All About Books

I haven’t yet been tagged in the book meme going around St. Blog’s Parish, but the questions about books interested me, an inveterate reader, so I figured I’d leap into the fray untagged.

  • Total books owned:  Likely in the thousands.  Every few years, I tend to collect enough to open a used bookstore in my house.  I purge them by donating to libraries or used bookstores, and then the vicious cycle starts again.  My name is Michelle and I’m a bookaholic.
  • Last book purchased: We Have a Pope!, an upcoming biography of Pope Benedict XVI by Matthew Bunson.  I bought it through Catholic Answers and am eagerly anticipating receiving a copy when the shipment arrives.  <Commercial>If you want to purchase a copy, too, GO HERE.</commercial>
  • Last book read:  Benedict XVI by John L. Allen Jr.  Although some of Allen’s later books, such as Conclave and All the Pope’s Men, are very good, I understand now why Allen himself thinks this book (originally written when the Pope was Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger) is not one of his best.  It is not so much a biography of the Holy Father but uses him as a pretext to discuss Allen’s own liberal views.  Allen said recently that he wished he had been able to write new material to preface the U.S. edition of the book, but did not have the opportunity.  Apparently, though, the U.K. publisher did allow for a new preface.
  • Five books that mean a lot to me:  The Bible (natch), God Help Me! These People Are Driving Me Nuts by Gregory K. Popcak (very helpful), Catholicism and Fundamentalism by Karl Keating (first Catholic book I read), Morning Glory by LaVyrle Spencer (favorite romance novel), Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (favorite book growing up).
  • Tagging:  Since I wasn’t tagged myself, I won’t tag another blogger; but feel free to answer one or more of the questions in the comments box.  Consider yourself tagged, if you like. 🙂

(Nod to Selkie for inspiration to do the St. Blog’s Book Meme.)

What To Do About Frozen Embryos

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.

Star Wars III-B: Allure of the Fat Side

Did you know that the Dark Side is not the only aspect of the Force that parents should fear? The new movie Revenge of the Sith is luring kids to the Fat Side. Or so say Wannabe-Nanny Groups that pose as Advocates for The People:

"Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith promotes unhealthy eating, according to a review conducted by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC). Sixteen separate food promotions feature twenty-five different products, most of which are devoid of nutrients, filled with empty calories and targeted directly to young children.

"’The quantity of nutritionally deficient Star War’s food being marketed to children is staggering,’ said nutritionist Jane Levine of Kids Can Make a Difference. ‘In the midst of an epidemic of childhood obesity, once again junk food marketers have shown that they have no restraint when it comes to targeting kids. The Star Wars promotions demonstrate why we need restrictions on food marketing to children.’"

GET THE STORY.

Spare me. I didn’t take along a child when my sister and I saw Revenge of the Sith this past weekend (indeed, my sister, who is a mommy, was horrified to see a stroller in the theater in which we watched the film), but I would have had no trouble explaining to a child that he couldn’t have whatever candy-cum-snack he thought he must have based on having seen the movie. And what, exactly, these nanny groups have in mind as their concern puzzles me. They appear to be referring to the food products that have advertising from the movie on them.  Sheesh.  Just refuse to buy, for pity’s sake!  Parents are parents because they are supposed to be able to say "no" to their children when their children would otherwise make unacceptable choices.

34 . . . Whew!

As folks guessed, I’ve been counting up the number of days Benedict XVI has been pope until they pass 33, the number that John Paul I served.

The reason is that I’ve been concerned about how traumatic it would be for the Church if Benedict XVI had an ultra-short reign.

After the cardinals elected such a wonderful pope, I really, really hope that he gets to shepherd the Church for a long time, though since he is 78, one must be realistic about how long "a long time" is for a person of his maturity.

The new pope himself, apparently, made reference in the conclave to the fact that his reign would be short, and I read in his interview book The Salt of the Earth where he referred to his health having been poor years ago when he first came to work at the Vatican (if I recall correctly).

Then when Benedict skipped the beatification ceremony of a couple of folks, it made me extra nervous, though he didn’t seem to be sick. It may simply be that he wants to devote his time to pressing things (like his first encyclical, for example) without delaying things like beatifications. (I presume he’ll still personally celebrate canonizations, though not necessarily.)

While Pope Benedict has passed an important milestone–the 33 day mark–he still could (God forbid) die in an abnormally short amount of time, and that would also put the Church through a huge convulsion, perhaps ven making the cardinals question whether they had elected the right kind of candidate. (Hopefully they’d focus on Cardinal Ratzinger’s age rather than his orthodoxy as where they went wrong.)

But let’s hope that Benedict XVI still will have a lot of time to shepherd the Church, to consolidate the gains of his predecessor, and to make his own unique contributions.

God bless Benedict XVI!

HERE’ZA SUMMARY WITH ANALYSIS OF HIS FIRST MONTH IN OFFICE.

LEFTIST TO LEFT: I'm Leaving You

SanFran Chronicle columnist Keith Thompson writes (EXCERPTS):

I walk away from a long-term

intimate relationship. I’m separating not from a person but a cause: the

political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character

and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.

I’m leaving the left  —  more precisely, the American cultural left and

what it has become during our time together.

My estrangement hasn’t happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I

watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see.

Now it’s all too obvious.

Like many others who came of age politically in the 1960s, I became adept

at not taking the measure of the left’s mounting incoherence. To face it

directly posed the danger that I would have to describe it accurately, first

to myself and then to others.

GET THE STORY.

LEFTIST TO LEFT: I’m Leaving You

SanFran Chronicle columnist Keith Thompson writes (EXCERPTS):

I walk away from a long-term
intimate relationship. I’m separating not from a person but a cause: the
political philosophy that for more than three decades has shaped my character
and consciousness, my sense of self and community, even my sense of cosmos.

I’m leaving the left  —  more precisely, the American cultural left and
what it has become during our time together.

My estrangement hasn’t happened overnight. Out of the corner of my eye I
watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see.
Now it’s all too obvious.

Like many others who came of age politically in the 1960s, I became adept
at not taking the measure of the left’s mounting incoherence. To face it
directly posed the danger that I would have to describe it accurately, first
to myself and then to others.

GET THE STORY.

Wal-Art

KindredspiritsThe painting at left, Asher B. Durand’s "Kindred Spirits" was recently sold at auction through Sotheby’s for a bid of over 35 million dollars, the highest price ever paid for an American painting.

The painting depicts artistThomas Cole and poet William Cullen Bryant together in a Catskill Mountains scene. Henceforth it will be housed (surrounded by a number of other classic American artworks) in a new museum in… Arkansas!

The painting was offered for sale by the New York Public Library and was purchased at auction by the Alice Walton Foundation. That’s Walton, as in the supposedly evil Wal-Mart corporation.

The noble Metropolitan Museum of Art and the courageous National Gallery of Art combined forces to offer a competitive bid, but were beaten by the hideous strength of the Walton Foundation’s malevolent checkbook. At least that’s how the struggle is being depicted in certain cultural circles. Some letters to the New York Times online have whined as if the transaction amounted to out-and-out theft.

True, if I lived in New York I would miss the painting, too. In a spirit of real restraint, Met spokesman Harold Holzer said, "We’re disappointed that the painting is leaving New York…". The disappointment seems very one-sided, though. I have not heard much criticism levelled at the New York Public Library for putting the painting on the auction block.

Disappointment I can understand, but the bittereness displayed by some hints at something deeper. See, this is another victory for the Red Staters, a sign of the ascendency of Flyover Country. Arkansas, for cryin’ out loud?!! And, to make matters worse, the evil Wal-Mart corporation is behind it all, no doubt punishing the Empire State for it’s icy rebuff to the retail giant’s expansion efforts in that region.

The planned museum, to be located in Wal-Mart’s hometown of Bentonville, will house a collection of national significance. How strange, that the evil and greedy Walton family would spend millions and millions of dollars just to bring a little culture to those who have never had access to such treasures. Southerners don’t have the capacity to appreciate great art, and anyway, don’t corporations always use their money to just make more money? Don’t they have some slave-labor factories to build overseas?

Am I biased by the fact that I will be living close enough to this new museum to practically throw rocks at it? Probably. We are as excited here as they are disappointed in New York. Look at it this way, y’all; Won’t there be plenty of culture left in New York? Can’t you spare a piece or two for us benighted hillbillys?

FIND OUT MORE.

Grrrl Power Pitcher

An 11-year-old girl became the first in her Little League division to pitch a perfect game, proving that "throwing like a girl" can be something to which athletes of both sexes can aspire:

"Katie Brownell is in a Little League all her own. The 11-year-old — the only girl playing in the Oakfield-Alabama Little League program — pitched a perfect game Saturday for her Dodgers. She struck out all 18 batters she faced in the six-inning, 11-0 victory over the Yankees.

"Oakfield-Alabama officials said they can’t remember anybody ever throwing a perfect game in this western New York league between Buffalo and Rochester.

"In two games on the mound, Katie has struck out 32 of 33 batters. And she’s hitting .714 through the team’s first three games."

So, not only can she pitch; but, unlike many pitchers, she can hit too. You go, girl!

GET THE STORY.