Thought for the Day, 19 May 2008

The Rev. Joel Edwards

Two weeks ago Cardinal Murphy O'Connor appealed for a cessation of hostilities between religion and science. Last week this was exemplified when Ed Stourton chaired a cordial and sophisticated debate on medical ethics. Someone said it was like Galileo and the Pope smoking a peace pipe.

It was, I thought, an exemplar of civility wrestling with one of the most difficult issues facing Parliament for decades: the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

As the contentious Bill winds its way through Westminster our MPs are taking on a huge burden for all of us over these two days: they must grapple with emerging science which is well beyond most people's ability to grasp. It's an enormous moral mandate.

It will open up a myriad of seismic questions. When does a cell become a person? If everyone has an absolute right to become a parent should 'family' be redefined? Are we really sure that a 24 week limit is the best we can do for the unborn? And perhaps most critical to this debate: is a 'hybrid' embryo the only way to increase life-chances?

Today the Centre for Social Justice has waded into the acrimonious debate with the publication of their report which highlights the Need for a Father and the meaning of Parenthood. And this raises a truly critical issue. For a Bill providing loopholes by which Fatherhood becomes unnecessary seems strangely regressive. Same sex parenting is a feature in our democracy. But legislation which institutionalises the absence of fatherhood seems to me like a cultural time bomb.

And responsible fatherhood is already in short supply.

In the cacophony of voices on the subject there should be room for one more: it's the apostle Paul. "You have many teachers," he said, "but not many fathers." Fatherhood is not a biological accident or cultural misogyny. Whatever science might achieve, God's ideal is that a mother and a father provides the most basic foundation for diversity and difference: complementarity and cohesion; history and belonging. And consequently, as the sociologist Alvin Toffler said, family becomes the crucible of society.

There is no shame in belonging to a home without a father. That became my experience when I was 8 years old. And there is no guarantee that fathers are always good. That became my experience when I was born.

But whatever our experience good laws should never rob us of the ideal.