Educational Resource
The Vocation of Marriage: An Approach to the Vatican Instruction on Bioethics (1987)
The Vocation of Marriage: An Approach to the Vatican Instruction on Bioethics by Janet E. Smith in International Review of Natural Family Planning, Volume XI, Number 3, Fall 1987
The objective reality of marriage is a many-splendored and complicated thing. It is also a much misunderstood thing. Here is not the place to rehearse the misunderstandings of the nature of marriage that are rampant in contemporary society. The challenge here is to determine what truth or truths about the objective reality of marriage need to be heard by our contemporaries and to explore how we might get them to see and accept the objective reality of marriage. The intent here is to use this information to understand better the Vatican teaching that in vitro fertilization (IVF) is morally impermissible even for spouses.
Janet E. Smith, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Program of Liberal Studies at the University of Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana. She presented the above paper at the Bay Area Conference on the Ethics of Human Reproduction held at Dominican College in San Rafael, California, July 27-31, 1987. The proceedings of this Conference will be in a forthcoming book published by Christendom College Press, Front Royal, Virginia 22630.