Readers of the Chronicle may remember articles I have written in the past about the bioethics conference for bishops presented by the National Catholic Bioethics Center and made possible through a generous grant from the Knights of Columbus.

These workshops, held every two years, are always an eye-opener as to what is happening in bioethics, an area that has potential for tremendous good and for tremendous evil. The topic this year was “A Universal Moral Language: Bioethics and the Natural Law.”

What is “natural law?” Simply put, it is the law of right and wrong that can be known by every human being. St. Paul speaks of it as being “written in the human heart” (cf. Rom 2:14-15). We are all capable of knowing a common foundational morality because we were all created in the image and likeness of God. Human beings are the work of divine creative Reason.

The first and general principle of the natural law is “to do good and to avoid evil.” With the growth of a moral conscience an upright person recognizes fundamental obligations like respect for human life, for institutions like marriage and family, for truth and justice. No claim to individual freedom, no majority vote, can ever override the fundamentals of right and wrong without doing violence to human nature and visiting devastation on us all.

Given the reality of natural law, what religion teaches about fundamental ethical truths is not an imposition dictated from outside the human conscience, but a norm that has its basis in human nature. Thus natural law provides common ground for moral dialogue among all people — people of every religion and people of no religion. Natural law provides common ground for all people of upright conscience to fight those things that threaten the moral foundations of society.

Let me give you a timely example from a recent article in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.  Arguing against same-sex “marriage” the authors state: “It has sometimes been suggested that the conjugal understanding of marriage is based only on religious beliefs. This is false. … Instead, the demands of our common human nature have shaped (however imperfectly) all of our religious traditions to recognize this natural institution. As such, marriage is the type of social practice whose basic contours can be discerned by our common human reason, whatever our religious background.”

The bishops’ bioethics workshop this year called attention to a number of issues: reproductive technologies,  abortion, stem cell research, same-sex attraction and marriage, euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide, and moral concerns about some provisions of new the health care legislation.

Let me summarize the presentations on just two related topics: in vitro fertilization (IVF) and embryonic stem cell research.

In 2009 the U.S. bishops issued a resource titled “Life-giving Love in an Age of Technology” (see www.usccb.org). We wanted to address the genuine hurt and frustration of infertile couples experience while at the same time alerting them to the serious moral evils involved in IVF.

What are some of those evils?

IVF is a multi-billion dollar industry in which a technician brings about a new human being in a laboratory dish. The process involves the participation of donors and surrogates who are often paid. It is estimated that ore than 40 million human embryos have resulted from IVF, but only about 4 million have actually been  born. Embryos are screened and “defective” ones discarded. Multiple pregnancies lead to selective abortions, and there are a high number of miscarriages. IVF also opens the door to genetic engineering and “designer babies.” Studies have indicated the higher likelihood of certain diseases for children born this way, as well as emotional concerns and personal questioning on their part about their origins.

In order to remedy infertility there is a moral alternative with a reportedly high success rate, yet it receives little attention. It is the “Creighton Model” based on a new women’s health science called NaPro Technology (natural procreative technology). It relies upon the standardized observation and charting of biological markers that are essential to a woman’s health and fertility. These “biomarkers” tell the couple when they are naturally fertile and infertile, allowing the couple to use the system either to achieve or to avoid pregnancy. These biomarkers also telegraph abnormalities in a woman’s health.

Recourse to IVF, by contrast, is the source of virtually all the human embryos that are destroyed by scientists to acquire embryonic stem cells for research. The fact that these embryos are unwanted by their parents in no way lessens their innate human dignity. All of us are embryos who grew up, or as one presenter put it, embryos are not “potential human beings” but rather “human beings with potential.” It has been reported in the media that workers in IVF or other facilities are sometimes unwilling to be the ones to discard or destroy unused embryos. The boss has to do it. If this is the case, I would say that the natural law is at work in consciences of these workers. Whatever their religion, or no religion, they know the difference between right and wrong.

The church is not opposed to stem cell research. There are four kinds of stem cells (adult, embryonic stem, embryonic germ and umbilical cord stem). It is only the use of embryonic stem cells that is morally objectionable. Even apart from the moral objection, embryonic stem cells are highly unstable and develop lethal tumors with great frequency. Up until now, no human being has ever been cured of a disease using embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells, on the other hand, have already cured thousands and hold even greater promise.

The pressure today is fierce to advance an agenda of morally objectionable threats to human life and dignity, to marriage and family, and to many other truths and values that can be known by faith and reason.

In the words of Pope Benedict XVI, “If by tragically blotting out the collective conscience, skepticism and ethical relativism were to succeed in deleting the fundamental principles of the natural moral law, the foundations of the democratic order itself would be radically damaged. To prevent this … all consciences of people of good will … must be mobilized … to create the necessary conditions for the inalienable value of the  natural moral law in culture and in civil and political society to be fully understood. Indeed, on respect for this natural moral law depends the advance of individuals and society on the path of authentic progress in conformity with right reason, which is participation in the eternal Reason of God.”

You are all in my prayers for a holy Lent.