News

Diocese publishes in vitro information

By Communications Department

To help Catholics better understand what the church teaches about in vitro fertilization, the Green Bay Diocese has created a one-page newsletter and website. Both summarize why in vitro is contrary to the church's pro-life teachings and list acceptable - and more successful - fertility options.

The "Insights" newsletter was sent to Catholic parishes and schools on Sept. 20 and was reprinted in The Compass (9/29, p. 14A [print edition only]). Parish and school leaders have been encouraged to share copies of the newsletter with parishioners and students.

"Insights" explains that Catholicism is rooted in the love of Jesus Christ, who instructed his followers to "love one another" (Jn 13:34), which is naturally extended to people of all ages, including the unborn.

"Because of our love we must oppose in vitro fertilization," the newsletter says. "While in vitro, as it is commonly used, can result in the creation of life, it also destroys life in the process. In vitro involves surgically removing from a woman several or many eggs, fertilizing them in a lab, selecting the 'stronger' fertilized eggs and implanting them back in the woman. The remaining fertilized eggs (those deemed 'weaker') are either frozen or destroyed. Determining which fertilized eggs are 'stronger' is not an exact science. And even if it were, we as Catholics cannot justify freezing or ending a life only because it appears to be weaker. Our faith teaches us to 'love one another' (Jn 13:34), to respect all life, including the unborn."

"Insight" also notes that "the procedure interferes with what God wants to be a sacred intimate act between a wife and a husband" by introducing "a 'third party' - the laboratory - into the act of procreating, thus removing the intimacy between a couple."

As a result, "Insight" says, the creation of a person "is treated like a manufacturing process, which is beneath our human dignity."

Because fertility is a challenge for 10% of U.S. couples, the newsletter and website, www.aces-xavier-upholds-teachings.org, identify reproductive procedures that uphold both the sacredness of life and marriage and which are at least as successful as in vitro.

One procedure, Natural Procreative Technology (or NaPro or NPT), is based at the Pope Paul VI Institute in Omaha, Neb. NaPro has a pregnancy success rate one-and-a-half to three times higher than in vitro fertilization, reports its website (www.popepaulvi.com/).

The resources note that the church supports more techniques than it opposes and life and marriage are gifts from God, including the act of procreation. Thus, any procedure that assists marital intercourse in reaching its procreative potential is moral, while procedures that add a "third party" into the act of conception or that substitute a laboratory procedure for intercourse are not acceptable.

More information is available on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' website at www.usccb.org/prolife/treatment.shtml. Its comments are rooted in the church document "Donum Vitae" (The Gift of Life) which was approved by Pope John Paul II in 1987. (The full text is at www.nccbuscc.org/prolife/tdocs/donumvitae.htm.)