A Belgian Jesuit suggests destroying congealed embryos leftovers of IVF

The Zenit press agency published on its web site, on March 23-24 an interview of Fr. Alain Mattheeuws s.j., a Belgian doctor in moral and sacramentary theology and who specialises in bioethics. Mattheeuws also was trained as a biologist. The text was only published on the French version of the web site.

Fr. Mattheeuws, a Jesuit, was also a specialist for the last Synod of the bishops for bioethical questions. His opinions are thus of interest for an appreciation of the position of the Catholic church on the attitude to adopt vis-à-vis of the congealed embryos resulting of IVF.

Mattheeuws recalls that for the Church, congealing an embryo is a “morally illicit” act, which he said, quoting Donum Vitae (an encyclical of the Church) plunges the embryo into a “cold prison”.

He also considers that a “law of the hearts” does not release the parents from their commitment to their congealed embryos, despite documents that IVF centres oblige the parents to sign.

Mattheeuws denounced the “production” of congealed embryos, and did not consider that initiatives aiming to allow the “adoption” of embryos by childless couples would be a viable alternative.

However, Mattheeuws proposed that the parents of congealed embryos free the latter from the “cold prison” and “confide them to the Divine kindness”. While the terms might be ambiguous, in its meaning, Mattheeuws precises further what he means. For him, this meant:

“Retiring them from the cold in which they are imprisoned, return them to the temporal conditions which are theirs, not to use disproportionate means to save them or means that do not respect their dignity or that of people who wish to aid them. The teaching of Catholic Magisterium about the refusal of prolonging life by technical means finds here another actuality. It is not euthanasia, but the refusal to use disproportionate and inadapted means to try to let them survive”.

For the sake of completeness, here is the original version, in French:

« les retirer du froid où ils sont emprisonnés, de les rendre aux conditions temporelles qui sont les leurs, de ne pas utiliser de moyens disproportionnés pour les sauver ou de moyens qui ne respectent pas leur dignité ou la dignité des personnes désireuses de les aider. L’enseignement du Magistère catholique au sujet du refus de l’acharnement thérapeutique trouve ici une nouvelle actualité. Il ne s’agit pas d’une euthanasie, mais du refus de prendre un moyen disproportionné et inadapté pour tenter de les faire survivre.»

In clear words, Fr. Mattheeuws advocates the destruction of congealed embryos, rather than the adoption of embryos. The Church traditionally promoted the respect of the embryo from the day of its conception, but wrestled with inconsistencies in how to solve problems which are born de facto, notably on what to do of embryos remaining after the IVF procedures. Parallels with the refusal of therapeutical persistency would be rather surprising under the pen of a Jesuit, if it were not that this particular Jesuit was a Belgian Jesuit.

Under the conduct of Cardinal Godfried Danneels of Brussels, the Belgian church has been searching the last times to find positions of agreement with the secular activists. In order to promote what he views as a “relaxed” view of faith, Cardinal Danneels for instance allowed, by his silence, a Catholic University, the UCL, to adopt and publish a position allowing physicians to practice active euthanasia within the university.

Hence, it is not astonishing that a specialist of moral theology may come to advocate the pure and simple destruction of congealed embryos – even though it runs counter to the teaching of the Church in the matter. However the position of Mattheeuws as specialist of bioethics for the Synod of bishops could mean that his pragmatical views may be shared by the princes of the church.

On the merits of the argument, it might be noticed that a positive intervention is required to put an end to the existence of the embryos. The embryos have to be uncongealed, and then left to die. This, in itself, introduces a positive action which can be hardly reconciled with the doctrine of abstention of “disproportionate means” presented by Mattheeuws. On a moral plane, if one considers that the embryos are living persons, as does Mattheeuws, and as does the Catholic church, then a positive action to put an end to this life is clearly a case of unjustified killing. The slip in the argument is all the more surprising since Mattheeuws also decries IVF as an “immoral act”.

Read the whole interview of Fr. Alain Mattheeuws on the site of Zenit:

1^st. part: http://www.zenit.org/french/visualizza.phtml?sid=86483

2^nd part: http://www.zenit.org/french/visualizza.phtml?sid=86546