At 11:18 AM 4/23/98 -0500, Dennis D. Martin wrote:
>
>If the woman and fetus are dead, both are merely bodies.
Their immortal
>souls are no longer present in union with their bodies.
So the _body_ of
>the fetus would be within the viscera of the body of the
woman.
>Goffredus's position would not in any way be incompatible
with the
>standard Catholic (medieval and modern) position that a
living fetus is a
>living human person, distinct from the person of its mother.
>
Dennis' point is well taken, but there is, I think, one
problem that still needs to be raised. One thing is clear
from the sources I've mentioned, and the others which have
been discussed in this thread, and that is that the dead
are not "merely bodies." Or, to be more specific, it seems
to me that the dead retain some sort of spiritual value,
positive or negative, after death. Otherwise, there would
be no need to debate the question of whether a deceased,
pregnant woman can be buried in consecrated ground. The
crux of the question is whether the unbaptized status of
the fetus is more important to the purity of the
consecrated ground than the baptized status of the woman.
In other words, these texts suggest not only that "a living
fetus is a living human person, distinct from the person of
its mother," but that a dead fetus is also distinct from
the person of its dead mother. In this light, especially
in comparison with other legal texts of the 12th and 13th
centuries, Goffredus' answer is surprising.
Stephen A. Allen
The Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, IN 46556-5692
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