Marie Mason, founder of EnCourage in Melbourne – a help-group for parents and families of same-sex attracted people – says that ethical problems brought up by new biotechnology point to eternal truths about relationships.
By Marie Mason
My husband, Alan, and I have been married 46 years and are the parents of three and grandparents of five. I have a lot to do with my grandchildren and love them dearly, but I fear for them. I see the way the world has turned from a culture of life to one of death, and the dangers surrounding these children on every side are terrifyingly real. I thank God for our Catholic faith and the beautiful logic and love of Jesus’ teaching passed down through the safe hands of the Church, and we take every opportunity to pass the faith on to our dear little ones. Thank God, too, that they have good parents who try to live their faith with love in the family.
The truth of the dangers surrounding children nowadays was forcibly brought home to me one morning recently when I opened The Age and read the story of two gay men who outlaid $40,000 to go to a Mumbai fertility clinic where they collected eggs from one woman and rented the womb of another to bring forth two beautiful little twin girls who are now living with the men in an outer Melbourne suburb.
So, have children now become just another ‘product’ or ‘possession’? We know that no-one has the ‘right’ to be a parent because children are a gift from God, not another possession.
There was the absence of loving intimacy and self-giving that should have been there at their conception. The two men involved in this case might object and claim that the little girls are not just ‘objects’ for them.
But when life is objectified in this way, it is then only a short step to claim the ‘right’ to dispose of life when it is deemed to be no longer of any value. These girls will be deprived of their right to a mother in their lives, maternal grandparents and other relatives like cousins in the maternal side of the family. There are a whole host of practical and emotional implications on the lives of these children. What will their reaction be to the later knowledge that their biological mother and gestation mother were two different women who did it for money, probably as a result of poverty. And what about the confusion ahead for the girls and the teasing in store for them by their peers?
The questions they will ask about their family history – “Who am I? How did I get here?” will be very difficult to answer satisfactorily.
The girls will want to know their family history going back for generations. Have the men got all that ready to tell the girls about their Indian family history or is the clinic’s egg bank shrouded in confidentiality, revealing only a few basic facts?
The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that we are made to belong and we are not happy unless we feel we do. To belong, we need the integrity of the powers of life and love to be found in the right order of our family.
This integrity ensures the unity of the person and it is opposed to any behaviour that impairs it. The way these girls were created lacks the essential integrity of chaste life and love, even if the men had the best of intentions.
The missing ingredients are clear – the lack of one man and one woman who love each other, marry for life and, in love, create the babies they hope for; a stable, committed household where the strong and dependable man sees his chief vocation to be husband and father, and the strong and caring woman sees her chief vocation to be wife and mother; a home where the children are taught Jesus’ message of faith, hope and love, and the great virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance are daily practised by all the members of the family; where love of God and consideration for others are the chief principles of the family; where the sexuality taught is one of chaste loving relationships between friends, and the complementarity of married man and woman in the act of intercourse open to life.
The active gay relationship is not a sexually chaste one. Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom (CCC 2339). Either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy.
I feel sympathy for these men who seem to have a great need to nurture in some real way.
There are many nurturing jobs that could fulfill their needs. I know a same sex-attracted man who, in his spare time, has worked with the Missionaries of Charity in Melbourne and Aboriginal people in various parts of Australia.
I also know several same-sex attracted people who work in the Catholic apostolate of Courage Australia-wide. These are inspiring and friendly, chaste groups with priestly guidance who meet regularly to support each other and ensure that no one has to struggle alone.
The Church loves all her children and in groups like Courage, and the parents’ group EnCourage, gives Jesus’ message of love and care, especially to those whose struggle is greater than most.