From the 1998 Inside the Vatican 

Special Supplement on Humanae Vitae


STATEMENT ON HUMAN CLONING 

CATHOLIC MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (USA)

February 10, 1998


Catholic teaching on the dignity and uniqueness of every human person is founded upon Biblical and natural law, truths which have guided our Western Civilization up to our modern era. The impli- cations of that teaching are clear. God chose Adam and Eve to be the first husband and wife, the first parents. From the beginning, God created marriage to fill heaven with saints. Marriage, today, has that same divine purpose.In the love between husband and wife, God creates children to be reared and educated by the parents.


This is the norm. Any deviation from normalcy could interfere with God’s plans for children at His choice. Any technology that seeks to create human life outside the normative conjugal act of husband and wife is immoral precisely because it circumvents God’s plan for generation of the human person.


Each human person is new, unique and exists by creation before any of its parts, including the soul. The human person is at once corporeal and spiritual. Soul, intellect and will are concreated. (Concreated means to create at the same instant.) The person is individual substance of a nature that is rational. The existence of a person is manifest when the new life is recognized.


There are two sexes, male and female, equal as persons by reason of original creation. Each person is unique and irrepeatable. Each person is either a male or a female as a result of the joining together of genetic mate- rial from both male and female.


During cloning, there is no joining of genetic material of two parents. Rather, the DNA of a somatic cell is implanted into an egg without any genetic material of its own, and the resulting fused cell is stimulated to begin dividing. Thus, instead of the normative fertilization that takes place with the coopera- tion of male and female, there would be chance fertilization imposed by scientists on the enucleated egg.


We would have, then, the scientific rape of an enunciated ovum versus the loving, norma- tive merging of male and female gametes. Which method upholds the dignity of the human person? The answer is obvious.


The cloning of human beings is a violation of the natural moral law. Research in cloning as it applies to man is degrading. It destroys the dignity of human nature by treating the human person as a material commodity to be manipulated according to whim and fancy. Man appoints himself to displace God in creation. The attempt to displace God in the creation of the human person is an extreme example of arrogance. The human cloning project repre- sents a terrible aberration — science without ethics, technology without morality, man without God. This aberration replaces the sanctity of life of a human person with a “quality of life” judgment about the human person.


The Catholic Medical Association (CMA) is vehemently opposed to any attempts at human cloning. Such activity is contrary to the method of procreation designed by God. Human cloning is contrary to the method of procreation designed by God. Human cloning is contrary to natural moral law. We call upon our legislators and all people of good will to enact restrictions immediately to prevent human cloning. The consequences of failing to act in this matter are incalculable.




Supplement Index


Index



Home