Fertilization and adoption

The answers to the questions are prepared by the theologian Monsignor Costantino Di Bruno, Central Assistant of the Apostolic Movement.

D. With regard to adoption, is choosing the child to be adopted moral or not?

R. What is adoption? In adopting the good is not yours, it is you that are giving a good to the other, it is you that are giving your spiritual fatherhood and motherhood to one that does not have one for whatever reason, but for his and not for your life. What does God do? He gives his son entirely to us, in his son he makes us children of adoption, regenerates us through the Holy Spirit and makes us his children to give himself to us as inheritance. First he makes us his children and then he adopts us, and gives himself entirely to us. If we start from this truth on adoption, you have to choose: if it is he, the son, who has to give something to you, or it is you who have to give something to him. God makes preferences of persons. God gives his love indiscriminately to all, he gives his truth to all, he gives Christ to all, he gives the Holy Spirit to all, and all are incorporated into Christ, but for your greater good. You can say, “I want this baby because I like him like this,” or you want to give something to a child to make him grow, mature, to pour all your love on him, but for himself, not for you. This is the problem, and if you understand the purpose of the adoption will understand why certain things are not holy, are not good, are not right.

Q. A woman who even though she cannot have children decides not to have but to adopt them, how is this seen by the Church? Is it a holy thing?

A. First and foremost it must be said that the purpose of marriage is uniting and procreative and the two purposes cannot be separated. A woman who does not want to have children already exposes her marriage to nullity. The refusal of maternity and paternity exposes a marriage to nullity, marriage cannot be celebrated because procreation which is the primary end of marriage is excluded. So much so that when you come to get married the Church poses you three questions: “If you want to accept the children that God wants to give you, if you want to educate them according to the law of Christ and the Church, if you came freely to get married.” If one of these conditions is not met marriage is already void from the start. You must procreate, you have to give God your body so that he can give rise to life. Then, if you procreate and you also want to adopt some baby out of a great love you can do it. But you cannot exclude yourself from procreation in marriage, because you want to adopt a child, because it is your marriage that would come to be compromised. Your husband has the right to have a child of his own, flesh of his flesh and bone of his bones. That after he could also adopt, he can. But does not God the Father have a child of your own? His only begotten Son. He generated him in eternity, then he adopts all of us in Him, but not without Him. The wanted, exclusion of motherhood and fatherhood, is cause of marriage nullity.

Q. After the tragedy in Haiti, some communities housed orphaned children. They gave couples the opportunity to adopt these children without dwelling on judicial practices, but simply paying for, and this amount was then allocated to the reconstruction of the country. Is this from the moral point of view correct?

A. When you adopt a child you have to take to its exclusive, supreme good, and you cannot use the child for any other cause, you cannot do it as an exchange of goods. If you want to collaborate for the reconstruction of the country, give whatever you want, but even that must to be a gesture of love, because in our religion, everything must be a fruit of love. If it is not a fruit of love there is something that manifests selfishness and we must always avoid egoism, because selfishness is not a Christian thing and it is never a rule of action, and not even interest, because in our holy faith gratuity reigns. You must adopt the child not even because a good is coming to you, but because the greater good comes to the child, because the purpose of adoption is not the couple that must break its loneliness. The purpose of adoption is to create an optimum condition so that a child can grow. Tomorrow the child can even go away and you have to let him go. He may also have the desire to be reunited with his mother and you have to let the child go to his mother. But how are you going to manage if there is not a great love in you? You cannot. You must be free from yourself because the aim is that of doing the greater good for a child, who cannot live in the greater good.

D. Sterility is lived today as thousands of years ago almost as a humiliation and a shame by the woman who cannot conceive. Up to what point it is right to help a woman conceive with the techniques available to the man and science of today.

R. Sterility is the inability to be able to generate. Today, sterility is not just feminine, it is also masculine. You must not always blame the woman when a conception does not occur, because it can be both man and woman. Can you be helped by medicine? Always. Because medicine is not an evil in itself, it is a good, so that all science can always come to the aid of man. What science cannot do is that it cannot replace the conjugal act, because this is not given, because the child that is not born cannot be a product. It must be a fruit of love between a man and a woman, it must be the fruit of one flesh and not of a manipulation. The Church does not allow this because it is against the dignity of the human person and against the dignity of the child to come. Every child must be the fruit of your love and not of the manipulation of science. On this science must not have power.

D. Is conscience already in the embryo?

R. The embryo is a creature in the making, existing the soul there is all in the embryo. But is the whole capable of an independent life? No. The Catechism of St. Pius X spoke of the age of reason, of the age of conscience, the age of discernment between good and evil, and this happens at about six years. At six years of age the child begins to understand what is good and what is evil, his conscience begins to work. For this reason S. Pius X had allowed to be able to give communion to children in the age of reason, at six years, because the pope wanted the baby right from the start was accompanied by the grace of God. Now this time has been moved to nine years, but in last document of Benedict XVI on the mystery of the Eucharist, it is written that a pastor can also anticipate this date, if he finds that the child already has the use of reason and already knows how to discern good from evil. The postponement of the date is not absolute for everyone, so I can even at six years grant that a child can take his first communion because he has the use of his conscience, has the use of his discernment. He knows good and knows evil. At a time when the embryo starts its life it is perfect in everything, but it lacks in exercise, in functionality, in development that has yet to take place. It will take nine months in the maternal womb, then it comes to light, and then begins its journey that is long and arduous: it is the path of life. One thing is clear, from the time conception takes place when there is no longer any ontological gap that occurs in the womb, but there is always a progressive, gradual and perfect development.

D. In reference to responsible fatherhood and motherhood. Wanting to explain this principle, what does Paul VI mean when he tells us that the responsible motherhood and fatherhood are to be exercised in relation to the biological processes, the energies of their own sexuality and the reasons and the economic, physical, psychological and social conditions of the couple.

R. The gift of a life does not depend on anyone else. No state can introduce itself in the affairs of a family either to prohibit or to increase procreation. The father and mother are the ones who are responsible for a life. Because they are the only actors God devolved the task to. Procreation means, create in place of, or create for the benefit of, you are a procreator because there is God who is the creator, and you create in the name of God with His blessing and you create for the benefit of another person. Now can one insert a foreign element in this process? No. What does then responsible fatherhood and motherhood mean? It means that the husband and wife stand before God, they examine their own lives, their possibilities and the reality of their own history and ask themselves how many children can they give to the Lord? They decide and they assume their responsibility before God. If giving one, two, three… This means responsible motherhood and fatherhood. So that a child is not made because it is pleasing to the grandmother or it is pleasing to the little brother, for the little brother cannot decide another life, the father and mother must always decide it. This is a principle of right action. No one can govern the life of the couple. In Genesis it is written: “you will forsake your father and mother and you will join the woman, and you will become one flesh.” From that moment when you establish a new family and you create, the family becomes responsible for its whole life and no one must enter under this responsibility. I can help, I can support, I can illuminate you but I cannot decide for you. Neither the priest can decide for you, he must enlighten, guide, support, but not to decide, because the responsibility is of the father and mother.

Q. Sometimes the governors of the states, to increase the birth rate, lavish incentives for families who bring children into the world. How does the Church see this type of intervention by the state?

The Church sees all right what is done well. However, the state cannot decide how many children you can have and how many children you cannot have. However, if there is a poor family that would like to give another son to the Lord and cannot, and the state helps, the family takes its decision, decides responsibly and does what it pleases. The state has no power over the family. The family is before the state and no one can intervene on the family. Because otherwise we would give the state a power that does not possess. But the state can help all difficulty, can help all poverty, it can also support families who are living in poverty, it can help them. All the good you can be done, always; though you cannot decide what needs to be decided by the father and mother, because this is a decision that is yours, and no one can take it away from you; what is yours is yours. Not even God intervenes in your decision, he always wants you to be responsible.

Q. Could you explain me contraception in conjugal acts, and the difference with the regulation of procreation?

A. Marriage has two primary purposes: the uniting and the procreative ends. These two purposes cannot be separated. You cannot use marriage only for a uniting end and not for a procreative end. However, you cannot have any more children, for various motivations or a variety of reasons. What must you do? You can experience the uniting end but not deliberately exclude the procreative end with strange means. The Church teaches you this. There is the natural way, that you can always use, when in your responsibility you decide not to be able to have any more children to give to the Lord, to the Church and to the world. If we understand that these two purposes: the uniting and procreative ones, cannot be separated, you will understand what you can and what you cannot do. Even because some practices of contraception are immoral in themselves, because they are not worthy of the human person, or they are not even good for the baby, because they can cause serious damage. We need to be wise, intelligent, cautious, prudent, to let ourselves be guided, led, and things will go well. Then there is always the blessing of God that helps you, protects you and guides you. Your spiritual father personally guides your conscience; he can show you the right and holy ways through which you can live the two ends of marriage; however, not through something that belongs to everyone, but something that belongs only to your conscience and the conscience of your husband, and you make a Christian family. Then, many things are adjusted within the spiritual guidance, which gives you the right path to walk on in order to avoid any mistakes and not do unpleasant things for you, for your child, for your husband, for your nature or for other things.

Q. What does the Church think about the surrogate mother, when a couple cannot have children?

The child must be born within a marriage and nothing else, and it cannot be born outside of a marriage and cannot be born outside of a complete marriage relationship between a man and a woman. On this there are no dispensations of any kind, because it is possible that the child is a product. A child is not a machine, the child is an act of love. In one of the last documents of the Pope it is said that “the baby is not a due gift but it is a gift”, it is a fruit of God’s blessing, it is his gift, so that the gift is requested but it cannot be demanded. One can also pray for the gift, and many have prayed and obtained it; however, it cannot be pretended because it is not due, the child is a gift, it is not due.

Q. Through the site, Peter asks us: you say that the child must be the fruit of the conjugal act and not of that activity that is called manipulation, ie., the medically assisted fertilization. Why is the Church against this progress which I think represents the expression of God in science, God that gives a chance? Why should these techniques be against the dignity of the child? Is not there perhaps in the artificial procreation an activity that stems from painful and difficult choices and an infinite devotion to life? Is not the child born from a real one desire that transcends the sexual act, that is, the desire for a child? Who celebrates the copula as the only truly worthy procreation, in fact, is celebrating its animal specificity because the specificity of man is the artificiality. And if the physical love between two people is not enough to generate a child why not use the artificiality?

A. Because the child is not a product, the child is not one of your own fruit, the child must be an act of love, it must flesh of your own flesh, life of your life, blood of your own blood, through the way that God taught and created for you. What this friend says is not true in its conclusions. He says that the animal is an animal, man is science. Man is not science, man is morality, he is discernment, man is conscience, man does not make himself he is made by God. We did not make ourselves by us, we are made every day by God. Science must be a help to man not a replacement, the possible to science is not always moral. Are all moral the things that science can do today? Science can do cloning, but is it moral to do the cloning? It is not moral. If we do not start from the principle that we are not autonomous in the law that governs our nature, but that we must always bring our own nature in reference to God, tomorrow we can give to science the delegation of all, and science can do everything it wants. And instead no. Science must submit to the conscience, and the conscience must obey the law of God. If we do not start from this truth tomorrow we can do what we want to man, we can also decide how we want a man, how to build him, how to make him, how to project him. And this is wrong. Because we would take the place of God. While we do not have the place of God. Man and the animal are not distinguished because one does not have the science and man has it. They differ because one has the moral conscience and the other one does not have it. The lion can always tear the gazelle to pieces but man cannot tear a man to pieces, despite having the science of being able to do it. On this one must be strong, firm, steadfast, because otherwise we build a false humanity, a humanity in our image and no longer in the image of God.

Q. In the document of Pius XII it is said that artificial insemination is considered immoral because according to natural law, the divine law, the only possible procreation is the one fruit of marriage. For the believer, the natural law is the one that is based on the teaching of Christ. But how can the natural law be explained to a non-believer? In the university environment, communicating with one of my professors, this gave me this example: “two twins are separated at birth. One goes to live in a place and the other in a completely different place, where customs and traditions are totally different, to the point that what is good for a brother is not good for the other.” Now, if I am asked by a non-believer what the natural law is, and I say that it is the teaching that Christ has given me, my professor argues that by introducing the religious factor in this speech, the speech itself cannot continue, cannot go on. I wish I knew how one must answer to a question like this.

A. We distinguish the natural law the positive law. The Ten Commandments are a positive law, a law God placed at the foundation of his people. The gospel is positive law set by Christ as the foundation of his Church. Rousseau argued as your professor does. Natural law is the human structure of man, that he did not make himself, but that he was made in the image of God. God is not the God of the Christians, he is the God of man, and God made you in his image. Natural law is the one that Jesus Christ says in Matthew 7:12: “Whatever you want men to do to you, you do it to others because this is the law and the prophets.” You know what is good for you, you know it, there is a good that you notice, regardless of whether you are a Christian, you are a pagan, you are an atheist, you are an unbeliever and you are an idolater; you have the conception of the good, you know that certain things are bad in themselves. You know it, because you are a man and because you have the moral conscience, that can also be extinguished, can be turn off; however, something still remains inside you that tells you that a thing is good and a thing is bad. If you read the history of Cain, you find that, before Cain killed his brother Abel, the Lord said a beautiful sentence to him: “lust, the desire of evil is crouched at your door but you will control yourself, you cannot kill your brother.” This is not positive law, it is natural law. If you give your professor a slap he knows that it is an evil, and if shows favoritism among students he knows that it is bad; if he sells an exam he knows that it is bad, and it is a bad thing not because there is a positive law but because there is a natural law. You cannot make people’s preferences, you cannot discriminate between a man and a man. This is not positive law but it is natural law. You and I are equal in dignity and I must respect this your dignity, because it is your human nature that it is like this, not because religion makes it for you, for man is prior to religion. First comes man and then comes religion. In reference to the two twins that you separate, you separate culture and not nature, because in nature man feels this transcendence and this dimension of eternal that exists. Nobody takes this transcendence away from you, otherwise on what does one found a religion; religion would be an artifice, and religion can never be an artifice. Religion is a true answer to the need you have in your heart, that you have to get to perfection, and then God comes and gives you the perfection you seek; Christ comes and gives you the truth you seek. He gives you the truth of your nature. Man carries in himself this image of God which comes from his creation. Only by starting from here we can understand and comprehend.

Q. Can a person who knows he is sterile contract marriage anyway?

A. The person who knows with certainty to be sterile, must notify his partners of his sterility. She is not the only one to take the decision but also her husband must take it, otherwise the marriage is void for fraud. When you make the matrimonial preliminary investigation there is one last question in which it is asked if was there anything that tomorrow will affect the stability of your marriage kept hidden to the personal partner? All answer: nothing. One must say I concealed this truth. Then, it is the one who carries out the matrimonial process that will tell whether that is a condition of invalidity or it is not a condition of invalidity; whether the condition is not compromising or compromising. But you cannot celebrate a marriage concealing an essential truth of your life. Marriage is also aimed at procreation and if a man has a heart to have absolutely some children you have to let him marry another person, you cannot deceive him. There is an end to be observed that we cannot disregard, cannot but show, cannot but tell. This does not mean that you cannot get married. The right to marriage precedes even the same procreation as long as it is not excluded deliberately.

Q. With regard to the principle that what is juridically legal not always can be morally done, is not allowing the development of an embryo murder? In reference to the law 40 of 2004, if the Italian State allows research on embryos does responsibility for their elimination fall on the whole Italian people?

A. Responsibility is always personal, and it is of the one who is at the beginning and during the process of the elimination process. An embryo is already regarded by the Church a human person and you cannot do experiments on the human person. They do not want animal testing to be done! And the animal is not human person. We respect the animal, but the Lord created it for man. But man was not created for another man but he was created for himself, so that you cannot do any experiments on man. First of all against his will and then not even with his will, if a test produces an irreparable evil. The human person must always be respected. Whose is the responsibility? It is of the man or of the woman who gave their seed to science and of all those who in the chain are involved for the experimentation, and then also of the legislator if he gave the chance to make this happen. Whoever joins the chain of evil is responsible for his part of the evil that is done. For example, who legalized divorce is responsible for all the divorces that are committed up to when the law will not be changed. Who legalized abortion is responsible for all the abortions that are practiced in Italy, and who practices it is responsible for having practiced it. But everyone has his own moral responsibility before God. In the life, every one of us has responsibility for evil as soon as it comes to his door. If I spread a slander, it comes to you and you propagate it, you are as responsible as I am of the slander that you propagated, and you are accountable to all the people who have heard that slander. When every one of us is faced with evil, he must stop it: “I am sorry I cannot do this.” This means bearing witness to Christ. This is a responsibility that we must all take. Even the priest when he is faced with evil he must answer, “I am sorry I cannot.” How many times was Jesus Christ tempted? And faced with evil he replied, “no I cannot.” But today man lacks the moral conscience, he is destroying the moral conscience, so that there is no longer a distinction between good and evil. When in 84 John Paul II came to Calabria, at the Lamezia Terme Airport he said: “Let the distinction between good and evil be strong in you”, let your moral conscience be holy for the holy moral conscience gives you salvation today .

Q. We read in newspapers that the Pope accepts the use of condoms in some cases. How is actually the situation?

The pope gave an interview, the book is not out yet. I do not know what the pope wrote. In our Christian morality there is always the principle of the lesser evil that must be taken into consideration. Between two evils, a larger and a smaller ones that are contemporaneous, you have to choose the lesser evil and avoid the greater evil, you cannot let all the two evils be perpetrated. This is taught in fundamental moral theology. Always the use of this greater good for the man even through the lesser evil to prevent a greater evil to be done. It seems to me, from what I have heard, that the Pope’s speech fits into this principle of lesser greater evil-evil. But as I said before, when these moral questions arise, one needs to turn to the personal spiritual father or confessor, and the priest that knows well the fundamental moral theology will always know how to guide you and always directs you so that you accomplish the greater good and the greater evil can always be avoided.

Q. If two spouses adopt a child the law prohibits any relationship between the child and its natural parents. But if the mother was forced to give the child or she repented and wants to re-establish some relationship, how must adoptive parents behave?

A. The problem is one. Why do you adopt a child? Do you adopt it for its greater or your own good? If you adopt him for its own good, when you know that for the child contact with its natural mother is its real life, you give it up again. Morality is beyond the law. There is no morality that can be supplanted by a civil law. The civil law regulates relations on the basis of a positive right that man gives himself. What is the positive law? That the child once adopted becomes the property of the other pair. But the child is not owned by anyone, because it is the property of God and of himself. Do I adopt it for its greater or for my greater good? If I adopt it for my greater good certainly the other family is an obstacle to me, but if I adopt it for its greater good and help it grow, when I have to detach myself I know how to detach myself because I seek his greater good. In the parable of the prodigal son, there is a deep and beautiful meaning. The father is deprived of his son because the son thinks that his greater good is to go out of the house of his father. The father who cannot bind the child to himself gives it all that belongs to it and his son leaves for a distant country. What does the father search when his son leaves and when the son returns? He searches only the greater good of the child. First, it was the one that he left; and later, that he were accepted. What is the greater good for a child? That one holds it tight to himself, or that he gives it to its mother? Or even that the child may have the one and the other mother. The law is not able to encode these things. Love, yes. Love is before the law, and if we do not put the law of love in our society, the one that John Paul II called the civilization of love, we have a civilization of law, but law is not love. The right tells you what is yours and what is his. Love tells you that many times you have to give up yours so that the other has a greater and a personal good.

Q. Father Andrea Gallo in one of his books says: “Do not let Christians ask non-believers what they cannot give. Do not let them ask for acts of faith turned into law. Do not let them ask to accept dogmatic beliefs in politics. But let them know how to present their message in a way so that non-believers can share them. What do the biblical, evangelical messages, the imposition to all with a state law of a choice that instead is a purely individual problem and that does not harm anyone?

A. The problem is always the ambiguity that exists between natural law and positive law. What is faith and what is natural law and positive law. Faith is not a superstructure to our nature, is not a dress that I am wearing or that I tailor me in my taste and liking, faith is the revelation from God of your nature and of the ways you can bring this nature to its fulfillment. This is the faith, it is not a superstructure. I cannot impose my faith to you, because if you want eternal life keep the commandments, if you want eternal life do what is right, if you want eternal life love your neighbour as yourself. Faith is a personal choice. Can we discuss about what is proper to human nature, or not? Is man capable of knowing what is a man, or not? Has man this ability, or is it removed and obscured to him? If we say that man is no longer capable of knowing himself, and he is no longer able to understand himself, let us close this speech, everyone does what he wants and acts according to what his brain is. However, when you enter into a relationship with the other person your humanity necessarily has its limits, and are these limits natural or artificial? Is you shall not kill an artificial or natural limit? Is do not steal an artificial or natural limit? Do not bear false witness, Do not slander your neighbor, are they artificial or natural limits of the dignity of the other person? Do I myself make my dignity or does it come from my nature? Is there a difference between me and a dog or is there not a difference? Are we capable of this? If we are not capable we fall back into the darkest and most cruel agnosticism because we are not longer able to know each other.

Indications for the preparation of the meeting given by Monsignor Costantino Di Bruno:

– Catechism of the Catholic Church from nn. 2366-2379
– Pius XII: “Address to Catholic doctors” (In Annex PPD).
– Biomedical Issues: “Synthesis of education genitas personae (In Annex PDF).