March 15-16, 2025
Dear parishioners,
In last weekend’s bulletin article, I mentioned a couple of President Trump’s executive orders because they directly pertained to the Church’s moral doctrine. Namely, I discussed the executive orders that seek to limit tax-payer funding for abortions in the U.S. and internationally, and the orders that seek to recognize only one’s biological sex. As I mentioned, these directives were applauded by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) because they are in line with Catholic moral principles.
This week, I would like to highlight another issue that the Trump administration has written into an executive order. This is the administration’s order to expand access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). Couched in pro-family wording, this directive seeks to lower the cost of IVF procedures across the country. Although the administration may have sincere intentions of helping couples who struggle with infertility, this executive order is most unfortunate because IVF is in direct contradiction with Catholic moral theology.
There are two primary reasons why IVF procedures cannot be reconciled with Catholic moral doctrine. Firstly, IVF often involves the creation of multiple embryos, many of which are frozen for a long time and eventually discarded. Of course, because life begins at the moment of conception, this means that the IVF process regularly involves the death of many children. The second reason is that IVF separates conception from the conjugal act. The Vatican’s Congregation (now Dicastery) for the Doctrine of the Faith issued very helpful instructions in 1987 on certain bioethical moral issues. In it, the Congregation states,
Conception in vitro is the result of the technical action which presides over fertilization. Such fertilization is neither in fact achieved nor positively willed as the expression and fruit of a specific act of the conjugal union. In homologous IVF and ET, therefore, even if it is considered in the context of ‘de facto’ existing sexual relations, the generation of the human person is objectively deprived of its proper perfection: namely, that of being the result and fruit of a conjugal act in which the spouses can become cooperators with God for giving life to a new person. These reasons enable us to understand why the act of conjugal love is considered in the teaching of the Church as the only setting worthy of human procreation. (Donum Vitae, II.5)
In other words, the conjugal act is the divinely created process by which new human life is brought forth, and it is therefore necessary for the moral act of procreation. As such,
the Church remains opposed from the moral point of view to homologous ‘in vitro’ fertilization. Such fertilization is in itself illicit and in opposition to the dignity of procreation and of the conjugal union, even when everything is done to avoid the death of the human embryo. Although the manner in which human conception is achieved with IVF and ET cannot be approved, every child which comes into the world must in any case be accepted as a living gift of the divine Goodness and must be brought up with love. (Donum Vitae, II.5)
Our own Bishop Daniel Thomas and Bishop Robert Barron, chairing different USCCB committees, offered a joint statement in similar words. They stated, “As pastors, we see the suffering of so many couples experiencing infertility and know their deep desire to have children is both good and admirable; yet the Administration’s push for IVF, which ends countless human lives and treats persons like property, cannot be the answer.” Further, they note, “For the sake of couples trying to bring precious new life into the world, we look forward to working with the Administration to expand support for restorative reproductive medicine that can help ethically treat often-overlooked root causes of infertility. However, we will strongly oppose any policy that expands destruction of human life, or forces others to subsidize the cost.”
Blessings,
Fr. Ammanniti
