Either Embryos Have Human Dignity, or It's All Just a Sham

We speak of human beings having innate dignity, and that innate dignity being the basis for human rights; but then we pretend that embryos do not share that dignity and are not entitled to the same rights as are those who have been born.

And that is absolutely nuts!  Seriously, think it through:

For someone to make the claim that human beings have dignity, while simultaneously claiming that embryos do not have dignity and innate rights, they have to hold that human beings only obtain dignity when they have reached a certain level of physical or cognitive development.

But if that is true then there is really no such thing as "innate dignity" - a dignity that we humans have simply as a result of existence (which science recognizes as beginning at conception).  Rather, human dignity is a human construct - an idea that we came up with, and which we are able to apply or deny to whomever we wish.

And if that is the case, then Martin Luther King, Jr.'s whole argument for civil rights was baseless, and the atrocities committed by Adolph Hitler completely justifiable.  If human dignity is not real - if it wasn't granted to us the nanosecond that we came into existence - then that is the reality. 

But we can't have it both ways, not logically.  Either human dignity is real, or it is an illusion.  If real, then we recognize the dignity and right to life of the unborn.  If not, then we admit that we have no innate dignity either; and we can be disposed of however the most powerful among us decides - and that isn't wrong; it's just the way the universe works.

Aristotle 101 - Introduction

Scripture and Theology - I've spent many years reading them and love them.  Philosophy?  I consider myself woefully inadequate, and have been trying to remedy that.  Trying to read someone like Aquinas however is very difficult because I do not have the vocabulary down.  To start making some headway I have been reading an introduction to the thought of one of Aquinas' heroes, the Greek philosopher Aristotle.   This book came recommended to me from Kevin Vost, Mortimer Adler's Aristotle for Everybody.  My intent is to post my study notes here on the blog so that you can make use of them too.


Adler's purpose in distilling the philosophy of Aristotle for modern readers is to help us think more clearly.  The beauty of Aristotle in his opinion is the way he used common human experiences and notions common to all of us - thing, body, mind, change, cause, etc. - to reason about our existence.  These commonalities are accessible by all, unlike the scientific experimentation that goes on behind the doors of a laboratory and are only read about by non-specialists such as ourselves.

Categorizing things is where Adler begins his exploration of Aristotle.  Categorizing is so basic to our human existence that it's practiced by children playing "Guess Who?"

The most basic categories into which we divide things (or bodies, to use Aristotle's terminology) are living and non-living.  All living things (bodies) take nourishment, grow, and reproduce while inanimate objects (bodies) do not.  We can subdivide living bodies into the categories of plant or animal.  Granted, there seem to be bodies on the borderline between living and non-living or between plant and animal; some things (bodies) have characteristics that seem to straddle the dividing line. 

That we have borderline cases is actually good though.  Unless our minds recognized the clear-cut distinctions between something like a rock and a rabbit, we wouldn't have to puzzle over the borderline cases.  But the human mind does recognize these larger categories, and that sets us apart from all other animals!  Other animals show intelligence, but they do not ask one another questions about the nature of things and work to answer them.

Our minds recognize these categories because it is able to discern the nature possessed by all the individual things making up that category, or class.  Artistotle discerned five main classes of physical things and placed them in an ascending order.  Each subsequent class possesses the characteristics of that which comes before it in the chain, as well as some new characteristic that sets it apart:

Inanimate Bodies

1) Elementary Bodies - have weight, occupy space, and are composed of only one element.
2) Composite Bodies - have weight, occupy space, and are composed of two or more elements 

Animate Bodies

3) Plants - have all the characteristics of composite bodies, but also take nourishment, grow, and reproduce
4) Animals - do this, as well as move and employ additional powers of sense such as touch, sight, hearing, taste, and smell.
5) Human beings - in addition to all that has come before, possess rational thought. 


The major differences indicated above, that separate one class of bodies from another, are essential differences.  All the other differences within a class are superficial, or accidental differences.  People have tried to divide our class into many different sub-classes (race, height, hair color, I.Q., place of origin, etc.), but these are all accidental differences.  Rational thought (asking "what" and "why") is the common property of human nature; it's what sets us apart as a class unto ourselves; all the other differences between us are superficial. 

Ah, the Possibilities!

I was speaking to a group of people studying to enter the Catholic Church this past Sunday. I had been asked to speak about the Incarnation, God the Son becoming human. I love focusing upon the Lord's humanity. He's not a Hercules (a half god, half man), but a Person who is simultaneously 100% God, and 100% man. The two aren't melded together. His divinity doesn't swallow up His humanity, or allow Him to take any shortcuts. He grew and passed through all of the same stages as you and I. The ONLY, and I mean single, solitary difference between Him and every other one of us, is that His soul didn't know the brokeness of sin. John Paul II was fond of saying that Jesus shows us what it means to be human.

Consider what that means: His heart, soul, mind, and will were only human - filled with the Holy Spirit, but human - like yours and mine. So when we see Jesus loving and expending Himself in the Gospels, those are human actions that we are witnessing! Oh, they are elevated by Grace and enflamed by the Holy Spirit to be sure, and there's no deformity or tainting from sin - but they're performed in His human nature.

Salvation is to be caught up into the HUMANITY of Jesus Christ - for our brokeness to find healing in His wholeness. The Holy Spirit is meant to flow through our souls, breaking forth in actions and words, just as they did in Jesus. In Jesus, through Baptism and the other Sacraments, our human souls "partake in the divine nature."

I was struck this past weekend by the beauty of devotion to Jesus' Sacred Heart. It is His human heart that we are reverencing. His human heart - the perfect conduit of the fiery, Divine Love. And we are called to share in, to participate in, His Sacred Heart! This is what we see in the saints - Maximilian Kolbe giving his life in exchange for another prisoner's, Mother Teresa working away in the slums of Calcutta, and Gianna Molla's love for her patients and children. Those words Jesus spoke at the Last Supper are just waiting to be lived out, "Anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father" (John 14:12).