Spirituality

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Demographic decline as caused by 'procreation'

Friday, September 20, 2024Spirituality

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Our restricted notion of procreation is a vestigial Christian notion; it is a Christian heresy.

What do we do when we have children? I want to say that the two words we use for it, "reproduction" and "procreation," are almost at war with each other.
The word "procreation" connotes what theologians call a "secondary cause." Its underlying idea is that God alone (the primary cause) creates. But he gives his creatures powers as if to bring something into existence on his behalf (as secondary causes). The "pro" prefix in the word signals "on behalf of" the true Creator. To procreate is to create, on behalf of the Creator, with powers given by the Creator.
The Oxford English Dictionary reveals that when the word "procreate" was first introduced into English, it was used to refer to anything living. "We reede that wolfes and dogges in Francia, couple and procreate" says a source from 1576. Indeed, in a society that had a lively sense of an omnipresent Creator, any cause could be referred to as procreating. "That cause efficient," says A. Fraunce in a 1588 book of logic for lawyers, "doth either procreate or bring forth that which was not before, as God the worlde." The cobbler in his shop making a shoe, in imitation of the Creator, was procreating the shoe.

But over time, we have tended to restrict the word solely to human beings, engendering human beings. It would be most strange for me to say today that my purebred poodle, when in heat and sent to the breeder, is going off to "procreate." No, the hope is that she will "bear a litter." The spider outside my window laying an egg sack is not in the process of procreating spiders -- that is not how we speak any longer.
I believe a theological intuition underlies this restriction in the use of the word. In a vestigially Christian culture, as we discover more about "the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter," we become more starkly focused on the idea, as "the Catholic faith obliges (us Catholics) to hold," that "souls are immediately created by God," as Pope Pius XII put it in his encyclical "Humani Generis." Catholics might say they are impressed by the gap between material causes and the coming into existence of a rational soul, which nothing but the immediate action of God can bridge. Others sense intuitively that this new "personality" who arrives at birth (or, more reasonably, already at conception) is not under our direct control.
If to procreate is for human beings to act as auxiliary causes in such a way that a miraculous new rational being comes to exist -- then procreation is accomplished at conception.
But reproduction is something else. To reproduce is to bring into existence the same thing, but different in number, from what is reproduced. To reproduce a printed photograph is to make the same photograph on a different piece of paper. For manufacturers, to reproduce a prototype is for them to make the very same artifact out of numerically distinct stuff.
A mark of reproduction is that you can put the thing reproduced and the thing that reproduces side by side, and they look exactly the same. Obviously, procreation in the restricted sense in which we use it is not reproduction because the parents and the conceptus, put side-by-side, do not look the same. Parents who merely have a child have succeeded in "procreating" in our sense but not reproducing.
What would look the same as the parents? This and only this: the offspring, when grown, and married, and engendering his or her own child. Aristotle says that every living animal, if it is not maimed when it reaches maturity, aims to reproduce another like itself, which does the same in turn upon maturity so that an unbroken chain forms of similar but numerically distinct beings, which taken altogether imitate the eternal existence of God ("De Anima" II.4). Procreation as we understand it is a terminating process; reproduction is an inherently repeating process. Reproduction is like a recursive function in math: each term-yielding term yields a term-yielding term.
To reproduce is to engender a reproducer. This was the insight embedded in the traditional blessing, "May you see your children's children!" You have not attained happiness until you see that you have lasting fruit, but you have no assurance that your fruit will last unless your fruit is fruitful.
Our restricted notion of procreation is a vestigial Christian notion; it is a Christian heresy. We can bring it in line with the truth by expanding it as follows: "The glory of God is a man (homo) fully alive," said St. Irenaeus. To be fully alive is to be mature in knowledge and character, ready to take on serious responsibility, especially in the care of others. Therefore, the work of a parent -- genuine procreation, complete procreation -- is accomplished only when this is so. Not when a child is conceived, or born, or (as most commonly supposed) admitted to a prestigious university, but when their children are well married and ready to have children.
The alternative is infantilizing: If we suppose we reproduce simply when we engender a child, then logically, we must be children, too. It is also sterilizing. If, as a child, I am the terminus of my parent's lives, then what need for me to have children?

- Michael Pakaluk, an Aristotle scholar and Ordinarius of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, is a professor in the Busch School of Business at the Catholic University of America. He lives in Hyattsville, MD, with his wife Catherine, also a professor at the Busch School, and their eight children. His latest book is "Mary's Voice in the Gospel of John." You may follow him on X (twitter) @michael_pakaluk.