Created, Not Engineered: Analyzing Human Gene Editing from a Catholic Anthropological and Moral Perspective

Advances in human gene editing raise significant ethical questions concerning their compatibility with the Catholic Church's understanding of human dignity. This paper examines the Church's moral evaluation of human gene editing, particularly germline modifications, through its foundational principles of the dignity of the human person, the integrity of human nature as created in the imago Dei, the principle of solidarity, and the moral responsibility to exercise care rather than technological domination over human life. Employing the See-Judge-Act model, the study applies the Catholic moral framework to contemporary developments in gene editing, which are currently directed primarily toward the treatment of genetic diseases. The paper undertakes a doctrinal and hermeneutical analysis to assess whether such interventions respect or compromise inherent human dignity and then makes recommendations for concrete responses to the issue. Given the Catholic Church's global moral influence, clarifying its position helps delineate ethical boundaries between legitimate therapeutic intervention and unacceptable alteration of human nature. The study concludes that a Christian ethical response must take a future-oriented view in medicine, one that anticipates not only present therapeutic uses of gene editing but also emerging biotechnologies aimed at enhancement, redesign, and inheritable modification of the human genome, while firmly rejecting any form of genetic manipulation that transforms medicine from healing the person to engineering human nature itself.