers to your lapsing from the faith? It seems, instead, like you would be committing yourself to live in an environment in which your faith will be under attack (overtly or subtly) for decades and by the person with whom you are supposed to be most intimate. That sounds more like deliberately exposing oneself to the danger of defecting from the faith, which is sinful.

Similarly, there is the commitment on your part to do all that you can to see that all the children are raised Catholic. If you’re marrying an anti-Catholic, it is going to make this very hard to do. You’re asking for inter-spousal conflict by embarking on this course. If you really intend to do all in your power to raise all the kids Catholic and he has a reciprocal commitment to see that they’re raised in his faith, BLAMMO! Arguments galore.

The religious education of children is also, by natural law, a responsibility of their parents–including you–and for you to knowingly and voluntarily commit to raising your children in an anti-Catholic environment raises real questions about your handling of this responsibility. One can easily argue that sin is likely to be involved if one voluntarily commits to raising one’s children in an anti-Catholic environment.

2) The second condition is simply that the non-Catholic party has to be informed, before the marriage, of your commitments in such a way that he truly understands what you are committed to doing. This is customarily done by those involved in marriage preparation, though morally speaking you would be expected to play your part by impressing on your potential spouse the fact that you are firm in these commitments and will remain so.

3) Then there is the fact that the non-Catholic party is not to exclude the purposes or essential properties of marriage as the Church understands them.

This affects your proposed spouse directly. If he excludes the purposes or essential properties of marriage then it may be sinful to enter the union or the union itself may be invalid.

This question tends to impact Protestants on two fronts: the indissolubility of marriage and its openness to life.

Protestants typically do not hold that marriage is indissoluble. As a result, they typically believe that it is possible for one to divorce after a valid, consummated marriage between Christians and still be able to marry someone else while the first spouse lives. This is itself problematic, but does not automatically invalidate the marriage unless the property of indissolubility is excluded by an act which determines the will. (For example, if your proposed spouse were to say to himself, "I’m not getting married unless I have the right to divorce her and marry someone else if it doesn’t work out.")

When it comes to openness to life, Protestants (these days) typically do not recognize the immorality of using contraception, and the great majority use it. This is objectively sinful. While the Church acknowledges that it is possible for a Catholic spouse to have conjugal relations with a contracepting spouse under certain conditions, whether it is possible to without sin voluntarily enter a union in which one knows the other party will be contracepting is another question entirely.

Simiarly, the proposed spouse may pressure you to use contraception or may insist on using means of contraception that destroy the unitive aspect of the act (e.g., condoms). In the former case, it puts you in the proximate occasion of sin and in the latter case it causes the act itself to become sinful.

There are thus a host of different ways in which entering into marriage with an anti-Catholic Protestant could be sinful.

The reader also asks:

Would it still
be a sin to marry a Protestant, even though the Bishop allows it?

Bishops have to make the best decision they can based on the situation, and they often have less information about the situation than do the parties themselves. For this reason, and for other reasons, a bishop’s decision does not remove the responsibility of the parties themselves in determining whether they should get married.

It may well be that a bishop grants permission for a union in which one or both of the parties is sinning. Often this is done in hopes of avoiding a worse situation (e.g., the Catholic party leaving the faith immediately). A decision from the bishop thus does not mean that the parties are not sinning by marrying each other.

As hard as it is, you therefore have to make your own determination of whether it would be sinful to marry this gentleman, even if it were possible to obtain permission from the bishop. You have to look at what you know about the gentleman, what he would be likely to do or fail to do in marriage, compare it to the criteria that the Church has proposed, and make the best determination you can.

As you do this, it is certainly reasonable to consult those who may help you better discern your moral obligations. (Of course, you need to make sure that those whose counsel you seek are orthodox and not just telling you what you want to hear.)

For my part, I do not see how it would be possible to recommend that you marry an anti-Catholic. It would be one thing if he said, "I’m not Catholic, but I admire and respect the Catholic Church and think it does good in the world." It is another thing if he says (as you report he does), "I think that the Catholic Church is anti-Christ." As long as that is his view, I cannot recommend marriage to him.

I also think that you are likely underestimating your chances of finding a good Catholic man. I’ve already mentioned the possibility of using services like AveMariaSingles.Com to meet faithful Catholic men. As you mention in an e-mail I don’t quote, you’re in your twenties. You still have lots of time. And, as the saying goes, "There are lots of fish in the sea."

Often people underestimate their chances of finding someone. I’ve been guilty of this myself. Most people have at one time or another. I’d hate for you to make a life-affecting mistake just because you sold short your chances of finding a good Catholic guy.

20

A reader writes:

Has the Church given a moral teaching on Viagra and other similar drugs? It seems to raise sex beyond it’s sacredness.

The Magisterium has not said anything specific about viagra or similar drugs to my knowledge, but its attitude toward such drugs would be positive provided certain conditions are met.

Overcoming physical evils is the purpose of all medicines, and the Church regards this as praiseworthy provided moral goods or comparable physical goods are not thwarted.

Viagra and similar drugs are meant to overcome the physical evil of impotence, and so the Church’s general regard for medicines–and its general cautions about them–will apply.

If the drugs perform their intended function of helping to alleviate male impotence (a humiliating reality that I’m given to understand the great majority of men suffer at one time or another), then all things being equal they would be praiseworthy.

They would not be praiseworthy if all things are not equal. F’rinstance:

• If the drug causes the guy’s blood pressure to skyrocket, putting him at risk of a stroke.
• If it causes his heart to beat wildly, putting him at risk of cardiac arrest or other heart-related ailment.
• If it causes other alarming and/or embarrassing side effects that aren’t compensated for by what it does for his conjugal life (e.g., the rare, uncontrollable four-hour period of tumescence that you hear about in commercials for some drugs–though not Viagra specifically).
• If it causes the guy to be so inflamed with passion that he can’t keep his mind on his wife and he is driven crazy by every woman he sees.
• If it is used not to correct for impotence but for purposes of leading a wanton and irresponsible sex life (possibly extra-marital, possibly contraceptive).

(NOTE: This list is not exhaustive but illustrative.)

If the latter kinds of conditions apply then use of such drugs would not be praiseworthy, but then if any drug had comparable side effects its use would not be praiseworthy.

If such drugs are used, however, to correct for impotence and side-effects of the above-mentioned kind are not present for a particular individual then its use is morally non-problematic and the drug may play a useful role in building the union of the two spouses.

Now, just for the sake of completeness (and heading off questions folks might want to ask as follow-ups), let’s kick it down a notch.

What if we aren’t talking about pharmaceuticals but something weaker. What if we’re only talking about what in human society have commonly passed as aphrodisiacs?

I don’t know if there are any genuinely effective aphrodisiacs. My suspicion is that most of them that have been suggested in human history have simply be snake oil and have no effect beyond that of a placebo (not that the placebo effect is entirely to be discounted). I know that there are some nutritional supplements for which claims are made in this regard, though I don’t know if any are actually effective.

But suppose some are?

Again, it seems to me that the moral status of using such substances will depend on the way in which they are used:

• If they are used to overcome impotence or frigidity then their moral status will be evaluated in the same way as the drugs dealt with above.
• If they are used to enhance the experience of conjugal union then they would seem not in principle different than other things that enhance the experience (perfume, etc., etc.).
• If they are used, though, so as to engage in marital (or non-marital!) relations more wantonly and irresponsibly then their use will be sinful.

So it seems to me that all of these things–from Viagra-like drugs to more traditional aphrodisiacs–may potentially play a role in reinforcing and assisting the conjugal relationship that exists between husband and wife, but they may also be abused and used in imprudent and even sinful ways.

A reader writes:

Would it be a sin for me to marry (in a Catholic church) my zealous Calvinist boyfriend, who thinks the Catholc church is anti-Christ?

(I was a Calvinist myself, so I’m immuned to their arguments and attempts to convert me.  Plus, he will love me like Christ loves the Church and teach the kids about Christ better than most Catholic men, who are usually lukewarm about their religion.)

The Catholic Church allows marriages to non-Catholics in special circumstances, and if those circumstances apply then contracting such a marriage would not be sinful. The conditions specifically named in the Code of Canon Law are:

Can.  1125 The local ordinary can grant a
permission of this kind [i.e., for marriages between a Catholic and a non-Catholic Christian] if there is a just and reasonable cause. He is not to
grant it unless the following conditions have been fulfilled:

1/ the Catholic party is to declare that he or she
is prepared to remove dangers of defecting from the faith and is to make a
sincere promise to do all in his or her power so that all offspring are
baptized and brought up in the Catholic Church;

2/ the other party is to be informed at an
appropriate time about the promises which the Catholic party is to make, in
such a way that it is certain that he or she is truly aware of the promise and
obligation of the Catholic party;

3/ both parties are to be instructed about the
purposes and essential properties of marriage which neither of the contracting
parties is to exclude.

The conditions named in sections 1-3 of this canon are excluding conditions (i.e., the bishop is not to grant permission for such a wedding unless they are fulfilled), but one should not ignore the implicit requirement of "a just and reasonable cause" that is found in the opening section of the canon.

What counts as a just and reasonable cause is not defined and is left up to the discretion of the local ordinary, but it seems to me that a likely construction of this condition would be "The Catholic party does not have reasonable prospects of finding a Catholic marriage partner of comparable quality to the non-Catholic partner, taking into account the negatives that the non-Catholic brings to the prospective union."

In practice, I think it somewhat unlikely that local ordinaries will think through the condition in precisely that way because they usually do not have enough information about the private life of the Catholic parties appealing to them for permission to make a determination of that nature, but it strikes me that Catholic parties contemplating such unions should be asking themselves if they have this kind of cause.

In other words: Do they lack realistic prospects of being able to marry a Catholic of comparable quality to the non-Catholic they are contemplating, taking into account the negatives that the non-Catholic would bring to the relationship. If it is true that they really lack such prospects then the Church would not presume it to be a sin to marry such an individual, the other conditions named above being observed (i.e., the ones named in sections 1-3).

If the Catholic party does not have the kind of cause just named (i.e., the Catholic party does have reasonable prospects of marrying a Catholic of comparable quality, even if it means waiting a little longer to find one) then it seems to me that marrying the non-Catholic party would, at a minimum, be imprudent and, possibly, sinful.

Things get worse if the excluding conditions are not met or are undermined by the non-Catholic spouse. For example, if it is foreseen that the non-Catholic spouse would seek to undermine the faith of the Catholic or would insisting on contracepting in the marriage then it seems to me that it would be sinful to marry the person.

I also could not personally expose my children to having a parent who was a zealous non-Catholic. It would be one thing if a proposed non-Catholic spouse said "I’m not Catholic, but I have no problem at all with your raising the children as Catholics; I want them to have a religious upbringing, and I respect the Catholic Church" but it would be ENTIRELY another thing if the proposed spouse said, "I think the Catholic Church is anti-Christ, I don’t think Catholics are Christians, and I intend to see that my children are raised to believe in Christ as I understand him."

Even if my own faith was secure (and one should not too quickly dimiss the corrosive effect of decades of subtle efforts at undermining one’s faith–particularly at moments when the Church is asking you to do something hard), I could never expose children of mine to such an environment.

I personally cannot recommend marrying non-Catholic individuals in anything but quite unusual circumstances. I have experience in such a union (only I was the zealous Calvinist at the time), and from my experience mixed marriages always involve pain unless neither party is really serious about their religion.

• If both care about their religion then they will both be pained by the fact that the other party does not share it.
• If one cares about his religion then he will be pained by the fact the other does not share it–and the other may be reciprocally annoyed, dismayed, or otherwise negatively affected by the pain the first spouse has.
• Only if neither is really serious about religion is pain avoided, which no doubt explains why in many mixed marriages both parties give up the serious practice of religion–it’s a way of avoiding the pain that comes with taking religion seriously and realizing that the person with whom you are most intimate in this life does not have the true religion. Many thus slide into dissent, indifferentism, or stop going altogether.

After the experience of my own marriage–which was very successful but still involved pain because my wife was Catholic and I was not–I resolved that I would simply not marry anyone who was not Catholic. I want marriage to be what it is meant to be in God’s design, which includes both spouses sharing the true faith. I will not settle for marrying anyone other than a Catholic woman who is solid in her faith. (Of course, I also have to find one willing to put up with me, but that’s another question.)

I suggest that you consider adopting a similar attitude. There are good Catholic guys out there in your age group (whatever that may be), and the Internet is making it easier all the time to find them if it’s hard turning them up in your area.

You might try AveMariaSingles.Com or similar services.

Hope this helps!

20

A reader writes:

I was listening to a radio show this morning.  During one segment (I didn’t catch the whole thing) the host was disagreeing with a priest who called in and said that committing a sin in your mind is the same as physically committing that same sin.  I know that Jesus said this but is it as simple as the written words or are there distinctions to be made?

Okay, first the standard disclaimer: I didn’t hear this show. I don’t know what show it was and, in fact, I don’t even know if it was a Catholic show. As a result of not hearing it, I can’t comment directly on what was said on the show, only on what I’m told. There is always a risk of something being lost in transmission. In fact, it’s not even clear to me who (the host or the priest) was saying that commiting a sin inwardly is "the same" as committing it outwardly. So for anyone who may have heard the show (whatever it may have been), my comments should not be taken as commenting on the show but on the issue as presented here.

To address the issue, what Jesus said was:

You have heard that it was said, `You  shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that every  one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery  with her in his heart [Matt. 5:27-28].

Translated a bit more literally, he singled out those who look at a woman "to lust after her." (I.e., purposefully looking at her in order to incite lustful fantasies, not just looking at her and feeling attraction.)

Now, Jesus does not say that doing this is "the same as" physically committing the sin. He clearly establishes an equivalence between them, but not an equivalence that admits of no distinctions. Viewed contextually (i.e., in context of Matthew 5 as a whole), it is clear that he is warning that one can commit mortal sin in one’s mind without an external physical action, but this does not mean that one is not more grave than another or that they are fully equivalent to each other.

We’ll see below what some of the relevant differences are.

The reader continues:

There were two examples given on the show that I wouldn’t mind getting your take on.  The first example is adultery.  If X entertains impure thoughts about Y’s wife, is it equivalent (i.e. just as bad) to committing adultery?  Does it make a difference if X knows he would never do it for real even if the opportunity came up even with no repercussions?

Yes, it does make a difference. How badly one has sinned in a particular case is determined by the degree to which one is willing to offend against God and, by extension, his creatures. If one is willing to go all the way and commit adultery outwardly, with all the implications that has for harming the woman, her husband, whatever family she may have, your own spouse (if you are married), your own family (if you have one), the abuse of the conjugal faculty that God designed into your own nature, etc., then that is clearly worse than if you just deliberately fantasize about it.

In the former case, you are willing to cause all kinds of objective damage that is not there if you aren’t willing to commit adultery outwardly. It’s bad enough if you only are being unfaithful in your heart–you’re still doing damage–but it ain’t anywhere near as bad as if you are willing to go all the way and do the act externally.

In the one case your will is configured such that it is willing to offend against God and his creatures in a vastly more destructive way than in the former, and as a result committing an act of adultery outwardly is much, much worse than simply willfully fantasizing about an act of adultery. In the latter case you’re willing to offend God up to a point, but you’re not willing to offend him to the much greater degree involved in outwardly committing the act.

The second example is more extreme.  The host said that he often finds himself having thoughts of shooting drivers who drive slowly in the passing lane.  Now, I doubt he would ever do that even if he could completely get away with it so in that case would the sin be equivalent to murder?  Or would it just be a sin of anger?

First, the emotion of anger is not a sin. One can have this emotion without sinning. It is what one does with one’s will based on the anger (e.g., deliberately nursing the anger by fantasizing about killing someone) that is a sin.

As to the particular case at hand, this is where it gets harder to comment because I don’t know precisely what the host meant. It might be clearer if I’d heard him for myself. I can see the host meaning any number of things, among them the following:

1. When he gets frustrated, the host has intrusive, obsessive thoughts he doesn’t want that involve shooting such motorists.
2. The host gets frustrated and in a non-serious, semi-joking manner imagines shooting such motorists (sort of the way kids play cowboys and indians, without imagining that anyone suffers major harm).
3. The host gets so frustrated that he imagines shooting such motorists in earnest and actually killing them dead, with all the consequences that entails.

The moral character of the thoughts he is having depend greatly on which (if any) of these he may have in mind:

• If it is the first then the host likely has a condition such as Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and he is not sinning by these thoughts as his will is opposed to them.
• If it is the second then the host may well be sinning in some degree as it sounds as if there is an engagement of the will whereby in his frustration he willfully fantasizes about causing these individuals some harm, even if though it is not grave harm. This would be venial sin.
• If the third individual is definitely sinning if he wilfilly engages in such homicidal fantasies. To deliberately fantasize about killing people in earnest is gravely sinful, and if done with adequate knowledge and consent will be a mortal sin.

Not having heard the show, I have no idea which if any of these may have been meant, though I’d assume that it likely wasn’t the last option.

I should also note that even though the host did not understand what the priest was saying, the priest said that having the temptation alone to commit sin is not enough.  You need to engage or entertain the thought for it to be a sin.  So I guess my bottom line question is…  does entertaining the thought make it as bad a sin as physically doing it, or does there also have to be a sincere desire to physically do it?

It’s not the desire to physically do it that increases the gravity of the sin, it’s the will to physically do it. Merely have a desire to do something evil is just temptation. But fostering the temptation by deliberately entertaining fantasies of it engages the will and thus is sinful. Being willing to go even further and commit the act outwardly engages the will even more in sinful behavior and so is more gravely sinful.

Hope this helps!

A reader writes:

I’ve been a Catholic for 26 years now.  Over those years I have heard countless stories from Catholics, (usually devout) who tell about the time they were selling a house and how they buried a statue of St. Joseph (upside down at that!) in the yard in order to bring about a quick and successful sale.  Those who’ve tried this swear by it! Do you know anything about this?  Seems like pure unadulterated superstition to me.  Correct me if I’m wrong.

You need no correction.

While it is reasonable to ask St. Joseph for his intercession in helping buy or sell a home (finding housing for the holy family being one of his duties as head of the holy family), the idea of burying a statue of him upside down has no plausible connection to any patronly interest he might have in housing.

Because an efficacy is attributed to a religious act that has no apparent rational basis, the act qualifies as superstition or a perverse excess of religion. The Catechism notes that "Superstition in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion" (CCC 2110). That’s what we’re talking about here.

A reader writes:

The last number I read put the count of unused frozen embryos in the US at 400,000. 

I couldn’t tell you if that number is correct or not, but it’s certainly huge–whatever the correct number is.

I find that hideously disgusting and wonder if we have ever been so barbaric as we are now, allowing life to become a frozen commodity. 

I don’t know who you mean by "we," but the human race as a whole has been equally or more barbaric than we are now–we simply haven’t had the tech to do this particular barbaric thing before.

If by some miracle our sick society decided to change it’s ways and respect life, what would be the right thing to do with all these embryos?  Does the Church has a position on this?

No. The Magisterium seems to be sitting back and letting moral theologians kick this question around for a while. It’ll probably weigh in on it eventually–perhaps during the pontificate of B16.

I have heard news stories about women volunteering themselves to take these babies to term so that they are not just destroyed.  I can’t see anything wrong with this and actually find it to be a very noble gesture. 

Me, too.

Would it be wrong to just let them die? 

Good question.

Should volunteers be requested to take the babies to term?

Another good question.

What if a couple has 14 embryos in a freezer and suddenly realizes what they did was wrong?  To make it right, should they then try to bring all the babies to term.

Okay, we’re getting good question overload here.

These are just a few questions that came to mind as I was reading various stories.  If you have any insight, could you please blog it?

I’ll tell you what I can. Here is a plausible order of solutions to the problem:

1. The couple that has created the embryos does its best to implant and bring to term these embryos. This means implanting them in a way that will maximize the chance of their surviving, so not all at once if they have 14 in cryonic suspension. Of course, doing this is expensive, and the couple may hit a limit to the number they can do before the children’s "shelf-life" is gone and they die on their own. Thus . . .
2. For those children that can’t be raised by their own parents, allowing them to implant in the wombs of volunteer save-a-baby mothers. This also won’t solve the whole problem though, so . . .
3. Develop artificial wombs and allow the children to develop in them. This also will be unable to fully solve the problem so . . .
4. Baptize the embryos, knowing that the rapid thawing will result in their deaths. This solution is unlikely to be applied in very many cases, though, so . . .
5. Allow the children to die (either frozen or upon taking them out of cold storage) and entrust them to God’s mercy.

Now, if no other solution is morally legitimate, then option #5 is morally licit. The question is: Are any of the other solutions morally licit?

While it is certainly wrong for the parents to have created the children in the manner they did, once the children are created it seems quite intutitive to me that it would be morally licit for them to be implanted in their own mother’s womb and brought to term. Thus it strikes me that solution #1 is also morally licit. It seems to be the best way to repair the situation, and I suspect most moral theologians would agree with me on this point.

Solution #2 is where known disagreement comes in. Many moral theologians apparently feel that allowing a baby to incubate in the womb of another woman is Just Wrong even if it means that the alternative for the child is Death.

Personally, I don’t see that. I think that the value of human life is such that, once the life is created, the priority of saving it is such that it would allow implantation in a second womb if this were the only way to do it.

I know that surrogate motherhood, as the institution has evolved in our society, is Very Evil, but it seems to me that we’re talking about something very different here. Surrogate motherhood is conceived of as a way for infertile couples to have kids through a rent-a-womb system. That’s not what’s being proposed in this case.

What we’re talking about here is Saving A Kid’s Life, and that’s a very different thing. It’s one thing to agree to serve as a surrogate mother for a child that isn’t even in existence yet. It’s another to offer to serve as a surrogate mother in order to save the life of a child who can’t (for whatever reason) live in his own mother’s womb.

I’ve heard arguments in this regard about babies having a right to being carried in their own mothers’ wombs, but it seems to me that these are better directed to surrogate motherhood situations than to life-saving situations. It seems to me that the proposed right is one that would operate in a non-absolute fashion. For example, "Yes, the child has a right to be carried to term in his own mother’s womb–unless he already exists and the alternatives are death or temporary residence in another womb."

I understand more clearly the idea that the child has an absolute right to being conceived of his married biological parents in a normal sexual act, but it seems that the incubation stage is not that analogous to conception.

The definitive step in the child’s development–its conception and thus its creation–has already taken place. Incubation in a womb may provide it with nutrition, hydration, oxygen, shelter, and even hormonal interaction, but it does not provide anything definitive of its existence. Temporary residence in another womb thus seems to me more analogous to having a wet nurse after birth (which experience also provides nutrition, hydration, and hormonal interaction) or use of an incubator (providing shelter) or use of a respirator (providing oxygen) or use of all three (thus providing all of these benefits)–than it seems analogous to conception.

Thus–under normal conditions–one would not want to force a wet nurse, an incubator, and a respirator on a child, but if the alternative to these is death then they are morally licit.

I rather suspect many children faced with the alternative of another womb or death would also (upon reaching the age of reason) say that they would prefer the former, that it would not be a violation of their rights, and that denying them this without reason could be viewed as a violation of their right to life.

So I tend to view option #2 as morally licit.

The same goes for option #3. Given what I have just sketched out about providing nutrition, hydration, oxygen, homonal interaction, and shelter through artificial means, I don’t see why a womb has to be organic rather than artificial for it to be morally licit.

Babies are often put into incubator/respirator/artificial-nutrition-and-hydration contraptions for life-saving purposes and it’s regarded as totally morally licit. If this can happen after birth, I don’t see why it can’t happen before birth.

As meaningful as birth is as a human moment for the parents, it doesn’t
seem to be a moral imperative that children detach from the mother by
natural processes only. Indeed, to save their lives preemies are often taken from the womb by cesarean section and placed in such devices and nobody say boo about it morally.

So–at this point in my understanding–I don’t personally see why a life-saving incubator can’t be customized to serve the needs of progressively younger and younger children who can’t survive on their own yet. If it means filling it with warm fluid, fine. If it means allowing the baby to eat and respirate through the placenta rather than by his mouth and nose, fine.

All of this is with the goal of saving the lives of children who already exist, not allowing people to create new kids for purposes of putting in such wombs. Abstracting from the frozen embryo problem, why can’t we develop such
incubators for the children of women about to miscarry at 14 weeks? Why
would the kid have to be 28 weeks old before such an incubator becomes
morally licit? Where do you draw the line? And once the tech exists to save the lives of kids who will otherwise miscarry, why can’t it be used to save the lives of kids who will otherwise die in cold storage?

So it seems to me that option #3 is also morally licit given what I can tell at present.

That leaves us with option #4, which involved baptizing the kids, even knowing that they will die in the process.

In this case the death is not either the goal or a mean toward a goal.
Thus the law of double-effect applies if there is a proportionate
reason. One could certainly argue that giving the children the certainty of eternal life is
proportionate to the shortening of lifespan that would otherwise occur, especially since the alternative would be letting them thaw without baptism and die or simply go "stale" and die in cold storage.

So: There are no firm answers on any of these things, there’s rather a lot of disagreement on all of the above, and we’ll have to wait for the Magisterium to weigh in on these questions, but I hope the above discussion provides some food for thought.

A reader writes

Dear Mr. Akin,

One of my friends, who has all kinds of questions about the Church, sent me this.  Usually I have a good answer.  This time I’m stumped.  I do remember that the Church used to deny marriage to those incapable of performing the marital act.  I hadn’t realized that was still the case.  My grandfather remarried at age 85 and he was definitely impotent after prostate cancer and chemo.

She then provides

A STORY ABOUT THIS INCIDENT.

Okay, here’s what the Code of Canon Law says:

Canon 1084

§1 Antecedent and perpetual impotence to have sexual intercourse, whether on the part of the man or on that of the woman, whether absolute or relative, by its very nature invalidates marriage.

              §2 If the impediment of impotence is doubtful, whether the doubt be one of law or one of fact, the marriage is not to be prevented nor, while the doubt persists, is it to be declared null.

§3 Without prejudice to the provisions of Can. 1098, sterility neither forbids nor invalidates a marriage.

Now, I’ve quoted all three parts of this canon because folks often confuse infertility (sterility) with impotence (inability to have sex). It’s important to be clear on the distinction. When you commit to marriage, you are committing to a relationship in which the other party has a right to have sex with you (at least at opportune times). You are promising the other person to fulfill the marital duty (which is a euphemism for sex) upon the reasonable and opportune request of the other party.

That act may be fertile or infertile. It is always infertile in the case of a couple past the age of childbearing and, even in younger people, is infertile during most times of the month. But one is still capable of fulfilling one’s marital duty.

If one is impotent, however, one cannot do this. Some folks become impotent during the course of marriage, but as long as they weren’t impotent when the marriage began then then there was no barrier to them validly contracting a marriage. The loss of potency is thus a tragedy that may befall one in a marriage.

Frequently, though, the impotence is not permanent. Many (maybe most) men experience transitory impotence from time to time. That’s quite common. Even when the impotence is longer-lasting, we’ve got all kinds of treatments (up to and including the use of surgery or surgical implants) to make it possible for the vast majority of individuals to be able to fulfill the marital duty at least some of the time. Given the change in the medical treatments we have, we either are living or will soon be living in a world in which only the total absence of the relevant anatomy or severely debilitating psychological conditions (e.g., a pathological fear of sex, perhaps due to a trauma) would genuinely render one perpetually impotent.

Consequently, this is a vanishing problem.

But . . . if someone really is permanently and untreatably unable to perform the marital act from the very beginning of the marriage onward then the person is not able to give valid matrimonial consent.

Marriage is a union in which you give someone the right to have sex with you, and if you are unable to fulfill this commitment then you aren’t capable of granting someone this right. I can’t give someone right to have me turn lead into gold for them unless I first have the ability to turn lead into gold, and in the same way, a person permanently and untreatably unable to have sex cannot grant someone the right to have sex with them.

Marriage is not only companionship or love. An impotent person can have those things as much as anybody. But an essential characteristic of marriage is that it involves an exchange of the right to have sex (and actual sex, not just quasi-sexual behaviors).

Now, in your grandfather’s case, it does not seem to me that prostate cancer or chemo automatically results in complete and untreatable impotence, even at an advanced age. I suspect that in his case the impotence was at least doubtful, in which case it fell under
              §2 and would be permitted.

Neither is it clear to me that the gentleman in the news story was completely and untreatably impotent. The story says that he’s paraplegic (not even quadraplegic), but in an age of surgical implants, that does not guarante a total inability to perform one’s marital duty. It would be difficult, and he might need his wife’s help to do so, but it seems to me that unless there’s something that the story doesn’t mention that (following the needed surgery) this gentleman potentially would be able to give a woman the right to intercourse with him and thus would have the ability to get married.