Abortion and the embarrassing saint.

On a street corner in downtown Chicago, an elderly woman lurches toward me with pious intensity and presses a pamphlet into my hand. Such an occurrence is so frequent that one fails to register the event until later. Eventually, I take stock of the day's "literature." In fact, nothing quite lifts the spirits like perusing the abusive ultimatums and grave injunctions contained in these propaganda leaflets.

A few days ago, I was enjoying my three-by-five-inch "Practical Guide for the Sacrament of Penance in the '90s" when an irony of the strongest magnitude struck me. The "guide" is a series, of questions, that the devotee must inquire of his or her own conscience. Just after asking myself whether I had "physically injured or killed anyone" recently, I read that "regarding abortion, check with your priest to see if you were automatically excommunicated." Apparently, canon 1398 states that persons party to an abortion are automatically excommunicated. Like most other people forced to endure the interminable discourse concerning abortion, I understand that the Catholic church forms a crucial flank of pro-life ideology. But as I read the pamphlet, Saint Thomas Aquinas leapt to mind-and therein crept the irony.

What does a thirteenth-century saint have to do with contemporary temporary debates over abortion? O ye of little faith: we need look no further than the controversial Supreme Court case of Webster v. Reproductive Health Services.

The Webster case, you recall, questioned the constitutionality of certain statutes regulating abortions in Missouri. The restrictions upon abortions (for example, public facilities may not be used for abortions even if no public funds are spent) were upheld by a five-to-four Supreme Court vote. Media coverage of the dissenting votes focused around Justice Harry Blackmun's cryptic "I fear for the future" sermon. But the key passage in the Missouri law was quietly and persistently targeted by Justice John Paul Stevens. The crucial passage-actually contained in the preamble of the Missouri statute-set forth "findings" which stated that the life of each human being "begins at conception" and that "unborn children have protectable interests in life, health, and well-being." In other words, zygotes are people too.

Justice Stevens argued that the Missouri "findings" were unconstitutional, and he appealed to a remarkable (yet little noticed) argument. At first, his reasoning seems rather academic-indeed, this is undoubtedly why the media centered on Blackmun's more dramatic comments. Had we given Stevens' "illustrational" argument closer examination, however, we would have found it to expose the irony lurking just beneath the surface of pro-life ideology. And guess who Stevens appeals to in his subtle dissent? Why, Saint Thomas Aquinas, of course.

The irony, quite simply, is this: how many clinic-blocking, doctor-harassing, "pro-life" Roman Catholics know that the entire history of their church denies that the zygote is a person? Since history can be so painfully embarrassing, I suppose we should all be thankful for that most soothing of afflictions, the short memory.

The current official position of the Catholic church is published in the 1987 Vatican-issued Instruction on Respect for Human Life in Its Origin and on the Dignity of Procreation. In the Instruction, it is stated that "every human being" has a "right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death. . . ." Now contrary to most writers and readers of abortion-related discourse, I am not going to line up on either side of this insoluble question (sorry to disappoint the simple-minded dichotomy purveyors). In fact, to leap in at this point, boldly asserting or denying the personhood of the zygote and then weighing that conviction against the woman's personal rights, is precisely the move that has consistently clouded the clear argument of thinkers like Justice Stevens. What I wish to point out, as Stevens subtly attempts to do, is that the official position of the church-from the church's very conception up until Pope Pius IX's 1869 decree-held that the fetus did not become a person until late in the course of gestation. And this tradition (lasting almost two millennia) of church "findings" should give the modern Catholic some pause over the "eternal veracity" of their current findings. Ask almost any Roman Catholic if the saints believed in personhood at conception, and they will scoff, "Of course." But they would be wrong.

I wish to focus primarily on Saint Thomas, but even earlier church fathers held that "personhood" developed late in the pregnancy. Saint Augustine and Saint Jerome, for example, both believed that destruction of a fetus could not be considered homicide until the fetus had fully formed. Prior to this "full formation," the fetus held no greater moral significance than an irrational animal. That is not to say that the fetus held no moral status, for all living things, according to the faithful, are products of God's handiwork and consequently deserving of reverential respect. But this line of thinking (which Ronald Dworkin, in his new book Life's Dominion, finds more intelligible than other abortion-related arguments must be understood as quite different from the "personhood argument." It is different because the criteria for moral respect widens radically from the sanctity of "persons" to the sanctity of "life." Moreover, such a broadening of the criteria for moral respect opens the door too widely for the pious believer, who must now sin nightly as he devours his sacred sirloin.

In dredging up the uncomfortable past creeds of Augustine, Jerome, and Aquinas, I am not suggesting that changes in dogma automatically manifest church fallibility. Rather, to expose the irony - indeed, the contradiction - in church doctrines is a crucial first premise in a wider and more important argument about the relation between church and state. It is for this reason that we must visit the embarrassing saint.

Thomas Aquinas has been the official Catholic theologian for the past 600 years. Aquinas was given the thankless job of making the potentially heretical ideas, of Aristotle (then only newly discovered by European intellectuals) consistent with church doctrine. Anyone who doubts his current influence on Christianity need only visit a Catholic college campus, where the mandatory core-curriculum is drenched in Thomistic ideas, or simply ask any priest to recite one of Aquinas' proofs for the existence of God (he will no doubt be able to recite five). The pope himself, in his October 1993 encyclical, cites Aquinas no less than six times.

Aquinas, writing in that encyclopedic manner so beloved by philosophical types, has much to say (and many distinctions to draw) concerning just about everything. In his magnum opus, the Summa Theologica, he tackles (among many other issues) the formation of the human soul.

Generally speaking, Aquinas has three basic strategies. Faced with a vexing question, he either appeals directly to his reasoning skills (which were, make no mistake, quite awesome), or he appeals to scripture, or he appeals to "The Philosopher." By "The Philosopher," Aquinas - and everybody else at that time - meant Aristotle. In the case of the formation or genesis of the human soul, Aquinas quite rightly defers to the wisdom of "The Philosopher." Appealing to Aristotle on this issue is not merely falling back on the authority of antiquity; it is, in fact, a respectful submission to a renowned specialist. While Aquinas spent most of his time cloistered in classrooms and monks' cells, Aristotle spent most of his time elbow deep in the entrails of animal specimens. In fact, much of Aristotle's careful embryological observations are still completely accurate and insightful. So when Aquinas turned to the issues of fetal development, he did so with Aristotle's biological texts close at hand.

In the Thomist-Aristotelian tradition, it is the faculty of "reason" that distinguishes humans from all other animals. Reason, then, is the defining essence of what it means to be a human person. The "soul," according to Aquinas, is not a friendly ghost that enters the body at birth and departs after death; it is a principle of life that all animated creatures possess in varying degrees. For example, plants have souls but they are "nutritive souls" - they have the power of growth. Animals have souls that are not only nutritive but also allow them the powers of sensation and locomotion. Human beings, in Aquinas' view, have the nutritive level of soul (because they are alive), the sensate and locomotive levels of soul (because they are animals), and, finally, the rational level of soul (which makes them human-something "more" than animal).

This Thomistic view of the soul is not the sort of thing most Christians envision when they consider such matters; it seems that the "ghost in the machine" metaphor has taken stronger root in the common consciousness. But the idea of the soul as inseparable from the body (the animating principle of the body) is still very much the official church doctrine. Pope John Paul II, in last year's October encyclical, reiterated the Thomist position on the relationship between body and soul. The pope states that a person's, "rational soul is per se et essentialiter the form of his body." He then states that "reason and free will are linked with all the bodily and sense faculties." Aquinas draws out this principle to its conclusion when he observes that, if the "bodily and sense faculties" do not develop until the eighth week, then "reason and free will" also do not develop until that time. Consequently, if reason and free will are the defining properties of human persons, then in the first eight weeks of pregnancy no human person per se exists. Obviously, this conclusion remains undrawn for the contemporary Catholic.

The "levels" of soul, according to the Thomist position, develop from lower to higher through the course of fetal development. This temporal development follows the basic embryological law of epigenesis (which Aristotle argued for and which modern biology currently affirms). Epigenesis means that embryological development occurs in a pathway from the less specific to the more specific. In other words, in the chronological order of gestation, I was alive (a nutritious blob) before I was an animal (capable of sensation and self-movement), and I was both these things before I developed into a human being (having the faculty of reason). The more "specific" (species-defining) traits develop last in the order of time. Now all this may sound quite antique in tone, but it is only a different way of stating what current biology asserts. Human capacities develop at different times in the course of embryological growth; the finished product is not all there at the outset. Regarding the powers of soul, Aquinas states that "the more imperfect powers precede the others in the order of generation, for the animal is generated before the man."

To be blunt, Aquinas as believed that in the course of gestation we are first plants, later become animals, and finally become human persons. If we arrest the development of a human zygote early on, we find, according to Aquinas, a nonspecific animal - or, if the arrest is very early, a nonspecific plant. Human ensoulment occurs, according to the saint, not at conception but at six or eight weeks. This discrepancy - between classical and contemporary Catholic theories of personhood-development - is enough to make the pope cringe.

The Renaissance church even codified the saint's "findings" into laws at the Council of Trent, stating that an individual would not be committing homicide if he or she aborted a fetus prior to its human ensoulment (six to eight weeks). Justice Stevens makes note of the Trent council in his dissenting Webster opinion and uses this embarrassing chapter of Catholic theology to make the crucial point about the separation of church and state.

Having acquainted ourselves with Aquinas' theory of "person formation" (a theory which, I hasten to add, might currently land Aquinas in the company of heretics rather than saints), we can turn to the wider and more significant argument. We must ask not whether women's rights outweigh fetuses' rights but whether religious ideology; should ever be allowed to dictate law.

The current church ideology holds that personhood begins at conception. This ideological (not scientific) "finding" has been written into Missouri law - a secular law which governs not only Christians but Jews, atheists, Muslims, Hindus, and others. But if we want to infuse secular laws with religious convictions, let us see what an alternative set of convictions might produce. We won't pick a different faith, like Hinduism or Buddhism, for that will be too easily dismissed by the Christian right as pagan confusion. Instead, we will pick our alternative set of ideological commitments, from the church fathers themselves. Saint Thomas Aquinas' "findings" could just as easily be dressed up into the form of legal statutes (as they in fact were at the Council of Trent), with the added attraction of being founded - unlike the Missouri findings - on some empirical study of biological development. And if the saint's findings were now codified and sanctioned by the state, then abortion up until the eighth week would be entirely justified and protected.

Christians, it seems, want their religious ideology sanctioned by the state; when "outside" (non-Christian) ideologies are posed, they are often dismissed as heathen and godless. But when a Catholic ideologist of Saint Thomas Aquinas' stature pronounces against the current personhood credo, Christians cannot so easily shout "heretic" and consign him to burn in some obscure level of hell.

Pope John Paul II, in a November 1993 anti-abortion speech given to the U.S. bishops, stated: "Fundamental moral principles, in fact, are an essential ingredient of the formation of public policy, as was clearly understood and intended by your nation's Founding Fathers." But if we take the pope seriously on this point, then we must recognize that the official Catholic "moral principle" at the time of our nation's founding was that abortion was permissible up to the sixth or eighth week of pregnancy. This is in direct conflict with the "fundamental moral principles" of current Catholic thinking - yet the pope seems to suggest that those earlier principles should have been written into law. We must conclude either that the pope is unaware of church history (which is very unlikely) or that he does not mean what he says here.

Therefore, it seems, Christians do not really want their ideology sanctioned by the state, for that would entail the inclusion of an embarrassing contradictory tradition. Rather, they really want to have only their most recent visceral responses and intuitional moral impressions stamped onto the gavel of state authority. Opening the door to this sort of idiosyncratic contingency is death to the secular state.

Of course, today's Catholic, steeped in the American faith in "progress," might simply bite the bullet and dismiss the entire history of the church as wrong and the current belief in "sacred conception" as correct. This attitude toward church fathers is akin to our position regarding early scientists (for example, geocentrists), thinking them naive and uninformed about later discoveries (heliocentrism). But then the question arises as to how one justifies a complete reversal in church dogma. In science, such a justification is easier to understand, for new instruments are developed, new observations made, new tests devised, and so on. But the "findings" of religious groups have no such tie to empirical data, because religion has to do with matters of the spirit and these are, by definition, not open to scientific method. Science can "progress" because it admits all along that it is only tentative, that new findings can influence commitments; but religious tenets are supposed to be "absolute." When they contradict each other from one era to the next, we cannot call that "progress" but, rather, plain old "politics."

If jurisprudence is based upon religious creed rather than secular reasoning, an alternative and opposing creed - one which, in this case, runs counter to pro-file ideology - could just as easily rise to the level of law. The sweet irony of this particular issue lies in the fact that the alternative creed comes not from outside but from within the sacred dogma.

What is currently grounds for automatic excommunication, as my Catholic instructional pamphlet assures me, was, under the Council of Trent, entirely permissible. Not only is it impossible possible for the secular state to mandate the inconsistent beliefs of different faiths (for example, should we all eat pork or abstain?), but the radical inconsistencies within a single tradition prove too perilous for constitutionality. If the state took its lead from religious ideology, on what grounds could it arbitrate between, say, Aquinas' abortion-tolerant position and the pope's abortion-intolerant position?

When the religious right seeks to imbue the state with the "truths" of its spiritual life, it should be reminded (not least by the embarrassing saint) that those "truths" are not eternal verities. Instead, they are subject to the radical contingency of history and the inscrutable logic of individual psyches and church politics. The religious right might find itself in a far worse situation if contrary religious "findings" regarding abortion were mandated by the state.

Branch Davidians, for example, are a religious group, and as such they are supposed to hold the same status as conservative Christianity in the eyes of the state. The beliefs of Branch Davidians have no secular justification because they are based, like Catholicism, upon faith and authority. Indeed, these antinomic beliefs are actually detrimental to secular society, and - at the risk of receiving a fetus in the mail-I must say that Davidians and Catholics have a logically equivalent basis for their beliefs, which is Kierkegaardian irrationalism.

The argument, simply stated, is this: if state policy is opened up to the influence of conservative Christianity, then it is also opened up to every other ideology. If you find this argument alarmist, I refer you to Contra Costa County, California. Recently in Contra Costa County, conservative Christians attempting to get state funding for their private schools (via the "voucher" plan) are being supported - much to their embarrassment - by a coven of witches. The witches claim that, if the Christians are given state money for the operation of private schools, then they should also be given state money to fund their educational program of math, reading, and pagan theology. And, of course, they're right.

If Christians push too hard against the wall of separation between church and state, they might find themselves living under the authority of a "Koreshian"-type constitution, since both positions are equally defensible (or indefensible) from a secular or civic perspective. Worse yet, conservative Catholics may yet find themselves living under the authority of a Thomist constitution, wherein popes and senators would combine in an effort to mandate the pro-abortion "findings" of St. Thomas.

Stephen T. Asma holds a doctorate in philosophy and teaches humanities at Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois.