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Faith
and Culture
In a recent edition of the Chicago Sun-Times, I came across this encouraging headline: “Many Genetic Diseases on the Decline in the U.S.”
The author explained how the number of babies with cystic fibrosis, Tay-Sachs and other lesser-known genetic disorders has sharply decreased in recent years. How could this be anything but very good news? Well, read on.
The article specifies that some of the most debilitating illnesses are fading away precisely because so many prospective parents are engaging in “pre-natal screening,” discovering these diseases in their pre-born children. And they are endeavoring somehow to treat these maladies in the womb? No. Upon uncovering these problems, they are opting to abort their children.
I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised by the article, since not long ago I came across a similar piece on the decline of Down syndrome children in the United States. Again this happy state of affairs was the result not of medical advance but of abortion: When a child is discovered in the womb to have Down syndrome, he or she, increasingly, is being eliminated. Physicians for Life published a survey showing that in America 84 percent to 91 percent of mothers of Down syndrome children elect to end their pregnancy. And the numbers are even higher in England and Spain — up to 95 percent.
Now there is an obvious problem with this practice simply from the standpoint of moral philosophy, for it is the result of “end justifies the means thinking.” If the end is good — and reducing the occurrences of genetic disease is certainly good — then any means necessary to attaining that end is, it appears, morally praiseworthy.
But this kind of analysis has long been shown to be faulty, for it can be used to legitimate practically any moral outrage. The affirmation of Palestinian rights and prerogatives can justify the blowing up of children; the acquisition of living space for Germans can justify the launching of a world war; the swift ending of that war can justify the fire-bombing of civilian populations, etc.
Unless certain acts are appreciated as intrinsically evil, which is to say incapable of legitimation by any motive, circumstance, or consequence, the entire moral enterprise becomes radically unstable. And surely the direct killing of an innocent baby in the womb qualifies as an intrinsically evil act.
But there is something more deeply wrong with this practice and, in order to explore this depth, we have to open up the proper theological dimension. A person who believes in God — and I mean this in an existential and not merely theoretical sense — knows that his life is not his own. This awareness follows from a keen sense of creation, the fact that here and now all existence is grounded in the sustaining power of God and ordered according to God’s purpose. Being, breath, life, embodiment, movement, thought, energy and will are all the gifts of a gracious God and are meant, therefore, to be used for God’s ends and not our own.
St. Ignatius of Loyola stated this principle in his famous suscipe prayer: “Take, Lord, receive, all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, my entire will. You have given them to me, and now I give them back to you.” Notice that Ignatius puts first on his list the very thing that most modern people hold dearest, viz. their freedom.
From the time of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, moderns have clung most tenaciously to their liberty, their right to self-determination according to their own lights. But if God exists and if the world is the result of his creative love, then even our freedom, good as it is, cannot be construed as the ultimate good. Rather, it must be appreciated as a gift given and meant to be returned to the one who gave it.
On Genesis’s telling, Adam and Eve grasped at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, seizing thereby for themselves what is the unique prerogative of God. Their great sin was to try to make their lives utterly their own, or what amounts to the same thing, to make their own wills the determination of right and wrong. To believe in God is to de-center one’s ego and to move into a stance of receptivity. Throughout the Bible, this is portrayed as the willingness to hear the word of God: “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.”
As long as our egos are in control, we will simply eliminate from our lives whatever strikes us as inconvenient and troubling. But if we have assumed the attitude of listening to the divine word, we begin to ask, “Why has God given me this challenge, this suffering, this opportunity?” Simply to kill a child in the womb who might be less than perfect is one more iteration of the original sin. To see such a child — precisely because of its challenges — as a gift, is to see with the eyes of Christ.
Barron is the Francis Cardinal George Professor of Faith and Culture at the University of St. Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary. For more of his writings visit www.wordonfire.org.
