Sunday evening and Monday morning were pretty normal. Bryce and Damon went to Pat’s for a couple of beers that evening, and the following morning Bryce arose and made his way to the fitness center for his workout. Returning to their apartment in the Caldwell house, he found Damon not only awake, but busy preparing breakfast for the two of them. For the remainder of the morning, they worked on getting their apartment more completely adjusted to their specific needs. Some things just needed to be tried for a few days to see whether that particular arrangement of furniture would work, or that location of a picture was best. Bryce’s cuckoo clock was installed in the common room, and lustily called out the hours. Most of the time, the guys enjoyed that reminder of their visit to the Black Forest, but it was a nuisance when it happened while they were being intimate in the bedroom.
When they settled down for lunch, their arranging and rearranging completed for now, Bryce was looking forward to a lazy, stress free afternoon. The next item on the calendar of either young man was the Sigma Alpha Tau fraternity meeting on Tuesday evening. As most brothers would not even be back in town then, this was expected to be largely a planning meeting, not one when significant decisions were made.
Over lunch, however, it became obvious to Bryce that Damon had something on his mind. After a few false starts, he finally said, “Why don’t you just tell me what you’re up to? That has usually worked out for us in the past.”
Damon replied, “I don’t want to pressure you. If this is not a good time, we can do it some other time. But I’ve been thinking about this, and I really want to know where you’re coming from.”
“Damon, that is the most convoluted way of saying nothing I have run across in quite some time. What’s on your mind?” Bryce demanded.
“Okay. A couple of times we’ve touched on the matter of abortion. You keep putting it off, saying you get emotional. Well, that makes me wonder what’s going through your head. I want to know what you’re thinking about this, and especially what it is about this that gets you so knocked out of shape,” Damon said.
Bryce sat and carefully chewed the mouthful of sandwich he had bitten off as Damon began that statement. He furrowed his brow, and finally cleared his throat. “Okay. I don’t mean to be mysterious. And I am not ashamed of what I have to say. It’s just that, one, I do get emotional, and that is not in keeping with the image I like to have of myself as a calm and cool customer; and two, this is an issue about which a lot of other people also get emotional, and I don’t want to provoke conflict unnecessarily.”
“Just start talking. I’ll let you know if I think you’re being a horse’s ass,” Damon assured his partner.
Bryce grinned. “I’m sure you will.” He thought for a few moments, then continued, “Okay. Do you remember when we were back in Rome, and talking to Tony and Ray? I think it was that last Sunday, when we were having dinner at that little restaurant Tony led us to. Tony asked me what I based my outlook on.”
“Yeah, I remember the occasion. I’m not sure I could repeat the conversation,” Damon hedged.
“Well, I want to start there. Some background. If I just charge in, what I have to say might seem just arbitrary,” Bryce explained.
“Approach it any way you like. If I don’t understand something, I’ll let you know,” Damon said.
“I was talking about the human soul being different from the principle of life in animals. I know humans are in some ways animals too, but there is an important distinction that I think a lot of people miss. Just as there is a major leap from inanimate objects to creatures with life, such as between rocks and rose bushes, and just as there is another major leap from plants to animals, I believe there is a major leap between what some call beasts and us humans. In the purely biological sphere, I guess we humans are animals, but we are something more. This approach to reality is discussed in a book I have by the philosopher E. F. Schumacher called A Guide for the Perplexed,” Bryce began.
“I could use that. I’m often perplexed,” Damon said, only partly in jest. “As to that conversation, I remember something about that. Something about love,” Damon commented.
“Yes. That’s important. But I don’t want to skip any steps here. This is involved with the matter of the soul. Now the materialist dismisses what I have to say right away at this point, because he says there is no soul. If you can’t measure it, weight it, probe it in some way, he doesn’t think it exists. Well, he’s welcome to his opinion, but I think that leaves out an awful lot of evidence to the contrary and a huge chunk of reality. While it’s not the sort of evidence which can be reduced to numbers or a formula, there is plenty of evidence for the reality of the spiritual life. There is the experience of humans for as far back as there is human history. Some people say belief in the reality of the spiritual resulted from the ignorance of our ancestors, but that’s simply pride on the part of the speaker. Kind of like what C. S. Lewis called ‘chronological egotism.’ What we believe now must be better than anything that came before because we’re here now and they’re dead. But, at least as far back as there is any written evidence, our ancestors were every bit as smart as we are. And efforts to explain all that experience away as just some kind of psychological aberration, some impulses in the brain, are simply not believable unless you’ve already made up your mind to that answer before you ever start asking the question. There is something about us humans which goes beyond the simple biological or mechanical explanations offered by the materialists.”
“And that something is what you call the soul?” Damon asked. “Well, I guess I can accept the reality of the soul.”
“It’s important not only to accept it, but to really believe it. Otherwise, an awful lot does not make sense,” Bryce insisted.
“Go ahead. So far, I’m following you,” Damon urged him.
“It is a major part of Christian belief that each of us has an immortal soul. I deduce the existence of the soul from its activity. That, by the way, is the same way Sir Isaac Newton deduced the existence of what he called ‘force’ in the physical world. The Cartesians said he was just reintroducing magic into science, too, just as the materialist scoffers say about us Christians. There are certain things about the way humans act which are mighty hard to explain without the soul. To begin with, we humans are capable of abstract thought. It’s not just a matter of putting two and two together about something right in front of us, but we can even imagine such a thing as the whole concept of abstract thought. We can conceive of such things as art and music. Such things as ethics, morality, government, science. We can ask why things are as well as how they operate. We can seek to understand the meaning of the universe. This ability to go beyond the immediate, the obvious, is a characteristic of the human soul.
“This ability to go beyond the immediate is also a characteristic of the soul which allows us to experience spiritual reality. In some way which is not purely biological or physical, we can have a relationship with a reality which is transcendent. We can touch a reality that computers and mathematics cannot know about. All human experience shows us that humans have this ability, an ability which science cannot explain, an ability which is more than mere electrical impulses in the brain. We cannot quantify it. We cannot capture it and put it on a drawing board or in a test tube to study it. But we can experience it. This ability to relate to spiritual reality is another characteristic of the human soul.
“Then, we have free will. We have the ability to choose. While that ability is not unlimited, in that I cannot choose something which is physically impossible, for example, still, I do make choices every day. All of morality is based on this ability to make a choice. Without free will, there is no morality. Without free will, things are neither good nor evil, they simply are. Consequently, all human rights, all liberties, are based on the reality of free will. If there is no free will, then I have no right to anything, I am merely an automaton, a robot, a thing. Ideas of right, of liberty, are merely misguided aberrations in the brain, but have no reality outside me. Consequently, all justice is an illusion. Things just happen. Free will is also something that cannot be explained in purely physical, biological terms. It is another characteristic of the human soul.
“Because I do have free will, however, I have the capacity to love. I’m not talking about the good fuzzy feeling that we sometimes experience. That can be explained in purely materialistic terms. I mean the ability to really dedicate ourselves to something or someone outside ourselves. I mean what Father Miller called agape, the same word St. John uses when speaking of God. Theos agape estin - God is Love. I mean the ability to sacrifice for someone or something. I mean that thing which spouses, partners, ideally have for each other for a lifetime. I mean the wellspring of patriotism. I mean the force behind the concern for humanity as a species, something more than concern for my personal well-being. And definitely something beyond my immediate self-interest. In his Epistle to the Romans St. Paul writes, ‘For scarcely in behalf of a just man does one die; yet perhaps one might bring himself to die for a good man. But God commends his love (agape) towards us, because when as yet we were sinners, Christ died for us.’ Love is a decision, and decision is a function of free will.
“And because love is a function of the human soul, the expression of love in humans is different from that in any other creature. Yes, one can have affection for a pet, for example. One can have that warm fuzzy feeling. One can get all emotional. And there is nothing wrong with that. That, too, is part of the human condition. But that can be explained in purely physical, material terms. What cannot be explained in purely material terms is the abstract decision of the will to prefer the well-being of another to one’s own. That is love. That is what a biologist might call a species specific characteristic. And we humans have that characteristic because we have an immortal soul.
“Of particular interest to you and me is my belief that this difference in kind, not merely in degree, between the human soul and that of other animals is the moral justification for gay sex. If the human soul is different in kind from the purely animal soul, or principle of life, then other aspects of human life can have different purposes or functions because of that difference. We use our brain to engage in abstract thought and make choices, something the purely animal brain cannot do. If the human brain can have a distinct function beyond what the purely animal brain has, why not other aspects of the human? In animals, the primary purpose of sex is procreation. It can be linked to that warm fuzzy feeling which C. S. Lewis, in his book The Four Loves, calls affection. It can be purely physical, electronic impulses in our bodies and nothing more. But because we humans have an immortal soul, with free will and the ability of make a choice, the ability to love, sex in humans can have another, and a different, primary purpose, just as the human brain has a function beyond coordinating the impulses received through the senses. Yes, human sex can and does still have the function of procreation for the species as a whole. But I maintain that this is not the primary purpose of sex in humans. The primary purpose is the expression and the deepening of that species specific characteristic, love. And because that is the primary purpose of sex in humans, sex can be engaged in by humans even when the purely animal purpose of procreation is absent. To put it on a very personal level, Damon, I believe it is entirely right and proper for you and me to have sex.”
“Well, I’m certainly glad to hear that. I kind of knew you had no hang-ups on that score, but you sure went a long way around to say so,” Damon replied.
“Yeah, I guess in a way what I just said is a diversion or sideline. But without that understanding, what comes next might not make any sense at all. After all, you did ask about my beliefs about abortion, right?” Bryce reminded his partner.
“Yeah, although by now I had almost completely lost track of that,” Damon kidded him.
“Bear with me. Remember, what I just went through was to lay the groundwork for the belief that us humans are not merely material creatures. We are more than just a biological collection of molecules. We a have an immortal soul. A human, then, is by definition the union of a physical body and a spiritual soul. The human soul is immortal. A spiritual, immortal soul cannot be passed on from one person to another by purely material, biological means, unlike the physical body. How can the purely biological, physical process of procreation transmit something which is spiritual and immaterial? The human parents pass on the material or physical part of reality to their offspring, but they cannot pass on the immaterial, spiritual part. Only God can create a spiritual being. Only God can create a human soul. Consequently, only God can create a human life.”
“I’m not sure I follow you here,” Damon objected. “Are you saying that we humans cannot simply reproduce like animals do?”
“Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying,” Bryce replied. “That gap between the animal and the human, that I mentioned before, is real. We are not merely more complicated animals. That notion leaves entirely too much unexplained. We are different in kind from the pure animal. We have an immortal soul.”
“But why can’t humans pass on their immortal souls from one generation to another without outside intervention from God?” Damon demanded.
“Because of the dual nature of humans. We are capable of engaging in sex, and reproducing a purely physical receptacle, the body. That is the physical, the animal part of the human species. But then we get only what some earlier thinkers called the homunculus. In some Jewish thought it is called a golem, and Tolkien used that term in his fantasy works for a less than fully developed creature. This is more or less what the science fiction writers call a zombie. Basically, all these concepts refer to a human body without a soul. That’s all we can do by ourselves.
“But a soul is a spiritual being. An immortal soul goes beyond anything mortal, physical, ever changing biological reality can produce. It requires a spiritual origin. It requires an immortal origin. How can the material, biological act of procreation result in something which is spiritual and immaterial? By the nature of things, you need something which is greater to produce something which is lesser. What is greater than the spiritual and immortal human soul? Only something which is spirit personified and eternal. Now, we humans are spiritual, but we are not spirit personified, and we are immortal, but we are not eternal. There was a time when I did not exist. My soul, once it comes into being, may live forever, but it has not always been here. Only God has always been. Only God has no beginning and no end. As it says in the Book of Revelation, God is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. So, only God can be the source of the individual human soul.”
“That gets pretty complicated, but I sort of see what you’re saying,” Damon went along.
“Okay, so, if God is the source of the thing which makes us special, which gives us our specific identity as humans, then God creates each individual human soul. We do not do it alone. Making another human being is a joint effort between God and the parents,” Bryce insisted.
“Keep going,” Damon said.
“If God creates the human soul, and joins it to the physical body created by the parents, when does this union take place?” Bryce asked.
“At birth?” Damon suggested.
“Sorry, but that does not make sense. There is no significant difference between a child just before birth and a child just after birth. There has been since ancient times the process called Caesarian birth. It is so called because the Roman statesman, Julius Caesar, was supposedly born that way, so it’s been around for a long time. It does not require passing through the birth canal to be human,” Bryce insisted. “Try again. What is the difference between this individual before birth and the same individual after birth?”
“Well, I have heard it said that the child in the womb, or the fetus, cannot survive on its own. I think that’s called not being viable,” Damon said.
“Yes, I’ve encountered that argument, too. But it does not hold water any more than the previous one. It is true that the infant cannot survive outside its natural environment, and before birth that natural environment is the mother’s womb. But after birth we cannot survive outside out natural environment either. What newborn child can live for more than a few days on its own? It cannot feed itself. It cannot do anything for itself. On a light note, I have heard it said that a newborn can do only two things, eat and shit. Remove the parents, or some other caregiver, and a newborn child will quickly die.
“Besides that, none of us can survive at any stage in life outside our natural environment. Put me at the bottom of the sea without artificial breathing devices, and I will not survive long. Put me at the outer rim of the atmosphere, and I will not survive more than a few seconds. True, my natural environment is larger than the natural environment of the womb for the child before birth, but size is irrelevant to this argument. I depend on my natural environment every bit as much as the child in the womb depends on his,” Bryce insisted.
“There’s another aspect to this argument. For all practical purposes, there is no real difference in the dependency, or viability, of the child before and after birth. If we deny the child in the womb human status, on what ground do we assert that status for the dependent newborn? If it is moral to kill the child a week before birth, why is it not moral to kill him a week after birth? The logic seems irrefutable, yet I know of no agency or movement which supports abortion which also supports infanticide. If we can decide that we can kill a child in the womb because tests indicate there is something wrong with it, then why not after it’s born? No one seems willing to tackle that question.”
“Okay, I see the problem when we’re talking about a child just before or just after birth. But what about some earlier time?” Damon asked.
“What earlier time?” Bryce responded.
“Well, sometime before the fetus is fully formed, I guess,” Damon replied.
“In a sense, we are back to the viability argument again, and I think the same considerations hold as before. The child which is not fully formed is not viable, but then none of us are viable outside our natural environment. As long as the child is in the womb and continues to live, it is viable in its natural environment,” Bryce responded.
“Is there no time when that does not apply?” Damon asked.
“Not that I know of. Now, I am not a biologist, so I cannot give scientific names to this or that phase of development, but my understanding is that once life is there, assuming no outside influence such as abortion or disease or accidental injury, it continues to develop in a natural progression from one stage to another with no sharp breaks. It’s true, St. Thomas Aquinas in the thirteenth century speculated that the soul entered the body at three months, when there was what he termed a ‘quickening’ in the fetus. But St. Thomas was using ancient Greek biology as his basis for understanding. He would readily agree that, if incorrect or incomplete data is used, then the conclusion reached is flawed. As the computer people say, garbage in, garbage out. Besides, St. Thomas is not infallible. He was wrong about the Immaculate Conception, too.
“But, to return to your question, as I understand it, there is no magic moment when a non-human fetus becomes human. It is a case of natural development from one stage to another of the same species, from the moment when life is first present, that is, from conception, to death. The various stages of development in the womb are no different basically from stages of development after birth, such as from infancy to childhood or from adolescence to adulthood. It is simply a natural progression within the same species. And it is the same species. The child has the same DNA from the moment of conception until death, and it is a separate DNA from either parent. Just like the caterpillar and the butterfly are two stages of the same species, or the tadpole and the frog are two stages of the same species, so also the child in the womb is just another phase of development of the human species. It does not change species, magically going from something non-human to human,” Bryce insisted.
“So, back to God and the soul, you are saying God places our soul in each of us at some point along the way in this natural development,” Damon deduced.
“Yes. And the only logical point I can see is at conception. Nothing else really makes sense,” Bryce replied.
“And from this you deduce what?” Damon asked to be certain he understood.
“From this I deduce that there is a human being involved from the moment of conception onward. Therefore, to kill that individual is killing another person, another human being, and morally speaking is no different from killing another person at any later phase in life,” Bryce declared.
“So you think all abortions are immoral?” Damon asked.
“Yes.”
“But the Supreme Court …” Damon began.
“Damon, I’m disappointed in you. The Supreme Court deals with what is legal, not with what is moral,” Bryce interrupted. “There is no question about whether abortion is legal in this country. The question is whether it is right, and questions of right involve questions of morality, not questions of legality. Not to get too personal, Damon, let me remind you that slavery was legal, too, and the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision in 1857 decided that slaves were not legal persons, just like in the Roe v. Wade case in 1973 the Supreme Court decided that the child in the womb was not a legal person. I see no moral difference between the two decisions. Both might have been legal given the law at that time, but both are morally wrong,” Bryce passionately declared.
“This is obviously based on your religious convictions,” Damon concluded. “Is there anything in the Bible to support it?”
“Oh, yes. Lots of evidence,” Bryce declared. “Here, I’ve written down a few things, as I knew I’d have to explain this sometime. Probably the most cited place is in the Gospel According to St. Luke. In Chapter one, Our Lady goes to visit her cousin, St. Elizabeth. She has just been told by the Archangel Gabriel that she will be the mother of the Savior, so she could not have been more than a few weeks pregnant when she visits. Yet, St. Elizabeth greets her as the mother of Our Lord. Elizabeth was about six months pregnant with St. John the Baptist, and says the baby in her womb leapt for joy. Two pregnant women, and two babies. Babies, not mere things, mind you. But there is another source from the Old Testament which I like. Here’s the reference in the Second Book of Maccabees, Chapter 7. A Mother, whose sons were being executed by the secular power trying to expunge the special observances of the Hebrews says to her sons who are about to be executed, ‘I do not know how you came into existence in my womb. It was not I who gave you the breath of life, nor was it I who set in order the elements of which each of you is composed. Therefore, since it is the Creator of the universe who shapes each man’s beginning, as he brings about the origin of everything, he in his mercy will give you back both breath and life because you now disregard yourselves for the sake of his law.’” Bryce quoted.
“What is this Book of Maccabees? I never heard of that before,” Damon asked.
“We Catholics recognize as the inspired word of God the version of the Hebrew scriptures called the Septuagint, the sacred writings translated into Greek by a group of seventy scholars at Alexandria in Egypt in the second century before Christ. It is the version most frequently quoted by St. Paul. If the Protestants chose to leave out seven books of the Old Testament, including both books of Maccabees, that’s their business, and you’ll have to ask them why,” Bryce declared.
“There are a lot of people who disagree with you,” Damon stated the obvious.
“Too true. I am very much aware of that. But that does not change my reasoning, nor my conclusions. Morality is not determined by an opinion poll, despite what the more extreme postmodernists might say,” Bryce responded. “Most of those people are beginning with the assumption that there is no God, no objective morality, and nothing beyond the material, assumptions which I find woefully lacking in explaining human experience.”
“Not everyone who disagrees with you about abortion is one of those atheists or materialists,” Damon pointed out.
“No, I know that. I do not understand how they can hold the position they do if they truly believe in God and in the immortal human soul, though,” Bryce sighed.
“There are a lot of cases where it seems more loving, more caring to carry out an abortion. There are cases when the life of the mother is in danger,” Damon continued to object.
“I know that. I do not deny that there are heart-wrenching decisions involved. I do not deny the reality of tragedy and suffering. But, once you have reached the point of deciding that the child in the womb is a human person from the moment of conception, I do not see how one can justify killing that person in order to benefit another person, even if the other person involved is the first person’s mother. Morally, it’s no different from killing a child at some later time to benefit the mother or father. Kind of like the Canaanite practice of child sacrifice in time of danger. On what grounds do I decide to kill an innocent person? On what grounds to I decide I can play God, and decide which person lives and which person dies?” Bryce cried, obviously emotionally distraught.
“I don’t think anything is going to change any time soon, even if you’re right,” Damon said.
“Oh, I know. I think it is a national disgrace, a national tragedy, but until more people are convinced of that, the present situation will not change greatly. But the consequences are worth considering,” Bryce said.
“Such as?”
“Since Roe v. Wade in 1973, there have been over fifty million legal abortions in this country. Some people say where abortion is legal, there is less abortion than where it is illegal, but that argument makes no sense. I think they are confusing abortion with birth control,” Bryce said.
“But isn’t abortion a form of birth control?” Damon replied.
“Only in the sense that wars and massacres, starvation and disease, and especially infanticide, are also forms of birth control. Dead people don’t have children. But I see a major distinction between preventing life and destroying life,” Bryce answered with obvious feeling. He then continued, “My great source of distress for our country is this: in what way are we morally superior to the Nazis who carried out a lot fewer deaths in their concentration camps? In what way are we morally superior to the Stalinists who carried out far fewer deaths in their gulags? They also had high sounding justifications for their actions. We have cut ourselves off from our moral foundations, which are based in Christianity. Our survival as American civilization, as a part of Western civilization, is at stake. I believe God has withdrawn his favor from the United States. I cannot prove it, but nothing has really gone well for us as a nation since 1973, now has it?”