By Judie Brown
In his Catechesis on the Angels, Saint John Paul II taught:
The Church confesses her faith in the guardian angels, venerating them in the liturgy with an appropriate feast and recommending recourse to their protection by frequent prayer, as in the invocation “Angel of God.” This prayer seems to draw on the treasure of the beautiful words of Saint Basil: “Every one of the faithful has beside him an angel as tutor and pastor, to lead him to life!”
A tutor and a pastor—someone who loves each of us even when we appear to be unlovable to others. Most people understand this, for without exception, each of us has fallen into sin, and many have then recanted. And during the entire time, our guardian angel has remained steadfast and true.
While we are grateful to the Lord for our guardian angel, we are also horrified at the things that happen when the beast takes over within the psyche of someone who perhaps once knew right from wrong but who now seems to have lost her way.
This is particularly true of those who persist in their failure to recognize the humanity of the individual human embryo. Though this baby is unrepeatable, some in our midst view her as nothing more than an item to be examined and then retained or rejected at will.
The designer baby craze is one example of such beastly emanations. According to a recent report, “A U.S.-based biotech company has announced the launch of Nucleus Embryo, a company that screens human embryos for desired genetic profiles, a practice the Catholic Church teaches violates human dignity and contributes to a eugenic mentality.”
To be clear, a eugenic mentality arises from the beastly mindset of those who believe that the human race needs to be improved by human beings rather than affirmed as a gift from God.
Nucleus Embryo is offering people who are undergoing the IVF process the chance to select their embryos by using software that highlights various genetic markers linked to health, with the aim of reducing preventable genetic diseases.
In other words, the embryonic human being becomes no more than a different type of product than one might take from a supermarket shelf. We would not choose a can with a dent or a frozen food package with a hole in it, so why not test out the acceptability of a human being using the same sort of tactics? What could possibly go wrong!
In this era of the commercialization of human beings, we can see yet another result of the elongated road that started with the invention of the birth control pill and has now added throwaway people to its brutal path. It seems that when human beings decide that they know better than God, there are no limits to the savagery that continues to occur. While those who practice this would say that medical advances are humane, we hasten to point out that treating certain people as though they were subhuman is certainly not a step in the right direction.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains that “angels are spiritual creatures who glorify God without ceasing and who serve his saving plans for other creatures.” It goes on to quote Saint Thomas Aquinas who wrote, “The angels work together for the benefit of us all.”
This statement includes every person from his beginning until God calls him home. This undeniable truth leads us to say to those who celebrate scientific advances that eliminate some of us: Remember that God is an all-knowing Father and He expects us to emulate Him, not the evil one.
We are designed by God to follow Him and to avoid that which offends Him. Listen to your guardian angel; do not listen to the beast.
A helpful way to remember this is to keep in mind what Professor Peter Kreeft once said, “The national anthem of hell is, ‘I did it my way.’”