CNS STORY: Commission warns new technology threatens human biological integrity

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CNS Story:

IMAGO DEI Sep-20-2004 (860 words) xxxi

Commission warns new technology threatens human biological integrity

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- In a new document on the created world, the International Theological Commission warned that science and technology today offer the dangerous ability to "alter man himself" and destroy the biological integrity of human beings.

The document said the biblical call to "stewardship" over the natural environment extends in a special way to safeguarding human life, which is created in God's image. This understanding clearly rules out human cloning, destruction of embryos, genetic enhancement, abortion or euthanasia, it said.

The 46-page document, titled "Communion and Stewardship: Human Persons Created in the Image of God," was obtained by Catholic News Service in mid-September. The International Theological Commission is headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Vatican's chief doctrinal official.

In discussing people's relationship with creation, the document emphasized Christian teachings against unrestrained economic development and environmental damage.

It also addressed evolution, saying evolutionary explanations of biological development were acceptable as long as they did not exclude God as a transcendent cause or exclude the universe as a setting for "a radically personal drama" involving God and man.

A central question posed by the document was: "How far is man allowed to remake himself?"

The answer it offered was cautionary. While human beings are indeed agents, and not just passive subjects, of evolutionary development, they do not have a "right of full disposal" over their biological natures, it said.

"The sovereignty we enjoy is not an unlimited one: We exercise a certain participated sovereignty over the created world and, in the end, we must render an account of our stewardship to the Lord of the universe," it said.

"Man is created in the image of God, but he is not God himself," it said.

The document cited several areas where the biological integrity of human beings may be threatened. It said:

-- Human cloning is "an infringement of the identity of the person."

-- Genetic engineering aimed at producing a "superhuman" is radically immoral.

"The uniqueness of each human person, in part constituted by his biogenetic characteristics and developed through nurture and growth, belongs intrinsically to him and cannot be instrumentalized in order to improve some of these characteristics," it said.

-- Assisted suicide, direct euthanasia, and direct abortion -- however tragic and complex the personal situations may be -- wrongly sacrifice physical life for a "self-selected finality."

-- Germ-line engineering with a therapeutic aim would be acceptable, except it is today accomplished with unacceptable means, including the destruction of human embryos.

-- Birth control and sterilization render "incomplete" the mutual gift of men and women.

The document views all these issues through the lens of "imago Dei," a theology that affirms that humans are created in "the image of God" in order to enjoy personal communion with God and among themselves and in order to exercise responsible stewardship of the created world.

This theology emphasizes that man is not an isolated individual and that he cannot be made subservient to systems that are of this world only.

A key part of the "imago Dei" doctrine is that human beings are created with a specific male or female identity, the document said.

"The roles attributed to one or the other sex may vary across time and space, but the sexual identity of the person is not a cultural or social construction," it said.

The section on evolution discussed the need to reconcile the theology of creation with the modern scientific understanding of the universe.

It cited strong scientific evidence that the universe erupted 15 billion years ago in a "big bang," that Earth was formed about 4.5 billion years ago and that the human species evolved in Africa some 40,000 years ago.

"Since it has been demonstrated that all living organisms on earth are genetically related, it is virtually certain that all living organisms have descended from this first organism," it said.

"Converging evidence from many studies in the physical and biological sciences furnishes mounting support for some theory of evolution to account for the development and diversification of life on earth, while controversy continues over the pace and mechanisms of evolution," it said.

The document said the appearance of humans, marked by the development of the human brain, permanently altered the nature and rate of evolution. As human factors of consciousness, freedom and creativity were introduced, biological evolution was "recast as social and cultural evolution."

In the context of evolution, the document said, the church teaches that the emergence of the first humans is an event that has no purely natural explanation and that can be "appropriately attributed to divine intervention."

The document noted that some scientists rule out a divine cause by arguing that biological evolution is driven by natural selection and random genetic variation, not guided by a divine blueprint.

But that argument shows a misunderstanding of the idea of "divine causality," which can be active in a process that is either guided or contingent, the document said.

- - -

Editors: "Imago Dei" was published in Origins, CNS Documentary Service, Vol. 34, No. 15, dated Sept. 23, 2004.

END

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