Promoting the Sanctity of Human Life and the Sanctity of Marriage/Family/Human Sexuality (8/18/23 edition)
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The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued A Catholic Primer on In Vitro Fertilization in 2025. As I noted that same year (Catholic Stand, 9/5/25):
Catholicism esteems sexual relations between wives and their husbands. So much so that even when used by a wife and her husband, the Vatican (e.g., Dignitas Personae) has adamantly said that IVF is absolutely wrong, because it separates the unitive (i.e., the joining of the two bodies) and the procreative (i.e., the baby making) aspects of the marital act:
The basic principle guiding Catholic reflection on infertility is that measures that assist a couple to conceive a child in their marital act are permissible while measures that replace the marital act are not….
Its very name, in vitro, means in Latin that the conception occurs “in glass” (a petri dish in most cases), not in the couple’s marital act. Ovum and sperm are extracted from the man and woman, often by masturbation, and are manipulated in the laboratory. Multiple embryos are usually created, because some do not survive the freezing before insertion in the mother; others are not used because they are judged to have low reproductive potential; and some of those with high reproductive potential fail to attach to the uterine wall. As laudable as sympathy for an infertile couple may be, there is more than a whiff of “eugenics” in IVF as medical personnel choose which embryos are worthy of life and which are not.
So, what happens to the embryos that are not used? Unless the couple objects, they are discarded. If the couple wants to keep them, they are kept frozen for possible future use.
Every help possible should be given to couples experiencing infertility but the ends do not justify the means. Technology in medicine as in warfare, commerce, and daily actions such as driving a car or using the Internet must be guided by ethical standards or else technology will betray the good which it pretends to serve. IVF looks for a short-term solution but does not recognize the longer-term damage it does by making the embryo an object of medical manipulation rather than a fruit of parental love….
It is the normal desire and expectation of most couples to have children but there is no absolute right to have a child. (Bishop Mark Brennan, 3/11/24)....
Absolutely different from IVF, Naprotechnology aids the marital act and does not replace it....
Learning fertility awareness, a married wife and husband work with specialists, who may employ some surgery. Any techniques employed are absolutely different than IVF [cf, Catholic World Report, 2/28/25]....
It appears to be a [highly unfortunate] rule of thumb for many bishops, priests, deacons, and pastoral workers to avoid topics of a sexual nature. There seems to be so much fear of offending anyone for sinful behavior, that the full and beautiful message about human sexuality is dismissed.
The Church has been clear in its prohibition of embryo "transfers" from one woman to another. Despite its very words, some read the Vatican's 2008 Dignitas personae as leaving a door ajar for consideration of an exception for so-called "snowflake adoptions":
The proposal that these embryos could be put at the disposal of infertile couples as a treatment for infertility is not ethically acceptable for the same reasons which make artificial heterologous procreation illicit as well as any form of surrogate motherhood;[38] this practice would also lead to other problems of a medical, psychological and legal nature.
It has also been proposed, solely in order to allow human beings to be born who are otherwise condemned to destruction, that there could be a form of 'prenatal adoption'. This proposal, praiseworthy with regard to the intention of respecting and defending human life, presents however various problems not dissimilar to those mentioned above.
All things considered, it needs to be recognized that the thousands of abandoned embryos represent a situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved. Therefore John Paul II made an 'appeal to the conscience of the world’s scientific authorities and in particular to doctors, that the production of human embryos be halted, taking into account that there seems to be no morally licit solution regarding the human destiny of the thousands and thousands of "frozen" embryos which are and remain the subjects of essential rights and should therefore be protected by law as human persons'.[39]"
Joe Tevington is a proudly orthodox Catholic, a husband since 1986, a dad to two adult children, a grandpa to two, and a civil service retiree. He is a sign language fluent certified rehabilitation counselor with graduate degrees in deafness rehabilitation, religious studies/moral theology, & Christian counseling psychology, as well as a catechetical diploma and certificates in benefits planning and Catholic social ministry. He deeply appreciates Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life and the sanctity of the transmission of human life, as well as how they are to inform us in our apostolates and ministries.
On much lighter notes, he fancies himself to be the foremost authority on his native Brooklyn, when it comes to architecture, cinema, geography, history, Italian food, stick ball, stoop ball, or wiffle ball.
