Pastor Reflection: Faith and Reason in the Pro-Life Movement

Having concluded the celebration of the Christmas Season recently, we continue to reflect on the significance of the birth rites of the Child Jesus, culminating liturgically with the Feast of the Presentation in the Temple forty days after his birth (February 2). This is a time for us to underscore the unique distinction which our Christian religion gives to the world, that is God is no longer known through distant signs and symbols, mere prophetic utterances or through signs of nature, but up close and personal … indeed, so close and personal that He takes on human flesh by means of His greatest creature, a woman. In the doctrine that God takes on flesh in the Incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth, we hold dear what no other religion has ever (or will ever) proclaim: God becomes Man at conception in a real and natural womb of a mother.

All of this bears on the dignity and purpose for each human life, as each human bares resemblance to the divine man, Jesus Christ. Moreover, that dignity is not something we impose on human nature; rather, it is human nature itself (like all natural beings) which first informs us of what it is: human life begins not when we say so but when it in itself begins. Biology and all the natural sciences attest to this truth which, only politically and through the strange thinking of some forms of contemporary philosophy, would challenge that natural understanding of how something potentially human becomes actually human. The language of physics (potency and act, or potential energy vs. actual energy, etc.) gives us a profound insight into the whole subject of how things move, how they become. In the case of human life, potential human life is not actually human life until it becomes actually so. Since biology and physics can point to the actuality of a unique human cell life at conception, then human nature begins there and not at some later point. Indeed, if human life began at a later point in time, it would have to already have within itself the potency for being human, which means it would have to already be human before it could be human: seemingly a problem to explain by those who say it (the human) is not human yet (or a human person) -- a contradiction.

All the other arguments for “Rights” or “Freedom of Choice” or the bizarre “distinction” between “human” and “person”, etc., all stem from a misunderstanding of the biology and physics of natural beings. It’s important to know that historically this kind of ignorant thinking is the consequence of some pretty strange relativism which has its Western roots in the worst interpretations of Descartes’ “I think, therefore, I am.” It’s not what I think is the truth; it’s what nature itself tells me is the actual fact.

Anyway, I teach metaphysics and apologize for what some might deem too speculative for the issue at hand regarding human life. However, I would argue that this is exactly the kind of thinking (through the lens of scientific reason rather than religious faith – with all respect) which needs to re-emerge in the defense of human life – not to the exclusion of religious faith statements but in concert with them. The pro-life movement is not simply a Catholic thing, a religious thing; that’s exactly how the opposition would like to frame the debate. It is a debate that can be argued on naturally scientific terms – of course, elevated by the profound supernatural gifts of God and the specific doctrine of the Incarnation of Jesus and the Motherhood of Mary.

As members of Catholic Church, we are called to defend the Faith against the enemies of religion; I would add that the enemies of religion are also the enemies of true reason (which is also a Catholic understanding of the intimate relationship of faith and reason (fides et ratio). To this purpose, natural reason can underscore the faith we believe and assist us effectively in explaining the faith intelligently to those who would relegate the Pro-Life movement and our arguments about the dignity of human life as exclusively “religious” and therefore prejudiced by “faith” alone. The dignity of human life from the moment of conception to the moment of natural death is not only a faith statement; it is also a natural understanding. As “grace perfects nature,” then, in God’s taking on human life in Jesus Christ through the Blessed Virgin, that dignity we bear is not only supernatural but clearly naturally endowed and to be safeguarded at every point of its actual existence. God bless.