Abortion: Misunderstanding the Catholic Church

Maureen Condic has said almost everything that needs to be said about Elizabeth Dias’s exercise in mystification about the beginnings of human lives. But there was one other claim in Dias’s New York Times essay that deserves challenge:

Contrary to a very widespread view, the church does not teach that ensoulment happens at conception, and it (therefore) does not base its teaching that direct abortion is immoral on ensoulment at conception. See, for example, Evangelium Vitae (1995), in which Saint John Paul noted that the church condemns abortion notwithstanding debates about “the precise moment of the infusion of the spiritual soul.” The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued similar pronouncements in 1974 and 1987, separating the question whether human lives at the earliest developmental stages have souls (about which the church does not yet have an authoritative teaching) from the question whether it is permissible to act with the purpose of destroying their lives (no).

About the Author

Ramesh Ponnuru

Ramesh Ponnuru is the editor of National Review, a columnist for the Washington Post, and a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

Featured Tags

Maureen Condic has said almost everything that needs to be said about Elizabeth Dias’s exercise in mystification about the beginnings of human lives. But there was one other claim in Dias’s New York Times essay that deserves challenge:

Contrary to a very widespread view, the church does not teach that ensoulment happens at conception, and it (therefore) does not base its teaching that direct abortion is immoral on ensoulment at conception. See, for example, Evangelium Vitae (1995), in which Saint John Paul noted that the church condemns abortion notwithstanding debates about “the precise moment of the infusion of the spiritual soul.” The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued similar pronouncements in 1974 and 1987, separating the question whether human lives at the earliest developmental stages have souls (about which the church does not yet have an authoritative teaching) from the question whether it is permissible to act with the purpose of destroying their lives (no).