Via Pewsitter...
Check out Fr. Tad Pacholczyk's article "Do Embryos Have Souls?"
He argues that the basis for the Church's stance against abortion does not depend on the idea that the embryo has a soul. It depends entirely on the embryo being a distinct human entity that may have a soul or will be able to receive a soul.
Most cleverly, he points out that not having a soul would actually make the embryo less appropriate for for destruction since it essentially means that destroying the embryo deprives a fellow human of an immortal soul. The unfathomable horror of that option...the idea that humans could exist without souls...is almost enough to convince you that the embryo must have a soul.
Once again, however, this proves my point that part of the glory of the Church is the fact that it doesn't just make up answers to these kinds of questions. In a made-up religion, it would be easy for the religious leader to just declare the precise moment of "ensoulment" and defend that position on their own authority. The Church has been around long enough (and embarrassingly put enough scientists under house arrest) to know that it is wiser not to simply assert something and find out you were wrong later.
Again, the point in the article above is not merely that abortion is wrong because we give the embryo the benefit of the doubt (that is, he doesn't argue that we refrain from abortion because it might murder a person with a soul). Rather, we refrain from abortion because it either murders a person with a soul, or directly and intentionally disrupts the union between a soul and body, reducing an individual human to a mere physical being and denying it its rightful spiritual component.
By way of analogy, it's rather like intentionally preventing a child from ever having any education. We might not have a right to a college degree, but surely we have certain rights regarding things like language. A parent who somehow managed to keep their child from ever learning to speak or read would be considered an abusive monster. It is similar to aborting the "soulless" embryo because a parent who attempted to prevent their child from ever communicating would effectively be preventing that child from having an identifiable soul. One person's right cannot trump another individual's right to something so basic as a soul.
Comments