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Creating ethical paradoxes out of commonly held, unexamined assumptions is a hallmark of the pontificate of John Paul II. While "body worship" dominates contemporary culture, Pope John Paul II writes a theology of the body. As science catapults civilization "back to the future," by proposing that human sexuality return to the most primitive forms of asexual and nonrelational methods of reproduction, John Paul formulates an "adequate anthropology," which integrates the physical, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions of the person into fully human sexual relationships. Such claims about scientific advance in counterpoint to theological development require further explanation.
Redemptor hominis, the encyclical written by Pope John Paul in 1979 as a "kind of programmatic statement of the inspiration which will guide his pontificate," challenges Christians to "x-ray" scientific and technological achievements that promise a panacea for human problems and sufferings.1 He prompts us to reflect upon basic ethical criteria: "If we can do it, does that mean we should do it?" Will this scientific "advance" make us more human? Will humanity progress or regress in true humanness?2 In light of these criteria, an examination of currently proposed methods for human procreation (reduced by science to reproduction) provides significant insight, particularly in regard to the role of the human body in personal relationships.
The advent of cloning now makes it possible for human persons to imitate the reproductive method of amoebas, the lowest form of life. While asexual replication achieves science's goal of reproduction of the species, it provides no opportunity for human interrelationship, not even at the level of simple body contact. In vitro fertilization provides us with another way to bring forth life, very similar to that observed within the world of fish, where male sperm fertilize eggs already separated from the female body, again without need for relational contact. As we continue up the life chain into the realm of the insect, the honeybee and her one-time-only drone consort exemplify a way of reproducing that has become rather familiar within twentieth-century life. While here body contact becomes part of fertilization, the immediate death of the male vividly symbolizes the discontinuity of relationship integral to this form of mating.
The animal kingdom likewise presents us with models for scientifically "advanced" generation of the human species....