Topic: When does the soul enter a body?

Date originally posted: March 7, 2002

Source of this posting: Moderator response to emailed question

Moderator who originally posted this source: J. Ruffo

Question:  I was told that the Church teaches that it does not know when life begins, but it still protects life from conception until natural death.  Has the Church ever officially taught that 'life begins at conception'?

Answer: 

Dear Luke, 

That’s right: the Church doesn’t know when life begins exactly, but still protects human life from conception to natural death.  Pope John Paul II in his encyclical “The Gospel of Life” in 1995, and an earlier “Declaration on Procured Abortion” in 1974, both acknowledge that you can’t scientifically verify when the soul enters the human person.  You can’t see your soul.  Both documents say that it is more likely than not that at the “first appearance of a human life” there is a personal presence, a body and soul unity.  And, even if you cannot prove this scientifically, it remains wrong to kill what is certainly human life from the moment of conception.

 Yes, the Catholic Church has consistently taught that life begins at the moment of conception.  Vatican II’s “Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World” in 1965 stated that “life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception”. 

 The 1994 “Catechism of the Catholic Church” states “Human life must be respected and protected absolutely form the moment of conception.  From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person, among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.” (#2270) 

More recently in that same 1995 “Gospel of Life” encyclical Pope John Paul said: “From the time that the ovum is fertilized, a life is begun which is neither that of the father nor the mother; it is rather the life of a new human being with his own growth… modern genetic science offers clear confirmation.  It has demonstrated that from the first instant there is established the program of what this living being will be.” 

A good web site to check out on this topic, Luke, is www.usccb.org/prolife.  Thanks for your question!