I recently finished reading The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief by Dr. Francis S. Collins. If that title piques your interest, you should read the book. 
The book brings up many issues worthy of thought and pondering, but one which really stood out for me was the issue of the ensoulment of identical twins. I was disappointed that the book does not provide any answers, or even much coverage of the alternative viewpoints of this problem, so I went to investigate the matter myself.
Ensoulment is important to consider because many pro-life proponents state that abortion is murder. If the conceptus has a soul at the time of abortion, then the abortion would be homicide (I don’t reckon that anyone would attempt to argue that an entity with a soul is not human). An entity’s lack of a soul might strengthen the argument that it is not human, and thereby potentially nullify the proposition that abortion is murder.
How twins come about
A web search for “how twins” produces some informative links which describe the biological processes involved in the creation of twins.
In the case of the creation of a single baby, a sperm fertilizes an egg, the egg implants, and off the whole thing goes on its way to being born. The fertilized egg is called a zygote.
Twins are formed in one of two ways. Dizygotic twins are formed when two individual sperms fertilize two individual eggs. In the case of monozygotic twins, a single sperm fertilizes a single egg, just like in the case of a single baby. At some point during early development (a point which varies from case to case), the collection of the cells of the baby splits apart, and the two resultant parts continue on, growing as two distinct people (two babies are born).
The twin ensoulment problem
Any intellectually satisfactory theory of ensoulment must be able to explain the ensoulment of monozygotic twins. There are several possible explanations, including:
- The single zygote is ensouled exactly at the point of fertilization, and the soul also splits into two souls at the point when the zygote or blastocyst splits.
- The single zygote is ensouled exactly at the point of fertilization, and at the time of splitting, one part retains the soul, while the second part is ensouled at that moment with a second, distinct soul.
- The single zygote has no soul at the point of fertilization, and at the time of splitting, both parts are ensouled. Alternatively, each part is eventually ensouled some time after the split, perhaps at different times.
- The single zygote is ensouled with two souls, and at the time of splitting, each part retains one soul.
The Catholic position on ensoulment
The Declaration on Procured Abortion (from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), published in 1974, states:
[Paragraph 13] expressly leaves aside the question of the moment when the spiritual soul is infused. There is not a unanimous tradition on this point and authors are as yet in disagreement. For some it dates from the first instant; for others it could not at least precede nidation.
A recent Catholic blog post states that there are two main theories of ensoulment:
The first is called the “immediate animation, immediate ensoulment theory”; the second, the “immediate animation, delayed ensoulment theory” (also called the “serial ensoulment theory”).
Using material from notes for a medical ethics course at the International Catholic University, the blog post concludes that the [more] Catholic position is to hold the “immediate animation, immediate ensoulment theory”, despite the often raised point that Saint Thomas Aquinas believed in a delayed ensoulment. Unfortunately, although the course notes acknowledge that the existence of monozygotic twins poses a problem for the immediate ensoulment theory, no harmonization between this theory and monozygous twinning is proposed. The issue is essentially left untreated:
Inasmuch as monozygous twinning appears to be an aberration, rather than the norm, considerations of its ensoulment may also depart from the norm.
There does not appear to be at this time an official Catholic teaching on ensoulment.
Conclusion: ensoulment is not pertinent
Given room to speculate on the ensoulment of monozygotic twins, my inclination is to believe that the zygote is ensouled with two souls at conception. Although present science doesn’t seem to permit us to determine whether a single zygote will or will not split and become twins, God himself knows. Just as a single human individual would be ensouled at the time of conception, when all of his or her potentialities have begun the processes of actualization, so would a pair of people be ensouled, even though their unitary physical form would appear to us as indistinguishable from that of a single person.
Even though an official Catholic position on ensoulment in general remains as yet unspecified, paragraph 13 and footnote 19 of the Declaration on Procured Abortion make it clear that this uncertainty and lack of knowledge do not make abortion morally licit.
[Supposing] a belated animation, there is still nothing less than a human life, preparing for and calling for a soul in which the nature received from parents is completed
[On] the other hand, it suffices that this presence of the soul be probable (and one can never prove the contrary) in order that the taking of life involve accepting the risk of killing a man, not only waiting for, but already in possession of his soul.
[Even] if a doubt existed concerning whether the fruit of conception is already a human person, it is objectively a grave sin to dare to risk murder.
No related posts.
This article was quoted in a forum thread in August 2008. Reknowned Catholic apologist Patrick Madrid argues that the Catholic Church's teaching is that humans are ensouled at conception. (I personally remain unconvinced that there is a clear teaching from the Church on ensoulment. In my opinion, Patrick's argumentation did not definitively prove otherwise.)
See the EggInfo.info web site.
Interesting take on ensoulement of twins. As the link from Henry suggests, a discussion of the ensoulment of chimeras is also warranted.
A flaw in your preferred twin argument is that if God ensouls a zygote that will become identical twins with 2 souls, a zygote that will become identical triplets with 3 souls, etc, then God might simply not ensoul a zygote that will not survive for whatever reason, including non-spontaneous abortion.
Perhaps you could explain the phenomenon more accurately if you left out such archaic ideas as religion & souls.
Bill: I’m not sure how it necessarily follows that a zygote which will die soon or quickly would not get a soul. That seems like an arbitrary statement.
I’ve come across a thread in a Catholic forum in which the ensoulment of identical twins is discussed. Some interesting points of view are exchanged there.
Pistos,
Hope it does not annoy you to have comments on an older post. (In truth, I was drawn here by your Ramaze tutorial, which is teh awesome)
Regarding Bill’s comment, while it does not necessarily follow, it certainly isn’t arbitrary. Logical necessity is not oft found in this world. The question that he presents is as follows:
If God provides the appropriate number of souls for the amount of babies the egg will grow into, then for an aborted zygote, why isn’t that number 0?
Also, do counterfactuals count? If a fertilized egg would have split down the line, were it not to have been aborted, then does it have multiple souls, even though it never ends up having multiple bodies? If yes, then why? (if we’re relying on God’s foreknowledge of actual events, which shouldn’t include counterfactuals) If no, then why not 0?
Bill, thomblake: I see now what you guys are trying to draw attention to. Thanks for the clarification, thomblake.
I think there would still be some ensoulment under those conditions. Otherwise, we’d also have to posit that full-grown adults have no soul, on account of them having an eventual death.
Pistos,
I too, hope it does not annoy you to have comments on an older post.
I think Bill and thomblake have a point. I agree that if ensoulment did not occur at some point we’d also have to posit that full-grown adults have no soul, since they eventually die. However, we still must account for when the ensoulment occurs.
If ensoulment occurs at conception, we still have the problem of identical twins. If a zygote that splits into more than one fetus is given more than one soul, it implies that if God provides the appropriate number of souls for the amount of fetuses (or babies) the egg will grow into. This in turn implies that for a zygote that’s aborted before the fetus stage, God should give it zero souls.
The only solution to the problem that I can see is that God ensouls the fetus after conception, when the embryo is too developed for splitting to be biologically possible.
Tony: I’m not bothered by late commentary. Thanks for chiming in on the discussion.
I’m afraid I still can’t concede to the possibility of zero souls based on this line of reasoning.
If a squirrel eats an acorn, we can’t declare that the acorn was never an oak nut because it didn’t eventually grow into an oak tree. The potentiality was always there. In the same way, aborting a zygote that would have grown into identical twins doesn’t change that it would have done so.
Side note: Dr. Collins has since established The BioLogos Foundation.
Is Mary the Key to Understanding When Ensoulment Occurs?
Herbert F. Smith, SJ writes in his book, Pro Choice, Pro Life that “[T]he human soul is spiritual and therefore comes directly from God by an action of creation. But when? At conception? God has not revealed the moment.” (p. 37). My answer to Father Smith’s comment is: “Mary has!” Unfortunately, unlike the words of scripture, the Church has never reflected on the words Mary has spoken through time to see if they contain a deeper value than initially thought.
To understand the words of scripture, theologians use a process that involves a “constant rereading” through which the “word gradually unfolds its inner potentialities, already somehow present like seeds, but needing the challenge of new situations, new experiences and new sufferings to open up.” Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, Foreword xviii-xix (2007). Indeed, Pope John Paul II’s reflection upon Jesus’ intent in using the words “from the beginning” in Matthew 19 gave rise to the Theology of the Body.
If the Church treated Mary’s words like the words in scripture and engaged in a “rereading” of Mary’s words regarding her conception, the Church may arrive at a definitive answer as to when ensoulment occurs.
My own “rereading” of Mary’s words began in the Great Jubilee year 2000. In October, I visited the Chapel of the Rue de Bac in Paris where Mary entrusted St. Catherine with the making of the Miraculous Medal. The words “Oh Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee” are painted in large letters on the arch above the altar. While I had been wearing the Medal for twenty years by then, I never once thought about why Mary selected those specific words for the Medal. Sitting in the Chapel, I immediately thought “that is the oddest combination of words to want on a medal. Why would you want that? Why do you want to be known as ‘conceived without sin’? Why not ‘Queen of Peace’ or ‘Mother of all’ or ‘full of grace’?”
Shortly after returning from Paris, I was sitting in on a class at St. Charles Seminary in Philadelphia and the young priest related that the Church had never defined the timing of ensoulment, and that for all we knew, a baby could receive his soul weeks after conception. My experience at the Chapel at the Rue de Bac came back to me. I wondered in using three simple words, Mary was declaring a truth that applied to herself and the rest of humanity, i.e., that Mary, and all members of the human race, received their souls at conception, with the distinction being that Mary’s soul was immaculate, while the soul of everyone else bore the stain of original sin?
Since 2000 when I visited the Chapel at the Rue de Bac, I have come across other instances in which Mary appeared and spoke about her conception. There may be others, but these are the ones that came up in the normal course of my life:
(1) In the 1300s Mary told St. Bridget of Sweden that she was “conceived without original sin, and not in sin” Revelations of St. Bridget 14 (Tan 1984).
(2) On December 9, 1531, when Mary appeared to Juan Diego on December 9, 1531, some scholars believe she identified herself as the Immaculate Conception, and that a fundamental error in translation of Juan Diego’s native tongue has resulted in the use of the title “Our Lady of Guadalupe.” Francis Johnston, The Wonder of Guadalupe 46-48 (Tan 1981). (Apparently unaware of Mary’s statement to St. Bridget and the words on the Miraculous Medal, Mr. Johnston erroneously concludes: “It hardly seems likely that the Virgin would have referred to herself explicitly as the ‘Immaculate Conception’ since that dogma has not yet been defined. It was only after this dogma had been promulgated by the Church in 1854 that she publicly acknowledged (in 1858, at Lourdes) this unique dignity which God had bestowed on her.”)
(3) In 1830, Mary selected the words “conceived without sin” to appear on the Miraculous Medal she entrusted to St. Catherine Laboure.
(4) In 1858, our Blessed Mother selected the words “I am the Immaculate Conception” when identifying herself to St. Bernadette.
Mary’s decision to appear on these occasions (and possibly more) and make statements about her conception caused me to start looking for an analysis by the Church of Mary’s word choices regarding her conception. When I could not find any, I believed that I must have missed something, so I began writing to priests and lay people who I thought could direct me to the material I sought. No one could point me to anything. Most, such as the Rector of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, Father Pavone, Jeff Cavins, who appeared at my parish, and Patrick Madrid, the brother of a friend, simply did not respond to my written inquiries.
Father Donald Calloway, MIC, the Editor of the book The Dogma of the Immaculate Conception in the Life of the Church, advised me in 2007 that I had “a very insightful way of understanding when ensoulment occurs through the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception” and stated that he “wish[ed] I could point you in some direction for further reading, especially from the Church on this matter, but I’m afraid I do not have those resources. . . ”
I must be clear here. I do not analyze ensoulment through the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception. Rather, I analyze Mary’s words to see if She was saying something about the timing of ensoulment to the saints to whom she spoke and to the communities in which the saints lived.
Like Father Calloway, Father Tadeusz Pacholczyk of the National Catholic Bioethics Center also missed this difference in approaches when he recently wrote to me saying: “the dogma of the Immaculate Conception . . . can theologically and summarily be formulated as: ‘the immaculate ensoulment’. It does not deal with the question of the timing of ensoulment, either for Our Lady, or in general. It simply affirms that ensoulment, whenever it may have occurred for Our Lady, occurred in a manner different from yours and mine.”
Notably, Father Pacholczyk’s email to me made no mention of Mary’s intent in selecting the words she did, or what her audiences understood her words to mean at the time she appeared.
In that Mary appeared several times to talk about her conception occurring without sin or immaculately, I find it curious that many in the Church believe that when Mary appeared again and again using the same words, she was not talking about her conception, but rather her “ensoulment.”
As a preliminary matter, if Mary meant to talk about her ensoulment but wanted to make no mention of the timing of it, she could have easily used the word “ensoulment” or “ensouled” in speaking to the saints. Mary could have told St. Bridget “It is a truth that I was ensouled without original sin.” Mary could have requested that “ensouled without sin” appear on the Miraculous Medal. And Mary could have declared herself to be the “Immaculate Ensoulment” to St. Bernadette. Had Mary done so, I would agree that the “when” of her ensoulment would remain unknown, and more importantly, untold.
The fact that Mary did not use the word ensouled in speaking to St. Bridget is particularly intriguing given the debates that raged in the 1200s regarding the purity of Mary’s conception/ensoulment. See generally, Fr. Paul M. Haffner, S.T.D., The Anthropological Significance of the Dogma of the Immaculate Conception, in The Virgin Mary and Theology of the Body 139-53 (Donald H. Calloway, MIC ed., 2005). Mary’s use of the words “It is a truth” before “that I was conceived without original sin” suggests that Mary was weighing in on the debates and purposely selected “conception” as the word which most fully represented the truth she meant to convey.
Additionally, if we accept that Mary, as Mother of God, and Queen of Heaven, knows what is happening on earth at the time she makes an appearance, and that Mary knows what will happen on earth after she makes an appearance, does it not make sense that at the time of her appearances in the 1300s, 1531, 1830, and 1858, Mary would know that in the future “laws that protect abortion . . . [would] rest on several false claims including that there is no certainly regarding when life begins, that there is no certainty about when a fetus becomes a person?” 2008 Pastoral Letter regarding Respect Life Sunday of Bishop Joseph Martino, former Bishop of the Diocese of Scranton, PA.
Mary would know. All mothers know that their children will do foolish things before they do them. All mothers warn their children against the danger beforehand. When the matter is important, a mother will leave a reminder about what she said even though she gave verbal instructions.
If revealing the moment of ensoulment was Mary’s intention by repeatedly selecting the words “conceived” and “conception” and then pairing those words with “immaculate” and “without sin,” the economy of her words to annunciate this reality was simply stunning, and thus, easy to miss. Perhaps that is why Mary felt the need to keep repeating herself and to leave visual reminders of her appearance (Juan Diego’s Tilma, the Miraculous Medal, the spring at Lourdes).
As Pope Benedict noted in his discussion about the Trinity people are sometimes slow and somewhat lazy in interpreting heavenly matters: “If there must be short tenets for expressing the tenets of our faith, then they should at least be attractive, exciting, something whose importance for men and for our lives is immediately apparent.”
Abortion, frozen embryos created during in vitro fertilization, and now stem cell research are all matters which warrant an examination of Mary’s word choices to see if they contain a deeper value that has been previously unappreciated. If you feel the same, I invite you to Petition the Church on this matter. I sent my own Petition on December 8, 2009 to:
Cardinal William Joseph Levada
Prefect, Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
Piazza del S. Uffizio
11, 00193
Roma, Italy
Cardinal Justin Rigali
Chairman of the Committee for Pro-Life Activities
Archbishop of Philadelphia
222 N. 17th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103-1299