Second Sight

In a recent column (June 4) and a feature article (May 28) I discussed two remarkable scientific advances: the creation of synthetic life and the unwrapping of the Neanderthal genome. Is it too tempting to look at the two together and ask whether it would be possible to reconstruct a synthetic Neanderthal?

But before I come to that we will benefit from looking at some of the reflections on synthetic life from people of standing, who have now had a little time to contemplate what has happened.

Have we really mastered the creation of artificial life? This first example required the injection of synthetically built DNA into a natural bacterium from which the native DNA had been removed. So the result was a hybrid of natural and synthetic elements. But the second and subsequent generations were  a response to the synthetic DNA’s instructions. So it was wholly synthetic but had required a “live” ancestor.

Opinions vary but I would hold that to create artificial life all the elements must have been combined from scratch. But, either way, no philosophical or religious difficulty is involved, provided that we are not considering intelligent life. Scientists may or may not succeed, but that is another question. Understanding the nature of God’s creative act is above my pay grade (and yours); we only know that it is infinitely different from any human activity. We have to make do with the thin milk of metaphor - and with never forgetting the limitations of that.

Back to making our Neanderthal. I don’t think we should hold our breath awaiting the event. It would be an immensely complex task, with no obvious commercial advantage. But scientists will try - there is no stopping their curiosity. Currently we only have 60 per cent of the Neanderthal genome to work from and even if that percentage increased we would have to combine it with human cells. The resulting hybrid might turn out to be a very strange creature. Undoubtedly it would be condemned as an unlawful breach of the dignity of human nature - but the theological status of the living result would be interesting to discern.

Presumably our reconstructed Neanderthal blastocyst would be implanted in a human womb and would grow up in a human culture. Once born we would be immediately aware of his stocky frame and heavy brow ridges. And, given that the later Neanderthals may well have adapted their own culture through imitating their human cousins, it might be difficult to distinguish innate characteristics from learned ones.

We could expect him to be able to master the simple language needed for cooperative activity, but we do not know how far he could get beyond that. His grasp of abstract or symbolic ideas might remain elementary. And he might be deficient in ingenuity or capacity to explore new ideas. He could no doubt be steered away from cannibalism, to which some of his brothers appear to have been inclined. But we would expect him to value the dead and to look to an afterlife. In many ways he would resemble early modern humans, but lacking the capacity for adaptation to new circumstances which was the key to our continuing development. These speculations are based on characteristics which are inferred from fossil remains, and would explain why Neanderthals made slower progress than early man.

A mite more practical than developing a Neanderthal would be to unearth more recent DNA - say Charles Darwin, or Shakespeare. And to use that to produce a twin sibling of identical genius. But perhaps on a shorter horizon, and with no ethical problems, we might succeed in creating woolly mammoth by using an enucleated elephant’s egg.

These bizarre and uncertain possibilities remind us that the truly important fact here is the skill which is being developed in the deliberate creation of new forms of life, and to do so through the copying of complete or partial DNA which can be used to change characteristics across species. People have been rightly concerned about genetically modified crops, but I think there is a growing understanding that these can solve certain problems under certain conditions - although a high degree of care required. But it is a further step to move from developing a better form of, say, wheat to developing an artificial new species. A further step again is required when the move is into the animal kingdom, and a huge jump when it comes to man.

A great deal of concern has been expressed about the danger of these gene manipulations escaping into the outside world. Various precautions ensuring that the organisms are built with fail-safe characteristics have been considered. But there is huge money in developing the techniques and plenty of regimes happy to ignore international law. While it is relatively difficult to develop a nuclear bomb in private, it is easy to conceal work on the development of synthetic life when it is performed in a small laboratory. Even the information published so far is sufficient to help scientists down a track which has now been proved feasible.

If we add to that the capacity for this new life to breed at a geometric rate, and to evolve through mutations into forms we cannot visualise now, the hazards are very great indeed.

You might like to review some of these opinions at Edge.org . Track down to “The Reality Club” May 10 , where you will also read the remark by Freeman Dyson, the veteran distinguished physicist: “I feel sure of only one conclusion. The ability to design and create new forms of life marks a turning-point in the history of our species and our planet.”

You may have some views on whetherthe genetic modification of our species would be a great advance or a great disaster.

st. joseph, a regular contributor to the blog, has referred from time to time to methods of contraception which are claimed to act as abortifacients. This subject hasn’t fitted easily into the other posts but it is such an important question that it ought to be discussed. In effect it leaves on one side, for the time being, the issue of the unqualified prohibition on contraception in Humanae Vitae, and challenges everyone to consider the morality of several methods which are in common use.

I claim no particular expertise on this matter, although I have accumulated research files over the years, so this brief introduction is more than usually open to corrections and additions. And of course updating by those who have the relevant statistics and experience to hand.

First, we should distinguish between the lay view on very early abortion and the Church’s teaching. In this country the House of Commons took the view that ‘a pregnancy begins at implantation’ (rather than at conception) and that this was ‘the accepted legal and medical view’.

By contrast the Church teaches that the essential human being is present from conception. Guided by its DNA, modified by its environment, it develops to maturity not only in the womb but thereafter. Implantation takes place by about day 7, and the “primitive streak”, which is the first sign of the nervous system appears at day 15. There is good evidence that the axis of the embryo is set by the point at which the seed enters the egg. Put “axis” into the search box and you will find “Human beings from conception” (9 Oct 08) for fuller details.

Let’s start with the ordinary contraceptive pill. Or perhaps we should use the plural because different combinations of chemicals are used, usually with the aim of finding the best formula for the individual woman. The mini pill for example contains no oestrogen, and for that reason it suits many women. But in a substantial proportion of cases it will not suppress ovulation and so achieves its objective by inhibiting implantation through causing a thinning of the wall of the womb. The standard pill contains both oestrogen and progesterone, and is more effective in suppressing ovulation. However ovulation occurs between 2 and 10 percent of the time. Here, again, the conceptus will not implant because of the effect on the uterine lining. In both these cases the rate of unsuppressed ovulation is much higher than the rate of actual pregnancy. It has been inferred that this difference is, in sexually active women, a measurement of the number of abortions which are taking place. This is difficult to measure in other ways because, in many instances, a woman will not know whether she has miscarried or merely carried on with her usual cycle.

The “morning after” pill can work by preventing or delaying ovulation or the meeting between the seed and the egg. But it also works, on a long-stop basis, by affecting the uterine lining, as in the case of the long term pill.

Intrauterine devices (IUDs) have a contraceptive effect — either from the material from which they are constructed or by their production of hormones. But they also have the effect of making the womb inhospitable to implantation.

As st.joseph implies, the moral questions which arise are not often discussed. And we must remember that the long term pill at least can have therapeutic qualities such as regularising cycles, reducing cramps and minimising pre-menstrual symptoms. The Church permits the pill for such benefits, accepting the temporary sterilisation as an unwanted side effect. But, by the normal application of moral theology, the intended and unintended effects must be proportionate. For a sexually active woman the symptoms which the pill is intended to relieve might have to be very disabling to provide justification in the face of the abortion danger.

I have not attempted to reach a conclusion on these matters, and I hope that your comments and thoughts will help me to do so. It may even be possible to publish a column in the CH in due course based on what I have written, but taking your comments into account.

A couple of generations ago, when the average decent member of the British public looked for reasons of substance rather than simple convenience before electing for abortion, the danger to the mother’s life was often cited. We hear of this much more rarely now - perhaps because the question has been settled, or perhaps because better medical techniques have so often saved the day.

But it is back again: Sister Margaret Mary McBride, who sits on the ethics board of a hospital in the United States, is in trouble for approving the abortion of an 11 week unborn child to save the mother’s life. While she was, under canon law, automatically excommunicated, her bishop has emphasised his disapproval by making the excommunication public.

I make no judgment of Sister McBride’s good faith or religious devotion; I make no judgment whether the bishop was right to raise the stakes. I understand that they are both people of high reputation. My only concern is to look at the principles.

And the bare principles are straightforward. Both mother and child are human beings with an equal right to life. A heroic mother might choose to sacrifice her life to save her baby but the baby cannot make such a choice. Thus, at this level, it is open and shut.

The situation is different when the death of the unborn child is an unwanted side effect. This might occur when the pregnancy takes root in the fallopian tube. It would be legitimate to remove the tube even though the baby within cannot survive. Provided that the intention is to heal the mother and that the child’s death is not the means of this healing, and provided that the outcome is proportionate, then the act of removal is justified.

We must assume that in the McBride case the continuation of the pregnancy is sincerely believed to be fatal to the mother (accepting that medical prognoses are often fallible) and that the removal of the baby will give the mother a reasonable prospect of survival. So the issue of proportion is satisfied.

But the main condition is not. The action to be taken is not the removal of a diseased organ (eg, a fallopian tube) but the removal of the baby, thereby killing it. This is directly to sacrifice the baby’s life for the saving of the mother.

To look for arguments against this rigorous position I would go to trustworthy, lay Catholic authority. I stipulate “lay” because every cleric is bound by oath to uphold the orthodox position, and so cannot help us. Who better than Professor Tina Beattie of Roehampton niversity, who is often in the public eye on gender questions concerning the Church? And immediately I am concerned.

In her article in The Tablet (June 5) I read first that the Church’s attitude has its roots “in the belief that the moral value of an action lies in its intention”. Not so. Good intention is necessary but it is not sufficient. The action itself must not be objectively evil. She continues by saying that many would think the situation under consideration is too complex for formulaic judgments. But what matters here is not whether the judgment is formulaic (presumably she means “definite”) but whether it is correct and applies in a given context.

She then expresses surprise that a Church which has behaved so incompetently over the sex abuse question can be so decisive over abortion. Such ad hominem arguments have their place in emotional rhetoric but not in discussion by an academic. Nor, even here, does she notice that killing a child in the womb is a substantially worse abuse than paedophilia.

She puts emphasis on the change in the Church’s attitude on early and late abortion. But she fails to mention that this is a response to a new and fuller scientific understanding of the process of conception. Aristotle’s view on ensoulment, based on a misunderstanding of conception and genetic development, was in need of updating after 2,500 years. Old rulings based on faulty facts are not relevant.

More disturbingly, she creates her own rules for designating personhood and, by implication, human rights. She regards personhood as something which is gradually acquired and dependent on relationship: “It is hard to see how any embryo can be deemed a person before even the mother enters into a rudimentary relationship with it.” Not only is this criterion gratuitous, it is extremely dangerous. In too many historical incidents those in power (in this case the mother and the doctors) have defined humanity in terms of their own priorities. Of course Professor Beattie is in good faith here - which is why my blood runs cold, for unjust discrimination can start with the best intentions.

There are a few theological experts in this area who argue that an embryo is not ensouled for the few days during which a single conceptus can clone into twins, but that is not an issue at 11 weeks. More interesting, I think, is whether the status of the act is altered by the fact that, if the mother dies, the foetus will die anyhow. Or whether, as is possible in some cases, the foetus can be extracted from its abnormal siting in the fallopian tube - allowing the tube to be restored to its normal capacity. The foetus cannot survive whether or not the tube is removed.

My concern here is that it is emotionally tempting to side with the known, loved and needed mother rather than the invisible foetus. A person of standing and influence could well provide a rationale for unwary Catholics and accusations of inconsistency from our opponents. Choosing to grade human beings and so differentiate their rights is a step toward the abyss.

www.secondsightblog.com looks forward to your comments.

I wonder who would make the best patron saint for the Science and Faith column. The first candidate who springs to my mind is Thomas Aquinas (13th century). And I have several good reasons for this.

I like his instinctive refusal to accept establishment ideas lying down; his objective was the truth. While he was expected to become an abbot to swell his family’s coffers, he joined the Dominicans – an order taking a vow of poverty. He was even kidnapped by his relatives, but succeeding in escaping.

Both the Dominican and Fransiscan, mendicant orders, were very unpopular with a church which had become fat and comfortable in its position of power and profitable revenue. Not only was Thomas frequently attacked during his life, he was condemned after his death – although this was corrected before long.

Intellectually he was something of a rebel. Much of the philosophy and the theology of his time was NeoPlatonist. That is, it focussed on the ideals of mystical perfection, and regarded the world as very second rate. But Thomas was not afraid of taking a pagan philosopher, Aristotle, as his starting point. Much truth, he believed, could be learnt from studying the realities of this world, because it was a fundamentally rational example of God’s work. What we knew from Revelation would then deepen and complete the picture.

He welcomed the work of recent non Christian philosophers – Islamicists like Avicenna and Averroës, and the great Jewish philosopher, Maimonides. Indeed he referred to Averroës simply as “The commentator” – because of his superb commentaries on Aristotle.

But I reserve my highest admiration for the methodology of his work. The scholastic approach was characterised by adversarial debate. You proceeded by pitching different points of view against each other, and seeing which view survived the test. Thomas developed this to its highest form. Typically he would start by presenting the very strongest arguments  against the position he held. And he had to do this genuinely, giving himself the least quarter. He would explain his points, giving full reasons. Finally, he would take the objections one by one and demonstrate their inadequacy.

But you can see what I mean by Googling Summa Theologica, and reading for yourself. It’s challenging and stimulating reading. Dip where you like.

In his early day, his teacher Albertus Magnus said: ”We call him the dumb ox, but in his teaching he will one day produce such a bellowing that it will be heard throughout the world.”

Finally, right at the end of his life, he reported that he had had a vision. He had been shown that everything he had written (over 8 million words) was so much straw. He was not told that his teaching was untrue – merely that it has fallen infinitely short of the full reality of truth.

On this blog we would not dare to compete with Aquinas, but we can share his readiness to question establishment positions, if that is where truth seems to lead. We do believe that good science leads us towards the wonder of God and not away. We are enthusiastic to look at contributions from any quarter - Catholic or otherwise. We are set up in such a way that objections and debate are strongly encouraged. And our friend Advocatus Diaboli is growling in the wings if he feels we aren’t being tough enough on ourselves. But withal, we acknowledge that however hard we try we shall always fall short of the truth that we seek

I wonder whether you agree that Thomas Aquinas is a good patron saint for us. And perhaps you have some sub patron saints to add. I look forward to your suggestions.

So we have a new set of cousins: the Neanderthals. We were already aware of a distant relationship - although they were never our direct forebears - because we shared a common ancestor some half a million years ago. But what we have discovered is a much closer similarity in our genetic codes, and strong evidence that interbreeding with humans took place. So once again we must look at what constitutes a being with an immortal soul, and whether Neanderthals qualify.

The first archaeological discovery was made in 1829, although it was then assumed to be from a primitive human ancestor. Fossils found in the German Neander valley some years later were eventually identified as a distinct species, homo neandertalensis. First signs of the species seem to have appeared over 400,000 years ago, complete characteristics were present 130,000 years ago and it survived until about 30,000 years ago. Its last community is thought to have been at Gibraltar - a fine place to see out such a history. We have only been around for less than 200,000 years - mere babes by comparison.

The signs of interbreeding (1 per cent to 4 per cent of the human genome) may not be of functional significance, but it demonstrates that we were so closely linked that we could breed fertile children together. This is a rule of thumb indication of a shared species. The interbreeding dates from about 60,000 years ago — around the time that we migrated from Africa into the Neanderthal heartland, which ranged from Europe to southern Siberia. Humans with pure African ancestry do not have Neanderthal genes.

But in general there seems to have been little mixing between Neanderthals and modern humans, and there are plenty of competing ideas about why they died out. These suggest the possibility that they were much weakened by frequent glacial climate change, that they had larger energy needs, they were ill-suited to forming diverse societies, that they simply weren’t so sophisticated and ingenious. But since there were different Neanderthal populations, spread wide geographically, there may well have been more than one cause.

In fact the stocky Neanderthal body was well set up for cold weather, and the wide spread of territory they covered suggest that they were good at adapting to different environments. Nor do we have to assume a slow, lumbering gait, although I would imagine that ballroom dancing would not have been a forté.

It is difficult to grade intelligence - if only because evolution would favour its development. And, should we use brain size as a measure, the Neanderthals, with slightly larger brains, would score more highly than modern humans. But in assessing true human characteristics it is the kind rather than the level of intelligence which counts. The ability to work with abstract concepts, or the existence of a mind which can introspect, reason and make free judgments are all signs of the immaterial qualities we would associate with the spiritual soul - even if they operated at a lower level.

Certainly they manufactured tools and weapons which were quite sophisticated for the time. We know that some of the lower animals, and some birds, are skilful toolmakers, but these are of a different order of inventiveness. So much so that it has been suggested that the Neanderthal techniques were copied from their modern human neighbours. However, their capacity to hunt large herd animals, requiring substantial courage and co-ordination, seems to have been very high. They could control fire and build complex shelters.

Some claim that objects buried with bodies were grave goods - witnessing to a belief in immortality; other have claimed that these were just incidental trash, and that burial was simply a way of disposing of a rotting corpse. There is always room for another explanation. But perhaps the recent discovery, in territory only used by Neanderthals, of perforated and painted sea shells, personal jewellery and containers for pigment used for skin painting is more difficult to explain away. As Professor Zilhao (Bristol University) put it: “This discovery, along with research on the rock strata at other cave sites, has huge implications for how we view the European Neanderthals… The differences between Neanderthals and modern humans may be much less than had been previously thought…”

In fact the use of symbolic communication suggests, some would say - implies - speech. And the substantial cooperation required for large-scale hunting or the communication of tool making skills would seem to require at least a simple language. Interestingly, very recent work has discovered that the mutations on the “language gene” FOXP2 which are not present in the chimpanzee and were thought to be unique to humans, are now known to be present in the Neanderthal. They appear, at least, to have the genes to speak.

The work on the Neanderthal genome, published in May, shows that the variations in proteins compared with ours are remarkably few - in fact 160 times fewer than the differences between man and chimpanzee. I know that the significance of this is hard to grasp for us who are not experts in this field so I use the summary given by Professor Hannon (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory), who did this part of the work: “The news, so far, is not about how we differ from Neanderthals, but how we are so nearly identical, in terms of proteins.”

Everything which I have described is well backed by plausible evidence, but there is plenty of detail disagreement and speculation. If I speculate that we know of a sub-species of homo sapiens, who was intelligent, capable of abstract thought, revered its dead, and could communicate through language, then I speculate that we have someone with an immortal soul. What do you think?

Just a week ago I listened to a BBC Four programme on sacred music, and then I switched on my computer. My mind was still thrilling with the faith of the composers and those moments of musical beauty which restore belief in the human spirit. Then suddenly I was in a laboratory with bacteria and chopped up DNA and a claim that synthetic life had been achieved.

From the sublime to the…? Well, to the sublime. For the sublime is to look through the threshold and see a great wonder. And the beauty of music is just such a wonder but so, in another part of human experience, is the wonder of discovery - and in this case, I think, a key stage in scientific knowledge.

What has happened is straightforward. The team of scientists at the J Craig Venter Institute have replaced the DNA in a cell with artificially synthesised DNA of an existing genome from another bacterium. So we have a natural cell containing a set of artificial instructions. Those instructions enable the cell to proliferate. The offspring cells, which are formed according to the artificial instructions, are now wholly synthetic.

Does this process constitute creation of life from scratch, or an arrogation of divine power - as many newspapers have intimated? I will return to this question, but the scientists themselves give a straight answer: “No, we do not consider this to be ‘creating life from scratch’ but rather we are creating new life out of already existing life using synthetic DNA to reprogramme the cells to form new cells that are specified by the synthetic DNA.”

A kind of reverse engineering has taken place. As a result of biologists being able to analyse the DNA in living organisms, they know enough to start constructing artificial genetic code by imitating and varying known combinations. In this case the transfer was not “perfect” although the few errors appear not to be significant. Dramatic though this first success may be, a great deal of work remains to be done. Genome transfer techniques must be refined and applied in a variety of conditions, followed by experimentation in modifying DNA to achieve different effects in different bacteria. Using an aviation analogy, the Wright brothers have just made their first flight, and the team at the Venter Institute, and their successors, have a great deal of work to do.

The project was conceptualised in the mid 1990s, but work in earnest started in 2003. I will not even attempt to describe the complexities, the setbacks and the frustration of the work. The project, which has involved 20 people for over a decade, has cost $40 million so far. Ironically, they were attempting to do the job at the simplest level possible; that is, to produce organisms with the least DNA needed to live and reproduce. They did not quite achieve their ideal, and the process of further simplification continues.

So what? “One small step for one man… one giant leap for mankind.” A cell so small that you need an electron microscope to see it lacks the same dramatic quality as landing on the moon. But I am willing to bet that in 100 years that small cell will have proved many times more significant for the human race. For good or ill.

The great achievement is to have proved the possibility of constructing synthetic, but living and reproducing, organisms. Now, through trial and error, experimental success and failure, we will learn how to make more complex and more useful organisms. This will enable us to understand in greater depth how life works. More complex organisms, developed over time, could lead to new vaccines and drugs, provide new sources of food, textiles and biofuels, enable the cleaning of water and the repair of damaged organs. It could lead to new industries and sources of wealth. The prospect is full of wonder. Against that, there is the possibility that unforeseen insuperable barriers could trump progress. And organisms which live and reproduce can spread - giving rise to the same fears that are attached to genetically manipulated crops. As a recent British report put it: “There is widespread recognition of the potential for negative outcomes.”

It would seem that the scientists currently working in this field know the immediate answers to these dangers, but when the work has been imitated (and what advanced economy would dare to be without this facility?) who will control it then? And if natural environmental danger isn’t enough, there is also the development of weapons of war and terrorism. A dust cloud of volcanic ash is one thing, a dust cloud of swiftly breeding pathological organisms is another.

I am tempted to consider the possibility that, if rogue synthetic viruses were to escape, they would eventually produce random mutations and so develop a wholly new evolutionary line. Fortunately such an outcome is likely to be hundreds of millions of year away. In this respect we can sleep soundly.

I have a ready concern for those whose worries are more of a metaphysical nature. But, having watched the Craig Venter project from the sidelines over the years, I believe that that worry is misplaced. Although there has been much discussion of the combination of phenomena needed to trigger reproductive life on this planet, the most recalcitrant questions address the earliest stages. By the time that we reach the kind of bacterial cell with which the Venter work is concerned, it is (and I speak relatively, of course) plain sailing. It has been obvious for some time that only problems of practice and technique rather than principle stood between the Venter Institute and its goal.

It is not, as it happens, an issue of whether life on this planet, or elsewhere, started through some random confluence of physical phenomena or through the direct action of God. Anyone is free to take a view, but I hold that to reduce God to some kind of mechanistic, designing agent is to create him in our own image. We simply do not know how an infinite, transcendent God sets about his business. But we find clues to him in the human spirit which lies behind our endless search to bring the creation he has given us under our dominion - in this case the agency of Craig Venter scientists - as much as we find him in the musical expression of Bach or Handel or Gorezski. Our hearts should be humbled by both and lifted to praise God.
O O O
Here are links to three articles from specialist science publications to paste into your browser; they will give those interested more detailed information than my broadly based article.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=synthetic-genome-cell
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/328/5981/958.pdf
http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100520/full/news.2010.253.html

My column this week could, for some of you, be one of the most useful things you have read for a long time. Not for all of you, inevitably, because some will know about it already, and others will - for a variety of reasons do nothing about it. I am going to write about the scientific basis of meditation and what it can do for those who choose to take it to heart.

For most of us, meditation suggests mystical Christian prayer, or Buddhist contemplation, or - for the right generation - the Beatles and Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. But, for the moment, put all that aside. Think instead of spending some 20 minutes in deep relaxation. And by deep, I mean very deep indeed. The effect will be a great calming of the spirit and tranquillity, a lowering of blood pressure, and, should you suffer from it, a marked relief of depression.

Deep relaxation is a skill. It is in theory accessible to everybody but it takes about a week of regular practice to acquire the rudiments. The skill then continues to deepen until you can call it to your aid instantaneously. As a trivial example, were you to feel my muscles in the dentist’s chair, you would find them completely relaxed, and my capacity for pain reduced to a minimum.

First, an exercise. Clench your fist as tight as you can - so tightly that it shakes with the pressure, Then relax it slowly, attending the growing feeling of relaxation. At the end you will find your fingers to be floppy but - more importantly - you have learned what relaxation feels like. Got the basic idea?

Now lie, or sit down comfortably, and relax every muscle in your body. Follow a sequence: hands, arms, shoulders, neck, face, chest, stomach, buttocks, legs and feet. Clench each muscle and then feel it slowly relax. Occasionally check back to see if earlier muscles have tightened. You will not find it easy and only practice will help you into a state you may never have experienced before A fully relaxed state uses so little energy that breathing becomes lighter and almost seems to cease.

Lie there, relaxed - perhaps listening to some tranquil music - for about 20 minutes. And then bring yourself to - but slowly; and get back to the trials of real life.

What is happening inside your brain? Theta waves associated with deep relaxation increase, and so do alpha waves, which tend to increase when the brain withdraws from intentional or challenging tasks. Beta waves which are needed for such tasks are few, and so are delta waves. Delta waves are associated with sleep - which is a quite different state from deep relaxation. But you don’t need to remember any of that. I put it in just to show that deep relaxation is a measurable state of the brain, induced from the relaxation of the body. You need to be neither holy nor clever to learn how to use it.

My original exploration of the subject started many years ago because the evidence showed that two separated periods of 20 minutes deep relaxation had a measurable and continuing effect on blood pressure. That investment of daily time has yielded high returns in so many ways.

Further practice develops further uses. I can now use “triggers”. I am able to deepen my relaxation throughout my body in the midst of ordinary life, simply by relaxing a hand. The number of occasions when this has checked an irritable remark or an imprudent decision is countless - although my wife would tell you that I still have some way to go. This brief, instant relaxation is also useful for, say, a mother of young children for whom five quiet minutes is a luxury.

Deep relaxation puts the brain into a highly suggestible state. And it becomes possible to use it for self-hypnotism - by definition this is conscious and controlled. It can be a valuable way of changing an unsatisfactory attitude of mind simply through autosuggestion. Don’t expect sudden conversion: this is not magic but just an effective way of moving the mind into constructive directions.

Now that I have demystified this neurological phenomenon, let me replace some of the mystery. I suggested that one might use music as a background. This helps to clear the mind and checks thought processes so that intellectual focus is curbed. But many people prefer to use a mantra - recited throughout the process. Many will know the Tibetan Buddhist mantra, om mani padme hum. No exact translation exists, but it relates to the virtues of withdrawing from self-centeredness.

I prefer one which is more overtly Christian. Maranatha (”Our Lord has come”) is popular; but I favour Julian of Norwich’s “All manner of thyng shall be wele”. It encompasses the idea of Christian peace and confidence. But it’s a personal choice.

More recently I have started to train myself to a further stage where I eschew mantras and simply place myself in the presence of God. I regard thought of divine attributes as a distraction since any human understanding diminishes rather than embellishes. Nor, of course, does any prayer of petition apply, since the only relevant reaction is open-ended wonder. I am not very good at this yet, but, as I have suggested, much practice is required at every stage.

My description of deep relaxation (and its use in prayer) has been short and personal. The professional audiotape I published several years ago was widely used, but is no longer available. However, secular accounts of deep relaxation are available in good bookshops for further study. I look forward to comments on www.secondsightblog.com from your experience - especially with regard to its use in prayer.

It did not take the Hitchens-Dawkins suggestion that the Pope should be clapped in irons on his arrival in Britain to remind us that the secular humanist contingent should be treated as a group of eccentrics whom we should welcome as adding to the general variety of life. Their intellectual basis is, as Jeremy Bentham said in another context, such “nonsense on stilts”that we would assume that they were indulging in some arch sport were it not for their evident earnestness.

In any dialogue I like to open up with the suggestion that they have no sense of morality. This of course is a feint: they tend to have a very strong sense of morality - which they use fulsomely to praise their own virtues and to condemn the vices introduced by religion. So the next question is to ask them to explain the basis of their moral sense. Naturally they have a ready answer: evolution.

This approach takes the general form that human beings, like a number of lower species, can only prosper through a willingness to co-operate. While the basis is to ensure the survival of genes in the close and extended family it also applies in a general way to our whole community. And the rivalry between competing communities (war) is a negative support for this whole concept of evolved altruism.

The argument is attractive if only because we have good reason to judge it to be broadly true. Its only drawback is that is does not address the question of moral sense. To behave “virtuously” at the behest of our evolved genes is no more a matter of morality than any other genetic effect. If it so happens that I have inherited a gene which leads me to slaughter everyone with red hair, I can hardly be blamed for that. And the same can be said for other influences - perhaps poor upbringing or peer pressure - which I have received. While a myriad of external factors may contribute causally to my behaviour (and does), these cannot be the whole story if it is to explain moral sense.

An extension of this thinking is often proposed as the reason for the evolution of religion. Historically and currently (see Northern Ireland) religion has identified the group to which we owe altruism versus the groups we are right to oppose. But, at least as importantly, religion is a way of codifying societal values and enforcing them with sanctions which transcend the secular.

But recent work (Pyysiainen and Hauser, Cell Press 2010, February 9) suggests that “we evolved moral intuitions about norm-consistent, and inconsistent actions, and thus, intuitive judgments of right and wrong”. Religion would then be a by-product of this, enabling codifying and enforcement. Since Catholics have always held that the sense that the good ought to be done and the evil avoided is natural to rational man, who also possesses a native ability to recognise the fundamental content of morality (natural law), this does not come as a surprise.

The concept of a “moral intuition”, or as it is put elsewhere “pre-existing cognitive function”, has no useful meaning. So, in the interests of charity, we must offer what help we can. And to do so we must work in terms to which the scientific mind can relate.

My starting assumption is that we all share a moral sense, and so are able to approve or disapprove of actions either of ours or of others. Those who do not claim this are not our concern. (It would save confusion if, having denied its existence, they dropped any claim to moral judgment.)

We must then ask what characteristics would be necessary provide a rational basis for moral sense. In this I follow, as an example, a subatomic physicist whose equation tells him that a hitherto unknown particle is required. His first task is to designate what characteristics it must have to solve the equation.

In the case of moral judgment the first requirement is freedom of will. Without freedom, approval or otherwise is otiose. This does not mean that we are not strongly influenced, and in some cases psychologically compelled, to choose a course of action but that we are in at least some cases free to make a choice, and therefore to take responsibility. Freedom is a difficult concept for the scientific secularist because it denotes uncaused activity; and science has no interstice to fit that.

And if there is a choice there must be a chooser. While this might seem obvious, many senior neurologists hold the view that we have just a biological brain, with a corresponding body, and nothing more. The term “self” is just a convenient way of expressing how our wholly natural brains think. It is not quite clear to me who or what it is which is able to make a judgment that there is no self, since there is presumably no self to do so. But we can safely leave our humanist friends to explain that.

The remaining characteristic is the provision of a reason why we should follow our sense of moral obligation in those cases when to do so is clearly against our own interests. Since this cannot be wholly caused, directly or indirectly, without losing the character of being moral, our recognition of the good, and our obligation to follow it, must originate from outside ourselves.

While a further analysis would lead one towards the concept of love and a transcendent God whose nature is goodness, it is usually enough to leave the secular humanist with the simple realisation that his fundamental position contains an inherent contradiction. His claimed devotion to truth should lead him towards revision. But don’t hold your breath.

This contribution, and the two comments which follow immediately, have been copied from “The culture of community”. The comprehensiveness of John Candido’s contribution suggests that it should be posted separately to allow for the points made to be explored.

John Candido on 27 Apr 2010 at 12:49 pm

The Catholic Church in parts is a thoroughly disgusting institution. The Vatican is insensitive to outside opinion because it is so wrapped up in its own collective ego and position of power. Nobody elects them except themselves. The laity have no say as to who will be a Bishop, or any other high-ranking prelate within our dioceses or within the Vatican. Ask yourself, do they talk to anybody outside their inner circle? No, they do not. Why not? Because nobody has any power to remove anybody within the Vatican except the Pope, who can only go by resignation or death. What is so obvious about the Vatican is that as an institution, it is self-perpetuating, unelectable, and therefore moribund as a consequence. This is the essence of the Vatican.

Parts of the Vatican are tainted by a disgusting group of celibate paedophile protectors, who have the gall and arrogance to defend clergy who have commited crimes against children. In addition, the Pope’s capacity to govern the church is now under question because of decisions he took while he was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and for former decisions he made while he was an Archbishop in his native Germany. His suitability to govern is also under question because of decisions he has taken while holding the office of Pope. Vis-a-vis, the apointment of Holocaust denier Bishop Richard Williamson as a catholic bishop, his risable comment about condom use in Africa, for his poor handling of ecumenical relations with the Anglican Church in England, and for inadvertently insulting the people of the Islamic faith through a speech he gave at a German university. Sadly, it looks increasingly the case that the Pope should resign his office.

Please pause for a moment and contemplate what has happend to thousands of vulnerable children around the world. What parts of the Vatican and other diocesan bishops have done by protecting priests who have committed serious crimes is to spit into the faces of children, spit into the faces of women who have been abused, and spit upon the very face of Christ himself! And in tandem with their own bankrupt policies of clergy management, they have also treated the law with total contempt. There is no question that the modern world is aghast by this and will not acknowledge the church as having any credibility or integrity.

The Vatican as an institution lacks the virtues of courage and humility, and a governing culture bounded by transparency and accountability. These virtues and values of governance are linked, because you need courage in order to be humble and you need both courage and humility in order to accomodate transparency and accountability. To wit, the church needs to humbly admit its searing errors regarding child abusers and summon the courage to reform its structures, processes, disciplines, policies, and doctrines. In addition, it needs a thorough updating through doctrinal reform by looking at the knowledge gained through the research of universities into the human condition. It must incorporate into its doctrines a modern understanding of psychology, psychiatry, genetics, sexology, sociology, and anthropology. To fail to reform their thoroughly mediaeval doctrinal positions on sex, sexuality, and birth control, is utterly non-catholic because it is not consistent with the truth of modern knowledge as the world knows it. To remain ignorant of a modern understanding of human beings in order to maintain the status quo on all her teachings, is to truely lack courage and humility. In consequence, the Vatican is a poorly led coward’s paradise populated by paedophile protectors and law breakers.

One essential starting point that the church cannot compromise on is the notion that every human being, believer and non-believer alike, is absolutely entitled to their own conscience. The primacy of the individual conscience is an unasailable reality that cannot be diluted by any individual or power structure. It will take some courage and humility for the Vatican, their apologists, as well as the multitude of sycophants and conservative ratbags around the world, to accept this unconditionally. Any attempts to dilute this teaching on conscience while the modern secular world is watching will be fatal for the church’s mission to spread the Gospel. Not only will she be exposed for the antediluvian fossil that she is, but the modern world will declare her a risible farce.

How do we resist a power structure that is dysfunctional, vainglorious, self-perpetuating, and unassailable? What I have done over the last decade is to stop going to mass for good and to take up Christian Meditation, as rediscovered and taught by the late Fr. John Main OSB and currently led by Fr. Lawrence Freeman OSB. I will never return to this dark and forbidding institution, which claims an affinity with Jesus Christ, until it is thoroughly reformed and reconstructed. The Vatican is a pox on the Gospel, but she will never see this in a millenia. In addition, don’t send your children to mass or to a catholic school and stop giving any money to their charities and schools. Children can still be taught about the Gospel through personal instruction and the example of their families. Use the internet and the mass media to highlight your disatisfaction, and wherever possible litigate against any church employed individual or structure, that you have reasonable grounds to believe has committed crimes or assisted criminals.

The modern, civilised, and cosmopolitan world that we have grown up in demands that we take whatever civilised and legal action that is within our means, in order to rectify error in our church. The Catholic Church is currently in a very poor state and it needs our activism and our prayers. She must rediscover humility and courage, together with modern values of governance, such as transparency and accountability. We the laity and whoever is with us, must seek to change what is a structurely moribund institution, by confidently exposing lies, obfuscation, criminality, and ecclesiastical dysfunctionality.

claret on 27 Apr 2010 at 9:35 pm

I know that this is the most serious of subjects but I can’t help wondering what made John stop when he had just got started?!

It would seem that his views on the ‘primary of conscience’ are a ‘get out of jail free’ card that we should all have. Taken to a logical degree it might even be a matter of consience for a priest deprived of a natural outlet for his sexual desires through marriage, as demanded by the Church, to successfully reason with his consience ( as some have done,) that the objects of their sexual perversions enjoyed what was happening to them

(as some would have at the time,)and so it was sinless.

That aside i wonder what posters thought about the letter from the Bishops of England and Wales that was read out at Mass last weekend. (John is excused this as he does not attend Mass any more. Incidentally does Fr. Freeman?)

For me it fell short as it did not address the harm done to those lay Catholics who have loyally kept the faith. It did not say a word about what would happen to any member of the clergy convicted of criminal offences in the future. It said nothing about reform. As John rightly points out this is a letter from unaccountable Bishops who would seem to have taken no account of what any lay Catholic has to say. A corrupt power system sustained by corrupt power.

st.joseph on 28 Apr 2010 at 8:45 am

The Gospel reading for todays Mass is taken from St Johns Gospel.12;44-50. It is worth a look.

When the Body of Christ is suffering we who belong to His Body suffers too.

But however the Gospel reading today ought to give us consolation and to hang in there,The Eucharist gives us Life.

And He has said it.

We are so Blessed to be able to receive Our Lord in the Mass.

Jesus did not deny His Body and Blood to Judas, so why should we deny it to ourselves! No one can say we are worthy of such a Gift.

One key issue in the debate which took place while the Children, Schools and Families Bill (2009) was being discussed was the emphasis on the Magisterium’s constant teaching that parents are the first educators of their children and that they, rather than the state, had ultimate responsibility for family life education. But this teaching requires, in my view, a continuing and mighty consideration because it imposes on parents a great responsibility.

It was my habit when preparing engaged couples for marriage to ask them, during the appropriate session, from whom they had first learned the facts of life. Regularly, nine out of 10 reported that this was in the playground or its equivalent. In practice Catholic children’s first explicit educators are often misinformed friends.

I can remember my friend Patrick enthusiastically explaining “the facts” to me when I was 10 years old. His version had struck me as bizarre when contrasted with the accurate account I had received long before from my parents. Yet it remains true that parents are necessarily the first and foundational educators, even if that education is negative by its default.

When does the process start? I have heard the age of five suggested, But this is five years too late. Sex education starts at birth. In fact, to be absolutely accurate it starts some time before birth.

Over-anxiety is a great enemy of mature sexual attitudes, and we know that high (as opposed to normal) levels of anxiety in a pregnant mother can increase the risk of an over-anxious child.

Infancy is the time when we first learn how love is expressed through physical contact. And gradual social interaction leads the baby to understand that its universe contains other people with their own separate needs to which it must respond. Few psychologists would disagree that the essential foundation for trusting intimate relationships is largely made or marred by the age of three.

Despite its influence on mature sexuality we might instinctively refrain from describing such a young age group as overtly sexual. Yet of course infants are overtly sexual, as any observant mother of children of both sexes will know.

We may not accept the significance that Freud gave to infant sexual feelings, but we should not deny the evidence which he used. If we equate genital sexual feelings and fantasies with loss of innocence (which I do not) then that innocence is lost very early.

But children do move into a latency period which lasts until the first prickings of puberty begin. This period is of course a key opportunity for explicit sexually connected information. The parental belief that this curtails childhood is simply an unwitting cover-up for a problem which lies with the parent rather than the child.

A child has a natural curiosity about its own origins and, of course, the birth of further siblings or the pregnancies of family friends. If children learn from the start that their questions are welcomed and are answered, naturally, at the right level this will continue. The young are curious to hear about new life, and, at the right time, to understand the special nature and expressions of married love. My friend, Eugene Byrne, has saved me the trouble of listing these (Letters, April 16). At this stage such knowledge is absorbed quite naturally; there is no embarrassment in the child, as there will be once the taboo caused by puberty starts.

I recall my four-year-old asking about the new baby. In fact I didn’t answer; I asked the six-year-old to explain to her sibling. Which she did, leaving me only a minor point or two to clarify. It was a good occasion.

In this atmosphere it is easy and natural for queries and comments triggered by television, the school playground and even sex education given at school to be raised and discussed. This provides an opportunity to clear up misunderstandings or examine public values critically, as they arise.

This is, of course, the opposite of sexualisation, to which our children are being exposed every day. Sexualisation is the belief that sexual attraction is the key to earning self-esteem and esteem from others. And nowadays it seems to involve the belief that actual sexual activity is expected behaviour.

We cannot protect our children entirely from external and peer pressure but we can, in the ways I have described, build the foundation on which sexuality is seen as a great and privileged gift from God.

The approach I have described will encourage parents to take an active interest in what the school is doing, and how. There is nothing to be gained by looking over a teacher’s shoulder but we should at least be sure that the teachers involved are among the best in the school, and are ready to explain their educational approach at each stage -  showing how they communicate deep Catholic values in a way which relates to the actual experiences of the children. Thus the school and the parents can work together to ensure that this very important element of education is achieved successfully.

I need hardly mention that throughout childhood the parental marriage will, for good or ill, prove a powerful, unconscious model. Fortunately we are  not required to be perfect. Children need to learn from us how to cope with failures and problems, as well as with success.

Society has, of course, a legitimate interest in family life education because of its responsibility for the stability of society. The fact that, at present, its secular agenda reflects a bankrupt social ethos which fragments society does not affect this principle. We may hope that our own work will provide a good example from which society can learn.