Pontifical Academy of Life Responds to the SCOTUS Decision

I will admit I am somewhat surprised that this statement never mentions the moral dimension of abortion, namely that the willful destruction of human life is a sin and an affront to the Creator. https://t.co/VSoihCzAI6

— Fr. Pius Pietrzyk OP (@PiusOP) June 25, 2022

Brief by Finnis and George in the Dobbs Case

By "persons," did those who enacted the 14th Amendment mean human beings at all stages of development and in all conditions, including children in utero? In a Brief in the Dobbs case, Prof. John Finnis and I say yes. Prof. Aaron Tang says no. Our response:https://t.co/5IvjSFllWJ

— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) September 21, 2021

Remember the article last week purporting to cast doubt on the "27 states" that prohibited abortion in 1868? Profs. John Finnis and @McCormickProf have penned a withering preliminary reply to Prof. @AaronTangLaw: https://t.co/Ymc0dgZhyw

— Josh Craddock (@joshjcraddock) September 21, 2021

The CDF and the USCCB

Among other things, Cardinal Ladaria noted it was actually the CDF which suggested the US bishops discuss the issue in the first place. https://t.co/0A5PzAsymr

— Ed. Condon (@canonlawyered) May 10, 2021

"I found a court that agrees with me."

Fail harder.

This MoJ post by Adrian Vermeule.

So the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in favor of Governor Abbot's restrictions on "abortion procedures" during the COVID-19 emergency, referring to the same case that Vermeule did in his The Atlantic essay [Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905)]. Does he, ostensibly zealous Roman Catholic that he is, not know that just because a judge said it, doesn't mean it is right or moral? (Roe v. Wade, hello? Lawrence v. Texas? Obergfell v. Hodges? etc.)

Does Vermeule think that attempts to make HPV vaccination mandatory on our young people are justified? Or just those vaccinations he (or "experts") think are necessary and at the schedule they advocate? Weighing rights claims may not be easy but it is mistake to think that the "right to life" overrules all other "rights," or even other moral considerations.

Vermeule is a statist and no reasonable Catholic should pay any attention to his opinions. Maybe some of those postconservatism conservatives can align themselves with Vermeule but they deserve no support either.

If Excommunication Is Not a Remedy, Then What Is?

What ecclesial punishment exists for the senators who voted against the bill to outlaw abortion after 20 weeks of pregnancy?

CWR Dispatch: The Bloody 14 and the question of excommunication by Edward N. Peters

Jerome Lejeune: To the Least of These My Brothers and Sisters

MercatorNet: ‘To kill or not to kill, that is the question’
A new film about Jerome Lejeune shows the drama of his life after identifying the cause of Down syndrome.
Mary Le Rumeur

purchase the DVD

Fr. Fessio Taking the Minority View?

Contraception and Abortion. Which Is the Greater Evil by Sandro Magister

The first withholds life from one who could be born. The second takes it from one who is already alive. A back-and-forth between two theologians, on a question that remains open to free discussion

LifeSiteNews: This viral video of a living baby still in the amniotic sac is stunning…and utterly heartbreaking

Blobs of Tissue

Here Are 12 Unborn Animals In The Womb. They're Absolutely Beautiful...Especially The Dolphin.

Robert George: Embryo: A Defense of Human Life 2nd Edition

Christopher Kaczor - Pro-Life Aristotle

Face Development in the Womb - Inside the Human Body: Creation - BBC One

A delayed addendum

To this post on abortion -- if those who believe that abortion should be legal make use of the claims that I have laid forth (namely that it can not be demonstrated by reason alone that ensoulment happens at conception), they cannot claim that abortion is therefore permissible because the life that is being ended is not that of a human being. They cannot, on the basis of the "no harm principle," justify abortion because it cannot be demonstrated either that ensoulment has not taken place. From my argument it is the case that one can only be a committed agnostic, and if one cannot know for sure whether the life of a human being is at stake or not, one cannot end that life since one is potentially committing murder (e.g. the hunter in the woods who does not take due precaution that his target is actually a deer and not another hunter).

Besides, even if it could be shown that the conceptum is not human, this would not completely take away from the gravity of the sin of abortion. Abortion would still be a mortal sin, for the reasons given by theologians who accepted that ensoulment took place much later after conception.

Another attempt at a Thomistic appropriation of rights discourse

Equal Basic Rights for All, Born and Unborn by Christopher Kaczor

No access to this article for me.

There has been some discussion of this post on abortion, the human soul, and the question of ensoulment. While Googling for confirmation by other scholars of what I remembered about Aquinas, I found this article:

"Aquinas's Account of Human Embryogenesis and Recent Interpretations" by Jason T. Eberl

If I were an academic I would check it out (and I'd be able to get access it if the school library were decent; it's probably accessible at BC).

Some thoughts on Haldane and Lee (plus this) on ensoulment to come. I should read De Potentia all the way through, since I haven't done so before.

Benedict XVI:

"... With regard to the embryo in the womb, science itself highlights its autonomy capable of interaction with the mother, the coordination of biological processes, the continuity of development, the growing complexity of the organism. This is not an accumulation of biological material, but a new living being, dynamic and wonderfully ordered, a new unique human being. So was Jesus in Mary's womb, so it was for all of us in our mother’s womb…there is no reason not to consider him a person from conception."

(via Rorate Caeli)

The Feast of the Annunciation -- the Church's proof that the soul is infused at conception? Except this is not what the Holy Father seems to be saying here, just that contemporary embryology maintains that human life begins at conception. Nothing about the infusion of the rational soul.

Robert John Araujo, SJ: Bishops, Catholics, Cooperation, Citizenship, and More (“Thomas” or “additional”?)

John Finnis on the moral status of the conceptum

The Other F-Word (via The American Catholic)

His arguments concerning the moral status of the fetus are dependent of course on the claim that the embryo is a human person. See my previous posts on that question.

If the Church's teaching on the Incarnation implicitly affirms that the conceptum is human from conception, then does the Church's teaching on the Immaculate Conception give additional witness to this?

It would seem not. Pope Pius IX's cites his predecessor Pope Alexander VII in the Apostolic Constitution, Ineffabilis Deus:

So at the instance and request of the bishops mentioned above, with the chapters of the churches, and of King Philip and his kingdoms, we renew the Constitutions and Decrees issued by the Roman Pontiffs, our predecessors, especially Sixtus IV,[8] Paul V,[9] and Gregory XV,[10] in favor of the doctrine asserting that the soul of the Blessed Virgin, in its creation and infusion into the body, was endowed with the grace of the Holy Spirit and preserved from original sin; and also in favor of the feast and veneration of the conception of the Virgin Mother of God, which, as is manifest, was instituted in keeping with that pious belief.

Later, Pope Pius IX gives the definition:

We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.

As far as I can tell, conception here is therefore identified with the creation and infusion of the rational soul into the body (as stated by Alexander VII), not with the fertilization of the ovum by the spermatazoa. I'd have to double check, but Pius IX does not offer a different definition of conception to replace that of Alexander VII. Hence, the apostolic constitution leaves open the question of whether conception, as defined here, takes place at fertilization.

The CCC on abortion:

Abortion

2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.⁷²

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.⁷³

My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.⁷⁴

2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law:

You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish.⁷⁵

God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves. Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.⁷⁶

What the Catechism claims about the conceptum is quite clear. But is this de fide? Or a theological opinion presented in authoritative trappings? I have asked whether the Church has infallibly taught that human life begins at conception (with "human" being understood univocally, not equivocally). It seems that the Feast of the Annunciation also celebrates the conception of Christ, and the humanity of Christ at conception is affirmed as a part of Sacred Tradition. But is this sufficient evidence that the Church has always taught that all concepta are human beings or persons?

Some claim that we have unambiguous evidence that the conceptum is human; I will have to address this question in a later post, having already done so in some notes. As far as I know, nothing the Church has proclaimed in recent years contradicts the teaching of the Council of Vienne, which defined the soul as the substantial form of the body. It seems impossible that the Church could define the formal cause as something else, such as DNA. The question a Catholic physicist would ask, then, is whether we can know (with certainty) that the rational soul is infused at conception. If the activities of the conceptum can also explained by an animal soul, then it would seem that we cannot know with certainty that the conceptum is human, though we may believe it with the certitude of Faith, if this has been revealed by God.