A DOCTRINE BEGGING TO BE DEVELOPED

By Monica Migliorino Miller, New Oxford Review, May1, 2023

Monica Migliorino Miller, a Contributing Editor of the NOR, is Director of Citizens for a Pro-Life Society and teaches theology at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit. She is the author of Abandoned: The Untold Story of the Abortion Wars (St. Benedict Press, 2012).

“A person’s a person no matter how small.” That’s the famous line from Horton Hears a Who (1954), Dr. Seuss’s children’s tale of an elephant concerned for the welfare of the Whos, the tiny, invisible-to-the-naked-eye inhabitants of Whoville. Too bad Seuss himself didn’t really believe that. According to his biographer Philip Nel, Seuss never intended his story to be interpreted as a pro-life statement. Indeed, Seuss even threatened to sue a Colorado pro-life group for using the line on its stationery. His widow, Audrey Geisel, a supporter of Planned Parenthood, spoke out against people “hijacking his work to support their own agendas.”

Dr. Seuss notwithstanding, Horton succinctly uttered what the pro-life movement believes: “A person’s a person no matter how small.” Strangely, when given the opportunity, Pope Francis could not bring himself to make such a simple affirmation.

This past November, Francis was interviewed at his residence at Santa Marta in the Vatican. In the interview, published in America magazine (Nov. 28, 2022), the Holy Father said:

In any book of embryology it is said that shortly before one month after conception the organs and the DNA are already delineated in the tiny fetus, before the mother even becomes aware. Therefore, there is a living human being. I do not say a person, because this is debated, but a living human being. And I raise two questions: Is it right to get rid of a human being to resolve a problem? Second question: Is it right to hire a “hit man” to resolve a problem? The problem arises when this reality of killing a human being is transformed into a political question, or when a pastor of the church uses political categories.

So, the Pope affirms that the unborn child is a human being, yet in the next breath he says he cannot affirm that the unborn child is a person. What’s the difference?

So, the Pope affirms that the unborn child is a human being, yet in the next breath he says he cannot affirm that the unborn child is a person. What’s the difference?

The dictionary definitions of human being and person overlap. Merriam-Webster defines a human being as “an individual of the species of primate mammal that walks on two feet…and is distinguished by a greatly developed brain with capacity for speech and abstract reasoning.” It defines a person as “an individual human being; esp. a human being as distinguished from an animal or a thing.”

To his great credit, the Holy Father has consistently spoken out against the evil and injustice of abortion. It is the killing of a human being and thus must be opposed. However, did he misstate the Church’s teaching when he said, “I do not say a person, because this is debated”? In claiming that the personhood of the unborn is “debated,” he most likely had in mind the centuries-old, theological-doctrinal speculation about “ensoulment,” the point at which the fetus receives a rational soul and thus becomes a full-fledged person, if not a full-fledged human being. It is unlikely that Francis had in mind the juridical-political controversy in which, in order to facilitate the killing of the unborn, fetuses are denied personhood, as was the case with Roe v. Wade (1973), the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision that legalized abortion nationwide, and is the case now in certain American states that have enshrined abortion “rights” in their constitutions.

In a December 2022 email blast, Judie Brown, a veteran pro-life leader and president of American Life League, had this to say:

As a former member of the Pontifical Academy for Life under both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, I can tell you that Pope Francis is WRONG to suggest that babies are not persons.

Catholic moral teaching is exceptionally clear on this question.

St. Thomas Aquinas teaches us that human persons are endowed with a rational will from our very earliest moment of existence. So long as we are linked to our souls, human beings are human persons from the moment we are created to the moment we take our last breath.

This is an incredibly important point. When you treat human persons as mere beings, you can do the most horrible things.

I agree that the unborn, from the moment of conception, are not “merely” human beings but are persons. However, constructing a case on Aquinas’s ensoulment theory is to build on shaky ground. It is well known that the Angelic Doctor taught that human fetuses receive a rational soul weeks after fertilization. Thus, Aquinas would not have considered abortion before ensoulment to be murder, because what was being killed was not yet a human person.

The late Catholic ethicist Germain Grisez explained the origins of Aquinas’s ensoulment theory, which is often termed “delayed hominization.” In his book Abortion: The Myths, the Realities and the Arguments (1971) Grisez writes, “Partly influenced by the Septuagint translation of Exodus and partly by the biology of the time,” a distinction was made between “the abortion of a ‘formed’ or ‘animated’ fetus and that of one not ‘formed’ or ‘animated.’” If the fetus was formed, abortion was considered a homicide. If the fetus was not formed, abortion was a serious sin but not homicide, “for it came to be thought that scripture and science seemed to join in certifying that the unformed embryo was in no sense a person.”

Grisez, however, adds that such “certitude was not to last in the Catholic tradition.”

Fr. Tad Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center notes that people are “sometimes surprised to hear that the wrongness of destroying a human embryo does not ultimately depend on when that embryo might become a person” or “might receive a soul from God.” They often suppose that the Church teaches that “destroying human embryos is unacceptable because such embryos are persons (or are ‘ensouled’)” (“Making Sense of Bioethics,” March 30, 2008).

The Magisterium of the Church has never definitively stated when the ensoulment of the human embryo takes place. It remains an open question. The Vatican’s Declaration on Procured Abortion (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1974) phrases the matter with considerable precision:

There is not a unanimous tradition on [when the spiritual soul is infused] and authors are as yet in disagreement. For some it dates from the first instant; for others it could not at least precede nidation [implantation in the uterus]. It is not within the competence of science to decide between these views, because the existence of an immortal soul is not a question in its field. It is a philosophical problem from which our moral affirmation remains independent for two reasons: (1) supposing a belated animation, there is still nothing less than a human life, preparing for and calling for a soul in which the nature received from parents is completed, (2) on the other hand, it suffices that this presence of the soul be probable (and one can never prove the contrary) in order that the taking of life involve accepting the risk of killing a man, not only waiting for, but already in possession of his soul. (footnote 19)

Interestingly, in 1869 the Holy See reorganized canon law, decreeing that “those procuring abortion if successful” incur automatic excommunication. No distinction was made between animated and non-animated fetuses. Grisez notes that “this act endorsed the growing awareness that the old distinction between animated and non-animated fetuses was ground neither in experimental evidence nor necessary reasons.”

All the above is sufficient for Francis to justify his inability to affirm the full personhood of the unborn: It is true that the precise moment of ensoulment has been debated since the first centuries of the Church. However, might the Pope have said something different? Could he have at least said something along the lines that “it is most probable that the unborn are full persons from the moment of conception”?

Gaudium et Spes, Vatican II’s “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World” (1965), teaches that “whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or willful self-destruction…violates the integrity of the human person” (no. 27). Grisez notes that Gaudium et Spes ranked the killing of the unborn among crimes “against the reverence due to the human person.”

Pope St. John Paul II, in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae (1995), repeats the words of Gaudium et Spes and comments on attacks on human life, placing abortion within the context of Cain’s murder of his brother, Abel:

Brother kills brother. Like the first fratricide, every murder is a violation of the “spiritual” kinship uniting mankind in one great family, in which all share the same fundamental good: equal personal dignity. Not infrequently the kinship “of flesh and blood” is also violated; for example when threats to life arise within the relationship between parents and children, such as happens in abortion…. At the root of every act of violence against one’s neighbor there is a concession to the “thinking” of the evil one, the one who “was a murderer from the beginning.” (no. 8)

John Paul II categorizes abortion as part of that “revolt against God…followed by the deadly combat of man against man.” He gives no indication here that killing the unborn is a lesser offense than killing anyone else, or that the unborn are less than persons. The Pope includes them in the “one great family…in which all share the same fundamental good: equal personal dignity.”

John Paul II writes of “medical treatment which may be needed by the child in the womb” (no. 14). One may argue that he uses the term child simply as a rhetorical device, a kind of poeticism, a means of humanizing the unborn without actually defining them as persons. Yet, the fact is that the Pope calls the unborn fetus a “child,” and one cannot be a human child and at the same time not be a person, just as our children are persons in relation to us.

John Paul II also comments on the Didache. This non-biblical, first-century treatise, which provides a valuable window into the ethical and liturgical life of the early Church, specifically condemns abortion. “It is a known fact,” John Paul II writes, “that in the first centuries, murder was put among the three most serious sins — along with apostasy and adultery — and required a particularly heavy and lengthy public penance” (no. 54). And then he makes this most remarkable statement: “This should not cause surprise: to kill a human being, in whom the image of God is present, is a particularly serious sin” (no. 55). If the “image of God” is present in a child killed by abortion, then we can safely conclude that the unborn are persons! No one can be in the “image of God” unless he has a soul, as the theological and doctrinal tradition of the Church associates the “image of God” with ensoulment.

Further along in his encyclical, the sainted Pope defines abortion as “the deliberate and direct killing, by whatever means it is carried out, of a human being in the initial phase of his or her existence, extending from conception to birth” (no. 59). Yes, he calls the unborn child “a human being,” not a person. However, he then goes on to say, “The moral gravity of procured abortion is apparent in all its truth if we recognize that we are dealing with murder.” Recall that you can be guilty of murder only if you kill a person, and this distinction was made even regarding ensouled and unensouled fetuses. Abortion of the former is considered homicide while abortion of the latter is “only” a grave offense against the good of a human life that God wills to ensoul. However, John Paul II characterized abortion as “murder” without making any such distinction.

In the next section, John Paul II essentially settles the issue. Quoting Declaration on Procured Abortion, he writes:

Some people try to justify abortion by claiming that the result of conception, at least up to a certain number of days, cannot yet be considered a personal human life. But in fact, “from the time that the ovum is fertilized, a life is begun which is neither that of the father nor the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth. It would never be made human if it were not human already. This has always been clear, and…modern genetic science offers clear confirmation. It has demonstrated that from the first instant there is established the program of what this living being will be: a person, this individual person with his characteristic aspects already well determined.” (no. 60)

If only Francis had quoted Evangelium Vitae!

This section ends with the admonition that the unborn child “must be guaranteed that unconditional respect which is morally due to the human being in his or her totality and unity as body and spirit.” Relying on the Vatican’s instruction Donum Vitae (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 1987), John Paul II writes, “The human being is to be respected and treated as a person from the moment of conception; and therefore from that same moment his rights as a person must be recognized, among which in the first place is the inviolable right of every innocent human being to life.”

Only the human person is the subject of rights. Non-persons are not the subjects of rights. Roe v. Wade, under which over 60 million unborn children were exterminated, claimed that the unborn were non-persons in order to deprive them of this inviolable right to life.

As John Paul II teaches in Evangelium Vitae, “The use of human embryos or fetuses as an object of experimentation constitutes a crime against their dignity as human beings who have a right to the same respect owed to a child once born, just as to every person” (no. 63). Notice the clear affirmation that embryos and fetuses “have a right” equal to that of children, to that of “every person”! Again, if the unborn have such a right, they must be persons in order to claim that right, meaning their innate human existence places a moral claim upon others that they be respected as persons.

John Paul II also discusses the role of civil law in the protection of life. He should be quoted in full:

Precisely for this reason, civil law must ensure that all members of society enjoy respect for certain fundamental rights which innately belong to the person, rights which every positive law must recognize and guarantee. First and fundamental among these is the inviolable right to life of every innocent human being…. Public authority…can never presume to legitimize as a right of individuals…an offense against other persons caused by the disregard of so fundamental a right as the right to life. The legal toleration of abortion or of euthanasia can in no way claim to be based on respect for the conscience of others, precisely because society has the right and the duty to protect itself against the abuses which can occur in the name of conscience and under the pretext of freedom. (no. 71; emphasis added)

This teaching starts out by affirming that rights belong to persons. Next it acknowledges that the most fundamental right is the “inviolable right to life of every innocent human being.” Then it states that no government can legitimize the denial of the right to life of “other persons.” Finally, it specifically makes reference to abortion, namely, that the killing of the unborn is a violation of the right to life of persons!

John Paul II reaffirms this teaching in the next section: “Disregard for the right to life, precisely because it leads to the killing of the person whom society exists to serve, is what most directly conflicts with the possibility of achieving the common good. Consequently, a civil law authorizing abortion or euthanasia ceases by that very fact to be a true, morally binding civil law” (no. 72).

John Paul II reaffirms this teaching in the next section: “Disregard for the right to life, precisely because it leads to the killing of the person whom society exists to serve, is what most directly conflicts with the possibility of achieving the common good. Consequently, a civil law authorizing abortion or euthanasia ceases by that very fact to be a true, morally binding civil law” (no. 72).

I think it is clear that abortion kills persons, not merely unensouled human beings.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has promulgated two important documents that address the issue of abortion, Living the Gospel of Life (1998) and Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship (2015; updated 2020). Both documents, especially the former, constantly and in various ways equate the unborn with persons. Living the Gospel of Life recognizes that various marginalized groups are able to actively voice their concerns but:

Those who are unborn, infirm and terminally ill have…no voice. As we tinker with the beginning, the end and even the intimate cell structure of life, we tinker with our own identity as a free nation dedicated to the dignity of the human person. When American political life becomes an experiment on people rather than for and by them, it will no longer be worth conducting. We are arguably moving closer to that day. (no. 4; emphasis in original)

Notice that the unborn are within the category of the “human person.” Of particular importance, Living the Gospel of Life admonishes politicians who, while advocating for certain disadvantaged peoples, support legalized abortion:

If we understand the human person as the “temple of the Holy Spirit” — the living house of God — then…all direct attacks on innocent human life, such as abortion and euthanasia, strike at the house’s foundation. These directly and immediately violate the human person’s most fundamental right — the right to life. (no. 22; emphasis in original)

The U.S. bishops clearly state that the unborn are persons. Indeed, they describe the unborn, along with everyone, as “the temple of the Holy Spirit — the living house of God.”

In Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, in the section on “Attacks on the Human Person,” the U.S. bishops teach that “direct attacks on innocent persons are never morally acceptable, at any stage or in any condition. In our society, human life is especially under direct attack from abortion” (no. 44). Again, the bishops place the unborn within the category of persons and, moreover, identify them as “innocent persons.” They are among persons who may never be directly attacked.

I think I have demonstrated that Pope Francis could have affirmed that the unborn are persons. At the very minimum, he could have quoted Evangelium Vitae or Dignitatis Personae, the Vatican’s instruction on bioethics (Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 2008), the first sentence of which states, “The dignity of a person must be recognized in every human being from conception to natural death.” Regarding anthropology, this document teaches that “the human being is to be respected and treated as a person from the moment of conception; and therefore from that same moment his rights as a person must be recognized, among which in the first place is the inviolable right of every innocent human being to life.”

Some may argue that the document doesn’t directly claim that the unborn are persons, only that the unborn should be treated as persons. They could point out that Dignitatis Personae acknowledges that “in order to avoid a statement of an explicitly philosophical nature,” Donum Vitae “did not define the embryo as a person.” And, of course, the avoided statement of a “philosophical nature” has to do with ensoulment. But then it immediately quotes Evangelium Vitae:

Although the presence of the spiritual soul cannot be observed experimentally, the conclusions of science regarding the human embryo give “a valuable indication for discerning by the use of reason a personal presence at the moment of the first appearance of a human life: how could a human individual not be a human person?” Indeed, the reality of the human being for the entire span of life, both before and after birth, does not allow us to posit either a change in nature or a gradation in moral value, since it possesses full anthropological and ethical status. The human embryo has, therefore, from the very beginning, the dignity proper to a person. (no. 5; emphasis in original)

Indeed, the reality of the human being for the entire span of life, both before and after birth, does not allow us to posit either a change in nature or a gradation in moral value, since it possesses full anthropological and ethical status.

It is painfully obvious that the Church stands on the absolute brink of affirming that the unborn child, from the instance of conception, is a person. What prevents this completely unequivocal doctrinal affirmation is the so-called debate regarding ensoulment. The uncertainty as to exactly when hominization occurs stands in the way. However, we have a nearly definitive teaching that the unborn are persons with John Paul II’s rhetorical question: “How could a human individual not be a human person?”

With our advanced scientific knowledge of fertilization and fetal development, there is really nothing standing in the way of a definitive doctrinal affirmation that unborn children are persons from the moment of conception. Equipped with modern empirical data on the gestation of the fetus, the Church can certainly go beyond, or simply drop, antiquated Aristotelian biology and Aristotle’s particular matter-form anthropology based on his biological observations that so influenced the delayed-hominization teaching of Aquinas.

Stephen J. Heaney, professor of philosophy at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota, provides a new basis upon which the Church can conclude that the human fetus is a human person. In an address delivered to the Society of Christian Philosophers, subsequently published in Human Life Review (Winter 1989) under the title “Aquinas and the Humanity of the Conceptus,” Heaney acknowledges that “the key element in ascribing personhood…is the presence of a rational, immortal soul.” He goes on to state that “the Church admits that the time of ensoulment is uncertain,” noting that those who advocate for legalized abortion exploit this uncertainty and even use Aquinas against Church teaching, as Joe Biden did on Meet the Press (Sept. 7, 2008). The future U.S. president said that though he agrees with Church teaching that life begins at conception, he would not impose his beliefs on others. And he attempted to justify himself by stating that “there is a debate in our Church” dating to the time of Aquinas, who believed that ensoulment doesn’t “occur until quickening, 40 days after conception.” (Never mind that “quickening” doesn’t occur until well after 40 days.) Yet, Heaney asks, “Would Aquinas have come to the same conclusions given a late-20th-century understanding of human reproduction and embryology?” His answer: “It seems unlikely.”

Heaney identifies two obstacles that must be overcome before the Church can affirm that the unborn are persons from the moment of conception: “the lack of early cell differentiation and the possibility of twinning and fusion.” Prior to implantation, the cells of the early blastocyst are not particular to any organ in the developing body, and those early undifferentiated cells can split, causing twins. If a rational soul is present at the very start, it would be impossible for that soul to divide. Thus, the rational soul must be infused by God later in the development of the newly conceived human life. This is, essentially, Aristotle’s position, which was adopted by theologians such as Aquinas: the body of the fetus must achieve sufficient human development in order to be the appropriate kind of “matter” that can receive the “form,” namely, the human soul, at which point the fetus-in-utero becomes a person capable of exercising will and intellect.

However, Heaney makes a significant contribution to the philosophical understanding of the relation between matter and form, demonstrating that newly conceived human life must possess a rational soul from the very start. First, souls can exist completely separate from the body. Thus, the soul is not for the sake of the body; the body exists for the sake of the soul. Ultimately, Heaney’s point is that the conceptus develops as a human body because “the soul is the informing principle of these organs.” Basically, he argues that a human body could not develop humanly unless a rational soul is there as the guiding principle to cause such development. “Without the human rational soul’s need, for example, for the types of sense and thought organs it has,” Heaney says, “there is no need for their development, they would have no reason for being.” Delayed hominization simply “doesn’t account for the reason why the human organism develops as it does…. Nothing less than a human rational soul is necessary for such a proper-human physical organism to come about at all. A highly developed nervous system and brain — which, as we know, develop in the human embryo and fetus in a uniquely human way — cannot be the result of a lower type of soul. The truly human soul must be there to make this organization possible.”

As to the problem of twinning, Heaney points out that although a soul cannot split, “this doesn’t mean that the material stuff cannot be divided between two (or more) souls…. Matter from one individual splits off to become a second, with the simultaneous infusion of a second soul.” All this is consistent with the science of twinning. Fusion (or “recombination”) is not when two persons “with two souls fuse into one being.” Rather, “the fusion of the body of the second into the first results in the death of the second. Its soul, like that of all the human dead, separates from the body, and moves on to its eternal destiny.”

The issue of whether unborn children are persons strikes at the heart of legalized abortion. Even the written opinion of Roe v. Wade recognized that the so-called right to abortion “collapses” if the unborn are indeed persons. If they are persons, then they are subject to the protections of the 14th Amendment, which states that no state shall “deprive any person of life…nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Regarding the word person as it appears in the U.S. Constitution, Roe v. Wade concluded that “it has application only postnatally. None indicates, with any assurance, that it has any possible prenatal application.”

As the advocates for abortion deny personhood to the unborn, it would have been better if Pope Francis had not said anything at all about the “debate” over personhood. Or, at the very least, he could have cited Evangelium Vitae that “science indicates to us that a personal presence is there from the moment of conception. After all, how is it possible to be an individual and not be a person? In any case, the unborn child from the start has dignity proper to a person.”

As it stands, abortion advocates could exploit Francis’s remark on this supposed doctrinal ambiguity by saying, “Hey, even the Pope can’t say the fetus is a person. So, abortion must not be murder.”

It is time for a development of doctrine on the issue of the personhood of the unborn. It is time the Church retired delayed-hominization theories and settled her “uncertainty” as to when the developing fetus receives a rational soul. When the Church can ask, “How could a human individual not be a human person?” then she is on the very brink of making such an affirmation. In fact, she already makes this claim spiritually, ethically, and pastorally. Her doctrine needs to catch up with her pastoral application. The science is there; the philosophy is there. It’s time the Church freed the unborn, and freed herself, from erroneous and antiquated Aristotelian concepts of ensoulment and affirm that from the very moment of conception a new personal someone is present, a someone entitled to the full respect of human personhood.

This article first appeared HERE.