Starting to crank up the thinking machine again (my tired brain) which has been on vacation for a few days, took a glance at one of many new books I’ve obtained and hope to read soon, A Catholic Modernity by Charles Taylor. In the very opening pages I read:
Redemption happens through Incarnation, the weaving of God’s life into human lives, but these human lives are different plural, irreducible to each other. Redemption-Incarnation brings reconciliation, a kind of oneness. This is the oneness of diverse beings who come to see that they cannot attain wholeness alone, that their complementarity is essential, rather than of beings who come to accept that they are ultimately identical.
. . . It seems that the life of God itself, understood as trinitarian, is already a oneness of this kind. Human diversity is part of the way in which we are made in the image of God. (pp. 14-15)
This is one of the things I love about Catholicism: the embrace, worldwide and throughout history, of so many diverse people in the Body of Christ, each adding their own unique image and individuality to the great Image of Christ that we together are weaving over the course of history. Each one of us is like a colorful, irreplaceable thread in the tapestry of Christ, without which His image would be less complete.
And I am reminded of something else, something I read about the embryo years ago which really struck me, in a paper entitled “Epistemological Questions with Regard to the Status of the Human Embryo:”
It is precisely the original singularity of each person, incapable of being reduced to a common genus, that provides the basis for the possibility and richness of dialogue. It is the personal originality of every human being that makes it interesting to enter into relationship precisely with him in particular.
. . . The value of the person as such lies therefore in his existential incommunicability, which renders him unique and irreplaceable. The person has value and is to be affirmed for himself, and not for the generic nature of the human species or for some accidental quality which he possesses.
. . . The certainty of the human and personal identity of the embryo takes the form of an anticipated credit granted to the embryo so that he can develop himself and manifestly become that which he already really is, in germ.
I’m used to hearing about how the human embryo is a human being, a person. But it is more: it is an individual, unique, unlike any other, irreplaceable. It is the individuality of the person from which it derives its greatest worth and dignity, because individuality is unrepeatable. There will never again be another person quite like you or I.
And that is a beautiful argument for the preservation of unborn life: to preserve the individual, because we love and treasure individuality, want to preserve and nurture it so it can grow, and thrive, and add its uniqueness to the beautiful spectrum of life we share.
