December 1, 2024

Dear St. Rita Families,

            This weekend, we move into the new liturgical year and begin our annual Advent preparations for the coming of Christ in history! As you know, the conception of Christ in the womb of His mother Mary (which feast is celebrated 9 months before Christmas on March 25) did not take place in the usual way. The Person being conceived in the womb of Our Lady, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, not only already existed from all eternity, but also could not be given human flesh in the usual way because that would require an earthly father. Christ’s Father is the First Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Father of Heaven.

            I am mentioning all of this because there is a trend – not extremely new, but more popular recently – of trying to conceive children in, well, not the usual way. In-vitro fertilization or IVF was itself born in 1978, and it is becoming more and more popular as way to combat infertility. The Church, however, is opposed to IVF as a fertility method, hard stop. But it remains a fascinating exercise to explore the depths of what is really going on with it.

            On the surface of it, the concept is simple: An act of self-pleasure (often with pornography) to obtain the seed, an invasive surgery to obtain the eggs, and a doctor with the means and know-how to set up a fruitful encounter between the two. Implant the newly conceived baby in the womb of the mother, and after 9 months or so, congratulations! 

The reality is less simple. While it is important to recognize that each human life conceived through IVF (or any other artificial method) has the exact same dignity and value as any child conceived in the normal way, we must also recognize that the IVF process is inherently unable to recognize that dignity and value, and in fact violates it in various ways.

Apart from the manifold motivations that spur couples to pursue IVF, the process itself removes from the picture the loving embrace between husband and wife that is the normal process of conception. While this may seem trivial, it is a much different thing to love a child into existence than it is to follow a scientific procedure for the same purpose. Further, we can say that a child deserves to be loved into existence, because we are made by and for love. To separate a child’s creation from the act of love between his or her parents may seem like a generous way of being pro-life, but because it removes the very act of love between the spouses from the equation, we are left with some other motive for the creation of children.

This point requires some explaining. Children are the fruit of the love between their parents. The love between the spouses is prior – logically and chronologically – to the love that parents have for their children. Spouses are not just baby-making machines and thus objects to be used for that purpose. They are persons to be loved, and – wonder of wonders! – that love creates new life, too! Therefore, the love of two parents for their as-yet-unconceived child is not sufficient reason to conceive that child using a method that excises the act of love between the spouses. In short, sex is important.[i] We all recognize that as children grow up, they need to see the great and beautiful, even sacrificial love that their parents have for each other. To remove that gift of love from the very first moment of their existence is somehow to step off on the wrong foot.

So, in its essence, IVF presents some challenges. And as you may already know, there are more to be found as you pull back the curtain. We’ve already mentioned the act of self-pleasure. To use self-pleasure as a means of conceiving a child reduces the child to a means of assuaging some other desire in one’s life. In other words, there is an analogous relationship between the self-comfort derived from the sin of self-pleasure and the comfort derived from no longer being infertile. This is, sadly, to see the child as a means of fulfilling the needs of the parents. That is the opposite of what the parent-child relationship should be. Parents provide for their kids, not the other way around. 

The invasive surgery to remove the eggs from the mother is also on some level a violation of her dignity. The man gets sexual pleasure, and the woman gets…what? Rather than receiving love from her husband, she is forced to have her fertility removed from her body. It is thus a confirmation of her infertility and so threatens to make infertility her identity and bedfellow. Therefore, it denies the power of God, as we shall see more clearly below.

Before that, however, you should also be aware of the rest of the process. While the following steps are not the case in all attempts to use IVF, they are widely used and present serious problems. First, it is the case that several children must be conceived for IVF to work, partly because of the failure rate after implantation in the womb. They are *all* children, and it seems problematic for us to conceive them as if we were manufacturing a product, and not to worry if a couple are lost by accident in the process. Second, technology is such that parents are able to choose which children they would like, based on genetic traits: hair color, height, athleticism, intellect, biological sex. This, sadly, pushes a parent to love their child for individual traits that the child may have, and not simply because this is their child. This attitude, too, places a burden on the child that shouldn’t be there: the child doesn’t exist to assuage some parental ideal about the perfect family or something like that. The child is a person to be loved, and for whom God’s plan (not mine!) should be sought. 

Third, what happens if you don’t *want* some of the children, or if they are selected for implantation? They are either discarded (!!!) or placed in a freezer for future potential use. This is no way to treat anyone, much less children! To know that abortion is actively accepted in the context of IVF should be a huge red flag for us. The morality of implantation of children in the womb is also questioned by Catholic theologians, though I will not go into all the details here. After implantation, there are other challenges as well. What happens if several of the children implanted in the mother’s womb survive the process, and the family only wanted one or two? The process of “selective reduction” is available, which is (it should be obvious) a euphemism for abortion. 

In all of this, it is easy to see the moral problems with IVF. Other methods of artificial reproductive technology present similar underlying problems, though perhaps in different ways. One thing I have not addressed yet, however, is the question of infertility itself. When I said that removing eggs from the woman’s body denies the power of God, I was not indicating that God will in all circumstances miraculously bring physical fertility out of nowhere, although this is certainly not impossible. The Church likewise supports all kinds of methods to overcome infertility, but ones that assist the sexual act and do not replace it. We can be grateful to organizations like Tepeyac Family Center and the Saint Paul VI Institute for their work and assistance of women. NaPro Technology has worked wonders for many families. Sometimes these methods are means of healing for women, and the men and women who have researched these methods and tested and tried them have become the parents of many, many children – their own and those of all who have benefited from this research. 

However, we still haven’t gotten to the heart of the question. Infertility is painful and devastating for women and couples, and it is important for them to know that God is with them in this profound suffering. In fact, not only are their many examples of barren women in the Scriptures who ultimately bear fruit (Sarah the wife of Abraham, Hannah the mother of the Prophet Samuel, the mother of Samson, Elizabeth the mother of St. John the Baptist, to name several), but there is also the example of St. Mary Magdalen, whose vocation was not to marriage, but to a spiritual motherhood. Then, there is the example of Our Lady, whose motherhood extends to the whole Church in a spiritual way (see John 19:26-27), and through immense suffering at the foot of the Cross. Suffering the loss of Her Innocent Son, She, by accepting the will of God for Her life and the world, becomes the Mother of the Church (which feast we celebrate the day after Pentecost Sunday). This Woman, in particular, the New Eve, the New Mother of all the living (all who live in Christ, cf. Gen 3:20), understands and is close to all women suffering from infertility. Her example encourages them (and their husbands) to seek to discover how it is that God wants to make them fertile, either physically or in some other way. It would be wrong to deny that exercise of God’s power in one’s life, only to grasp at fertility and force it through IVF or some other method. 

 I also like to direct people to Our Lord Himself, who, though not a woman, lives out a model of celibacy (accepted physical infertility) that can be helpful in our reflection. Jesus, you will recall, doesn’t do the things that men are “supposed” to do: He has no wife, no kids, and no job! However, He still manages, on the Cross, to accomplish the work of our salvation despite the fact that He has no job. Likewise on the Cross, He wins for Himself a Bride, Holy Mother Church. And through Her, like any husband, He mediates to us, His children, life – Eternal Life – by means of the Church’s supernatural fertility, Her life-giving Sacraments.

            All this is to say that God has all things in His hands, every life situation that someone can face, including the immense challenge and suffering of infertility. I encourage all of you, during this Advent season, to pray for all who struggle with this cross. Encourage them to carry their cross well, to place their trust in the Lord and His Love and Power and Goodness, and to ask the Lord to bring about new life through them, especially through their acceptance of the most holy, lovable, adorable Will of God. Please know of my prayers!

In Christ,

Fr. Christensen 


[i] Notice that the world’s approach is totally opposite to that of the Church. At its worst, the world wants sex without kids when it’s more convenient, and likewise kids without sex when it’s convenient. Often there are more emotionally compelling reasons for this activity than just convenience, but none of them justify violating the way of love in and by which we are made. The Church, in contrast to the world, operates on fundamental, inviolable principles that apply in all situations – the way of love in and by which God created the world.