ARCHDIOCESE OF PHILADELPHIA

Dr. Hilgers,
Members of the Philadelphia Guild of the Catholic Medical Association
and the Friends of FertilityCare—Philadelphia,
Clinicians Providing Care to Women,
Dear Brothers and Sisters in our Lord Jesus Christ,

I am so pleased to be with you today as you meet to advance women’s health, and especially to discuss ways of assisting the natural gift of procreation for married couples. By exploring medically and morally sound ways to alleviate the problems couples may face regarding their fertility, you provide a wonderful service to Christian marriage, to the Church and to all humanity.

Our first reading today is one of the great New Testament passages about the meaning and importance of the Eucharist, which is indeed the crown of all the Sacraments because it is the Body and Blood of Christ. Saint Paul tells us something more: By our communion with our Lord Jesus Christ, by receiving His Body, we ourselves become one body. In the words of Saint John Chrysostom, whose feast we celebrate today: "For what is the bread? The Body of Christ. And what do they become who partake of it? The Body of Christ: not many bodies, but one body" (Homily XXIV on I Corinthians). By being joined to Him, we members of the Church are joined to one another. Christ is the Head. We, as members of His Body, must unite with each other in love to communicate His life-giving Gospel to the world.

Our reading from the Gospel according to Luke completes this thought. Only if we are grafted onto Christ, only if we begin from a heart of goodness, can we bear good fruit. Only if we rest on the solid foundation of His word, and a readiness to act on that word, can we make a lasting contribution to the world. With any less solid foundation, everything we try to do can be swept away.

As you know, there is only one other context where Scripture talks about people becoming so intimately united with each other that they are "one body." This is in marriage where "a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body" (Genesis 2:24). In his Letter to the Ephesians, Saint Paul would draw out this striking analogy in detail: "Husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the Church, because we are members of his body" (Ephesians 5: 28-30). Immediately he adds that very same passage from Genesis, about man and wife becoming one body. The relationship of husband and wife is an image of the relationship of Christ and His Church—that is, between Christ the Head and His own Body.

It is easy to see, then, why the Catholic Church recognizes marriage as a sacrament. The union it celebrates is our best symbol on earth of the union we have with Christ in the Eucharist, our supreme sacrament. And this bodily union between husband and wife expresses and consummates a love that transcends our human condition, invoking God as its source and sponsor.

Like the union of Christ with His Church, this bodily union in marriage is fruitful. The total love and commitment of the spouses is open to giving rise, with God’s help, to a new human being whom husband and wife will love and care for together. This child is a new human person, body and soul, made in the image and likeness of God. Therefore he or she is the parents’ equal in human dignity. He or she is not an object or a possession, or something we can demand from God as a matter of right. Rather, the spouses are called to be open to this new life, prepared to receive the child as a wonderful gift if their bodily union does give rise to a new life.

As in the Christian life generally, authentic progress in becoming a parent and building a family depends on whether one builds on the foundation of the Lord’s will. As we are dealing with the power to cooperate with God in creating a new human person, we cannot treat fertility as simply a bodily function like any other. The means we employ are as important as the end in view. We must resist any approaches to fertility treatment that violate the integrity of marriage, substituting other people in the roles that only husband and wife can serve for each other. We hear today, for example, of sperm and eggs "donated" (or more often, sold) by outside parties, of "surrogate" mothers whose wombs are hired out to bear a child for others. Nor can we replace the coming together of husband and wife as "one body" with a technical procedure that is more like the manufacturing of a product, a commodity. This procedure treats the newly conceived child as an object in the laboratory, and makes possible so many further terrible abuses—as we have learned from the drive to obtain and destroy human embryos for stem cell research.

No, like the Son of God himself, our children have a dignity equal to that of their parents. We respect that dignity by ensuring that they are "begotten, not made." But this does not mean we can or should leave couples without recourse when they face infertility. We must learn and further explore ways of truly assisting these couples, so that their married love, open to new life, may indeed bring it forth. The Church welcomes and exults in new advances in scientific and medical progress obtained and used in morally sound ways. Taking the dignity of marriage and the sanctity of each human life as your foundation, you have achieved wonderful things for women, for married couples and for their children. Your commitment to healing in the fullest sense of the word, to helping your patients and their families to achieve their total human potential is indeed a great service to the realization of God’s plan for human love and human life.

What is so exhilarating is that you come together this morning, dear friends, in the Eucharistic Sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the unity of His Body the Church to renew your commitment and to pledge your contribution to Women’s Health Care and to God’s marvelous design for the procreation of the human race. The Church invokes upon your activities that fruitfulness which can come only through the action of the Holy Spirit of God’s love. And may the Mother of the Incarnate Word who conceived by the Holy Spirit sustain you in joy, serenity and strength. Amen.