Last week I mentioned the latest attack on human life, which takes the form of embryonic stem cell research. As can so often happen, there is a great tendency to emphasize the supposed good that can come of such research and to dismiss the evil. This tendency is in direct opposition to a very basic moral principle that evil may never be done in order that good may come out of it. In very common language, we teach that the end does not justify the means.

This lesson was taught to me very early in grade school, and it has been repeatedly reinforced throughout the years.

It is important to consider how we view or understand evil. It is quite easy to recognize that evil which manifests itself as a direct attack on someone or something we value. It is easy to see that a burglar who breaks into the home and steals or damages property has committed not only a crime but an evil act. It is easy to see that an armed gunman who takes hostages and shoots innocent bystanders has committed a crime, a legal violation, and perpetrated a great evil upon innocent souls. These are evil actions, and there are very few who would deny their evil. The two scenarios represent two different classes of evil. One attacks property and the other attacks persons. They are both, at least potentially, moral evils; that is, an evil act has been committed, and if those who did them acted with knowledge and free will then we also have an assignable moral evil. In Catholic terminology, sin has been committed.

There is clearly a difference between the two evils committed. Property is one thing, persons are quite another. For a justifiable reason, property may be destroyed. For that matter, the owner of the property does not need justification to destroy the property that is his. I own the watch on my wrist, and because I own it I have the legitimate right, should I choose, to take it off and smash it with a hammer or a brick or some other weighty object. I could not legitimately file an insurance claim following such an action, but I could not be prosecuted for destroying my watch. I do not know of any law prohibiting watch smashing. Smashing the watch is a physical evil, but it is not a legal evil nor a moral evil. Smashing someone else’s watch is a physical evil, a legal evil and a moral evil. I do not have the right to smash someone else’s watch, and no one, except me, has the right to smash my watch.

The simple destruction of property is a physical evil, but is not necessarily a moral evil. Firemen periodically burn down older buildings as a means of honing fire-fighting skills. A house is destroyed, which could be seen as a physical evil, but the intention and the goal certainly justify the action. This applies to property. This does not grant to any roving pyromaniac the right to determine which buildings should continue to stand and which should be destroyed.

Persons are an entirely different matter. We know instinctively that harm perpetrated against persons is more evil and more horrific than destruction of property. Our society has tried to convince us that persons are really property, that we literally own ourselves and that we have the right to do with ourselves whatever we will. If we are to be viewed as property then we also must acknowledge that the “owner” is not ourselves but God who has created us and sustains us in life. Even the laws prohibiting suicide have as their foundation an understanding that we are not property; we do not belong to ourselves and may not, therefore, destroy ourselves. There are, of course, great efforts to overturn this understanding, and laws have been enacted which permit self-immolation even with the assistance of others. There is a very great danger in beginning to see ourselves or others as property. In reality, we have already gone through a tremendously destructive period of our own history where certain persons were seen as, treated as and legally recognized as property. Even now pre-born children are seen as, treated as, and for all practical purposes legally recognized as property. This is evil.

Legally one could say that animals are owned as property. A person raising chickens has the right to kill and eat the chickens. This ought to be done humanely, and the animals have, interestingly, a legal right and the protection of law to be treated humanely. Animals are property and yet there are laws protecting them from various forms of mistreatment. Notice the word, we treat them humanely not because they are human but because we are human and to mistreat them is a negative reflection on ourselves, it is inhumane. Even animal experimentation for the sake of the production and testing of pharmaceuticals and research must be conducted in a fashion which does not inflict unnecessary harm on the animals. Sometimes harm to these animals is tolerated for the sake of human well being, but the harm is never desired or seen as a cause for rejoicing.

Animals are property, and even as property we afford them certain rights and protections. This is as it should be. Humans, however, are clearly not property: we are persons. The infant in the womb is not property. He or she is a metabolizing biological entity of human origin, i.e., a human being.

An embryo of human origin, with a human genetic code, is either property or person; it must belong either to the mineral, the plant or the animal kingdom. Within the animal kingdom, it would find its place in the appropriate phylum, a unique class, a particular order, its proper family, its rightful specific genus, its own unique species and would, of necessity, be classified by science as biologically human. This human embryo could not fit anywhere else in the schema of the animal kingdom. I am not aware of any creature that begins its life in one category and changes categories as it grows.

A caterpillar is always in the same category as the butterfly, even though the two bear little similarity to each other. Since human persons cannot be property, then this metabolizing creature which shares the same genetic makeup must be afforded the same protection as the others of that specific genetic makeup. To do otherwise is to assign arbitrarily the label of property to certain members of this gene pool. Animals may be property but human animals may not. A failure to properly respect the property of others is disrespectful. The failure to properly respect the so-called rights of animals to appropriate treatment is sometimes inhumane. The failure to properly respect the rights of those who share our same genetic code and to treat them as property is an evil of the highest order. We must know with certainty that the human embryo, a metabolizing biological entity of human origin, is not property, and we must remember that it is not justifiable to do evil, in this case to kill, even if great good could come of it.