Letters

Selfhood (letter)

Robert Prinzen-Wood

Contents - Sep 2003 - Buy a copy now Editorial: The future of the Anglican Church - Peter Westmore New auxiliary bishops appointed to the Sydney Archdiocese - Michael Gilchrist News: The Church Around the World - AD2000 Dissident US group establishing a foothold in Australian parishes - Mary-Ruth Monsour Catholic summer conferences in the United States: signs of hope - Richard Egan Culture: Second 'Carnivale Christi' Catholic arts festival scheduled for Melbourne - Michael Gilchrist Events: Hearts On Fire Vocations Congress for Melbourne Archdiocese - Joanne Grainger Understanding the Catholic Liturgy since Vatican II - Dom Alcuin Reid OSB Pope John Paul II calls for greater use of Latin - Denis Murphy Homosexual conduct: how Gospel teaching can be distorted - Bill Muehlenberg Letters: Not closing ranks (letter) - Alan Gill Letters: Hidden agenda (letter) - Dr Arthur Hartwig Letters: Liturgical choices (letter) - Marguerite Fennell Letters: New Mass (letter) - Philip Robinson Letters: Converts (letter) - Kevin Tighe Letters: Selfhood (letter) - Robert Prinzen-Wood Letters: Prophetic words (letter) - Errol Duke Letters: Freedom to be born (letter) - George F. Simpson Abridged Papal encyclicals available - Fr M. Durham Letters: Correction - Chris Hilder Books: OLD THUNDER: A Life of Hilaire Belloc, by Joseph Pearce - Scott J. Bloch (reviewer) Books: Some Fell On Rock, by Fr John O'Neill - Fr Peter Joseph (reviewer) Books: The Practical Preacher: Handy Hints for hesitant homilists, by Paul Edwards SJ - Anthony Cappello (reviewer) Books: Great books at the best prices! Reflection: A Christian response to bereavement: Jesus' ministry to the sick and dying - Fr Dennis Byrnes

I was amazed to read that Father Norman Ford in his book The Prenatal Person promotes the idea that human beings in their early embryonic stage are only "potential persons."

That view does not appear to be consistent with Catholic teaching.

In a mistaken belief that one can reduce the person to subjectivity, certain Catholic personalists following Scheler and other phenomenologists and existentialists believe that our existence as persons begins with the beginning of subjectivity - and an unborn baby has little or no subjectivity.

However, other phenomenologists, including our present Pope, make the fundamental existential distinction between ontological personal selfhood and the selfhood lived through in self-presence and in other forms of subjectivity. The "substantial being" - to use a Thomist expression - exists in advance of any self-presence or other form of subjective life.

To use simpler language, we could say that the "self" we had when we were first conceived is the very same "self" we have now. We are simply at a different stage of growth. It does not depend on our ability to actualise our consciousness of self. In other words, my personal being was already embodied in the embryo long before the awakening of personal subjectivity and consciousness.

ROBERT PRINZEN-WOOD
Chambers Flat, Qld

Reprinted from AD2000 Vol 16 No 8 (September 2003), p. 16