Rob is on to something when he says we’ll soon be living in a world where women will “have some of their eggs harvested and frozen in their twenties, spend a couple of decades building a career, and then use the eggs to become pregnant in their forties or fifties.” And there’s reason to think human reproduction might see changes that are even more sweeping.

Consider two new biotech books: Ronald Green’s Babies by Design: The Ethics of Genetic Choice, and John Harris’s Enhancing Evolution: The Ethical Case for Making Better People. (I’m reviewing both of these for the Weekly Standard.)

As preimplantation genetic diagnosis—where IVF embryos are tested for disease before being implanted in a uterus and the diseased are discarded—becomes more widespread, germline (sperm and ova) genetic therapies are perfected, and human cloning is eventually achieved, Harris predicts that parents will “avoid the risk of the genetic roulette that is sexual reproduction and opt for a tried and tested genome of proven virtue.” When all of these options to ensure a genetically healthy child are available, Harris asks “could it be ethical not to be a designer?” The end result, Green explains, is a “world where sex is for fun and reproduction usually takes place in the laboratory.”

Is the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre really right around the corner?

The New York Times has a funny article not on a devotional practice, but on the consequences of a devotional practice. As we all know, devout Muslims pray five times a day in the direction of Mecca as one of the five pillars of their faith. The news regularly runs footage of crowds kneeling in devotion, bowing their heads to the floor while Arabic is chanted through a loudspeaker. Apparently, all this bowing one’s head to the floor leaves a mark–literally:

The zebibah, Arabic for raisin, is a dark circle of callused skin, or in some cases a protruding bump, between the hairline and the eyebrows. It emerges on the spot where worshipers press their foreheads into the ground during their daily prayers.

It may sometimes look like a painful wound, but in Egypt it is worn proudly, the way American professionals in the 1980s felt good about the dark circles under their eyes as a sign of long work hours and little sleep.

This then begs the question of what the different practices of Christian piety would do to the human body, and whether they would be as cool as the zebibah. The easy answer to this comes from Orthodox priests and the Friars of Renewal whose beards never cease to amaze. But beards aren’t really the consequence of practices of piety in the same way that a zebibah is. Maybe one could find charismatics with callouses from so much clapping, or Eastern Christians with extra flexibility from their full-body bowing and crossing. Once, in fact, I sat in on a conversation about an old Anglican priest and how his creaky joints were no doubt due to the countless genuflections on hard marble at masses over the years.

If any contributors have thoughts on this matter, I’d be interested in hearing them. Of course, piety isn’t just about the inherent coolness of beards, maniples, or forehead-callouses, and the article ends on a note reminding us the true importance of devotional practices:

“You pray, but it doesn’t come out,” said Muhammad Hojri, 23, as he gently teased his brother, Mahmoud, 21, recently while they worked in a family kebab restaurant. Muhammad has a mark. Mahmoud does not, and did not appreciate his brother’s ribbing.

“I pray for God, not for this thing on my forehead,” Mahmoud shot back.

Here’s a tale of woe. According to this story in the American Lawyer, lawyers in Manhattan’s elite law firms—the kinds of places where partners make $1 million a year and more—are depressed because they don’t make as much money as financial professionals. Alas, it’s true. Top investment bankers have long made a multiple of what top lawyers make, and private equity types and hedge fund managers can make considerably more than that.

Apparently the differences are becoming undeniably apparent in social settings. The article describes a fund-raising auction at a private school in Manhattan: when a home-cooked meal by a famous chef was being auctioned off, the doctors dropped out of the bidding at $7,000, the lawyers at $15,000, and then the bankers, private equity and hedge fund crowd got serious and fought it out among themselves, with the winning bid coming in at $40,000.

“‘Face it, we have no status,’ says an Am Law 100 [i.e., one of the one hundred most profitable law firms in the U.S.] partner of the pecking order at his sons’ private school. ‘We go to these school functions, and this well-heeled group looks right through you. They won’t give you the time of day. You’re just one step ahead of the doorman.’”

Indeed, there is no misery so small that it cannot fill the human heart.

Thanks, Rob, that helps.

I think you’re right as far as the general thrust of recent CDF statements goes (think of Dominus Iesus, or the recent clarification on the meaning of the word Church), I guess I just found your exclamation “Take that, Karl Rahner” to be a bit off-putting.

Anyway, we’re putting the finishing touches on the February issue of First Things, and in it Avery Cardinal Dulles addresses this question in an article titled, “Who Can Be Saved?” He doesn’t quite characterize Aquinas and Chrysostom the way you do, and he has interesting things to say about Rahner, but we’ll have to wait til the New Year when the February issue hits newsstands.

In the meantime, there’s still time to subscribe…

What you have heard from me before many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. (2 Tim. 2:2)

The Congregation for the Clergy has a new online resource, Biblia Clerus, excellent for clergy, catechists, and anyone seeking to read the Word of God in light of the Christian Tradition. An electronic text of the Bible (Latin Vulgate, RSV, NAB) is linked, passage by passage, to pertinent commentaries of the Church Fathers, doctors and saints, Magisterial letters and encyclicals, liturgical texts, and catechisms.

The sheer amount of commentary is overwhelming (and more will no doubt be coming, as the site is developed and further translated). But for those who want to get their feet wet in the deep Christian tradition of hermeneutics and lectio divina, this is a valuable resource.

Last year a good friend introduced me to a song that has become my new favorite Christmas carol. It’s also the shortest one I’ve ever heard, at just over a minute long. According to Wikipedia, “Adam Lay Ybounden” is a 15th century song attributed to an anonymous wandering minstrel. The words and the music are both charming. The setting that I know is sung by The King’s College Choir. The music sampler on Amazon allows you to hear most of the song, especially the glorious ending in which the boy soprani tank up and soar to the heights of their range. The song puts an interesting Marian twist on the idea of felix culpa–that without our sin, we would not have known the marvels of God’s redemption–and does so in amusing middle English. As we ponder herald angels and shepherds in the fields abiding, “Adam Lay Ybounden” gives us one more reason to pause and give thanks, a reason we probably would not have thought of on our own.

Adam lay ybounden,
Bounden in a bond;
Four thousand winter,
Thought he not too long.

And all was for an apple,
An apple that he took.
As clerkes finden,
Written in their book.

Ne had the apple taken been,
The apple taken been,
Ne had never our ladie,
Abeen heav’ne queen.

Blessed be the time
That apple taken was,
Therefore we moun singen.
Deo gracias!

That’s U2 rock-star Bono gushing over Al Gore in the new issue of Time Magazine. Gore is a runner-up for Person of the Year. Putin is the Person of the Year. Oh how I yearn for the days when “You!” was the Person of the Year…

Ronald Dworkin—not the famous legal theorist, but a medical doctor and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute—writes in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal about the development of technology that will allow women to freeze unfertilized eggs when they’re young so that they can use them to become pregnant later in life. Dworkin foresees a world in which women could have some of their eggs harvested and frozen in their twenties, spend a couple of decades building a career, and then use the eggs to become pregnant in their forties or fifties. Just as cheap, effective artificial contraceptives allowed women to be as cavalier about sex as men are, so now the technology to freeze eggs will allow women delay reproduction as long as men can. Assuming the cost of freezing eggs will be low enough, Dworkin is probably right that we’ll see quite a lot of this in the decades ahead. The full text of Dworkin’s article is here (subscription required).

Can be found here. (For what it’s worth, I didn’t find it particularly insightful.)