EWTN News reports that the French children’s rights group Juristes pour l’Enfance has filed formal observations with the U.N. Human Rights Council, urging scrutiny of surrogacy laws in Greece and Ireland ahead of their universal periodic reviews in November 2026. The article highlights concerns that surrogacy, even when labeled “altruistic,” commodifies children and exploits vulnerable women, citing parallels to trafficking and violations of the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child. While the piece aligns with Catholic teaching on the dignity of human life, it notably omits the full supernatural dimension of the Church’s condemnation, reducing the issue to naturalistic human rights frameworks rather than grounding it in divine law and the intrinsic evil of separating procreation from the marital act.
The Naturalistic Framing of Human Dignity
The article’s reliance on the U.N. Human Rights Council and secular legal frameworks to condemn surrogacy reflects a broader trend in modern Catholic discourse: the subordination of divine revelation to humanistic ethics. While the concerns raised—commodification of children, exploitation of women, trafficking—are valid, the analysis remains trapped within the immanent order, failing to ascend to the supernatural plane where the Church’s teaching finds its ultimate foundation. As Pope Pius XI declared in *Quas Primas*, “the state is happy not by one means, and man by another; for the state is nothing else than a harmonious association of men” (Encyclical Quas Primas, 1925). True justice and human dignity are not derived from international conventions but from the eternal law of God, which surrogacy violates by its very nature.
The article quotes Matthieu Le Tourneur of Juristes pour l’Enfance: “a child must never be the object of a contract.” This is correct, but incomplete. The Church teaches that every human person is created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:27) and possesses an immortal soul destined for eternal beatitude. Surrogacy, whether commercial or “altruistic,” treats the child as a product of technological fabrication, severing the bond between procreation and the conjugal act as ordained by God. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992) states, “the child is not something owed to one, but is a gift… the fruit of the specific act of the conjugal love of the parents” (CCC 2378). The article’s silence on this sacramental dimension reduces the child to a mere subject of rights rather than a soul redeemed by Christ.
The Heresy of “Altruistic” Surrogacy
The article correctly identifies the duplicity in labeling surrogacy as “altruistic.” Le Tourneur asks, “Altruistic for whom? It is never altruistic for the child, who will carry for life the invisible mark of having been sold or given away.” This echoes the Church’s consistent teaching that no utilitarian calculus can justify intrinsic evils. Pope Pius XII condemned artificial reproduction in his 1956 address to hematologists, stating that “the child is the fruit of marriage” and that procreation must remain within the bounds of natural law. The Instruction Dignitas Personae (2008) reaffirmed this, declaring surrogacy “gravely contrary to the unity of marriage and to the dignity of the procreation of human life.”
Yet the article fails to name the root error: the modernist separation of the unitive and procreative ends of marriage, a heresy condemned by Pope Pius XI in *Casti Connubii* (1930). By focusing solely on the contractual aspects, the critique inadvertently legitimizes the underlying premise—that technological reproduction is morally neutral so long as it is “regulated.” This is the logic of the conciliar sect, which seeks to baptize errors by wrapping them in the language of compassion.
The Omission of Supernatural Realities
Most gravely, the article omits any reference to the spiritual consequences of surrogacy. There is no mention of the state of grace, the sacramental nature of marriage, or the eternal destiny of the child. The child conceived through surrogacy is not merely “commodified”—he or she is deprived of the right to be born within the covenant of marriage, a sacred sign of Christ’s union with His Church (Ephesians 5:32). As St. Thomas Aquinas teaches, “the generation of children is ordained to the worship of God” (Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 10, a. 12). Surrogacy, by outsourcing procreation to a third party, profanes this worship and introduces a disordered element into the family, the domestic Church.
Furthermore, the article’s appeal to the U.N. Human Rights Council is itself problematic. The U.N. is a bastion of secularism and religious indifferentism, condemned by Pope Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors (1864) as a denial of Christ’s social kingship. To seek justice from such an institution is to acknowledge its authority over moral questions—an authority it does not possess. As Pope Leo XIII wrote in *Immortale Dei* (1885), “the Almighty, therefore, has given the charge of the human race to two powers, the ecclesiastical and the civil, the one being set over divine, and the other over human, each supreme in its own order.” The Church alone has the authority to judge matters of faith and morals; the state must submit to her teaching.
The Complicity of the Conciliar Sect
The article references the Vatican declaration Dignitas Infinita (2024), issued under the authority of the antipope Francis. While this document condemns surrogacy, it does so within the framework of “human dignity” as defined by the conciliar sect—a dignity detached from supernatural grace and reduced to autonomy and self-determination. This is the dignity of the Enlightenment, not the dignity of the children of God. As Pope St. Pius X warned in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), Modernism “substitutes for the true doctrine of faith a philosophy of life which is merely human” (n. 7). The conciliar sect’s condemnation of surrogacy is thus a wolf in sheep’s clothing: it appears to uphold Catholic doctrine while undermining its supernatural foundation.
Moreover, the article’s focus on Greece and Ireland ignores the broader apostasy of the conciliar sect, which has systematically dismantled the Church’s teaching on marriage and family. The “bishops” and “theologians” who populate the structures occupying the Vatican have, for decades, tolerated and even promoted contraception, divorce, and same-sex unions—all of which pave the way for surrogacy. To condemn surrogacy without condemning these prior errors is to treat the symptom while ignoring the disease.
Conclusion: Return to the Social Reign of Christ the King
The abolition of surrogacy will not be achieved through U.N. resolutions or secular legal reforms. It requires the restoration of the social reign of Christ the King, as proclaimed by Pius XI in *Quas Primas*. Only when nations submit to the divine law will the intrinsic evil of surrogacy be recognized and eradicated. Until then, the Church’s faithful must resist the modernist temptation to seek justice from the world and instead cling to the unchanging teaching of the Magisterium. As Our Lord declared, “Without me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Let us pray for the conversion of nations and the end of this abomination.
Source:
Anti-surrogacy advocates urge UN scrutiny of Greece and Ireland (ewtnnews.com)
Date: 03.06.2026