Responses to the Fr. Knight Article

I have found an article where, upon scrolling down, you can see that many people let Fr. Knight’s article have it. Unfortunately, the last letter, written by a man named Richard Fath, uses some of the most twisted logic I have ever seen in my life. Of course, he starts off by saying that as a Catholic, he has no problems supporting John Kerry for president.

What is his argument? First, he claims that there are differing views on when God actually creates a soul. Is it at the time of conception or at some later time. Supposedly, according to “medical testimony,” the vast majority of the zygotes do not even make it to implantation in the mother’s womb. Therefore, we can’t be sure if a particular abortion is wrong or not because the zygote may not have a soul, yet.

I sincerely hope that Mr. Fath is not in the business of demolition or fumigation of buildings. Using his logic, he could just as well say “I don’t know if anyone is still in the building or not, so let’s go ahead and fumigate [or tear down] this building. We’ll let God judge whether we did the right thing.” Such negligence would never fly.

St. Jerome and St. Thomas Aquinas both debated when the soul was actually created. However, both unequivocally condemned abortion because, at the very least, there was the possibility of an ensouled human being in the womb. St. Basil the Great said in the fourth century “The hairsplitting difference between formed and unformed [ensouled and unensouled fetus] makes no difference to us. Whoever deliberately commits abortion is subject to the penalty for homicide.” (see this article for further information). In other words, this answer to this “debate” has been known for centuries among the saints.

On another note, unless one has an intrauterine camera of some kind, we can never say with certainty that “a significant majority of zygotes never attach to the womb.” Even if we could, it is irrelevant. Heaven may very well be populated by billions people who never so much as implanted in their mother’s womb on this Earth. There is nothing absurd about this. The Lord can do what he wills.