the vatican's stance on in-vitro fertilization...

seems off their message concerning marriage.

The Vatican issued its most authoritative and sweeping document on bioethical issues in more than 20 years on Friday, taking into account recent developments in biomedical technology and reinforcing the church’s opposition to in vitro fertilization, human cloning, genetic testing on embryos before implantation and embryonic stem cell research.

Vatican Issues Instruction on Bioethics, New York Times, Dec 13, 2008

Given the church's stance on marriage is for procreation and is only allowed in opposite-sex partnerships, doesn't this rule go against a core belief? if a couple marries to have children and discovers that it is impossible in the normal way [normal according to the RC] why is it wrong for them to use any means to bring more members into the church? It is a life in their definition.

The article in the NYT cites the “Dignitas Personae” that has just been released by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The document is much broader than just in-vitro. It includes stands on abortion, birth control, stem cell research and other bioethical issues, as they define them.

One should understand that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith is made up of a bunch of old men, clergy, who are not supposed to have sex and are responsible only to the pope and two-thousand years of mythology. Their stand not only applies to the faithful but to all medical and scientific persons who would administer or research no matter what their faith.

A representative from a U.S. organization of catholic medical members explained in-vitro this way:

Kathleen M. Raviele, an obstetrician and gynecologist in Georgia who is president of the Catholic Medical Association, said she tells her patients: “God creates through an act of love, and that’s not what’s happening in the laboratory. It’s the technician who’s creating. What in vitro does, is it separates the creation of a child from the marital act.”

Why would concieving a child in-vitro not be considered a marital act of love? If a couple wants to have a child and they are incapable themselves, why not use in-vitro and, I'd assume, in some cases, a surrogate mother? A life is a life.

Of course, I'm sure there are other considerations behind this "The Dignity of the Person" document, icluding the timing of its release - same-sex marriage, Obama's defense of stem cell research, birth control use in the U.S., etc.

I long ago left the RC of my own volition first, because I couldn't handle the hypocrisy and second, because I no longer could believe in the mythology. There is an issue with faith and believing but, in its present two-thousand year old formulaic incarnation, it declines the one thing that is the basis of that faith and belief - free will.

A bunch of old men, in their infinite wisdom, set out the rules in the guise of guiding the faithful to act as they should but take away the one right they possess - the right to chose.

ironic or hypocritical? i'm not certain into which it falls. maybe both...