John Paul II stated that the Church had not made any affirmations on this subject in his encyclical letter, Evangelium Vitae March 25, Catechism of the Catholic Church. Here is what Nathaniel's comment , which I would like to add, has to say:.
The relevant section of Ott is page ; he says that this is sent certa but perhaps it's at a higher level now that it appears in the Catechism not sure how that works. A much clearer statement than this is needed in order to pinpoint the time when the soul and the body are united. The statement "immediately created by God" implies that only God and God alone creates human immortal souls yet does not say when that precise moment in time their souls were infused into their bodies.
In any case the Church demands that respect of human life from the very moment of it's conception until it's natural end must be maintained by all Catholics. Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.
Thus the Catholic Church has not pronounced on this subject, modern theologians are now in favour of the idea that human life commences at the very moment of conception. Human life is not human unless the immortal soul and the body are united. It is sometimes claimed that Thomas Aquinas believed that the unborn did not acquire a soul until several weeks after conception. This is not true. Aquinas believed that the unborn had a soul a rational, human soul from the time it was conceived.
However, following Aristotelian science, he and a few other Western writers thought that conception was an extended process that did not finish until forty or ninety days into the pregnancy: "The conception of the male finishes on the fortieth day and that of the woman on the ninetieth, as Aristotle says in the IX Book of the Animals" Aquinas, Commentary on III Sentences Aquinas was correct that the unborn receive their souls at conception; he was merely mistaken on when conception was finished, due to the lack of available science.
As modern medicine has shown, conception in humans occurs almost instantaneously, as soon as the sperm and the ovum unite. This joining may occur as soon as twenty minutes after the marital act. Aquinas and a few other medieval Western writers held the forty-to-ninety-day conception theory, but the biological discoveries of the nineteenth century proved it wrong. The view provides little comfort for abortion advocates today for a variety of reasons. It was based on primitive science. It draws a distinction between males and females that many today would regard as sexist.
It was held by only a few writers. No single theologian even Aquinas speaks for the Church. The writers who favored the theory also opposed abortion as intrinsically evil at any stage. The Didache, one of the earliest Christian writings outside the New Testament c. The Letter of Barnabas c. Numerous other references in the early Christian writers condemn abortion as murder. Whatever St. Thomas truly thought on the subject modern science is making great headway in the field of studies of the unborn.
Summa Theologica delineates St. His discussion of sin, morality, and murder indicates his views on the development of life within the womb.
Summa Theologica offers no defense of abortion as a permissible act at any stage in the pregnancy, but it does specify that once the fetus has become animated when he believed ensoulment of the living human being took place , it is homicide to kill it.
This measure of ensoulment or delayed hominization the belief that the embryo or fetus was not a human life with a soul until a particular event after conception is typically equated with the stage at which quickening took place—defined by Aristotle as forty days for boys and eighty days after conception for girls. It is the concept of delayed hominization that seemingly pits these comments of St.
Thomas Aquinas against the modern Roman Catholic Church; when it comes to ensoulment, the Church now defends the position that an embryo is infused with a human soul upon fertilization, making any intentionally procured abortion a sin of murder because it kills a living being with a human soul. As for Adam and Eve, the when their souls entered their bodies, the Church has of yet not even declared that they were created as the Book of Genesis states or whether they were born as a matter of course through evolution.
Pope Pius XII in his encyclical letter Humani Generis permits Catholics to believe that both Adam and Eve may have been born through a process of evolution and if this were to be the case, both would be the soul would be infused into their souls at the same time as the rest of the human race:. Here too we see that the souls of Adam and Eve were immediately created by God implies that only God and God alone creates human immortal souls yet does not say when that precise moment in time their souls were infused into their bodies.
This is a binding doctrine on all Catholics and is not open to negotiation. The Church in her great joy celebrates the Immaculate Conception of Mary with a great solemnity on December 8. We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.
Declaramus, pronuntiamus et definimus doctrinam, quae tenet, beatissimam Virginem Mariam in primo instanti suae Conceptionis fuisse singulari omnipotentis Dei gratia et privilegio, intuitu meritorum Christi lesu Salvatoris humani generis, ab omni originalis culpae labe praeservatam immunem, esse a Deo revelatam, atque idcirco ab omnibus fidelibus firmiter constanterque credendam.
Quapropter si qui secus ac a Nobis. Original Sin affects the soul. Mary received the gift of the Immaculate Conception at the very moment of her conception, nine months before her birth September 8. Thus it seems to follow that Mary's soul was created at the moment of conception. There also exists a medieval pious legend or tradition that Our Lord died on March 25, the Feast of the Annunciation. It is simply a pious legend. Although simply legend, it would mean that Our Lord had a human life here on earth of exactly 34 years , from the moment of conception to His dead on the Cross.
Both Jesus and Mary had real rational human souls! The soul of Mary would follow it's infusion of her soul as the rest of the human race. Our Lord's human soul most likely was infused at the moment of the Annunciation. Is March 25 the historical date of the crucifixion? Did the Annunciation and Good Friday coincide?
Even though the Church has not pronounced definitively on the precise moment in which the soul is infused into the fetus, it is all too obvious that the Church very strongly points to the very instant the sperm and egg are united within a woman. The last official pronouncement on this issue by the Catholic Church was in by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which reaffirmed the value of life from conception but did not settled the issue of the time of infusion of the soul in the body.
The second edition of the New Catholic Encyclopedia published in has a comprehensive article on the soul. One of the subsections is titled "Time of Soul's Origin". I quote in extenso from it. The article first discards the view of the pre-existence of the soul i. Thus, it follows that. The soul is created by God at the time it is infused into matter, i. Exactly when this happens is more controversial, and still an open question with scholastic philosophers of high standing on both sides.
All agree that since the soul is the principle of vital operations, the human soul is present when there is specifically human operation.
Because there is evidence of specifically human operations from the first moment of conception, a majority assert that the human soul is present then.
Then the article mentions the debate on when one can refer to the embryo as "human". This is relevant because having a soul is essential for the human being. The article says:. Aristotle thought that he was unjustified in asserting true human life in the male before the embryo was 40 days old and in the female, before 80 to 90 days.
Thomas followed him in teaching a succession of forms, the embryo having first a vegetative soul and later a sensitive one, before the human soul finally arrives.
Modern studies in embryology reveal that at the moment sperm and ovum unite and the two pronuclei fuse, an orderly process of development begins with a definiteness governed by the pattern of the DNA molecule.
The new individual is characterized by the resulting unique constellation of genes and chromosomes before the zygote divides for the first time. Embryology considers the living body from the one-cell stage onward to be a human individual, not some general plant or animal that will become human in 40 or 80 days.
If one were to wait for clear evidence of rational activity before concluding belief in the existence of a human soul, it would not be a matter of days, but of years. As long as the embryo is clearly the product of human generation, it has a human nature even if severe organic defect prevents it from ever exercising any rational activities, as in the case of some developmentally disabled individuals. Examination of the fetus through its early stages gives no clue as to when one can draw the line.
The available evidence seems to force one back to the very moment of conception. A minority view points to the problems of fragmentary life, transplants, divisibility of lower animals such as worms, and human identical twins as arguments in favor of the mediate animation held by St. Thomas Aquinas, which seems to handle these difficulties more neatly.
The debate over whether the soul is immediately infused or arrives at some later point in embryological development was not the most pressing moral problem faced by the Church during the rise of legalized abortion.
Nonetheless, the much referenced footnote 19 of the Declaration on Procured Abortion took note of the debate between proponents of immediate and delayed hominization and stated that:. It is not within the competence of science to decide between these two views, because the existence of an immortal soul is not a question in its field.
It is a philosophical problem from which our moral affirmation remains independent. One finds here two important points: the question of when the soul is infused is not one that can be decided by any empirical means, and even if the soul were to be infused at some later point in embryological development, the zygote that is present at fertilization is surely a human life. As such it deserves the same respect as is due to any other human being. With the discovery of human genome, and the recognition that it contains the entire code for the epigenetic unfolding of the human being, there was a growing conviction among many Catholic theologians that personhood must begin at conception.
The document addressed a panoply of moral issues related to modern reproductive technologies, but it took special note of the question of the origin of the human soul. Certainly no experimental datum can be in itself sufficient to bring us to the recognition of a spiritual soul; nevertheless, the conclusions of science regarding the human embryo provide a valuable indication for discerning by the use of reason a personal presence from this first appearance of a human life: how could a living human creature not be a human person?
The Magisterium has not expressly committed its authority to an affirmation of a philosophical nature, but it constantly reaffirms the moral condemnation of any kind of procured abortion. Thus, while leaving the door open for the possibility of later animation, Donum vitae placed the weight of the Vatican on the side of those who view a personal presence in the human zygote; however, because this document did not make its judgment definitive, the debate on this important topic continues.
Finally, it is clear that this issue is to remain central in theological and philosophical debate. The article ends with the following passage:. The prospect of so-called therapeutic human cloning, in which human clones are made and destroyed for research purposes, and the desire among certain members within the scientific community to exploit the unfortunate plight of frozen human embryos, has greatly heightened the stakes in this debate and promises to keep the question at the forefront of philosophical and theological discussion well into the twenty-first century.
Now, that the point of reference where human life begins is dogmatically clear. We declare, pronounce, and define that the doctrine which holds that the most Blessed Virgin Mary, in the first instance of her conception , by a singular grace and privilege granted by Almighty God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the human race, was preserved free from all stain of original sin, is a doctrine revealed by God and therefore to be believed firmly and constantly by all the faithful.
With these three Divine Revelation pointing clearly to "conception" as the point of reference where soul is immediately infused whether created, formed or pre-existent. CCC "The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not "produced" by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.
Since the Clergy and the Laity are guided by Canon Law, all the faithful must assent to the faith of the Church as written in Canon A person must believe with divine and Catholic faith all those things contained in the word of God, written or handed on, that is, in the one deposit of faith entrusted to the Church, and at the same time proposed as divinely revealed either by the solemn magisterium of the Church or by its ordinary and universal magisterium which is manifested by the common adherence of the Christian faithful under the leadership of the sacred magisterium; therefore all are bound to avoid any doctrines whatsoever contrary to them.
In closing, the Divine Truth alone alone straight from the mouth of an Archangel Gabriel is enough to convince us that human life started right at the moment of conception and even further clarified by the Church thru Dogmatic Definition stating that "at first instance of conception" the soul was immediately created or infused.
Bartunek Our Patron Saints Contact. Gospel Reflections Retreat Guides Videos. Q: If I may, a two-part question: 1. When does the human person acquire a soul? Answered by Fr. Average Rating. Leave a Reply Cancel reply You must be logged in to post a comment. Get the Answers! Get notified of future Ask a Priest answers via email.
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The possession of the soul at all stages of development is also indicated by natural reason, once one understands what a soul is. From an ultimate perspective, a human is comprised of a human soul serving as the substantial form of a human body cf. Summa Theologiae I , as indicated in Genesis The fact that a soul is needed to turn a human body into a human has sufficiently penetrated the popular consciousness that people recognize the presence of a soul is tied to the right to life.
This leads to the argument in which pro-abortion individuals try to turn the concept of the soul against pro-lifers by arguing that there is no empirical way of determining the presence the soul, making it a matter of faith or personal opinion. One response to this argument is to take on the concept of the soul. According to biblical theology, the soul the spirit is the life-principle of the body. This point of biblical theology was infallibly proclaimed, using philosophical terminology, by the Council of Vienna — The Council dogmatically defined that the soul is the substantial form of a living human body—the metaphysical form that gives the body its humanness and its life DS [D ], CCC When the soul departs, the body ceases to be living, loses its integrity, and begins to decay.
Given this, a pro-life advocate may say that there is an empirical test for the presence of the human soul. Though the soul itself cannot be empirically observed, its presence can be detected just as an electron itself cannot be directly observed, but the presence of an electron can be detected through various scientific means.
The test is simple: If you have a living human body, it is made alive by a human soul. This reduces the issue to the question of biological humanness.
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