How the Church Has Changed the World

16 How the Church Has Changed the World he could. One thing he could do was to pray, and that was what he and Lejeune did together, at his request, on yet another of man’s days that will live in infamy. There are many stories about this genius of integrity and gentleness. Modern man is stupefied by big things; Dr. Lejeune was in love with the small. So we find him testifying in a trial in Tennessee, regarding the disposition of seven embryos that had been conceived in vitro from the sperm and the eggs of a man and woman who had then gotten divorced. The father wanted to make sure that the mother did not bring them to term without his agreement. What was at issue? First, biological fact. Dr. Lejeune testified with admirable care and precision, and in a sweetly Franco-English idiom, just how astonishing the transfer of information is when the sperm fecundates the egg. It is a unique occurrence. That is when you have all the information you need for the development of the mature being. It is as if you had transferred the sounds of Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik into a code, he said, so that when you had the code work on the proper material, you would get not Mozart, not the musicians, and not the notes they played, but the form of the work, which would then impress itself upon the air near you, so that you would hear it. That musical form, so to speak, is present

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzMzNzY=