Render Procreation Impossible Make A Summary
Ethical
and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services,
6th
Edition. (2018) U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Washington, DC.
Issues
in Care for the Beginning of Life
Introduction
The Church’s commitment to human dignity inspires an abiding
concern for the sanctity of human life from its very beginning, and
with the dignity of marriage and of the marriage act by which human
life is transmitted. The Church cannot approve medical practices that
undermine the biological, psychological, and moral bonds on which the
strength of marriage and the family depends. Catholic health care
ministry witnesses to the sanctity of life “from the moment of
conception until death.” 20 The Church’s defense of life
encompasses the unborn and the care of women and their children
during and after pregnancy. The Church’s commitment to life is seen
in its willingness to collaborate with others to alleviate the causes
of the high infant mortality rate and to provide adequate health care
to mothers and their children before and after birth. The Church has
the deepest respect for the family, for the marriage covenant, and
for the love that binds a married couple together. This includes
respect for the marriage act by which husband and wife express their
love and cooperate with God in the creation of a new human being. The
Second Vatican Council affirms:
This
love is an eminently human one. . . . It involves the good of the
whole person. . . . The actions within marriage by which the couple
are united intimately and chastely are noble and worthy ones.
Expressed in a manner which is truly human, these actions signify and
promote that mutual self-giving by which spouses enrich each other
with a joyful and a thankful will.21 Marriage and conjugal love are
by their nature ordained toward the begetting and educating
of children. Children are really the supreme gift of marriage and
contribute very substantially to the welfare of their parents. . . .
Parents should regard as their proper mission the task of
transmitting human life and educating those to whom it has been
transmitted. . . . They are thereby cooperators with the love of God
the Creator, and are, so to speak, the interpreters of that love.22
For
legitimate reasons of responsible parenthood, married couples may
limit the number of their children by natural means. The Church
cannot approve contraceptive interventions that “either in
anticipation of the marital act, or in its accomplishment or in the
development of its natural consequences, have the purpose, whether as
an end or a means, to render procreation impossible.”23 Such
interventions violate “the inseparable connection, willed by God .
. . between the two meanings of the conjugal act: the unitive and
procreative meaning.”24 With the advance of the biological and
medical sciences, society has at its disposal new technologies for
responding to the problem of infertility. While we rejoice in the
potential for
17
Ethical
and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, Sixth
Edition
good
inherent in many of these technologies, we cannot assume that what is
technically possible is always morally right. Reproductive
technologies that substitute for the marriage act are not consistent
with human dignity. Just as the marriage act is joined naturally to
procreation, so procreation is joined naturally to the marriage act.
As Pope John XXIII observed:
The
transmission of human life is entrusted by nature to a personal and
conscious act and as such is subject to all the holy laws of God: the
immutable and inviolable laws which must be recognized and observed.
For this reason, one cannot use means and follow methods which could
be licit in the transmission of the life of plants and animals.25
Because the moral law is rooted in the whole of human nature, human
persons, through intelligent reflection on their own spiritual
destiny, can discover and cooperate in the plan of the Creator.26