2022 REPORT BRIEF III
THE DECEPTION OF "LIFE BEGINS AT CONCEPTION"
(Disguises Actual "Pro-Life" Claim of Personhood)
There are many intellectuals who are well aware that "life begins at conception" is designed to enforce Roman Catholic theological concepts of "Personhood" under a cloak of morality. Religio-political power is in play with this deceptive phrase.
Before Roe v. Wade was overturned there were already attempts in the State Courts of America to codify Personhood:-
Personhood of the Fetus: Torah Takes a Stand (2015)
Abortion opponents will try anything. This month, here in Arkansas, our Legislature, in its infinite wisdom, banned an abortion procedure that doesn’t even happen!
Not too long ago, the folks who will go to any length to restrict a woman’s reproductive liberty tried passing a so-called “personhood” amendment in several states. The proposal would have declared an embryo to be a person from the moment that the egg is fertilized.
These “personhood” amendments failed, even in Mississippi. Voters came to realize that extreme consequences. For example, if a fetus has the same status as a mother, one could not legally or morally terminate a pregnancy in those rare cases when one must do so to save a woman’s life.
Also, several forms of birth control would have been rendered illegal. You see, the medical definition of pregnancy is the implantation of the fertilized egg on the wall of the uterus. Contraceptives like birth control pills and IUD’s, which prevent eggs from becoming fertilized, may also function to stop a fertilized egg from attaching to the uterus.
Voters wisely decided against dangerously conferring the full human rights upon a fertilized egg.
Often, the abortion debate has been framed by a question that asks, “When does life begin?” That’s the wrong question. Of course, a fetus is living. The question is whether it’s a person, an independent human being. (Underscored emphasis added.)
The voters were wise, even in the South, as recently as 2015; but as Rome has tightened the screws of control over the Republican Party attitudes changed. There was already a drastic change by 2018. This followed the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States and his connivance with the Roman Catholic Federalist Society and the Republican Senate to create a right-wing Roman Catholic super majority on the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court has of course now overturned the almost 50 years' precedent of Roe v Wade. Now the foundational Roman Catholic theology upon which Rome's virulent opposition to abortion is based must be enforced. The Republican Party is happy to oblige! The following academic paper was published by the Mississippi College School of Law in 2018, when Rome's plot to stack the Supreme Court of the United States Supreme Court with its right-wing super majority had barely begun. The stacking process began with the stolen seat that should have gone to Democratic President Barack Obama's nominee Merrick Garland being held open to be filled by a Republican President. As early as 2006 a controlling majority of Roman Catholics had been appointed to the Supreme court. In an essay titled WHY THE CATHOLIC MAJORITY ON THE SUPREME COURT MAY BE UNCONSTITUTIONAL there is a criticism of the illegitimate process by which the Catholic majority was achieved on the Supreme Court, even though expressed by a Roman Catholic academic. (However, this statement by the academic raises the question whether there is any process by which a majority of the Supreme Court justices are members of one particular religious faith can be constitutional.) Immediate religio-political consequences followed. These have increased manyfold as the result of Donald Trump's nominations confirmed by the Republican Senate. This is especially so on the issue of abortion which has been a bee in the bonnet of the Roman Catholic hierarchy since the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade (Cf. "Even before the work" and "From the very beginning." From a philosophical debate within the Roman Catholic Church, "Personhood" has become a widespread objective of many laws proposed in Republican controlled legislatures:-
Personhood Seeking New Life with Republican Control
On January 17, 2017, just three days before the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, Representative Jody B. Hice (R-GA) introduced H.R. 586, the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which states that "the life of each human being begins with fertilization, cloning, or its functional equivalent . .. at which time every human being shall have all the legal and constitutional attributes and privileges of personhood."' More recently, in October 2017, the Department of Health and Human Services (HES), released a draft of its strategic plan for Fiscal Years 2018-2022, stating that "HI-IS accomplishes its mission through programs and initiatives that cover a wide spectrum of sixty-one activities, serving and protecting Americans at every stage of life, beginning at conception. At the state level, in 2014 the citizens of Colorado and North Dakota considered and rejected proposed amendments to their state constitutions that would have extended the legal definition of personhood to the earliest stages of human development. As of this writing, at least ten other states are considering similar measures (Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, lowa, Kansas, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington). Concurrently, personhood proponents are also pursuing initiatives at the county and municipal levels!
. . . Indeed, the personhood movement is seeking nothing less than to change the legal status of the unborn!' While personhood efforts have not been successful to date at either the state or federal levels, changes in the legal and political landscape may offer new opportunities. The election of President Trump and other Republican officials can only be viewed as a victory for abortion opponents. Although Neil Gorsuch, Trump's Supreme Court selection, has not ruled directly on abortion in his time on the bench, he is a noted conservative who has written in the context of medically assisted dying and euthanasia that "all human beings are intrinsically valuable and the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong. . .
. . . Personhood rhetoric is already seen in proceedings involving the disposition of unused embryos and in laws that attempt to restrict access to abortion on the basis of gender, race, or disability. . .
The U.S. Constitution does not define the term "person" nor does it state when life begins. However, Justice Blackmun, author of the majority opinion in Roe v. Wade, explicitly addressed the matter when he wrote that "[i]f this suggestion of [fetal] personhood is established, the appellant's case [arguing in favor of women's choice], of course, collapses, for the fetus' right to life would then be guaranteed specifically by the [Fourteenth] Amendment. . .
Over the course of the last four decades, continuous attempts have been made to amend the federal Constitution to establish a right to life for the unborn. The National Committee for a Human Life Amendment reports that well over 300 such amendments have been introduced in Congress, of which only one (the Hatch-Eagleton Human Life Federalism Amendment) was the subject of a formal (though negative) vote in the Senate. Collectively, these legislative efforts were hardly limited to the formed fetus. Indeed, repeated congressional efforts to enact the Sanctity of Human Life Act are all about defining legal personhood as beginning at the single-celled (zygote) stage of embryonic development . . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
In general the foundational Roman Catholic theology upon which Rome's virulent opposition to abortion is based is found almost exclusively in University Journals; not the kind of publications to attract a general readership. Thus catchy phrases such as "life begins at conception" the more readily conceal the poison of anti-biblical pagan philosophy. The reader is urged to endure the challenge of wading through the following scholarly dissertation in which the author describes the philosophical speculations as "abstruse" ["hard to understand; recondite; esoteric"] This is the diabolical corruption of Christianity which the Church of Rome is forcing on the United States and the world. Note that the "immortality of the soul" is involved:-
The Potentiality Principle from Aristotle to Abortion
Anthropologists and sociologists intrigued with the theoretical promise of potentiality have largely overlooked a copious literature on potentiality produced by Catholic moral philosophers, bioethicists, and theologians. While there may be good reason for this—much of the philosophical literature is notoriously specialized and abstruse—it may nevertheless be worth the effort, because the philosophers are among those who utilize potentiality qua potentiality to discuss reproductive futures, often by situating the moral status of human embryos at the center of analysis. Furthermore, philosophers and bioethicists who carry “potentiality” in their conceptual tool kits are called on to comment publicly on subjects such as abortion, cloning, contraception, in vitro fertilization, stem cell research, and the like. Their expertise, then, is germane when potentiality is invoked to make moral claims on the bodies of human (as well as nonhuman) animals. For these reasons, and because potentiality has a 2,000-year history dating back to Aristotle, the philosophical literature merits our attention as we embark on a collective project to theorize (or rather, to retheorize) potentiality.
This paper takes as its object of study contemporary iterations of Aristotle’s potentiality principle. I argue that the potentiality principle has been kept alive mainly by a group of Catholic moral philosophers who rely on the concept to underwrite the moral status of embryos. I reached this conclusion after venturing—cautiously and ill equipped—into the philosophical literature on potentiality, seeking to understand the contemporary implications of an ancient discussion. As an anthropologist, I focus here on the actors—mainly Catholic philosophers, ethicists, moral theologians, and their feminist interlocutors—who utilize the concept of potentiality in their work, attempting throughout to understand their political agendas and subtexts while keeping track of my own (and my discipline’s) premises, prejudices, and expectations. Although I am primarily intrigued with a relatively small group of Catholic moral philosophers, by necessity I have read more widely. This paper separates the literature into three realms: Aristotelian metaphysics, feminist moral philosophy, and Catholic moral philosophy and theology. Aristotelian metaphysics appears here because it provided the origins of the potentiality principle, a foundational argument of enduring importance. The feminist moral philosophers have been at the forefront of ethical reasoning about reproduction at least since the 1970s, and they continue to engage (and sometime to dismiss) the concept of potentiality (see Morgan 1996). Although I did not begin this research knowing much about the subdiscipline of Catholic moral philosophy, I became intrigued with the Catholic philosophers who bring their expertise to bear on political debates using metaphysics and ethical reasoning. By their participation in national and international commissions, they have successfully recruited the state apparatus to “potentiate” and control reproductive bodies. Catholic moral philosophers emerge in this paper as active agents who condition and shape the uses of potentiality and who in turn provoked me to examine reflexively the politics of potentiality. Tracing potentiality in these three guises allows me to examine the concept as it circulates and to ruminate on the politics of theory: when, why, and to what end does potentiality surface in the philosophers’ debates? My answers are at best partial, but one lesson is that all potentiality theorists are well served by turning a reflexive gaze onto our knowledge-making practices for the purpose of exposing our rhetorical and political goals. . .
A Brief Summary of Aristotle’s Potentiality Principle
In its contemporary philosophical iterations, the potentiality principle proposes that embryos and fetuses should not be killed because they possess all the attributes that they will have as full persons later in life. The potentiality principle is encapsulated in the words of one author who writes about “abortion and the golden rule”: “If it would be wrong to kill an adult human being because he has a certain property, it is wrong to kill an organism (e.g., a fetus) which will come to have that property if it develops normally” (Hare 1975:209). Philosophers’ ruminations on this topic originate with Aristotle, who wondered how “the ultimate reasons or causes of the existence of concrete objects” could be explained (Ford 1991:21). What, in other words, was the relationship between the potential and the actual? Aristotle understood that things could not exist without potentials, yet paradoxically potentials could only be realized by actuals (Garrison 2001:55). What is the builder to the house, the marble to the statue, the acorn to the oak, the block of stone to the threshold (Irwin 1990:225)? Aristotle reasoned that the full and perfect realization of a thing is always inherent in its nature. “According to Aristotle’s science and metaphysics,” writes Sarah Broadie (1993), “all living things, including mindless plants, have a good or an end proper to their species toward which they naturally tend to develop from a formless or potential state” (49). Aristotle’s formulations continued to engage philosophers through the centuries. Ayn Rand, to give just one recent example, attacked the potentiality principle in order to defend the moral right to abortion: “To equate a potential with an actual, is vicious; to advocate the sacrifice of the latter to the former, is unspeakable” (Rand 1975).
The generation, transformation, and purpose of living organisms, including human bodies and souls, have long provided great fodder for Aristotelian metaphysical reasoning. Today, the potentiality principle is invoked almost exclusively by Catholic moral philosophers to assert full moral status for nascent human organisms, that is, stem cells, in vivo and in vitro embryos, and fetuses. Advocates argue that “all potential persons have a serious right to life” and that because stem cells, embryos, and fetuses are potential or intrinsic persons, they should not be killed (Gosselin 2000:437). These philosophers attach potentiality to notions of humanness, especially as humanness is manifested in the qualities of personhood that they most value: sentience, consciousness, and rationality. Aristotle might consider this a narrow interpretation of the circumstances to which potentiality is relevant in part because today’s debates ignore what was for him a central problem: the emergence of the rational soul.
Since the 1970s potentiality arguments in philosophy have largely ignored the soul, focusing instead on the moral status of the unborn. In this sense, their use of potentiality is consistent with one of the meanings offered in the introduction to this supplemental issue of Current Anthropology: it “denotes a hidden force determined to manifest itself—something that with or without intervention has its future built into it” (Taussig, Hoeyer, and Helmreich 2013; emphasis in original). This category has grown to include several subclasses of embryos, stem cells, and gametes, all of which the Catholic philosophers locate in the realm of divine, metaphysical entities that derive their meanings from beyond the realm of culture. To provide just a sampling of titles found in the literature, Mark T. Brown (2007) considers the “potential of the human embryo,” Helen Watt (1996) writes about the “potential of the early human,” John A. Burgess (2010) contemplates “potential and foetal value,” Don Berkich (2007) exposes “a fallacy in potentiality,” Michael Wreen (1986) pursues “the power of potentiality,” and Bertha Alvarez Manninen (2007) revisits “the argument from fetal potential.” There is also an extended scholarly exchange centered on “why potentiality matters” (Stone 1987), “why potentiality does not matter” (Fisher 1994), “why potentiality still matters” (Stone 1994), and “why potentiality cannot matter” (Jokić 1993). For the Catholic moral philosophers, the goal of these discussions is clear: to set the parameters of the abortion debate by virtue of establishing the potentiality and moral status of the embryo. At stake are the morality, ethics, and ultimately the legality of social practices that produce dead embryos, including embryonic stem cell research, abortion, in vitro fertilization, and so forth. If the potentiality principle cannot be supported, then these practices are morally permissible; if the potentiality principle is substantiated, then they are not. From an anthropological point of view, it should be obvious that this understanding of potentiality can ironically only be achieved at the expense of the potential for pregnant women to exercise their own interpretations of liberty and choice.
Metaphysics is no less susceptible to sociopolitical currents than other theories. Today’s potentiality debates revolve around the “life” issues because when the US Supreme Court legalized abortion in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, it ruled that the state has an “important and legitimate interest in protecting the potentiality of human life from the 24th week of pregnancy” (emphasis added). Because potentiality has such an illustrious philosophical legacy, philosophers took up the challenge of retrofitting Aristotle’s concept to the contemporary abortion debates. Classic philosophical contributions of that period include Judith Jarvis Thomson’s 1971 article “A Defense of Abortion” (1971) and the response by Catholic pro-life philosopher John Finnis (1973) as well as Francis C. Wade’s “Potentiality in the Abortion Discussion” (1975), R. M. Hare’s “Abortion and the Golden Rule” (1975), and Mary Anne Warren’s rebuttal “Do Potential People Have Moral Rights?” (1977). (Interestingly, the word “embryo” does not appear in the literature of the 1970s; all attention was on “fetuses,” with the exception of a much discussed kitten embryo analogy that appeared in Michael Tooley’s infamous “Abortion and Infanticide” [1972].) It was around this time that feminist philosophers joined the debate. . .
Potentiality in Catholic Moral Philosophy
Despite the invitation to consider embryos within the context of social relations, some Catholic potentiality theorists deal with the feminist challenge by ignoring it. In his five-page article on “potentiality and respect for embryos,” for example, Alfonso Gómez-Lobo cites the word “embryo” 17 times, the word “mother” three times, and the word “woman” just once (Gómez-Lobo 2005). Gamble’s 34-page article, “Potentialism and the Value of an Embryo,” mentions the word “mother” twice, the word “woman” three times (including once as “substance abusing pregnant woman”), and the word “embryo” 249 times (Gamble 2005). This little counting exercise makes visible the power at work in subject making. The preoccupation with embryos can be traced, at least in part, to an activist orientation on the part of potentiality theorists who work within the framework of Catholic moral philosophy.
Roman Catholic moral philosophy is its own vibrant subfield practiced by philosophers, ethicists, and theologians, many of whom are located in Catholic universities and think tanks and who closely follow Vatican policy. In those circles, the potentiality principle is still actively discussed, debated, and applied to social problems such as abortion, embryo research, and reproductive ethics. Feminist philosopher Margaret Little explains that there are two epistemological routes to the position that elevates respect for embryos to a moral absolute (Little 2008). The first is through the tenets of natural law, according to which embryos are intrinsically and essentially valuable (DeGrazia 2007:306; Little 2008). This is the view enunciated by several theological philosophers who support the Catholic sanctity of life doctrine. In their view, human agency is subordinate to God’s will, for God is “the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords” and infallible One who alone is capable of conferring life (King James Bible). These are the so-called “intrinsic-value moral theorists” (Brown 2007:597), who regard embryonic life as inviolable under any circumstances (Gómez-Lobo 2007; Napier 2011). Wade (1975) puts it this way: “The strength of the anti-abortion argument consists in the contention that the fetus is treated as a human being because of its potentiality to become an adult rational human” (239). Many philosophers regard this stance as fundamentally a religious posture because it is consistent with the position outlined in several papal encyclicals and because natural-law theory gives moral precedence to divine, God-given laws that override secular (and thus morally fallible) laws. The second route, articulated by Don Marquis, argues that abortion is wrong because it deprives embryos and fetuses of a “future like ours” (Marquis 1989). This view has been called “the best secular argument against abortion” (Strong 2008), but because it does not rest on the potentiality principle, I will not consider it further.
Among Catholic moral philosophers, the potentiality principle represents the secular face of a theological position based on natural law. Engelhardt (2011) traces the history of natural law and the roots of bioethics to Rome in the Middle Ages, when philosophers “came to assume that rational reflection can lead all rational inquirers to the same conclusions on central moral issues” (244). A powerful constellation of political actors is currently engaged in framing theological arguments in secular (scientific, legal, and bioethical) terms with the specific goal of influencing the “life” debates (Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice 2007; Vaggione 2005). Much of the work is coordinated in Rome under the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy for Life. The Vatican found an ally in 2001 when former President George W. Bush appointed a slate of conservative philosophers and bioethicists to advise the administration on “matters of ethical concern,” mostly related to stem cell research, “human dignity,” and the beginning and ending of life. This council was accused of antiscientific partisanship after the molecular biologist (and eventual Nobel Prize winner) Elizabeth Blackburn was removed from the council in 2004 reportedly for political reasons (Blackburn 2004). During this time, the council used state power and taxpayer funds to create dissent and foster ambiguity in part by underwriting debates about potentiality. In this way, the council used state power to reanimate and enliven a discussion of potentiality, arguably for political ends.
Several prominent potentiality theorists are pro-life Catholic philosophers and ethicists. Francis C. Wade (1907–1987), who argued against H. Tristam Engelhardt’s (1974) defense of abortion on grounds of potentiality, was a Jesuit philosopher at Marquette University. Patrick Lee (2010) teaches philosophy at the Franciscan University of Steubenville and belongs to the American Catholic Philosophers Association. Stephen Napier (2011) is a staff ethicist at the National Catholic Bioethics Center. Christopher Kaczor (2011) teaches Catholic ethics and philosophy at Loyola Marymount. Helen Watt (1996) directs the Linacre Centre, a Catholic bioethics institute in London. Robert P. George, a Catholic law professor at Princeton, works closely with conservative and pro-life philosophers. He served for 7 years on Bush’s Presidential Council on Bioethics and reprises the potentiality arguments in his 2008 book Embryo: A Defense of Human Life (George 2008). The potentiality principle was obviously a weapon in the antiabortion armamentarium.
The council’s political agenda was apparent in the biographies of two of its members. Mary Ann Glendon and Alfonso Gómez-Lobo served both in Washington and in Rome, working for the Vatican and the US government. They worked to set the parameters of a discussion of “human dignity,” managing to set the terms of debate for the Bush administration and the nation. Gómez-Lobo (who died in late 2011) was a Catholic philosopher whose name appears frequently in the potentiality literature, although he preferred scientific and metaphysical to religious phraseology. One of his many articles began with this sentence: “The latest developments in human embryonic stem cell research and the prospect of human cloning to obtain genetically matching stem cells have renewed the urgency of a careful and rational discernment of what is owed to early human life” (Gómez-Lobo 2004:199). Gómez-Lobo was less concerned with the technoscientific and discursive production of embryos than with their moral status. He may not have been aware, for example, that textbook knowledge about embryology got a boost in the mid-twentieth century when scientists performed 211 hysterectomies on women who they hoped were pregnant (Morgan 2009:125–130). What are the ethics of using embryological knowledge acquired through such means to make a moral argument that privileges the moral status of embryos above that of pregnant women? The desire to grant moral weight to embryos needs to be seen as the product of Catholic power that intersects with the massive embryocentric technoscientific enterprise constructed over the past century. Catholics were mistaken, Engelhardt (2011) says, in assuming that there can be a “single and canonical moral vision” based in shared values and faith (244). “Reason,” he says, “cannot bring one to that which faith discloses” (Engelhardt 2011:245). In this context, potentiality must be viewed as a tool in the pro-life Catholic philosopher’s theoretical arsenal as well as a political tool used to combat abortion.
Catholic philosophers look not only to Aristotle but to Saint Thomas Aquinas for classical inspiration. Aquinas is the most important intellectual antecedent for Catholic moral theologians and philosophers; he “represents the philosophia perennis of the West” (Gilby 1967:119). He is referred to as the “Angelic Doctor” or “Doctor of the Church,” and he is invoked to analyze all manner of social problems. As O’Meara (2012) explains, “Theologians after Vatican II applied Aquinas’s insights to medical ethics, Christian virtues, Christian spirituality, and human rights.” Indeed, with the recent resurgence of interest in Aquinas since Pope John Paul II’s Fides et ratio encyclical in 1998 (McInerny and O’Callaghan 2010), I wondered why so many Catholic potentiality theorists seem to ignore Aquinas. Aquinas, following Aristotle, posited that ensoulment occurred “late” in pregnancy, at around 40 days in males and 90 days in females. “Aquinas,” writes Joseph Donceel (Donceel 1970), “took over Aristotle’s doctrine of delayed hominization” (78). Contemporary observers agree that Aquinas’s views were wrong, based as they were on a medieval understanding of biology. For that reason, today’s Thomists feel justified in making “suitable corrections” to Aquinas’s account of human embryogenesis (Meyer 2006:206; see also Eberl 2005). They disagree, however, about whether Aquinas’s theory of delayed hominization was wrong based simply on biological misinformation or on his philosophy. “If [Aquinas’s] philosophy were derived from the biology, we would have to drop it,” wrote Donceel (1970:79; see also Eberl 2005:386; Finnis 1999:14).
The Thomists’ challenge has been to update the medieval embryology while retaining the fundamentals of Thomist metaphysics. Haldane and Lee, for example, argue that when “Aquinas’ metaphysical principles [are applied to] the embryological facts uncovered since his time,” we must conclude “that the human being is present from fertilization on” (Haldane and Lee 2003:273; see also Eberl 2005:392). The issue, for our purposes, is whether Aquinas “may be enlisted as an ally in a campaign against Catholic teaching on abortion” (Haldane and Lee 2003:278). Haldane and Lee argue emphatically that the answer is no. Had the Angelic Doctor addressed the question of intentional abortion, they write, he would have said that “a man ought rather to let the mother perish” than commit “the crime of homicide in killing the foetus” (Haldane and Lee 2003:278). This grim prospect, they write, is consistent with what Aquinas would have written, and this is the conclusion that the Church must face “as implied by the views of Aquinas” (Haldane and Lee 2003:278).
Aquinas is an inconvenient referent for Catholic philosophers and moral theologians. His views—especially on the critical question of when life begins—complicate the Vatican’s stance on the beginnings of life. Aquinas was convinced that “an embryo or fetus is not a human person until its body is informed by a rational soul” (Eberl 2005:379). He did not believe this soul was present at conception. He would have granted that embryos are alive, but he would have denied that they are persons. This was, incidentally, the position of the Roman Catholic Church until the late nineteenth century (Williams 1958). But to invoke Aquinas now is to call attention to the fact that Catholic doctrine has been inconsistent and has not always supported conception as the time of ensoulment. Aquinas is in many ways “the embarrassing saint” (Asma 1994). It is hard to reconcile Aquinas’s views with contemporary Catholic doctrine on respect for early human life. Perhaps for this reason, a 500-page anthology titled The Ethics of Aquinas (Pope 2002) contains no entry on “abortion” or “stem cells.”
Aquinas’s views on abortion have caused disagreement among Catholic philosophers. Some argued that his theory of “delayed hominization” is theologically and biologically defensible (Donceel 1970; Pasnau 2002). In their view, Catholics could argue that early, unformed embryos are not rational creatures. This position is countered by other Catholic philosophers who have taken up the challenge of combing “Aquinas’ basic metaphysical account of human nature with current embryological data to develop a contemporary Thomistic account of a human being’s beginning” (Eberl 2005:380; see also Haldane and Lee 2003; Meyer 2006). Scholars such as Eberl, Haldane, Lee, and Meyer reason that Aquinas would have reached a different conclusion if he had known about DNA (Eberl 2005:386).
Interestingly for our purposes, this debate reintroduces the potentiality principle in a Thomistic guise. Eberl (2005), for example, ascribes to Aquinas a “nuanced concept of ‘active potentiality’” (392) in understanding the nature of the embryo. He concludes that the zygote, as well as an early embryo, is a rational being “Because it has an active potentiality for rational thought and is thus informed by a rational soul” (Eberl 2005:392). Although Eberl and a handful of others are adamant that they represent Aquinas’s version of potentiality, many other philosophers would reject their argument. “Religion, like capitalism, likes abstractions,” said Emily Martin during our symposium. The same is true of the philosophers, of course. It may be easier for them to base an argument on the potentiality principle than on the social consequences of unwanted pregnancy or mandatory motherhood. The moral theologians cited above are akin to earlier potentiality theorists who preferred to imagine a formless material to which a divine spark could be added.
Summarizing the State of Potentiality
It is fair to say that most contemporary secular philosophers reject the argument from potential. Critics “observe how obviously weak it seems” (Burgess 2010:140); one philosopher told me that it is “just bad philosophy.” The idea that “a creature’s potential properties” could determine its present rights, they say, is “absurd” (Stone 1987:815). An egg is not a chick, a seed is not a fruit. They argue that it is “incorrect to derive actual rights” from the potential to have those rights at a later time (Gordon 2008; see also Benn 1984; Berkich 2007; Burgess 2010; Jokić 1993, 2001; Kaposy 2010b; Little 2008; Persson 2003). . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
Politics by Proxy
When Catholic moral philosophers write about potentiality and elide the difference between “life” and “soul,” they are working to shape the moral world in which they wish to live. Does this mean that claims about potentiality are inherently political acts? Yes, I would argue, claims about potentiality are inherently political, and even the choice of potentiality as a topic indicates a political choice. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)
Into this dark labyrinth of pagan and papal speculations, coupled with the Vatican's insatiable appetite for power, ventures the one who embraces the "pro-life" movement. Into this labyrinth, and into the embrace of Rome, the leadership of the Seventh-day Adventist Church has led the people.
APPENDIX
RELIGIOUS DESPOTISM DESTROYING AMERICA'S
FREEDOMS
In 2006, roughly midway in George W. Bush's second term
In 2006, roughly midway in George W. Bush's second term, a symposium was held at the Catholic University of St. Thomas, Houston, Texas. Prof. Michael J. Gerhardt, an expert on constitutional law, separation of powers, and the legislative process, made a presentation on the constitutional legitimacy of the recently established Roman Catholic majority on the Supreme Court. His reasoned analysis leads to the logical conclusion that it was unconstitutional.
RELIGIOUS DESPOTISM DESTROYING AMERICA'S
FREEDOMS
The possible ensuing
violations
"The possible
ensuing violations are all the more unfortunate because
it
would have been easy to assemble a Catholic majority
on the Court without sacrificing some of our
constitutional commitments."
RELIGIOUS DESPOTISM DESTROYING AMERICA'S
FREEDOMS
I agree with my
fellow participants
"I agree with my fellow participants in this Symposium that the fact
that the current Supreme Court has five Catholics—the most it has ever
had at one time—is a positive, significant achievement for Catholics in
the United States; however, I must otherwise dissent. . . These
developments are encouraging and noteworthy, but they hardly tell the
whole story of how, or why, we have a Catholic majority on the Roberts
Court. We know, as Sheldon Goldman explains, that
presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush had specific
political objectives in making their respective Supreme Court
appointments;' however, the critical question is whether the criteria
these presidents used to implement their objectives included the
nominees' conformity with particular religious beliefs or traditions."
FROM MORAL MAJORITY TO TEA PARTY
FOR 20 YEARS
FOR 20 YEARS, George has operated largely out of public view at the
intersection of academia, religion and politics. In the past 12 months,
however, he has stepped into a more prominent role.
With the death of the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a
Lutheran minister turned Roman Catholic priest who helped bring
evangelicals and Catholics together into a political movement, George
has assumed his mantle as the reigning brain of the Christian right. . .
Last spring, George was invited to address an audience that included
many bishops at a conference in Washington. He told them with typical
bluntness that they should stop talking so much about the many policy
issues they have taken up in the name of social justice. They should
concentrate their authority on “the moral social” issues like abortion,
embryonic stem-cell research and same-sex marriage, where, he argued,
the natural law and Gospel principles were clear. To be sure, he said,
he had no objections to bishops' “making utter nuisances of themselves”
about poverty and injustice, like the Old Testament prophets, as long as
they did not advocate specific remedies. They should stop lobbying for
detailed economic policies like progressive tax rates, higher minimum
wage and, presumably, the expansion of health care — “matters of
public policy upon which Gospel principles by themselves do not resolve
differences of opinion among reasonable and well-informed people of good
will,” as George put it. . . (The
Conservative-Christian Big Thinker.)
Catholic Doctrine and Reproductive Health WHY THE CHURCH CAN’T
CHANGE
Even before the work of . .
. the Papal Commission on Population and Birth
Control was completed in 1966,
it was widely recognized in the
Vatican that the Church faced a grave problem regarding birth
control, including abortion. Vatican Council II, which ended in
1966, set the stage for the bishops to address this problem. One of
the outcomes of this Council was the Pastoral Constitution on the
Church in the Modern World. Part two of the Constitution was titled,
“Some Problems of Special Urgency.” In his book, Catholic Bishops in
American Politics, published by the Princeton University Press in
1991, T.A. Byrnes observes,
“This list of problems to which the
Church was to turn its attention reads like a blueprint of the
American hierarchy’s political agenda in the 1970s and 1980s.”4
The first was abortion:
God, the Lord of life, has conferred on men the surpassing ministry
of safeguarding life—a ministry which must be fulfilled in a manner
which is worthy of man. Therefore, from the moment of conception
life must be guarded with the greatest of care, while abortion and
infanticide are unspeakable crimes.5
Catholic Doctrine and Reproductive Health WHY THE CHURCH CAN’T
CHANGE
From the very beginning
From the very beginning,
there has been a common and correct
perception that the Catholic hierarchy was primarily an
anti-abortion political lobby. Byrnes summarizes his study of the
history of Catholic bishops in American politics by saying:
Before I end, I want to address one final
matter, namely the unique position that abortion occupies on the
Catholic hierarchy’s public policy agenda. Abortion is not simply
one issue among many for the bishops. It is rather the bedrock,
non-negotiable starting point from which the rest of their agenda
has developed. The
bishops’ positions on other issues have led to political action and
political controversy but abortion, throughout the period I have
examined, has been a consistently central feature of the Catholic
hierarchy’s participation in American politics.8
On January 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized abortion for
Americans. According to Bishop James McHugh, “within twenty-four
hours” of the court’s action, the bishops knew they would need to
mount a political campaign in favor of a constitutional amendment
prohibiting abortion.9
The Vatican wasted no time in responding. In 1974, the stage was
further set to create a political machine to end legal abortion in
the United States when Rome issued a document titled, Vatican
Declaration on Abortion, which states:
A Christian can never conform to a law which is in itself immoral,
and such is the case of a law which would admit in principle the
licitness of abortion. Nor can a Christian take part in a propaganda
campaign in favor of such a law, or vote for it. Moreover, he may
not collaborate in its application.10
This statement is an unequivocal rejection of the legitimacy of our
democratically elected government to pass laws legalizing abortion.
The papacy had placed its authority on the line, pitting itself
against the U.S. government. If the Vatican were to avoid the
looming destruction of papal authority, it must minimize the number
of abortions legally performed and ultimately succeed in reversing
the effects of Roe v. Wade. The 1974 Vatican Declaration on Abortion
follows the instructions set forth by Pope Leo XIII in his
encyclical on the Chief Duties of Christian Citizens:
If the laws of the state are manifestly at variance with the divine law, containing enactments hurtful to the Church or conveying injunctions adverse to the duty imposed by religion, or if they violate in the person of the Supreme Pontiff the authority of Jesus Christ, then truly, to resist becomes a positive duty, to obey, a crime.11