Piazza San Pietro and St Peter’s Basilica Rome, Italy (Image: Johannes Simon / WestEnd61 / Rex)

IN DECEMBER, with great fanfare, the Vatican released Dignitas Personae, its latest report on bioethics. Sad to say, the document demonstrates once more that a morality rooted in outdated, pre-scientific understanding is not appropriate to modern realities.

I refer not to the hot-button issues of abortion or stem cell research but to the Catholic church’s continued opposition to a decidedly pro-life medical intervention: in vitro fertilisation. The moral basis of the Vatican’s opposition seems to be twofold: that only conception achieved through the …