Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church

Conjugal love is by its nature open to the acceptance of life^{512Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1652.}. The dignity of the human being, called to proclaim the goodness and fruitfulness that come from God, is eminently revealed in the task of procreation: “Human fatherhood and motherhood, while remaining biologically similar to that of other living beings in nature, contain in an essential and unique way a ‘likeness' to God which is the basis of the family as a community of human life, as a community of persons united in love (communio personarum)”^{513John Paul II, Letter to Families Gratissimam Sane, 6: AAS 86 (1994), 874; cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2366.}. Procreation expresses the social subjectivity of the family and sets in motion a dynamism of love and solidarity between the generations upon which society is founded. It is necessary to rediscover the social value of that portion of the common good inherent in each new human being. Every child “becomes a gift to its brothers, sisters, parents and entire family. Its life becomes a gift for the very people who were givers of life and who cannot help but feel its presence, its sharing in their life and its contribution to their common good and to that of the community of the family”^{514John Paul II, Letter to Families Gratissimam Sane, 11: AAS 86 (1994), 884.}.

The family founded on marriage is truly the sanctuary of life, “the place in which life — the gift of God — can be properly welcomed and protected against the many attacks to which it is exposed, and can develop in accordance with what constitutes authentic human growth”^{515John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Centesimus Annus, 39: AAS 83 (1991), 842.}. Its role in promoting and building the culture of life ^{516Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, 92: AAS 87 (1995), 505-507.} against “the possibility of a destructive ‘anti-civilization', as so many present trends and situations confirm”^{517John Paul II, Letter to Families Gratissimam Sane, 13: AAS 86 (1994), 891.}, is decisive and irreplaceable. Christian families have then, in virtue of the sacrament received, a particular mission that makes them witnesses and proclaimers of the Gospel of life. This is a commitment which in society takes on the value of true and courageous prophecy. It is for this reason that “serving the Gospel of life ... means that the family, particularly through its membership in family associations, works to ensure that the laws and institutions of the State in no way violate the right to life, from conception to natural death, but rather protect and promote it”^{518John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, 93: AAS 87 (1995), 507-508.}.

The family contributes to the social good in an eminent fashion through responsible motherhood and fatherhood, the spouses' special participation in God's work of creation^{519Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 50: AAS 58 (1966), 1070-1072; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2367.}. The weight of this responsibility must not be used as a justification for being selfishly closed but must guide the decisions of the spouses in a generous acceptance of life. “In relation to physical, economic, psychological and social conditions, responsible parenthood is exercised both in the duly pondered and generous decision to have a large family, and in the decision, made for serious reasons and in respect of the moral law, to avoid for a time or even indeterminately a new birth”^{520Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae, 10: AAS 60 (1968), 487; cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 50: AAS 58 (1966), 1070-1072.}. The motivations that should guide the couple in exercising responsible motherhood and fatherhood originate in the full recognition of their duties towards God, towards themselves, towards the family and towards society in a proper hierarchy of values.

Concerning the “methods” for practising responsible procreation, the first to be rejected as morally illicit are sterilization and abortion^{521Cf. Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae, 14: AAS 60 (1968), 490-491.}. The latter in particular is a horrendous crime and constitutes a particularly serious moral disorder^{522Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 51: AAS 58 (1966), 1072-1073; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2271-2272; John Paul II, Letter to Families Gratissimam Sane, 21: AAS 86 (1994), 919-920; John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, 58, 59, 61-62: AAS 87 (1995), 466-468, 470-472.}; far from being a right, it is a sad phenomenon that contributes seriously to spreading a mentality against life, representing a dangerous threat to a just and democratic social coexistence^{523Cf. John Paul II, Letter to Families Gratissimam Sane, 21: AAS 86 (1994), 919-920; John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, 72, 101: AAS 87 (1995), 484-485, 516-518; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2273.}. Also to be rejected is recourse to contraceptive methods in their different forms^{524Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 51: AAS 58 (1966), 1072-1073; Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae, 14: AAS 60 (1968), 490-491; John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 32: AAS 74 (1982), 118-120; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2370; Pius XI, Encyclical Letter Casti Connubii (31 December 1930): AAS 22 (1930), 559-561.}: this rejection is based on a correct and integral understanding of the person and human sexuality ^{525Cf. Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae, 7: AAS 60 (1968), 485; John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 32: AAS 74 (1982), 118-120.} and represents a moral call to defend the true development of peoples^{526Cf. Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae, 17: AAS 60 (1968), 493-494.}. On the other hand, the same reasons of an anthropological order justify recourse to periodic abstinence during times of the woman's fertility^{527Cf. Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Humanae Vitae, 16: AAS 60 (1968), 491-492; John Paul II, Apostolic Exhortation Familiaris Consortio, 32: AAS 74 (1982), 118-120; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2370.}. Rejecting contraception and using natural methods for regulating births means choosing to base interpersonal relations between the spouses on mutual respect and total acceptance, with positive consequences also for bringing about a more human order in society.

The judgment concerning the interval of time between births, and that regarding the number of children, belongs to the spouses alone. This is one of their inalienable rights, to be exercised before God with due consideration of their obligations towards themselves, their children already born, the family and society^{528Cf. Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, 50: AAS 58 (1966), 1070-1072; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2368; Paul VI, Encyclical Letter Populorum Progressio, 37: AAS 59 (1967), 275-276.}. The intervention of public authorities within the limits of their competence to provide information and enact suitable measures in the area of demographics must be made in a way that fully respects the persons and the freedom of the couple. Such intervention may never become a substitute for their decisions^{529Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2372.}. All the more must various organizations active in this area refrain from doing the same. All programmes of economic assistance aimed at financing campaigns of sterilization and contraception, as well as the subordination of economic assistance to such campaigns, are to be morally condemned as affronts to the dignity of the person and the family. The answer to questions connected with population growth must instead by sought in simultaneous respect both of sexual morals and of social ethics, promoting greater justice and authentic solidarity so that dignity is given to life in all circumstances, starting with economic, social and cultural conditions.

The desire to be a mother or a father does not justify any “right to children”, whereas the rights of the unborn child are evident. The unborn child must be guaranteed the best possible conditions of existence through the stability of a family founded on marriage, through the complementarities of the two persons, father and mother^{530Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2378.}. The rapid development of research and its technological application in the area of reproduction poses new and delicate questions that involve society and the norms that regulate human social life. It must be repeated that the ethical unacceptability of all reproductive techniques — such as the donation of sperm or ova, surrogate motherhood, heterologous artificial fertilization — that make use of the uterus of another woman or of gametes of persons other than the married couple, injuring the right of the child to be born of one father and one mother who are father and mother both from a biological and from a legal point of view. Equally unacceptable are methods that separate the unitive act from the procreative act by making use of laboratory techniques, such as homologous artificial insemination or fertilization, such that the child comes about more as the result of an act of technology than as the natural fruit of a human act in which there is a full and total giving of the couple^{531Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Donum Vitae (22 February 1987), II, 2, 3, 5: AAS 80 (1988), 88-89, 92-94; Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2376-2377.}. Avoiding recourse to different forms of so-called “assisted procreation” that replace the marriage act means respecting — both in the parents and in the children that they intend to generate — the integral dignity of the human person^{532Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Instruction Donum Vitae (22 February 1987), II, 7: AAS 80 (1988), 95-96.}. On the other hand, those methods that are meant to lend assistance to the conjugal act or to the attainment of its effects are legitimate^{533Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2375.}.

An issue of particular social and cultural significance today, because of its many and serious moral implications, is human cloning. This term refers per se to the reproduction of a biological entity that is genetically identical to the originating organism. In thought and experimental practice it has taken on different meanings which in turn entail different procedures from the point of view of the techniques employed as well as of the goals sought. The term can be used to refer to the simple laboratory replication of cells or of a portion of DNA. But specifically today it is used to refer to the reproduction of individuals at the embryonic stage with methods that are different from those of natural fertilization and in such a way that the new beings are genetically identical to the individual from which they originate. This type of cloning can have a reproductive purpose, that of producing human embryos, or a so-called therapeutic purpose, tending to use such embryos for scientific research or more specifically for the production of stem cells. From an ethical point of view, the simple replication of normal cells or of a portion of DNA presents no particular ethical problem. Very different, however, is the Magisterium's judgment on cloning understood in the proper sense. Such cloning is contrary to the dignity of human procreation because it takes place in total absence of an act of personal love between spouses, being agamic and asexual reproduction^{534Cf. John Paul II, Address to the Pontifical Academy for Life (21 February 2004), 2: L'Osservatore Romano, English edition, 3 March 2004, p. 7.}. In the second place, this type of reproduction represents a form of total domination over the reproduced individual on the part of the one reproducing it^{535Cf. Pontifical Academy for Life, Reflections on Cloning: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Vatican City 1997; Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, The Church and Racism. Contribution of the Holy See to the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, 21, Vatican Press, Vatican City 2001, p. 22.}. The fact that cloning is used to create embryos from which cells can be removed for therapeutic use does not attenuate its moral gravity, because in order that such cells may be removed the embryo must first be created and then destroyed^{536Cf. John Paul II, Address to the Eighteenth International Congress of the Transplantation Society (29 August 2000), 8: AAS 92 (2000), 826.}.

Parents, as ministers of life, must never forget that the spiritual dimension of procreation is to be given greater consideration than any other aspect: “Fatherhood and motherhood represent a responsibility which is not simply physical but spiritual in nature; indeed, through these realities there passes the genealogy of the person, which has its eternal beginning in God and which must lead back to him”^{537John Paul II, Letter to Families Gratissimam Sane, 10: AAS 86 (1994), 881.}. Welcoming human life in the unified aspects of its physical and spiritual dimensions, families contribute to the “communion of generations” and in this way provide essential and irreplaceable support for the development of society. For this reason, “the family has a right to assistance by society in the bearing and rearing of children. Those married couples who have a large family have a right to adequate aid and should not be subjected to discrimination”^{538Holy See, Charter of the Rights of the Family, art. 3 c, Vatican Polyglot Press, Vatican City 1983, p. 9. The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (10 December 1948) affirms that “the family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State” (article 16,3).}.