Ethics of Procreation and the Defense of Human Life: Contraception, Artifical Fertilization, and Abortion

by Martin Rhonheimer

Overview

Building on the renewal of Thomistic ethics encouraged by key moral encyclicals including Humanae Vitae, Veritatis Splendor, and Evangelium Vitae, Swiss philosopher Martin Rhonheimer revisits some of the most difficult questions regarding the ethics of procreation and human life. The book offers a rigorous argument on the contested question of contraception and related matters, and similarly engages disputed questions surrounding abortion.

With Rhonheimer's characteristic circumspection and rigor, his discussion of sexual ethics provides compelling argumentation in support of Catholic teaching against contraception. He applies this analysis to the related case of using contraceptives under the threat of rape. Rhonheimer agrees with trusted Catholic moralists, who from the early 1960s to the present have concluded that such use would be licit. He shows, moreover, both the flaws in alternative analyses and how the same conclusions can be reached in a defensible manner while upholding the teachings of Humanae Vitae and Veritatis Splendor.

Rhonheimer applies his philosophical acumen to another set of difficult moral questions about contemporary threats to the sanctity of human life, including artificial reproduction and abortion. Regarding artificial reproduction, his treatment further illustrates both the fecundity of his application of Thomistic virtue and action analysis and his insistence on the moral link between sex and procreation. Finally, he not only provides a rigorous rebuttal of some of the leading arguments justifying abortion, but offers readers an example of his writings in political philosophy through a profound reflection on the defense of human life in a constitutional democracy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND EDITOR:

Martin Rhonheimer is professor of ethics and political philosophy at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross in Rome. His publications include a dozen books, several of which have been translated into multiple languages. Ethics of Procreation and the Defense of Human Life was brought into English by William F. Murphy Jr., associate professor of moral theology at the Pontifical College Josephinum and editor of the Josephinum Journal of Theology.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:

"Martin Rhonheimer has been a key voice in the revival of natural law theorizing and casuistry in recent decades. His work is triply important for this revival. . . . [An] important and rewarding book." —Christopher Tollefsen, Thomist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813217222
Publisher:	The Catholic University of America Press
Publication date:	03/03/2010
Pages:	336
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

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Ethics of Procreation and the Defense of Human Life

Contraception, Artificial Fertilization, and Abortion

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By Martin Rhonheimer

The Catholic University of America Press

Copyright © 2010 The Catholic University of America Press
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8132-1722-2

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Chapter One

Natural Law and the Thomistic Roots of John Paul II's Ethics of Human Life

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No previous pope dealt with the theme of natural law, in his own magisterium, as extensively as did John Paul II, inserting it with great clarity in the context of the relationships of an anthropology that coherently understands man as a creature made in the image of God. In particular, the encyclical Veritatis Splendor appeared as a novum, in that it did not address a specific theme in Catholic morality, or propose as its theme Catholic morality as such, but dealt with Catholic moral theology as it is taught as an ecclesiastical discipline by theological faculties. In this context, the encyclical does not refer to the natural law only to establish concrete doctrines in the moral sphere—in particular in the sphere that may be called "ethics of human life"—but it addresses the very definition, essence, and characteristics of the natural law. This, again, is a novum, even if John Paul II took a cue from another encyclical, written a century earlier, which had already produced a definition of the natural law: the encyclical Libertas Praestantissimum of Leo XIII, the teaching of which is completely marked by St. Thomas Aquinas, and yet this encyclical had left little trace on the way ecclesiastical doctrine since then has dealt with "natural law" as the basis of moral action. This changed with Veritatis Splendor: the Thomistically inspired teaching of Leo XIII has been brought to fruition in all its richness and significance.

At first sight it could seem trivial to say that the teaching of the Church on the natural moral law would have an intrinsic link with its doctrine on questions regarding the ethics of life (abortion, euthanasia, stem-cell research). What seems much less trivial, however, is the precise way in which the Church applies the natural law to establish the respective norms. How do things stand in this regard in the teaching of John Paul II? In what follows, we will examine this question. It will not, however, be possible to respond in a completely neutral way, that is, without reference to the previous understanding that I, as the author of the present article, bring to these questions. The arguments that I will propose in what follows claim, of course, to be a faithful representation of the teaching of John Paul II; nevertheless, it is impossible to expound this teaching without at the same time inserting it in a wider and more systematic context, and therefore to a certain extent also offering an interpretation. I say this explicitly, for the sake of intellectual honesty. Even if I will seek to stay as close to the texts as possible, it would be inappropriate to claim that my exposition is the only valid way they can be understood. In what follows, therefore, I will refer to some of my publications on the topic, which I assume not only will be helpful for advancing my argument in this setting, but also will clarify the moral philosophical principles on which I base my reading of the texts of John Paul II.

Allow me, however, to first offer a brief anecdote. In November 1988, on the occasion of an audience granted by John Paul II to the members of the Congress of Moral Theology for the twentieth anniversary of the encyclical Humanae Vitae, I met the pope personally—having given a paper, I was in the first row at the audience as he went down the line from speaker to speaker—and when John Paul II read my name card, he said in a loud voice in Italian before all those gathered: "Ah, Rhonheimer ... the natural law! I am reading, and I will continue to read." In fact, some months earlier someone had given the Holy Father my above-mentioned book Natur als Grundlage der Moral, on the natural law in St. Thomas Aquinas. I will leave it to historians to decide whether my book in some way influenced the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, the content of which I also had the occasion to discuss with John Paul II, together with a group of other specialists on the theme, at a luncheon at the Apostolic Palace. Frankly, the encyclical did not seem entirely foreign to me when I read it for the first time. Still today I think that my vision of the natural law drawn from Thomas Aquinas is at least a valid reading of the relative doctrine of this encyclical, and I will thus occasionally refer to this vision in what follows.

The Natural Law according to the Encyclical Letter Veritatis Splendor

The Natural Law: A Law of Reason

In its teaching on the natural law, Veritatis Splendor (VS) takes its inspiration entirely from the thought of Thomas Aquinas. The natural law is not understood—as in the tradition of the Stoa—as the logos intrinsic to the cosmos, an eternal law, immanent to nature itself and simultaneously deduced from it, but rather as an active participation of the rational creature in the ordering function of the divine reason. The theory on natural law of VS is based on the thesis of the autonomy of man and on the active role of reason in distinguishing between good and evil (VS, nos. 12, 40, 42, 44). The natural moral law "has its origin in God and always finds its source in him" (ibid.), but at the same time it is also "a properly human law" since, according to Aquinas, "it is nothing other than the light of intelligence infused in us by God, whereby we understand what must be done and what must be avoided. God gave this light and this law to man in creation" (ibid.). I call this Aquinas's "core doctrine" of natural law, although to point out the core or focal meaning of natural law is not yet to provide a complete Thomistic account of it. Such an account includes other aspects that will be briefly discussed below. They mainly refer to what I have extensively shown to be what I called the passive participation of all creatures, also of human persons, in eternal law, mainly expressed in the natural inclinations of all beings. The main challenge of any natural law theory as a properly moral theory is precisely to show how a complex of principles of the practical intellect—which are what Aquinas calls the precepts of the natural law—are founded not only ontologically but also epistemologically (or cognitively) in the natural inclinations on the basis of which we then also speak of the primary and secondary precepts of the natural law.

The core teaching of John Paul II on the natural moral law is, therefore, strictly linked with the theory that holds man to be created in the image of God as a free and rational being, who bears within himself—through the divine creation—the light of reason, by which he is capable of distinguishing between good and evil. It is precisely this capacity of discernment—and in a derived sense the successive distinctions between what must be done and what must not be done, as well as the precept of human reason to pursue the good and avoid evil—that constitutes a natural law. This law is called "natural," as the encyclical points out, "not because it refers to the nature of irrational beings but because the reason that promulgates it is proper to human nature" (VS, n. 42), given that it is reason—the reason of the human person—that formulates this law and commands accordingly. This reason is precisely part of human nature, and thus we are dealing with a natural law (as opposed to the divine law of the New and Old Covenants, which is based on revelation, or human law, expressed through the positive juridical order).

The natural law is therefore a law that is intrinsic to man as a rational creature. It is a direct expression of God's care for man, who is a person and therefore is not guided " 'from without,' through the laws of physical nature, but 'from within,' through reason, which, by its natural knowledge of God's eternal law, is consequently able to show man the right direction to take in his free actions" (VS, n. 43). In this way, following Thomas Aquinas, man becomes a participant of Divine Providence itself. The natural law—natural moral knowledge in the sphere of good and evil, which man fills out with his own reason, given to him by God—is itself a constitutive element of the divine government of the world.

In this context VS refers back to the earlier teaching of Leo XIII, which expressed precisely these relationships. This long-ignored doctrine, expressed in the encyclical Libertas Praestantissimum, is not an expression of a late neo-scholastic concept of a natural moral law as a natural order set before man, from which the moral subject can simply "read" the norms of the natural law. Leo XIII conceived the natural law rather as the ordering act of human reason itself in the sphere of good and evil. The natural law, according to the citation of Leo XIII's text in VS n. 44 "is written and engraved in the heart of each and every man" (and is thus not simply an "objective natural order," or a law in the sense of conformity to the laws of nature). The "seat" of the natural law is the heart of man, at the center of his person as an image of God. It is so, continues Leo XIII, "since it (the natural law) is none other than human reason itself which commands us to do good and counsels us not to sin" (emphasis mine).

This mode of expression leaves no doubt about the fact that for Leo XIII the natural moral law is not simply a natural order recognized by reason, but rather reason itself, to the extent that it allows one to naturally distinguish between good and evil, and imposes on man the obligation of doing good and avoiding evil. This capacity of discernment of the human subject, and thus the cognitive character of the natural law, is strongly emphasized in VS (see especially nos. 12, 40, 42, 44). One must not forget, however, the basis on which reason possesses the capacity to distinguish good and evil, at the same time authorizing it for this task and conferring on it moral and legislative force. This is so, explains Leo XIII as cited in VS, because the human reason that appears as the natural moral law is "the voice and the interpreter of some higher reason"—the reason and wisdom of God—"to which our spirit and our freedom must be subject" (no. 44). The autonomy that is shown by the interior possession of the natural law and by the capacity to exercise it "from within," based on reason's own capacity of discernment, that is, of choosing good and avoiding evil, is an autonomy subject to God, indeed regulated by him. For this reason, as VS says, again citing Leo XIII who also here follows Thomas Aquinas, "the natural law is itself the eternal law, implanted in beings endowed with reason, and inclining them towards their right action and end; it is none other than the eternal reason of the Creator and Ruler of the universe" (no. 44). It is precisely in this sense that the natural law is clearly a "law of God." But the decisive point is that it is recognized as a law precisely through the action of human reason, and not by means of some other source (such as, e.g., revelation). The natural law is therefore the eternal law, but this latter is not accessible to man except by revelation. The eternal law is made manifest to man precisely in the natural law, that is, through the moral-normative knowledge proper to him.

Precisely for this reason VS had emphasized earlier that, regarding this knowledge of good and evil, man "does not originally possess such 'knowledge' as something properly his own, but only participates in it by the light of natural reason and of Divine Revelation,10 which manifest to him the requirements and the promptings of eternal wisdom" (VS, n. 41). Man's autonomy is therefore in reality a "participated theonomy" (ibid.), a theonomy that is autonomy through human reason, and precisely for this reason is not a "creative" reason, that is, having as its own a decisional power in the formation of moral norms. Rather, man "finds" something, which had already been thought in the divine wisdom and is made known to man through natural reason.

Reason and Nature: The Body-Soul Unity of Human Nature

Certainly, many questions remain unanswered from what has been said thus far. Is it really possible to reduce the natural law to "reason" in this way? A human being is not only spirit and reason, but also matter in a physical and biological sense. He is constituted bodily, a living being endowed with thought: not pure ratio, but animal rationale. Indeed, the definition of natural law elaborated to this point could lead one to think that the corporeal dimension of man is left to the decisional power of human freedom, and does not contain in itself any normativity. One could thus object that moral reasoning must align itself precisely to "nature," understood as corporeity, and to the laws and teleological structures inscribed in it. The question that is therefore asked in VS, n. 48, is about "the place of the human body in questions of natural law."

In this context John Paul II emphasizes above all the decisively important anthropology that asserts the essential union of body and soul: the "rational soul is per se et essentialiter the form of [the] body," man is "corpore et anima unus" (VS, n. 48). According to this anthropology, as it was elaborated by Thomas Aquinas, in the case of man body and spirit do not constitute two different natures, but precisely one nature. Perhaps we are not always aware of the implications of this assertion. This lack of awareness is seen, in my opinion, in the still widespread bad habit of not only distinguishing between "nature" (in the sense of corporeality) and "reason" (as pure will) or between freedom and nature, but opposing the one to the other in an almost Cartesian sense. In man, however, nature and reason, or corporeality and rationality, together form a single nature, and thus a substantial unity of being. This means that human reason cannot even be thought of without corporeality. Conversely, nor can corporeality, without reason, be affirmed as morally relevant and normative: the biological Physis of man is never of itself "human nature." As such, it can be known and held to be ethically relevant only within the horizon of the spiritual acts of the human person.

The consequences of this fact are significant. VS expresses these in the statement: "The person, including the body, is completely entrusted to himself, and it is in the unity of body and soul that the person is the subject of his own moral acts" (ibid.). The person is subject in both dimensions, which form a single nature: in his corporeality and in his rationality, or in his capacity to aspire to something based on reason, which means to will (the will is in fact the appetitus in ratione). This also means that there can be no rationally relevant knowledge that does not take into account the corporal constitution of man. The normative role and the power of human reason, as these are shown in the natural law, are at the same time inserted in man's corporeity and in the structure of his sensory aspirations. As "natural" reason, human reason is always also dependent on the fact of its link to the body.

What does this mean, concretely and practically? What does it mean for the establishment of moral norms? It means that a reason that would prescind from "nature" as the corporeity of the human person would be suspended in the void from the cognitive point of view. Human corporeity expresses goods and values, which for reason—in the so-called natural inclinations—become the point of departure according to nature, even if these in turn display their true moral dimension only once they are inserted into the horizon of reason. Thus the sexual instinct, the attractive force between the two sexes that serves reproduction and the preservation of the species, is given by nature to human corporeity, and is therefore received by reason naturally—and thus spontaneously and necessarily—as a human good. Nevertheless, only within the intellectual horizon of reason does this good reveal its truly human—personal—character, as love and communion between two persons, who in the reciprocal gift of themselves fulfill the task of the transmission of life. Note that I have implied that the moral relevance of the sexual inclination is grasped by reason not simply in the inclination but in the flowering of marital chastity, of which the inclination is the seed.

Nature and reason, body and spirit, nature and freedom, must not, therefore, be opposed to one another in a dualistic sense (cf. VS, n. 50). The human person, as has been said, is a unity, a unity that includes precisely body and spirit, reason and nature, nature and freedom. This unity forms itself one complex but indivisible unity or nature: the nature of the human person. But it can still be asked what this means for reason, that is, for the moral law, which, as we have seen, is precisely the light of reason that distinguishes good from evil.

(Continues...)

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Table of Contents

Contents

Acknowledgments....................vii
Editor's Preface....................ix
Introduction: Between Protection and Threats....................xi
1. Natural Law and the Thomistic Roots of John Paul II's Ethics of Human Life....................1
Prologue: Contraception and Virtue....................33
2. The Post-conciliar State of the Question on Contraception: The Encyclical, Relevant Case, Arguments, and Description of Contraception....................39
3. Toward an Adequate Argument in Support of Humanae Vitae: The Necessary Integration of Anthropology, Action Theory, Virtue, and Natural Law....................71
4. The Use of Contraceptives under Threat of Rape: An Exception? Clarifying a Central Teaching of Veritatis Splendor....................133
5. The Instrumentalization of Human Life: Ethical Considerations Concerning Reproductive Technology....................153
6. Human Fetuses, Persons, and the Right to Abortion: Toward an Absolute Power of the Born?....................179
7. The Legal Defense of Prenatal Life in Constitutional Democracies....................228
Appendix: An Initial Response to Todd A. Salzman and Michael G. Lawler....................285
Bibliography....................291
Index....................301