Posted on 04/26/2012 8:35:52 AM PDT by Abathar
FORT WAYNE, Ind. -- A Fort Wayne teacher who claims she was fired from a Roman Catholic school for using in vitro fertilization to try to get pregnant is suing in a case that could set up a legal showdown over reproductive and religious rights.
Emily Herx's lawsuit accuses the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend and St. Vincent de Paul School in Fort Wayne of discrimination for her firing last June.
Herx, 31, of Hoagland, Ind., said that the church pastor told her she was a "grave, immoral sinner" and that a scandal would erupt if anyone learned she had undergone in vitro fertilization, or IVF.
The Roman Catholic Church shuns IVF, which involves mixing egg and sperm in a laboratory dish and transferring a resulting embryo into the womb. Herx said she was fired despite exemplary performance reviews in her eight years as a language arts teacher.
Legal experts said Herx's case illustrates a murky area in the debate over separation of church and state that even the U.S. Supreme Court has failed to clearly address.
(Excerpt) Read more at theindychannel.com ...
Tacit confirmation that you are a moral relativist.
I think two things are hard for us Catholics to convey. One is that we hold human life to have very great intrinsic dignity. And the other is that we think, hold onto your hats, things are what they are.
From the first arises the idea that the means whereby which God has ordained that humans are ‘made’ also have very great dignity. The two people engaged in baby-making are themselves creatures of dignity, and the action can provide the locus where God repeats the wonder of creating a “rational soul,” and therefore has very great dignity.
Further, because humans are not a body + a soul but one “ensouled” creature, their proper actions are done with both will and body involved. So intimate an activity as sexual intercourse properly involves a commitment of will as intense and intimate as the commitment of bodies. Thus the essential problem with fornication is that it rends body from will and fragments the human being.
Therefore, even if no embryos were killed and if semen could be acquired without masturbation, IVF would be wrong because of a similar rending.
This may be hard to grasp because we have cheapened sex. But when we fell in love, and when we “made love” at least once we recognized the miracle that we can breed like sheep, but with a great deal more enjoyment than they seem to have, AND we can “mean it” in a way they never could.
As to the second. What I mean by “things are what they are” is sort of like this. When we read that the wealthy Romans at their banquets made themselves vomit so they we could eat more we think not only of the piercing smell of vomit or the pathos of the starving poor, but of the perversion of separating the pleasure of conviviality from nutrition. And we recognize that even if we could supply healthy nutrition by the means of IV drips and NG tubes, the “plene esse” of nutrition for humans is to eat and drink, optimally with friends.
Similarly, we have little difficulty saying that the heart is “for” circulation. If we could somehow separate circulation from the other functions of the heart (I can't think of any) we'd still say it “just ain't right.”
So, if I've established at least the idea (whether you agree with it or not) that sexual intercourse is imbued, we might even say “demands”, a very great dignity
AND IF I have sketched the notion of things being what they are so that the “plene esse” of intercourse is a new human miracle,
THEN I think I have sketched a ‘system’ in which it would be wrong to separate procreation from intercourse.
Tax-chick: How'd I do?
You don’t think she talked with anyone about it? Maybe she’s like those women you know?
I don’t believe I ever said I wasn’t.
I just dont remember the part where God said IVF was a sin.
Reason #856 to avoid the “Catholic” skools. Every teacher at my school is Catholic and completely capable of assimilating and conveying Catholic doctrine.
Better analogy.
Shoot. Now I want a bacon cheeseburger.
You might want to refresh your memory about what happened to Onan.
Give that woman a cookie!
What part of our free-will should God take away to make the world more peaceful?
If you say so. Personally, I’d say if the technology exists, then that means it’s capability exists in a physical universe God Himself created. This almost seems on the same level as Christian Scientists, but to each his own.
I don’t believe we truly have any. But we do need to believe we do, so we can have laws.
I believe everything that happens, is God’s plan. He knows what will happen.
"the rise of Protestantism" - Which also has a bloody history. Oddly enough, you chose to gloss over that fact.
Next time, do more than just a little research.
Well now, when did I say Protestantism wasn't bloody? And as for that, the Protestants were bloody and the Catholics weren't? LOL - then who exactly were the Catholics killing? And oh yes, besides killing the Protestants, they killed the "pagans" in every country they went. In Central and South America, that added up to how many millions? Or do you consider that the fault of the Spanish, even though they acted on Catholic orders? How convenient, since they replaced ALL of the holy sites there with Catholic Churches (what a coincidence). And, of course, there's the Cathars - or there were the Cathars, ha ha.. And then, let's see, there were a few incidents in the Holy Land, IIFC, but those were Muslims, so I guess the Catholics-killing-Muslims counterd the Muslims-killing-Catholics there. And then of course all of the female healers and female spiritual traditions... er, witches. And then, of course, the Inquisition. Other than that, though, yeah, we're pretty much looking at a spotless record for Catholicism, aren't we?
Next time, think of something to say other than a bumper-sticker insult backup up by a one-word pronouncement of claimed fact. You see, it's such a well known historical pattern, people might identify you as Catholic by that alone.
Just because you know that your child will fall down while learning to walk or ride a bicycle, does than mean that it is a plan that you want?
No, but then again I’m not God, nor am I privy to His plan. I doubt I could comprehend it if I was.
You didn't.
You glossed over it ... didn't mention it at all.
I think the bloody history of the so-called reformation (by which I mean the blood on the hands of the so-called reformers) is a little too important to leave out of a discussion like this.
A half truth is worse than an outright falsehood.
The rest of your paragraph, regardless of its veracity in so far as it goes, is just a bigger, more detailed half-truth.
people might identify you as Catholic by that alone.
That's interesting. I can't tell whether you're a protestant, a pagan, or an atheist ... maybe there isn't much difference among the three.
I can be certain, however, that you're a teller of half-truths.
So do I. Zucchini soup is a poor substitute.
SCOTUS already back the Lutheran Church in its firing of a teacher (who was also a ‘commissioned’ minister in that faith). While the facts of the 2 teachers situations are different, ultimately I would imagine SCOTUS would uphold any church’s right to hire teachers in its schools who adhere to the faith.
I also don’t understand why this particular teacher thought she had to ‘share’ her IVF with the priest or anyone at the school. Couldn’t that have been kept private between her, her husband and her doctors?
Interestingly, the Catholic Church has just as bloody a history as Islam. But the RCC is based ont he teaching of Jesus, which overcame its internal corruptiona and forced it (at least nominally) to drop the barbarism.The Catholic Church was bloody in spite of the teachings of Jesus. The Islam religion is bloody because of the teachings of Mohammed.
Thank you ... I’ll enjoy the cookie in my mind, although it almost seems like there’s something wrong with that when one could actually chew and swallow a real cookie!
You know what I’m really craving on the 17-Day Diet? Bread and wine! When I’m craving the Eucharist as much as Italian bread and Argentinian Merlot, I’ll consider the diet a success!
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