My dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

It is difficult in our day to understand the ethical perspective in the tremendous expansion of biological sciences.  One issue that most people have difficulty understanding is the moral evaluation of in vitro fertilization.  Many reason that children are good and the normal result of marriage, so why not use any means possible to obtain the good of children in the marriage?  An appeal according to this line of reasoning does lead to actions which really are less than human. 

Science today is very adept at assisting fertilization.  We see how this has taken tremendous strides in animal husbandry and in particular animal cloning.  We remember the famous story of Dolly, the sheep that was cloned in England not too many years ago.  What is possible with lower forms of life, however, is not moral with human beings.  Although science might have the technology to produce life in a test tube, it goes against the very nature of who we are as humans.  The procreation of a human being should be achieved by sexual means.  The use of asexual or artificial means diminishes the human element and the cooperation of the Creator in the production of new life. 

Our Catholic moral teaching reminds us that the transmission of human life is a personal act between the human husband and wife in marriage.  Certainly, the beginning of life, the miracle of God’s creation and our cooperation with it, should take place in marriage and only marriage and only within the conjugal or sexual act between spouses.

There are several reasons for this.  First, procreation is a sign of the love of a husband and wife. The child conceived has a right to be carried in the womb and brought up within the marriage that conceived that child.   So, it is the parents fulfilling a responsibility to the child for the good of society. 

Second, when in vitro-fertilization occurs, especially when the sperm of a donor other than a husband is used, we see the deprivation of a child of its filial relationship to its father and ultimately to both parents.   

Not too many years ago, when science was not so advanced, couples without any children had recourse to prayer so that they might fulfill their parental responsibilities within marriage.  We must remember that a marriage that is infertile and cannot produce children is just as much of a marriage as one that is fertile.  The use of any means to possess a child---accent on possess---erodes society’s value of family life and, ultimately, of our human society. 

On Monday, Oct. 16, we celebrate the Feast of St. Gerard Majella, a saint to whom I am particularly devoted as he spent most of his life in the town in Italy where my maternal grandmother came from, Mater Domine, or Caposele, in the province of Avellino.   From my youngest days as a child, I remember the stories told to me by my grandmother about St. Gerard.  I grew up in Newark, very close to the National Shrine of St. Gerard Majella at St. Lucy’s Church.  As I came to understand more about this saint, the unofficial patron of expectant mothers, I came to understand the intersession of this saint on behalf of those who seek some grace from God.  The truly miraculous stories of his intercession are manifold and well documented in many books about the saint. My own personal experience has led me as a priest to celebrate the Feast of St. Gerard each year, invoking his blessing, especially upon infertile couples wishing to conceive. 

As a token of the intercession of the saint, I also have distributed handkerchiefs touched to the relic of St. Gerard.  The story is an interesting one.  One day, St. Gerard visited a family and left his handkerchief at their home.  The young girl of the family followed him trying to return his handkerchief. He told her to keep it instead as she would need it some day.  During a difficult delivery, she remembered the saint’s words and held tight to the handkerchief and the delivery was successful.  From that time on, the faithful have invoked St. Gerard in times of infertility and difficult pregnancies.

Faith sometimes has answers that science does not hold.  Faith leads us to put out into the deep to confide in our relationship to God, which is something more important than any human science can provide.  We are affected both physically and spiritually by the healing and comforting power of God’s grace. 

Join me in these coming days in invoking St. Gerard’s intercession, especially for infertile couples and those facing difficult decisions in pregnancies.  God is never far from our human needs. We can learn from invoking the saints, our friends, with Him, to obtain comfort and understanding and the graces we need.

          

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