By DONALD DeMARCO
Pope St. John Paul II consistently and persistently reminded us during his pontificate that Christ informs us as to who we are. As society drifts away from Christ and His Church, the confusion about human identity becomes more acute. In relying less and less on Christ, society relies more and more on technology. The transhumanism movement is dedicated to creating, through advanced technology, a new and improved human being, one who, according to some transhumanists, will no longer suffer.
In 1962, Robert Ettinger, a confirmed atheist, wrote a highly influential book entitled, The Prospect for Immortality, in which he proposed cryopreservation, or freezing the body immediately prior to death. Ettinger believed that a cryopreserved person could be thawed, or reawakened, and through the advanced medical technology of the future, would be cured of his illness so that he could return to full life. His book earned a place in the Book of the Month Club and was translated into nine languages. Ettinger founded the Cryonics Institute and the related Immortalist Society. His body has been cryopreserved, though his dream has not yet been realized after sixty years has passed since he wrote his book.
If one does not believe in an afterlife, there is certain logic in attempting to extend present life indefinitely. Nonetheless, death appears to be unavoidable. As Pope John Paul II told an audience on Ash Wednesday, March 5, 2003, “To return to dust is the fate that human beings and animals seem to have in common. However, the human being is not just flesh, but also spirit. If the flesh is destined to become dust, the spirit is made for immortality.”
The denial of mortality is an important rejection of the human condition. The denial of who we are, nevertheless, extends beyond the matter of mortality. It is now widely publicized that the distinction between male and female, affirmed in Scripture as well as human history, is no longer considered valid. What were formerly known as males and females may now “transition” from one sex to another, to a different mode of sex, or to something that is entirely unrelated to sexuality. The attempt to do away with sexual identity — through hormone blocking, surgery, etc. — has not proved satisfactory, although it is promoted aggressively by certain medical and civic authorities.
According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, 50.8 percent of adolescent women who “transition” to young men, attempt suicide (“Transgender Adolescent Behavior,” October 2018, volume 142, 4).
Confusion concerning one’s sexual identity has direct implications for marriage as well as the roles and responsibilities that parents might play. Today, a “man” can become a “mother” and a woman can become a “father.” All these changes meet with the enthusiastic approval of President Biden. Since the family is the basic unit of society, this confusion is of inestimable significance.
Contraception and abortion are also denials of who we are and how we are made. Contraception rejects the fertility of the woman, while abortion rejects her being a mother. The natural woman yields to one who opposes both conception and childbirth.
Dietrich von Hildebrand wrote Not As the World Gives in 1963, one year after Ettinger penned The Prospect for Immortality. He made an important assessment of what was transpiring at that time: “The mark of the present crisis is man’s attempt to free himself from his condition as a created being, to deny his metaphysical situation, to disengage himself from all bonds with anything greater than himself. Man endeavors to build a new Tower of Babel.”
Von Hildebrand’s words are even more applicable today than they were sixty years ago. We have tossed aside the Bible and are attempting to produce a new human being of our own making. Pope John Paul II was well aware of the “crisis,” to which von Hildebrand alluded, and set to work organizing 129 lectures into his highly acclaimed Theology of the Body.
The Pontiff’s achievement bears a remarkable affinity with a 2003 publication of secular origin, Being Human: Readings from the President’s Council on Bioethics. This 628-page work was created by the President’s Council, which was established by President George W. Bush. At the council’s inaugural meeting, the president spoke of the need to explore how medicine and science interface with the dignity of life, and that the ultimate source of life is the Creator.
In his Introduction to the first chapter, “The Search for Perfection,” Leon Kass, chairman of the President’s Council, states that “seemingly from the beginning human beings have been alive to the many ways in which what we have been given falls short of what we can envision and what we desire. We are human beings, but can imagine gods. We die, but can imagine immortality.”
There has always been a gap between who we are as human beings and what we can imagine. Both the Holy Father’s “Theology of the Body” and the President’s Council’s Being Human are concerted efforts to help people understand who they are in a realistic way. We are creatures, not products. As creatures we are made by God. We are mortal, defectable, and sexual. Our life is improvable, but our being is not remakable. Our “Brave New World” begins with despair of our basic human reality. But out of the ashes of the old human being comes not a new and better human, but a grotesque travesty of its God-given reality.
Who are we? God knows who we are, and we should seek His wisdom.
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