Good News Once More
R. V. Young on an Impregnable Darkness That Opens a Door
It is difficult, in such times as ours, to avoid pessimism about the spiritual state of our society and the prospects for restoring it through Christian evangelization. It is not just that increasing numbers of men and women throughout what used to be called Christendom have ceased to participate in Christian worship and life or even to call themselves Christian; we have now reached a stage where a critical mass of our fellow citizens in liberal Western democracies are not just alienated from Christian morals and cultural standards, but are altogether oblivious to them.
While we have, then, no grounds for optimism that we can devise a practical solution by our own wit, we do have grounds for genuine hope. Beginning with the millennial generation and the succeeding demographic cohort, we are dealing with many men and women for whom transgressing Christian moral teachings is no longer an act of daring: these teachings have never been a part of their lives at all and hence have never exerted any pressure on their consciences. Among today's children and youths, many do not even know rudimentary biblical stories: I am acquainted with older children—good students from affluent families in highly regarded schools—who cannot identify Adam and Eve.
Why is this good news? Because the secular materialist view of reality, especially its view of human beings, is contrary to human nature and can only result in disillusionment, remorse, and moral confusion. Christ's promise of redemption, both in this life and in eternity, could become for our younger contemporaries, disappointed by Satan's "empty promises," Good News once more, as it was for pagans in the sterile vanity of the Roman Empire.
A Startling Discovery
The extent to which decadent Western civilization has lost any sense of what is decent or normal is suggested by a story in the New York Times (February 3, 2021): "Vanessa van Ewijk, a carpenter in the Netherlands, decided that she wanted to have a child. She was 34 and single, and so, like many women, she sought out a sperm donor." She considered going to a fertility clinic, the article says, but found them beyond her financial means. "Instead, she found an ideal candidate through a website called Desire for a Child, one of a growing number of online sperm markets that match candidate donors directly with potential recipients."
The ideal candidate that Ms. van Ewijk selected was one Jonathan Jacob Meijer, "a Dutch musician in his early 30s" who was "handsome, with blue eyes and a mane of curly blond hair." Ms. van Ewijk thought him "gentle and kind and well-behaved." "He seemed like the boy next door," she told the Times reporter. They agreed on a price (about $200 in American money, as well as travel expenses) and met in the Central Station in the Hague, where the money and a vial of sperm were exchanged. In due course, Ms. van Ewijk bore her first child, a daughter.
The fairy tale, however, did not last. The new mother met another single woman on Facebook who had also engaged Mr. Meijer's services. She revealed that an investigation by the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport (Sport?) had discovered that Mr. Meijer's sperm had been used in the conception of 103 children in the Netherlands through his involvement with numerous fertility clinics.
Moreover, this number takes no account of his "private donations" through websites and his biological children in several other countries by means of fertility services that operate internationally. Mr. Meijer admitted to "fathering" (does this verb work in this context?) at least 175 children (he had told Ms. van Ewijk that he was responsible for eight), but there are possibly more than 1,000, according to some not unreasonable estimates. And Mr. Meijer is by no means a unique case; the Times article cites a number of other instances of "donors" whose sperm has served in the conception of hundreds, even thousands, of children by numerous women.
The Bureaucratic Solution
It is difficult to convey how bland, nay, how anodyne the tone of this article is. We are told that Vanessa van Ewijk was "furious" with Jonathan Jacob Meijer and confronted him; nevertheless, because she wished her children to be full siblings, she contracted with him again in 2017 and bore a son conceived with his sperm. The major worry of Ms. van Ewijk and other maternal "victims" of "serial sperm donors" is that their children could unwittingly become sexually involved with half-siblings later in life, because they fear an increase in the chance of hereditary defects in children who might be born as a result of such liaisons. Surely a more pressing concern ought to be the absence and the lack of character of the only man these children could regard as their
father.
R. V. Young is Professor of English Emeritus at North Carolina State University, a former editor of Modern Age: A Quarterly Review, and the author of Shakespeare and the Idea of Western Civilization (Catholic University of America Press, 2022). He and his wife are parishioners at St. Ignatius of Antioch Church in Tarpon Springs, Florida. They have five grown children, fifteen grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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