Immediate Animation and Delayed Hominization

Abstract

IN THE DISCUSSIONS which have recently flared up again about the morality of induced abortion, one of the most important questions is that of the time of animation. The main, though not the only, reason why abortion is condemned by Catholic moralists is that it amounts to the killing of an innocent human being. This supposes that from the moment of conception the embryo is a human person. Nowadays the great majority of Catholic thinkers take for granted that it is, that from the start the fertilized ovum possesses a spiritual soul (theory of animation). This opinion has not always been the majority opinion in the Church. Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, and many of the great Scholastic thinkers held that the human soul was not infused at the moment of conception, but at some time between conception and birth (theory of animation). This theory has always had defenders in the Church, from Aquinas to Alphonsus Liguori, from Cardinal Zigliara to Cardinal Mercier. It might well be due for a revival, and I would like to examine some of the reasons which induce me to expect this. The terminology used in the present discussions is rather unfortunate: the two terms immediate animation and delayed animation are misleading. Animation means that an organism is animated, has a soul (anima), is alive. Thus the term delayed animation seems to imply that the partisans of this theory hold that the embryo is not alive immediately after conception. Such is not their position. They claim that the embryo is alive, that it is animated from the very start, but the soul which animates it is not yet a human soul, is a vegetative or animal soul; the human soul comes later. Animation is immediate, is delayed. Hence it would be better to speak of immediate hominization versus delayed hominization. In the following pages I shall generally use this terminology.