Our Age is in Need of Wisdom
In preparing for a lecture this afternoon, I was reading through Familiaris consortio again and for some reason paragraph 8 struck me as so pressingly important right now. Perhaps it was my recent conversations with Monica over the “Ashley Treatment.” It says:
The whole Church is obliged to a deep reflection and commitment, so that the new culture now emerging may be evangelized in depth, true values acknowledged, the rights of men and women defended, and justice promoted in the very structures of society. In this way the “new humanism” will not distract people from their relationship with God, but will lead them to it more fully.
Science and its technical applications offer new and immense possibilities in the construction of such a humanism. Still, as a consequence of political choices that decide the direction of research and its applications, science is often used against its original purpose, which is the advancement of the human person.
It becomes necessary, therefore, on the part of all, to recover an awareness of the primacy of moral values, which are the values of the human person as such. The great task that has to be faced today for the renewal of society is that of recapturing the ultimate meaning of life and its fundamental values. Only an awareness of the primacy of these values enables man to use the immense possibilities given him by science in such a way as to bring about the true advancement of the human person in his or her whole truth, in his or her freedom and dignity. Science is called to ally itself with wisdom.
And here is the kicker!:
The following words of the Second Vatican Council can therefore be applied to the problems of the family: “Our era needs such wisdom more than bygone ages if the discoveries made by man are to be further humanized. For the future of the world stands in peril unless wiser people are forthcoming (Gaudium et spes, 15).
The paragraph ends with a call to education of moral conscience:
The education of the moral conscience, which makes every human being capable of judging and of discerning the proper ways to achieve self-realization according to his or her original truth, thus becomes a pressing requirement that cannot be renounced.
Modern culture must be led to a more profoundly restored covenant with divine Wisdom. Every man is given a share of such Wisdom through the creating action of God. And it is only in faithfulness to this covenant that the families of today will be in a position to influence positively the building of a more just and fraternal world.
The fact that “ethicists” can justify the “Ashley Treatment” is the logical consequence of that perversion of thought which began with Descartes and now seems to be reaching its postmodern, nihilistic finality. Nature no longer has any meaning but that to which we give it. If we can manipulate it to our desires then let’s do it. Since we get to define nature as we please, we have carte blanche “moral” authority to run roughshod over the weakest who have no voice of their own. We now kill the unborn and harvest their corpses, and we further maim the disabled and justify ourselves in emotional appeals to the good that these misguided actions will bring.
I pray that we do indeed have wiser women and men forthcoming!
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The analysis in your last paragraph was the best I’ve seen anywhere – and I’ve been all over reading, looking for someone to make some sense of it. I think you’ve got right to the heart of it. Thank you, David.
Comment by monica — January 11, 2007 @ 6:59 PM
What would you have the parents in this case do?
Comment by Karen — January 11, 2007 @ 7:50 PM
Monica – thanks for the kind words. Did you see today’s Zenit and the Italian Medical Ethics Association president’s response to this issue?
Karen – Can you be more specific? What I mean is that I am not aware of any pathological conditions needing correction that these procedures would have addressed. I do not think that with respect to the controversial actions, there is anything that needed doing.
Comment by David — January 11, 2007 @ 9:29 PM
“I pray that we do indeed have wiser women and men forthcoming!”
Not yet. I have an article on my blog about the feasibility of uterus transplants(Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology):
http://scorpionstalkingduck.blogspot.com/2007/01/strange-but-true.html
God bless you.
Comment by dadwithnoisykids — January 11, 2007 @ 10:00 PM
Hey David,
Could you actually explain why you think the “Ashley Treatment” is unwise? Up until your last paragraph, I actually thought you were going to say that Ashley’s parents were trying to “use the immense possibilities given him by science in such a way as to bring about the true advancement of the human person in his or her whole truth, in his or her freedom and dignity.” I was unable to find your conversations on the beautiful site you linked to, though I found a lot of moving stories about cute babies, so except for your comment to Karen that the surgeries are not fixing anything, I can only guess at what your reasoning was.
Obviously, puberty is not a pathology. Ok. And growth is not either. But can the parents at least remove the useless appendix that may burst and kill their daughter some day? I’m guessing the problem isn’t that. If they did not remove her breasts entirely, would it have been all right to wait til they grew painfully large and she needed a breast reduction, as their niece and friends of mine have had? Are you against breast reductions for everyone, or just full mastectomy (in the absence of disease of course)?
Whatever else, Ashley must be considered as a whole person; her parents see her as their baby, which she is…mentally and behaviorally. She is not a baby physically, but they manipulate her physically. One could say, well, her truth is that she is a pre-adolescent with a baby’s mind, and her body should reflect whatever it would naturally, through childhood growth spurts, through adolescence and adulthood, through menopause and old age. Ok, but she is a mental baby going through a puberty that cannot ever be explained to her and that will cause her pain and discomfort. Ashley having a period won’t make much difference to the parents; a poopy diaper change versus a bloody/poopy diaper change is not that big of a difference. The only one affected will be Ashley, as menstrual cramps are more painful than simple bowel cramps and can last two days. Women who know what they are don’t enjoy them, but deal with it because they know what this is all about, just as men and women are able to have an earache without screaming about it for hours on end. Babies don’t know how to express themselves or tell themselves to just ignore pain because it will pass, and neither does this nine year-old. Ashley will just be hurt and scared.
That prudence requested by our magisterium is required. How should a person’s emotional and physical natures be reconciled and weighed? In pandering to Ashley’s emotional nature to the detriment of her physical nature, her parents may have gone way too far. But would rejecting all of “Ashley’s treatment” end up placing her physical growth above her emotional needs and reality? Both emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical aspects of the human person must be acknowledged, and if they are in conflict, wisdom is indeed required. You may be right to reject part or all of this treatment as a product of the evils in our society, and if so then I would like to join you in that rejection, but without seeing your train of thought, I cannot yet do that, nor could I explain to people who do not even think it wrong to kill unborn babies or starve the mentally disabled to death why parents who are caring for their child and trying to make her life more comfortable are committing an evil. So, will you please put up a more developed post on this topic?
Comment by freyn — January 11, 2007 @ 10:39 PM
Freyn -
Sorry, I meant to indicate of whom I was speaking when I linked to Monica’s website rather than indicate that our discussion was there.
You are correct in looking at the whole human person, though I would prefer to call it authentic flourishing or fulfillment rather than advancement. To understand just what this means requires a few steps. The first step is to understand that the human person is a composite of body and soul. This union is not of two preexisting things that are brought together, but the soul gives the person its existence, it gives the body its shape and animation. The human person is a single unity with spiritual and bodily aspects. I think part of the problem is that our culture leads us to think of the body as a thing to be manipulated rather than as an integral expression of the human person.
The next step is to see that human dignity requires respect for the whole human person, which by definition, includes his body. Each human person is created in the image of God and thereby derives his inherent dignity. Thus, each person has the inalienable right to flourish, to progress in the manner in which God created him.
Unfortunately, because of the Fall, natural and moral corruptions of the integral human good come about. In Ashely’s case, this was some corruption of the natural maturation process. But this condition does nothing to change her inalienable right to the dignity required to be shown to her whole person.
She has the right to grow and mature naturally, regardless of the fact that she has little to no chance to express this maturity in ways that depend upon her intellectual maturity. Even though this would seem to require a miracle at this point, say that Ashley were to recover and go on to mature naturally. In this case, we would have no problem in seeing that what was done to her would be considered mutilation (setting aside the removal of her appendix at this point). Regardless of the parents’ intention, she would be mutilated. The problem in not being able to see this now is that we have reduced her body, and the organs that were removed, to their functionality rather than seeing them as an integral part of her person.
Because of the body’s integral relationship to the whole human person, bodily integrity is a fundamental human right and a moral norm. Therefore, no directly intended mutilation of the body (which occurs with surgery) or amputation (which happens with the removal of bodily parts) can ever be allowed. There are times when it is permitted and that is when there is some pathology that must be corrected or removed. The legitimate intent in such action would be to make the body function in a normal way and the mutilation or amputation would be an unintended consequence (though a foreseen necessity).
You have agreed that menstruation is not a pathology, nor are breasts, nor is a healthy appendix, and nor is natural growth a pathology. Thus, there is no pathological situation to be corrected with the procedures that were undertaken.
The logic of exposing their daughter to the risks and pain of surgery does not seem to flow either. Let’s just look at the issue of pain. Recovery from this surgery was not painless, but the parents accepted her enduring the pain that she could not understand, as a necessary evil for what they perceived as a greater good. How does this differ from accepting her “possible” temporary pain from monthly menstruation for the good of her bodily integrity?
Her breast buds were removed because some in the family had large breasts. There is not a guarantee that Ashley’s breasts would become problematic, nor in her immobile state does it seem that other options could not have been employed to keep them from becoming a pathological concern.
Removing a healthy body part such as an appendix as a prophylactic measure violates bodily integrity based upon a small chance (5%) that it could become infected. The small could have been managed with periodic evaluations.
Taken at their word, the parents’ intentions were understandably oriented at their child’s welfare. However, good intentions do not change evil acts into good. The ends cannot be used to justify the means. The problem is that so many of us today have been affected by our culture’s reduction of human personhood that we can no longer discern evil from good.
Comment by David — January 12, 2007 @ 10:57 AM
David that Zenit article was really great — I thought it echoed, largely, what you said!
Comment by monica — January 14, 2007 @ 8:34 AM
[...] this year we did a post about Ashley’s treatment in which a young, disabled girl was surgically “mutilated” in the misguided thinking [...]
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