- Feb 5, 2002
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On I.V.F. and Church teaching.
Back when I was in seminary, I once argued fiercely about the morality of I.V.F. with a friend of mine. He and his wife had recently been married, a bit later in life, and had been struggling to conceive. My friend and I stayed up late into the night over some break during the school year, drinking bourbon and looking through the history of the Church’s relevant magisterial statements. I took the hardline approach expressed in Donum vitae and reiterated in later documents: artificial fertilization was intrinsically immoral. My friend agreed with a lot of the supporting points, but was not able to square that final dogmatic statement with his and his wife’s desire to have kids and start a family. There was no resolution to the argument. He and his wife opted to pursue I.V.F. and have had several children. The first of these was born shortly after I was ordained a transitional deacon. I was asked to do the baptism, and so the second baptism I ever performed was of a baby conceived by in vitro fertilization. Along with those of all the other people I have baptized, that baby’s name and date of baptism were written in my little prayer notebook to be remembered every year on the anniversary.
Continued below.
Back when I was in seminary, I once argued fiercely about the morality of I.V.F. with a friend of mine. He and his wife had recently been married, a bit later in life, and had been struggling to conceive. My friend and I stayed up late into the night over some break during the school year, drinking bourbon and looking through the history of the Church’s relevant magisterial statements. I took the hardline approach expressed in Donum vitae and reiterated in later documents: artificial fertilization was intrinsically immoral. My friend agreed with a lot of the supporting points, but was not able to square that final dogmatic statement with his and his wife’s desire to have kids and start a family. There was no resolution to the argument. He and his wife opted to pursue I.V.F. and have had several children. The first of these was born shortly after I was ordained a transitional deacon. I was asked to do the baptism, and so the second baptism I ever performed was of a baby conceived by in vitro fertilization. Along with those of all the other people I have baptized, that baby’s name and date of baptism were written in my little prayer notebook to be remembered every year on the anniversary.
Continued below.