Human Fertilization Debate in England: A small part

I going to share three posts that were written in response to the debate in England on the bill regarding human fertilization and embryology. The original site was Thinking Anglicans. The first comment is mine where I tried to point out a part of the bill which isn't getting much attention, the disclosure of information to children born as a result of these artificial reproductive technologies. The second and third comments were a response to mine.

The second one seems to say that she doesn't get what I'm saying. I think I answered the question she asks fairly clearly in the post. Read the penultimate line again and you will have the nib of it. The third post seems to get it. Too bad the discussion doesn't take it beyond this.

"I'm going to step out a little on this comment, nervously, and make a self-disclosure here that is somewhat relevant regarding my following concern. I am adopted... and was adopted in the United States in a place which has "closed records"... meaning that I have no right to know who my natural parents are. My concern with this bill doesn't concern what the BBC identifies as "key points". It doesn't concern what the Archbishop of Canterbury is talking about. It concerns the children who will be born using these reproductive technologies who will be precluded from knowing their genetic/biological roots. The applicable section of the bill seems to be the following: "Request for information as to genetic parentage etc. ... deleting five sections... (6) The Authority need not comply with a request made under subsection (2)(b) by any applicant if it considers that special circumstances exist which increase the likelihood that compliance with the request would enable the applicant— (a) to identify the donor, in a case where the Authority is not required by regulations under subsection (2)(a) to give the applicant information which identifies the donor, or 5 (b) to identify any person about whom information is given under subsection (2)(b). " I edited the bill because of excessive length... but please read it all. The concern I raise is for the child and his descendants. It regards the possession of personal, human, identifying history and how it is being controlled by the state and those interested in producing children so that the children (and their descendants) should come to think that they have no right to their histories. This is a human matter, that will affect potentially thousands of children. It is already affecting thousands right now. These policies must be examined. Most of society assumes a personal history, a heritage and connection to the past through relationships. When society closes that door, the door shuts hard. Information disclosure is not a scintillating part of the bill, but it has immediate and far reaching effect. It should be natural human right that everyone may know, without exception, their biological histories. This sort of thing affects not just one generation, but all subsequent. -- Posted by: mark diebel on Monday, 12 May 2008 at 10:33pm BST

Mark:

I understand (and sympathize with) your concerns, but what exactly are you concerned with--the actual identity (name, family, etc.) of the biological parents, or their medical information which may be of value to the adoptee for obvious reasons?

I ask, because I am familiar with several adopted children among my own children's friends, and I find that, for them, their "family history" is that of their adoptive family, not of their biological one. To them, their "personal history...a heritage and connection to the past through relationships" is through the family which has raised them and nurtured them and given them a place in the world. Their ancestors, for them, are the ancestors of their adoptive parents, not of their biological ones, at least as far as "personal history" is concerned.

Yes, those among them who have reached young adulthood are interested in the medical history of their biological forebears, but--to a man and woman--they appear to have no interest in them beyond that. Posted by: Pat O'Neill on Tuesday, 13 May 2008 at 4:02am BST

'.... This is a human matter, that will affect potentially thousands of children. It is already affecting thousands right now. These policies must be examined. Most of society assumes a personal history, a heritage and connection to the past through relationships.
' When society closes that door, the door shuts hard.Information disclosure is not a scintillating part of the bill, but it has immediate and far reaching effect. It should be natural human right that everyone may know, without exception, their biological histories. This sort of thing affects not just one generation, but all subsequent.'

Posted by: mark diebel on Monday, 12 May 2008 at 10:33pm BST

I think mark diebel's post is very important indeed. I quote what seems to me to be the nub of his post. We really must find a way to take on board and to honour such concerns, at a practical level also.

Many many people will want to know more of the identitiies, backgrouns and histories of their bilogical parents. And the need to know will kick in at varying points in the lives of individuals.

Adoption is far from straightforward emotionally and existentially. This is conveniently neglected by our societies.We must not compound this, by disregarding adopted people's feelings, sensibilities, and such deep needs.

Posted by: L Roberts on Tuesday, 13 May 2008 at 1:57pm BST

Daniel J. Smitherman wrote a book

That book is called Philosophy and the Evolution of Consciousness: Owen Barfield's Saving the Appearances (iUniversity Press: San Jose 2001) I had come back from one more professional development seminar with a renewed sense of what brought me into the priesthood. Important, perhaps essential, was Owen Barfield's little book.
Daniel Smitherman came to my attention via the internet. I was searching out work on Barfield. I bought his book sometime in 2002. My recollection of that reading was positive. He correlates Barfield's writing with more mainstream philosophical thought including Richard Rorty, Sartre, Thomas Kuhn, Paul Feyerabend. Not a philosopher myself I found his discussion helpful and interesting, and, in the end, I thought to myself, good effort. Then I put the book on the shelf and left it sit until now.
This response had in part to do with my being a parish priest. As such I didn't have any particular way to address the main focus of Smitherman's book which is to place Barfield in and among philosophers in order to indicate (plead) that he can and should be taken seriously among them. Barfield is a worthy philosopher, a serious thinker who argues something not that many are and at the same time he comes off as a human being. But Barfield continues to get short shrift.
I put Smitherman's book on the shelf but about that time I was having fantasies of taking a sabbatical. I saw that Smitherman lived in Montana, a place I've had on my mind since I hitchhiked through it at eighteen and since I read Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It. On that sabbatical I would travel to Montana, visit that big sky and the Anaconda stack, meet Smitherman for many cups of coffee and long discussion. I needed and longed for intellectual refreshment. There is something about meeting someone who seems to get it.
As things unfolded the sabbatical plan was cut short. The parish wasn't ready for me to take off for three months. My attentions went to other writings and work. Nevertheless, Barfield was always a prominent part of that.
What Barfield did was point me to a way of thinking. He helped me learn to think. And in that urgency I found something which wasn't wearisome or a repetition of things I've already thought or things someone else has. There was a well-spring that drew me repeatedly back.
I pursued studies of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Douglas Sloan, Stanley Grenz, John Franke, the Emergent Church Movement (or Emergent Church Conversation as they preferred), Brian Mclaren, James McClendon, Nancey Murphy, George Lindbeck with a few clergy and lay friends. At the same time I was preaching to and pastoring the congregation. Throughout these years has been the fall-out from 9/11 and the relationship of Christians and Islam. In the personal sphere I've been pursuing the roots of my life as an adopted person. I've also been a helping a friend work on a website dealing with Goethean Science.
So one day I get this email from Smitherman asking me to review his book. I took it off the shelf and decided to read it again.

Fr. Jake Stops his Audience

Father Jake Stops the World is a premier blog when it comes to TEC (the Episcopal Church). At Jake's, excellent news, opinion and commentary, as well as an active group of commenters. The other day Jake posted the story on the link above and I was surprised at the relative paucity of comments. The article by Richard Tarnas, Is the Modern Psyche Undergoing a Rite of Passage?, inspired a few people but left most with a ho-hum response and one or two with a strong negative. Tarnas, born in 1950, has been doing integrative studies for many years and teaches in Santa Barbara, California.
One of the responders who was thrilled also was a Unitarian Universalist pastor. She writes,

"This guy is saying absolutely nothing different than what any neo-Pagan or Wiccan is saying. The only difference is, he's putting it in the jargon of academia, and the neo-Pagans use mythological language (Gods and Goddesses and various mythical truths) to get the exact same point across.

So perhaps I should say what I've been absolutely dying to say: there's no need for Christians and Pagans to live in mutual animosity. None whatever. There never has been, and some of the Pagans actually have some wisdom to impart.

I could just bust out crying, this is just that thrilling to me. I wish I could give everyone a crash course on the elder or common Germanic futhark, for that alphabet is a series of mysteries or "runes" that speak of these processes that the human race goes through. The "mysteries" aren't all that mysterious, they're what we live through and with all the time.

But I can't do that, sadly, and this is why I struggle so hard. Both the indigenous Germanic tradition and the Christian tradition are very meaningful to me, and this person has basically written into these lines things I've been saying (only in a different way) for almost 20 years now."

Another comment reads, "What did I think of the article? Trivial ideas expressed in bombastic, pretentious language."

Later someone writes, "Psychology (Jungian?) masquerading as theology. Maybe the basic worldview of our culture is changing -- but that does not mean it is getting any closer to the truth. It could simply be changing. From my perspective, what we can hang onto is what God has revealed in the teachings and life of Jesus, as recorded and explained by the Apostles."

Jake writes, "But, to be honest, I'm now quite caught up in Tarnas, as he offers a way to set aside some of the rather petty Christian debates, which I'm personally beginning to find quite pointless. Human thought will continue to evolve. If Christianity, or Islam for that matter, will be part of that process, or a hinderance (sic) to it, is an interesting question, but really a rather abstract side issue. The future will arrive, if we like it or not. I suspect that the role of institutionalized religion in that future will be minimal. It seems to me the institutions are becoming more and more consumed with self preservation, and less and less engaged in the new thing that God might be doing in our midst."

Jake was pretty brave to post that article, I think. Was Tarnas's essay trivial? Hardly, since it tries to come to terms with the western worldview and where we might be headed. Does Tarnas come to terms with reality in any way? I think so. He says, "... it is not just a matter of intellectual understanding of this coincidence of opposites in our historical evolution. Rather, it is a matter of experiencing, suffering through the struggle of opposites within our consciousness. We must in a sense undergo a kind of crucifixion..." He is certainly much more interesting than some Christian writers in TEC. I'm not giving examples here right now. Those of you in TEC probably know something about it. If not, then file it by title.

Sometimes one does have to step back and attempt to take in the larger picture. That's what Jake (with Tarnas's help) is doing, I believe, even if his audience won't.

Autobiographical Notes

Fourteen months of my life is almost unknown to me. In the first six weeks of life I was kept at the hospital I think where I was "not thriving" and was having trouble with "lactose intolerance." Somewhere along the way I was removed to foster care where I was known as Charles Slade. Apparently I loved it there because I ate and grew cheerful. My foster mom wrote a letter to my adopting parents the day I was picked up. I read it and then lost it. Am still unhappy about that. They called me "Chuckie".
My adoptive brother, John, was a little like me: Japanese and Hispanic. According to non-identifying information I received two years ago, the agency workers were very happy about my placement. I fell asleep on my mother's lap the day they came to take me to my "forever home." Everyone has taken this as a sign of how natural a fit we were. These days I see it as a symptom of reactive attachment disorder.
Going home my parents said that I had "a cold" for a few days afterwards. There's a picture of me and I look sad and bewildered.
When I was with my grandson in July he was fourteen months old. When his parents left my wife and me with him for the evening he cried like mad and bowed to the door in tears until his mom and dad returned. Instead of crying for my natural mom I spent forty-eight years of my life looking for my her, quietly, secretly and ineffectively. My wife knew about it but she was the only one. How did I look? Whenever I entered a hospital I'd look for a Japanese nurse. That was one of the little tidbits handed on by the social workers. In all those years, of course, I knew it wouldn't pan out because she was probably far away. And I don't remember ever seeing one Japanese nurse.
It turned out when I did meet her that she wasn't doing nursing anymore and hadn't for many years.

Anthroposophy is a pastoral question

Anthroposophy should not be thought of as a theological problem but a pastoral one. Some of us have found that it helped us make more sense of the Christian faith. It is interesting and I think sad that some Episcopalians have felt a need to conceal the fact of their interest in Anthroposophy. Considering that almost no one in the Episcopal Church knows anything about it first hand, why would this be the case? Isn't the Episcopal Church a place where open minded inquiry is encouraged?
I remember a conversation with my god-father's wife late in her life. Having known her since childhood, she told me when I was about forty years old that she had been reading Anthroposophy for years but never talked about it for fear of her husband's career (he was an Episcopal priest.)

Towards a New Science

I'm working with a friend of mine on a project of his called New Science. I am doing reading for it. One relevant article he found is by Rustom Roy, called, The Twilight of Science -- Last of the "Gods" (Futures, Vol. 29. No. 6. pp. 471-482, 1997). He says, "...science is ending. Why? because it has succeeded beyond its own wildest dreams. Science has explained virtually everything about the physical world that technologists, engineers, and other scientists, certainly most citizens, needed to know. Our curiosity... is fully satisfied..." Roy goes on argue that a new science will take human inquiry to a new level and offers the suggestion of Rupert Sheldrake in Seven Experiments that Could Shake the World, "do animals have a special means by which they know when their mistress or master is coming?" He says, "this has been observed by hundreds but needs quantifying."
C.S. Lewis in his Abolition of Man (1955) argues that science has achieved so much in that last decades through a power to explain. But this ability to analyze and conceptualize is also the ability to explain things away. In the end, explaining everything away, seeing through everything, we are at risk of seeing nothing at all. When everything is transparent, everything is invisible. He argues for a regenerate science, something he only dimly guesses at. He points to Goethe and Rudolf Steiner.
What do you think about science? Has it reached an end? Or is there more for the human spirit to know?

Some Statements and Questions with the Episcopal Church in Mind

1) How we understand, or even just imagine, where we human beings come from is part of the normal human warehouse. Does the Episcopal Church interact with this or further any discussions.
2) How does the Episcopal Church (TEC) interact with the advance of knowledge or its termination?
3) Does the oft cited conviction that the scriptures "contain all things necessary to salvation" fall under examination and elaboration? In what way are these things contained? Can these things be abstracted from scripture and known apart from it?
4) The salvation which TEC proclaims is what exactly? What does salvation consist in and what is the soul?
5) TEC has no teaching on the origin of the individual. It assumes whatever society thinks. The Bible and tradition are silent about the origin of the individual. Is that true?