Prosthetic Bodies and Marriage

I recently re-watched the first season of the sci-fi anime series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. It's an excellent piece of work. While the show is neither Christian nor Catholic, it raises interesting issues for Catholic theology. One such issue concerns prosthetic bodies and marriage.

A number of characters on the show are cyborgs, or humans with fully functioning prosthetic bodies. Most of their humanity, physically speaking, is in the approximate 3% of their brain that is still the original flesh-and-blood they were born with. Everything else is their prosthetic body and brain.

While this technology is far from real-life, very similar technology is likely to develop as the science of engineering artificial human body parts develops.

So the question then becomes whether marriage and the marriage act would be appropriate for persons with prosthetic bodies?

In Catholic ethics, intentional frustration of the procreative faculty of a given act (by artificial contraception, or by other methods) is considered an intrinsic and grave evil.*

Prosthetic bodies, at least as imagined by Ghost in the Shell, are certainly not impotent, as at least a few episodes of the series seem intent on pointing out. But they do seem contraceptive or rather to act as contraceptives, or at least to be sterile or infertile.

Sterility in itself would be no problem for a Catholic couple. But if the prosthetic body itself acts as a sort of contraceptive, this seems to change the game. I suspect for those of us who call ourselves Catholics, the morality of marrying and the marital act where prosthetic bodies are concerned will hinge largely on the question of whether those bodies are considered artificially contraceptive, or merely infertile or sterile.

Perhaps the situation is most analogous to that of women who have had hysterectomies.** In this case the  intent of the procedure in the first place would seem to play a role. If that is the case then erhaps that procedure, not the marital acts following it, would be the act which one could properly call right or wrong or should at least take the primary focus in theological-ethical discussions.

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* This doesn't mean all contraception is the worst evil ever (lots of things are grave and intrinsically evil in Catholic tradition), but it does mean that it cannot be considered in Catholic moral tradition to be a "good" thing.

** One might ask why I'm not noting vasectomies here--I considered it, but a good key difference is that as far as I know, while not all men in marital situations are expected to reverse them, vasectomies are not candidates as moral actions in Catholic theology, whereas hysterectomies can be for medical reasons.

First Loyalties

So I'm starting to think that patriotism is overrated. I'm not actually saying it's bad. It isn't bad to like one's country and want it to succeed. But it seems like it gets put higher on the lists of some than is actually healthy. I tried today to write out a list of where my actual loyalties lie, or at least if not, where they should lie if I were practicing virtuously the Christian ethic:

First loyalty: Our Lord Jesus Christ, Lamb of God, and with him the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Second loyalty: His pilgrim Church on Earth--when it functions as it ought, as the Christian church most fully revealed. (Which churches this applies to in my mind, and in what degree, depends on the degree to which they are one, holy, catholic and apostolic.)
Third loyalty: Family and friends. Except in rare circumstances, this loyalty ultimately goes in that order.
Fourth loyalty: Humanity in general.
Fifth loyalty: United States of America.

To be honest, I'm not even sure the USA gets spot #5. I think maybe that spot belongs to Creation. Part of my point is, it was an interesting exercise. But I definitely noticed, while doing it: My country comes out nowhere near the top! This doesn't mean I'm unpatriotic, but it does mean that government, however well intentioned or well executed, never takes precedence over humanity or God. Christ, the Church, and people take precedence. (A note on loyalty #2 is that the "as it ought" was added expressly to make clear that when the Church abuses people, as it, being a human institution, does, my loyalty is to the persons being abused rather than the malfunctioning church.)

Now to be fair there are two things on this list I'm unsure of. (1) I feel like maybe #3 and #4 should be combined, if I'm really talking about the Christian ethic, not just what I happen to do as a Christian. (2) I'm not sure if #2 and #3 are in their correct relative places; I already listed one special circumstance where #3 trumps #2. However, for theological reasons I believe they are at present in the correct place, in the sense that the demands of the community of faith, when it functions in correct proportion to its needs and the needs of humanity at large, take precedence over the demands of other institutions and persons.

There is one thing, however, I am sure of, which is that if all these things could be properly ordered in one's life, there would be the need for only one loyalty, with all others absorbed under its banner: Loyalty to our Lord Jesus.

If anyone else has a list of loyalties I'd love to know what they are. You can of course feel free to disagree completely with mine!

Defining Pornography

I like the definition I (loosely) culled from John Paul II's pre-Papacy Love and Responsibility:

1. "Media which portrays the value of the sexuality of the person above the value of the person as such."

 I feel that this definition is a better one than "I can't define it, but I'll know it when I see it." It seems like it runs the risk of being a little bit too broad, so let's narrow it a little bit.

2. "Media which intentionally portrays the value of the sexuality of the person above the value of the person as such."

Still seems a little too broad: Isn't sexuality itself a part of the person? Therefore, it seems like some artworks which aren't actually pornographic might fit this definition just by placing emphasis on sexuality in particular. Let's refine it once more and see if we can't get something better.

"Media which intentionally portrays the value of the person as an object of sexual use above the value of the person as such."

I think this one works. Note that here when I say "sexual use" I include lust. So if something's designed to incite lust (which is disproportionate longing for or indulgence in sexual pleasure) rather than to simply emphasize the beauty of the person via sexuality (e.g. a Greek nude statue), there's a problem. I think that this definition, if anything, is too narrow: Certain borderline works which have a good deal of a chance of inciting lots of lust are still not labeled pornography. So one last definition:

3. "Media which, by design or by careless accident, portrays the value of the person as an object of sexual use above the value of the person as such."

In other words, if a scrupulous person is drawing a nude artwork, and accidentally creates pornography, then it doesn't seem like it's really pornography in the moral sense. But if they are fully knowledgeable that what they create will probably be pornographic or a massive catalyst for lust, and they do it anyway, then we've got a careless accident. The best analogy coming to mind (probably a rather poor one) is a defensive driver getting into an accident despite their best efforts to the contrary, versus a reckless driver getting into an accident despite their best efforts to the contrary.

So, serious question: Can someone name for me something that isn't at all pornographic or disproportionate about sexuality and the human person, that fits definition number three? This isn't obviously a huge pressing issue in Christianity, but it's a matter of definition I've been wondering about for quite some time, because when I've shared similar (but not equivalent) definitions with people, they usually get dismissed as being too broad. So if anyone has thoughts, let me know. I kind of have an urge to make a list, so I'm going to put item #1 of "things that fit definition #3" down; feel free to comment to add an item, you will be credited. Obviously skin-magazines like Playboy are givens; here I'm looking for not-obvious examples.


1. Jessica Simpson video for "These Boots were Made for Walkin'."

Love: An Example

If you're reading this, then you probably know already that I'm a decent-sized fan of the American version of The Office. Now when I read Karol Wojtyla's Love and Responsibility awhile back, I was almost obsessed with the philosophy I was absorbing, and certainly annoyingly intrigued, and it definitely created a shift in the way I saw our culture's portrayal of love. I'm definitely a tad surprised it's taken me this long to make a post about it. But anyway, now I get to post about and about L&R and about The Office. Now let it be known that reading that work has definitely affected my view of this show negatively, but it's affected my view of just about every bit of culture that even goes near what Love (the virtue) or love (romantic) means. I'm not saying I think writers endorse everything their characters do, or that I expect characters to be perfect on TV shows; they patently don't and patently aren't. But it's worth seeing where we can find examples in pop culture of stuff like Love. So here's an example of dialogue from the second season of that I think helps to illustrate amor benevolentia, or "love as goodwill."

To give some context: Jan Levinson, a regional supervisor, has come to the office to seek women who are ambitious and who might play a role in corporate life. She has urged Pam to try and get some graphic design schooling...later on, her fiance, Roy, talks her out of it, which is followed roughly by a talking head in which she rationalizes her decision. So here's the quotation, shamelessly culled from The Office Quotes. Ladies and gentlemen, Season 2, "Boys and Girls."

Jim Halpert:	So you're not doing it.
Pam Beesly:	How did you know?
Jim Halpert:	Why not?
Pam Beesly:	Just, like, no big reason. Just a bunch of little reasons. Roy's right there's no guarantee it's going to lead to anything anyway.
Jim Halpert:	Roy said that.
Pam Beesly:	What. You have something you wanna say?
Jim Halpert:	You gotta take a chance on something sometime Pam. I mean do you wanna be a receptionist here always?
Pam Beesly:	Oh excuse me! I'm fine with my choices!
Jim Halpert:	You are?
Pam Beesly:	Yeah.

This is then followed by another talking head in which Pam again tries to rationalize the decision, and winds up crying on-camera. I couldn't find the clip just by itself anywhere, so the best I can do if you want to get an idea of the sound/look of it is to go here and listen to an audio clip.

Love as goodwill, as I can gather, seems to mean showing Love to the other person over and above whatever attraction you have to them, or whatever desire you have for them. In a romantic context it's one possible motivator for saying "If you really love someone, you want them to be happy, even if it's not with you." In an un-romantic context the best example I can think of is telling people what they need to hear, even if they might hate you for it. This example is definitely a little bit of both; certainly there are motivations to what Jim is saying that go beyond pure goodwill, and it's pretty clear by implication that he still wants her, if only subconsciously. But it's a very slight impurity in this case, if you will, and in the scene it's pretty clear that he wants to motivate her more than he actually wants to be with her. This set of scenes remains one of the most profound that The Office cast/crew ever pulled off, in my mind. It is also one of the purest examples of love as goodwill that I've ever seen portrayed in pop culture. There will be more examples to come in the future from shows that aren't The Office. Hopefully I can find one or two with a YouTube clip available.