Cloning QUESTION from rfoster February 1, 1999 News came on about human cloning. This is the question I hate to ask or possibly the answer because my cousin and I discussed this horrible experiment on human cloning. My cousin ask me this question. This human clone does it have soul? This question shocked me and disturbs me. If it not, could it be the devil himself? How can it have a soul since God did not create it? How can we stop this evil doing?
ANSWER by John-Paul Ignatius on February 4, 1999 Dear rfoster:
Does the human clone have a soul? The Pontifical Academy for Life wrote the following about the spirit of a human being in their paper, Reflections on Human Cloning
It should be noted however that, should the extension of cloning to the human species be desired, this duplication of body structure does not necessarily imply a perfectly identical person, understood in his ontological and psychological reality. The spiritual soul, which is the essential constituent of every subject belonging to the human species and is created directly by God, cannot be generated by the parents, produced by artificial fertilization or cloned. As in other artificial forms of creating human beings, like artificial fertilization, test-tube babies, and the like, God creates the soul Himself, that is a function reserved to Himself. We mnake create biological life in a test-tube, but only God creates a soul.
Regardless of how the person is born, God implants the soul into that person, which makes him a human person. God and only God can do this. The soul is NOT created in any other way, except directly by God. Impregnation in the usual way, does NOT create a soul, nor is a soul created in a test-tube. God individually and personally creates each and every soul and implants that soul into the biological person.
If we do commit the sacrilege of human cloning, I believe God will create a soul for such a person and implant that soul giving the clone true life, and not merely biological life.
How can we stop this? Well, the first line of attack is prayer. After that doing things like lobbying congress to pass laws preventing human clonings would be good; also lobbying the United Nations to pass an international cloning-ban treaty.
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