Becoming Doers of the Word, Embryo Adoption, Infertility, Parenting Styles, and More
Weekly Notes
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Deus Caritas Est Study, Week 8
Read: Sections 30-31
Reflection
“[O]ur ability to know almost instantly about the needs of others challenges us to share their situation and their difficulties. Despite the great advances made in science and technology, each day we see how much suffering there is in the world on account of different kinds of poverty, both material and spiritual. Our times call for a new readiness to assist our neighbours in need,” Pope Benedict XVI (30).
The Church is not an NGO. Still, as a body and as individuals, we are called to serve. The reason for this, Pope Benedict writes, is that “love needs to be organized.” That is to say, love needs to take on form. Its nature requires that it become not just a feeling, but an action.
The first Christians in Rome understood this. They didn’t just preach, teach, and worship; they served.
They left their houses to find the newborn girls who’d been abandoned, unwanted, on the streets and took them home to raise as their own.
Likewise, when the plague came, the Christians didn’t run to the country like their pagan neighbors did. They stayed in the cities, nursing the sick, caring for the dying, burying the dead.
Christians fed the hungry, welcomed widows and orphans, and provided refuge to women. And they did all this not because they wanted to overthrow the emperor and institute a new political order, nor because they saw service as a means of converting the Empire. Rather, they served because they saw the weak, poor, sick, young, old, and vulnerable as the image of God. They saw the humanity of their neighbors. They saw their dignity. They saw Christ in them. And they responded with love—active, practical, organized love.
Those they served responded, too. They saw Christ in the ones who served them. They encountered a love who’s like they had never seen before. They wanted it. And so first a city, then an Empire did convert. Being treated like a human being and not a project or a problem was a powerful thing.
It still is. There are 7.8 billion people in the world, and their suffering confronts us daily. On social media, in the news, in the streets, in schools. Love still needs to be organized. It needs a visible form. It needs to be more than sympathy, more than words. It needs to be made manifest in our actions. As the Apostle James wrote, “be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”
God is not calling you to do everything. But He is calling you to do something. Not just inside your home, but outside, beyond your family’s border. So, the question is, what will you do?
Reflection Questions
In what ways, if any, is supporting the Church’s charitable work a priority in your budget?
In what ways, if any, do you love others with gifts of your time or attention?
What is one small thing you can do today to offer practical help, encouragement, or support to someone in your community? Is this easy or hard for you? What could make it easier?
Next Week
We’ll conclude our study of Deus Caritas Est, reading sections 32-42.
Question Box
What are your thoughts on embryo adoption?
I’ve written before that as someone who experiences infertility, I understand the deep pain and desire that drives couples to pursue In Vitro Fertilization. When science offers you a solution to one of the greatest sorrows of your life and promises you your dreams, it’s hard to say no. It is tempting to let your pain blind you to the vast ethical complications of the IVF industry and find justifications for choosing that path. Even understanding Church teaching as I do, it was hard not to pursue IVF.
What stopped Chris and me from going down that road wasn’t only our faith, but also our recognition that while we don’t have a right to a child, a child does have a right to be conceived in an act of love between their parents, not as a commodity—an object—in a laboratory. What also stopped us was the thought of the 1 million tiny humans currently frozen in storage sites across the United States. Some will eventually be transferred into a woman’s womb, but the majority of those will not survive. The rest will remain indefinitely on ice, suspended in time, never receiving a chance to live and grow and become. Beautiful precious children have been born because of IVF. Their dignity does not depend on the circumstances of their conception. But even more beautiful precious children have been created by IVF only to be destroyed. The industry has built itself on the lives of discarded children. It is, ultimately, an industry of death. And we couldn’t bring ourselves to participate in that.
But what about embryo adoption? This is what the Church has to say on it:
“The proposal that these embryos could be put at the disposal of infertile couples as a treatment for infertility is not ethically acceptable for the same reasons which make artificial heterologous procreation illicit as well as any form of surrogate motherhood; this practice would also lead to other problems of a medical, psychological and legal nature.
“It has also been proposed, solely in order to allow human beings to be born who are otherwise condemned to destruction, that there could be a form of “prenatal adoption”. This proposal, praiseworthy with regard to the intention of respecting and defending human life, presents however various problems not dissimilar to those mentioned above,”(Dignitas Personae, 19).
Some theologians and ethicists see that as an outright condemnation of the practice. Others insist it’s still a grey area and that, until the Church says something more, couples can, in good conscience, pursue embryo adoption. The latter group is actually split into two groups. One thinks it is fine to pursue it as treatment for infertility, and the second thinks it is only morally licit to pursue if the desire is to rescue embyros from their frozen limbo and give them a chance at life.
In 2017, Chris and I looked into embryo adoption, thinking perhaps that if our primary desire was to give a little one the opportunity to live that it could be acceptable. The more we researched the process, however, the more uncomfortable we became with it. This was primarily because it would require us working with doctors and clinics who are part of the IVF Industry. At one point, I was researching how the process worked and started looking over information on the website of the local hospital that provides that service. There, I noticed that on the same page where the clinic talked about embryo adoption, they also were offering to buy the eggs of healthy young women. To give those people money and credibility seemed like material cooperation in the evil they were committing. We also didn’t want to encourage the continuation of their industry by creating a market for unwanted embryos.
I can understand why people choose differently. But it when it comes to frozen embryos, I agree with the Church that it is a “situation of injustice which in fact cannot be resolved,” (DP, 19). Humanity has finally succeeded in creating a problem for which no clear moral solution exists. Yay for us.
The Church’s teachings on artificial reproductive technologies, particularly IVF, are beautifully outlined in two documents from the Congregation on the Doctrine of the Faith: Donum Vitae and Dignitas Personae. To understand her teachings more fully, I recommend reading them, along with Pope John Paul II’s encyclical on the Gospel of Life (Evangelium Vitae).
How did you make the transition from grieving infertility to pursuing adoption?
I don’t know what it’s like to experience infertility in my twenties or early thirties. When you are trying to conceive in your late thirties or early forties, however, every month feels like a year. The biological clock is rapidly winding down, and so the pressure to conceive feels all the more intense. Fifteen months into our marriage, after fifteen cycles of trying and failing, I was a wreck. I was struggling to work. I was angry at God and the world. I wanted to burn my house down. In the midst of all that, I realized I didn’t like who I was becoming. I didn’t want to be bitter, angry, and resentful. I didn’t want to keep wrestling God for a baby, demanding that He give me what I wanted, acting like I was entitled to the gift of a child.
So, I stopped. With Chris’s ringing endorsement, I stopped charting. I stopped taking Femara. I stopped taking the dozen supplements I was on. I stopped drinking fertility shakes and micromanaging my diet. I stopped trying to force my body to do anything and told God that if He wanted us to get pregnant, that was His business. Mary had conceived without even having sex, so I could certainly conceive without drinking fertility shakes. That pause was profoundly helpful. It gave me the space to remember that as much as I wanted a baby, I wanted to do God’s will more. And maybe His will wasn’t for me to conceive. Maybe it wasn’t for me to become a mother at all.
A couple months into that pause, I started writing a study on Humanae Vitae for Endow. Working on that helped me see that the call to trust God with our fertility isn’t just for couples who conceive easily. It’s also for couples who can’t conceive at all. I had to surrender my plans to His. I believed He loved me. I believed He wanted nothing but the best for me. I believed He works in all things to bring about my eternal happiness. But I had to act like it and stop gripping my desire for a baby, my way, on my terms, so tightly.
During that time, Chris and I talked about what we really desired: was it for me to get pregnant or was it to become parents? Pregnancy, we decided, would have been nice, but what we really wanted was to be a mom and dad. We wanted to be generous. We wanted to practice hospitality. We wanted to have the sounds and mess and joy of children in our home. And we didn’t have to get pregnant for all that. Within weeks of recognizing that, we were approached about adopting Toby. We said yes without hesitation. We didn’t feel like we were pursuing a lesser path. We didn’t feel resentful that we couldn’t conceive. We were just so excited to be given the chance to love a child.
Adoption is a complicated thing. There is much more to it than the joy of a baby. But for people thinking about making the transition from trying to get pregnant to pursuing adoption, it’s helpful to first take a break. Step back and intentionally make an act of trust in God by handing Him the reins. Also, examine your heart and your desires. What do you want? What do you fear? What are you trying to control or prove or accomplish? Finally, before you move forward with adoption, make sure you’re not doing it resentfully, with bitterness or a sense of entitlement. You want to be in a place where you see a child as a gift, not a right. You also want to make sure you don’t see a possible adoption or the child you might adopt as your Plan B. Rather, you need to see it as God’s Plan A: something He has always known would be a part of your story; something that isn’t a lesser way of having a family; something that, with grace, brings beauty out of brokenness, much like the Christian story itself.
If you are struggling with infertility, I highly recommend the work of Springs in the Desert. They have a number of virtual retreats available online, as well as a blog and podcast. They’ve also started an apostolate called Springs of Love, which is geared towards couples discerning adoption. Definitely check them out.
Do you have any book recommendations for someone who thinks there is no intellectual basis for believing in God?
I always have book recommendations! Thoughtful Theism: Redeeming Reason in an Irrational Age by Father Andrew Younan would be a great place to start. It’s a deeply intelligent and accessible book, which shows the eminent reasonability of theism. If your friend likes stories and is of a more literary bent, C.S. Lewis’ Surprised By Joy is also one of my favorites.
How do you deal with toddler tantrums? What is your discipline philosophy?
I’ll answer this question with the implicit understanding that Chris and I are both fallen human beings who, like most parents, struggle with impatience, exhaustion, consistency, and irritability. We don’t do anything perfectly, least of all discipline our children. We are learning as we go, knowing that we are super fallible human beings and so are our children. Also, our kids are little, and they are themselves, not anyone else. So how we discipline now is geared towards their ages and to their unique personalities and needs.
That being said, neither Chris nor I believe there is any one size fits all method of parenting, and we don’t follow any one “method.” We do a little of attachment parenting, a little bit of gentle parenting, and a little bit of authoritarian parenting (because sometimes they just need to put on their freakin’ shoes or stop running around the house like puppies on speed). We also do a little bit of “we’re old and tired parenting”; at 47, I don’t have the energy to fight some of the battles I would have fought 20 years ago … like eating in the tv room. But, more than anything, we try to parent our children in a way that reflects how God parents us.
For us, this means parenting with lots of love, clear direction, consequences suited to the individual (because what works for one child does not necessarily work for the others), and continually calling upon the Holy Spirit to stir up their baptismal graces. This also means that we strive to do all that in a way that seeks to form them, not control them. Our goal isn’t to raise obedient automatons. It’s to raise mature disciples who are capable of freely choosing the good through moral reasoning, good habits, and prayer. The way we discipline them reflects that.
This past Tuesday, for example, was a super rough day. Both boys threw things that they should not have been throwing and almost did serious damage to the toys, Chris’ guitar, and me. Each got a consequence for their behavior and was asked to apologize afterwards (because right now they are learning how to show repentance for wrongdoing, and apologizing is part of that learning). They each then got a big hug and quick prayer from me, and over lunch we talked about what why we don’t throw things. We discussed, in very simple terms how God calls us to be good stewards, how Adam and Eve failed at that (they love talking about Adam and Eve), and what being a good steward looks like. Toby is not quite 5 and Becket is not quite 3, but both boys were able to answer questions about respect and stewardship, suggest ways they could be better stewards of their toys, and even enter into a conversation about loving everyone as the image of God. This took all of three minutes. We can’t and don’t have a Socratic dialogue with them every time they do something wrong. But we think laying a foundation for moral reasoning is important, and while much of this won’t stick, eventually, hopefully, it will. As Chris says, raising kids is a long-term project.
More specifically, in terms of tantrums, we try to imitate how God loves us when we are throwing fits. We don’t leave them by themselves. Instead, we hold them while they yell or cry. We tell them we understand that they’re hurt/angry/frustrated/sad. We pray with them, asking Jesus to help them feel peace. And we keep reminding them that we love them. When they are little enough to still be kicking or hitting, we put them in their crib, and tell them we love them, but we are not going to let them hurt us. If they can promise not to hit or kick again, we pick them back up. Usually, we can snap them out of a tantrum by distracting them, but there have absolutely been times where our patience gets exhausted. Typically this happens at night when they (and we) are overtired. So, if one of us hits our patience limit, we let the other spouse take over.
I guess our overall philosophy is lots of love, lots of prayer, lots of discipline, and lots of forgiveness. God made us, God loves us, and God lovingly disciplines us. Again, not to control us, but to help us be free. As Christian parents, we think it’s important to take Him as our guide, not expecting more of our kids than what they’re capable of, but also not expecting less, and helping them to know how deeply loved they are through it all. We’re not God, however, so we screw up daily and our judgements aren’t always correct. When we mess up and we know it, we apologize and ask for our kids forgiveness. I hope they keep giving it. I’ll report back in 20 years if any of this works.
What baby/kids items can you not live without?
Our woolen long underwear from Simply Merino. The kids live in it from September through March and it makes winter dressing so easy. Also, our Agio Z4 stroller. It was hands down the best purchase we have ever made with kids…besides maybe our minivan. It is a single stroller that adjusts to a double stroller and can accommodate a third child on a ride along board. Each seat can hold up to 50 pounds weight. It’s as narrow as an umbrella stroller, super light, a dream to push, and easy to fold up. I have pushed so many double strollers, and this is the best by far. We’ve used it daily for three years, and I cannot imagine life without it.
Besides that, our Tonie Box is a major sanity helper. Becket is in the process of dropping his nap, but he is so happy to have quiet time in his crib when he can listen one of his Tonies. The boys also listen to them at night to help them fall asleep. Becket’s current favorite (and mine) is John Henry, which comes with four African-American folk tales on it, narrated by Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Danny Glover, and Whoopi Goldberg. It also has music by B.B. King. It’s so good. Other ones we love are Pinocchio (and other classic tales), Despicable Me (narrated by Tim Curry), and Peter Rabbit (the original Beatrix Potter book). The boys love Pete the Cat, but it annoys the heck out of me.
Oh, and I’m also a huge fan of the baby gate we installed on our tv room! 😁
Five Things I’m Loving
This week’s episode of The Pillar Podcast. The episode was a good one, but the real payoff for listening comes at the end, with a song a listener composed for Ed. It’s been a week. Sometimes people are just awful. And sometimes, they are just so amazingly wonderful and do things like compose and record a song for a stranger they listen to online. If I’m not completely despairing of humanity this week, it’s probably because of this.
By the way, The Pillar is back on Substack, and I highly recommend becoming a full subscriber. They are doing the best reporting in the English-speaking Catholic world right now, and I am so grateful for their independent voice. During my years of writing for the Catholic press, I saw how the work done by most existing Catholic news sources is compromised either by the politics or financial interests of their parent companies. JD and Ed don’t have perfect judgement—none of us do—but I trust them and their work. It’s very much needed. Chris and I have been paying subscribers since they launched The Pillar, and I encourage you to become one, too.
The Pirates season opener is tonight, so we started preparing the boys for the season by watching Field of Dreams with them. I love baseball movies more than I actually love baseball, and this movie is extra close to my heart. It was filmed near my hometown and it looks and sounds like home. Plus, many of my old friends and their parents were in the car scene at the end of the movie, so that’s fun. Anyhow, I haven’t seen it in years, but I enjoyed on a whole different level as an adult. The boys enjoyed it, too. (It does contain a few inappropriate words and one inappropriate line, but it all went over my kids heads). Also, if you haven’t read the book upon which it’s based, Shoeless Joe, do yourself a favor and add it to your summer reading list. It’s beautiful, as is another baseball book by the same author, The Iowa Baseball Confederacy.
I’ve loved hearing from those of you who have taken advantage of the St. Paul Center’s huge pre-Easter book sale. I can’t wait to see pictures of Mary, Mother of All in Easter baskets. If you haven’t shopped yet, you have through tomorrow, to get 35 percent off your order of $25 or more with the code BASKET. All six of the books I published with them are included in the sale.
I haven’t written anything about Monday’s horrid events yet for 100 reasons, but the primary reason is that I think the prevailing commentary on both side is deeply flawed. I haven’t figured out a charitable way to say that, though, or to present my thoughts in a way that is constructive, not destructive. If I wrote something right now, I would mostly be throwing flames at everyone and everything on every side, and I don’t want to do that. If and when I figure out a way to not sound crazy myself, I will write something about it. Until then, Claire Swinarski reshared an old essay this morning on the topic that comes closer to my thoughts than anything else I’ve read. It’s worth your time.
Becoming Doers of the Word, Embryo Adoption, Infertility, Parenting Styles, and More
You introduced me to The Free Press Substack in one of these newsletters recently and today they published a story on the business of surrogacy and it made me so sad, totally illustrating the commodification of children you wrote about here. https://open.substack.com/pub/bariweiss/p/motherloading-inside-the-surrogacy?r=8ey8y&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post