Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast,

where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us revealed in scripture and passed down

through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in here is brought to you by

Ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church discovering

our identity and God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 300, 65 days

left. We are reading paragraphs 2292 to 2301. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition

of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own catechism in a year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com slash CIY, and you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. Speaking of today, today being day 300, this is pretty remarkable. I was literally thinking about this last night. I woke up in the middle of the night and I was like, oh my gosh, tomorrow I'm going to record day 300 and the fact that the people, you know what I'm saying? The community of the catechism in a year are continuing. This is remarkable. I was just was so overwhelmed as I was tossing and turning like a little otisserie chicken, you know, just spinning around. I was thinking, this is amazing. 300 days that you have been part of this, 300 days that you have pressed play. I remember back in recording day 100 and thinking, this is a big deal. Here we are three times that. That's how math works. And on day 300, so I'm just really proud of you guys. And also, thank you to all those who have supported the production of this podcast with your prayers. I'm telling you, I do pray every single day for you all. And I'm grateful for your prayers for me as well as praying for each other. And also those of you who have supported the production of this podcast with financial gifts, we literally couldn't do this without you. we could not get to day 300. So on Day 300, what are we doing? We're looking at respect for the person and

scientific research. So remember two days ago, we talked about the kind of the header was

respect for the dignity of persons. Then we looked at the sin of scandal. Yesterday we looked at

the need to respect health, that health is a good, not an absolute good, but still a good.

Today, we're continuing to look at this by looking at how we have respect for the person in light of the fact

that there is such a thing as scientific research and that scientific research can be a great

benefit to humankind, right? Scientific research can be of a huge benefit. At the same time,

there are limits.

Not just limits. There is a guidance system here. And the guidance system for scientific research is not just, hey, what works, what's useful or what's efficient, but what is best for the human

person. That has to be always the case. So even in paragraph 2295, it says research

or experimentation on the human being cannot legitimate acts that are in themselves contrary to the

dignity of persons and to the moral law. So we realize that just because with science or technology,

we can do a thing does not mean we ought to do a thing. And yes, we will probably have to quote the guy from

Jurassic Park many times today. We're also looking at respect for bodily integrity as well as

respect for the dead. So there's all these pieces that when we're looking at this umbrella of respect

for the person. Okay, so scientific research, how does that guide our scientific research, our approach

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