Old Stuff

There's more to these hobbits than meets the eye

One of the gentlehobbits down in Southfarthing, in fact the venerable Mayor Samwise himself, has taken offense at my calling certain human beings "products". This is encouraging! Would that more people would find it offensive.

To clarify a bit: yes, I agree that the hypothetical products of the industrial process described in the Washington Post would be fully human. Yet, the process itself makes of the human person a manufactured product of an industrial process. Fully human, of course, and yet a product. For more on this idea of human beings as products, see Reflections on Cloning from the Pontifical Academy for Life.

Even though the Academy's document is concerned with cloning, not the specific technique described in the Post, it is still a moving meditation on the "production" of human beings.

Recall the Creed: Christ is "begotten, not made." Every human being should have the privilege and dignity of having been begotten, not made.