It’s normally bad blog etiquette to post an entire news item, but in this case it’s a short letter and makes the argument in 141 words, so I figured, great, let’s copy and paste it!

 Assessing the status of embryos

SECTION: FEATURES; Pg. 22

LENGTH: 141 words

Sir, Pamela Huby (letter, March 27) voices popular misconception that the Roman Catholic Church holds the dogma that the embryo is fully human at the very first stage of conception. On this issue it is non-believers who are dogmatic; the Catholic Church is agnostic and rational.

To the question, “At what point does an embryo become human?” or as Christians put it “When does it acquire a soul?”, the only sensible answer short of a divine revelation is, “We don’t know”, which is the stated position of the Church. So the only safe procedure is to avoid all experimentation on embryos.

Even earlier Catholic thinkers who suggested that embryos gained souls at a later stage pointed out that in killing an embryo you are either killing a human being or robbing something of its chance to become human, both of which are wrong.

(Times March 29, 2008)

This wonderful freedom of philosophical agnosticism (which is the most rational position and takes into account the full range of evidence, contrary to the assertions of all our prominent scientists!) reminds me of a saying of Chesterton in “What is Right With the World”:

 I am an agnostic, like most people with a positive theology. But I do affirm, with the full weight of sincerity, that trees and flowers are good at the beginning, whatever happens to them at the end; that human lives were good at the beginning, whatever happens to them in the end.

The ordinary modern progressive position is that this is a bad universe, but will certainly get better. I say it is certainly a good universe, even if it gets worse. I say that these trees and flowers, stars and sexes, are primarily, not merely ultimately, good. In the Beginning the power beyond words created heaven and earth. In the Beginning He looked on them and saw that they were good.

 The debate on Radio 4 news is really pretty lame. It’s portaying the question as “religion vs. science” and the biggest concern seems to be “strong feelings” rather than truth or happiness. Even if we cure all the diseases of (a very limited number of) people, will they be happy? Especially if they are aware of the cost of that happiness?

Clifford Longley pointed out, rightly, that the sanctity of human life is a Catholic concern, but is shared by most religious people, and lots of others. However, he sort of fell down philosophically in debate with a biochemist on whether the embryo is a human being (he seemed to imply that you need some kind of revelation to accept this fairly clear empirical fact).

The fact is that we do live in a bizarre quasi-eugenic (if not openly eugenic) society. All the monstrous sci-fi ideas of last century have actually come to pass and are neatly and properly regulated by people like the HFEA. It’s just not controversial any more, but organisations like Marie Stopes International are more or less highstreet brands. Other less familiar names associated with her include the UK based Galton Institute and various others who provide ‘the relief of poor persons by the provision of birth control advice’ (from the above link) – gosh, those words are shuddersome!