On the nature of the soul

[BrAndreyu]

I am sitting here listening to a record and I just thought about something, something which I don't know the answer to. There was another article that was talking about "children who were aborted or who were never conceived" and it got me wondering: does the soul of the created individual exist with God the Father prior to conception, or is the individual soul created upon conception?

I would think that the latter would have to be the case-- that God creates the soul of an individual at the moment of conception because it wouldn't make much sense for there to be souls of individuals who will never be conceived. What I'm getting at is: I will never have children, but does that mean that there are souls of my potential children that exist and would never be born? When another married couple conceives a child, would one of these pre-existing souls that would have otherwise been unique to my child enter into theirs? Am I going to have to go to heaven and meet a bunch of my "children" that were never born? Because that would be just plain bizarre & I don't like the implications of that.

The entire thing is kind of heavy and weird, so it's my belief that God creates the soul of an individual when that individual is conceived. I believe this because I believe that only God is eternal and has pre-existed life here in our plane of existence. As the act of existence itself is part of God's nature, only he would be able to "pre-exist" at all.

 

[Chesster]

From Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma by Ludwig Ott:
Every individual soul was immediately created out of nothing by God. (Sent, certa.)

Creationism, taught by the vast majority of the Fathers by the Schoolmen, and by modem theology, holds that each individual soul is created by God out of nothing at the moment of its unification with the body. This doctrine is not defined ; it is, however, indirectly expressed in the derision of faith of the 5th General Latcran Council (pro corporum, quibus infunditur, mul- titudine multiplicanda : D 738). Pope Alexander VII, in a doctrinal assertion on the Immaculate Conception of Mary, which formed the basis of the dogmatic definition of Pius IX, speaks of the “creation and infusion” of her soul into the body (in primo instanti creationis atque infusionis in corpus). D 1100, cf. D 1641. Pope Pius XII, in the Encyclical “ Humani generis,” teaches “ The Catholic Faith obliges us to hold firmly that souls are immedia¬ tely created by God ” D 3027. Cf. D 348 (Leo IX).