“Therefore We May Kill”

A very good post by Deacon Nick Donnelly of Lancaster, about Bishop Lang's withdrawal of the invitation to Professor Tina Beattie to give a talk at Clifton Cathedral in Bristol.

Deacon Nick reprinted a paragraph from an article by Professor Beattie which was published in The Tablet.  Here it is:

‘Given that in Christian theology the understanding of personhood is fundamentally relational because it bears the image of the Triune God, it is hard to see how an embryo can be deemed a person before even the mother enters into a rudimentary relationship with it. As many as one in four pregnancies may spontaneously abort during the first eight weeks of pregnancy, often without the woman knowing that she was pregnant. As some Catholic ethicists point out, the logical corollary of this position is that a woman should baptise every menstrual period – just in case.’

After calling into question the personhood of the embryonic child, the paragraph closes with what appears to be a serious flaw in moral reasoning, a flaw which has implications far beyond the subject of early abortion.

Leaving aside the relationship argument which Professor Beattie puts forward, and the statistics which are more a matter of supposition than of factual data, I draw from these words a simple inference:

“Some die naturally, therefore we may kill others.”

A day for nascent human life, without the nascent?

The English and Welsh Bishops’ Conference website informs us that, in calling for a day of prayer for all nascent human life, the Holy Father expressed his general intention for the day as follows:

The purpose according to the Holy See is to “thank the Lord for his total self-giving to the world and for his Incarnation which gave every human life its real worth and dignity,” and to “invoke the Lord's protection over every human being called into existence.”

It can, I think, safely be assumed that, leading on from this general intention, the Pope envisaged that the prayers themselves should refer specifically to such examples of nascent life as the human embryo, and the child in the womb.

Here, in magnificent response, are the US Bishops’ worship resources for prayers of supplication, most helpfully linked from the E&W Bishops’ site:

Supplications for Vigil for All Nascent Human Life

Let us pray to God, the Father of Life and Font of all Mercy:
Lord, have mercy on all who have sinned against life.

You knit us in our mother’s womb,
— Preserve all children from bodily harm
From the moment of conception.

Your Son ennobled all human life when he became flesh in the womb of the Virgin Mary,
— Enlighten our minds to see the dignity of every human life
From its earliest embryonic beginnings.

You are author of science and knowledge,
— Bring an end to the destruction of human embryos
In research facilities and IVF clinics.

You are the law-giver and ruler of the world,
— Help us to overturn unjust laws that permit the destruction of innocent lives,
And guide our public officials to defend the littlest among us.

You love those who are afflicted,
— Help parents of unborn children with disabilities
To cherish the baby you have entrusted to their care.

Your Son, Jesus, healed the sick,
— Guide all doctors to be guardians of life,
Especially the lives of unborn children with serious health conditions.

Lord, you are love and mercy itself,
— Draw all who have acted against innocent human life
To repentance and forgiveness,
And heal them through an outpouring of grace.

The US Bishops’ prayers, beautiful and comprehensive as they are, have been composed for a vigil service, and might need some trimming for use in the bidding prayers at parish Masses. I mention this because the English Diocese of Clifton has announced its own plan for the day: an hour of quiet vigil in the cathedral before the 6.00 pm Mass, and a bidding prayer at every parish Mass that weekend.

A vigil of quiet prayer will be held in the Cathedral at 5.00 pm on Saturday, before the celebration of the First Mass of Sunday.

Bishop Declan has written to all our parishes. He said: “I would like to ask you to include the following prayer in your intercessions at Masses that weekend:

‘In union with the Holy Father we thank the Lord for his total self-giving to the world and for his Incarnation which gave every human life its real worth and dignity. Let us ask the Lord's protection over every human being called into existence. Lord hear us.’”

This is, just about word for word, the Holy Father’s general intention. Since Bishop Lang has omitted any specific reference to nascent human life, which is after all what the day is about, I very much hope that the clergy of the individual parishes will insert their own references to it.

Update, Sunday 28th November: The bidding prayer was included at the Mass I attended, using the exact wording requested by the Bishop. No explanation or context was given. There was no mention of nascent life, the embryo, the unborn child, or the child in the womb. There has been no mention of the day of prayer in the weekly newsletter, either last Sunday or this.

The Person in the Womb

John Smeaton, the Director of SPUC, has drawn the attention of his readers to an interesting and very encouraging Zenit interview with Monsignor Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, the new head of the Pontifical Academy for Life. In the course of the interview Mgr Carrasco said the following:

One of the problems we have with regard to the embryo is that it isn't seen. Instead of embryo we should speak of a child who is in the initial phase of development. Because we cannot see him, he is in a situation of tremendous danger, at tremendous risk.

The words we use are indeed extremely important. Further on in this post I'll record a few thoughts on the word "child"; but before doing so I'd like to refer to the general use of the term "unborn".

While it is of course a statement of fact, I have always felt there was a certain insufficiency in the word. My slight discomfort arises from a phrase which occasionally used to crop up in the loftier kind of political speech, when the politician wanted to inspire his listeners with a vision of the faraway sunlit uplands to which his party’s policies would undoubtedly lead the nation. He would refer to “generations as yet unborn”.

In that example the generations did not in fact exist at the time of the speech. Might the term “unborn” convey something of that same sense of non-existence - or of not yet existing - when used in reference to the child in the womb? Not to us, of course; but does its use miss an opportunity to impress upon a wider and less informed audience the reality, the totality, the existence here and now, of an actual human being, from the instant of his or her conception?

Returning to the word "child", I’d love to hear it used, as Mgr Carrasco recommends; and used as the standard term. “Baby” would be good too; but I feel that the use of “child” emphasises even more strongly the individuality, the humanity, the personhood, the sense of continuity with all stages of a person's development and growth to adulthood. So for me, it is “the embryonic child”, “the gestating child” or "the child in the womb" which fits the bill better than any other phrase.