Originally Posted by National Organization to Halt the Abuse and Routine Mutilation of Males

At one time the Catholic church observed January 1st (8 days after Christmas) as the "Feast of the Circumcision", commemorating this event as the first of his blood sacrifice and martyrdom.

Although Christian churches today rarely focus on this, at one time early Christian writers gave much attention to the circumcision of Christ - not as any perfecting or purification of the body, but as an act of further debasement to which he submitted after assuming human form.

"Already diminished by assuming our flesh, Christ further lessens himself by receiving the circumcision. God's Son had abased himself one degree beneath the angels in taking on human nature, and this day, by accepting the remedy for our corruption, he descends a thousand times lower still." (St. Bernard, 12th Century)

"Since the debt incurred by the sin of Adam cannot be met by Adam's insolvent progeny - and since Christ's blood pays the ransom - his Circumcision becomes, as it were, a first installment, a down payment on behalf of mankind. It is because Christ was circumcised that the Christian no longer needs of circumcision. In the words of St. Ambrose: 'Since the price has been paid for all after Christ ... suffered, there is no longer need for the blood of each individual to be shed by circumcision.'"

Originally Posted by Father John J. Dietzen, M.A., S.T.L.

The Morality of Circumcision
from "The Question Box," October, 2004, by Father John J. Dietzen, M.A., S.T.L.

Q. What is the morality of circumcision? The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that amputations and mutilations performed on innocent people without strictly therapeutic reasons are against the moral law. Pope Pius XII taught that circumcision is morally permissible if it prevents a disease that cannot be countered any other way. In spite of these and other church statements against circumcision through the centuries, I'm told there is no strict Catholic rule against the practice today. Why not? No medical association in the world today any longer says circumcision is therapeutic. (Ohio)

A. I'm not sure why not, but the fact is male circumcision generally just doesn't appear very much on the "radar screen" of Catholic moral teaching. Many major moral theology texts don't mention it. A notable except is "Medical Ethics," by Father Edwin Healy SJ (Loyal University Press), who holds that since routine circumcisions are not medically defensible they are morally objectionable.

A few observations may help explain. The practice of circumcision arose thousands of years ago and is prevalent in many cultures around the world. Nearly always it has religious or social significance, signifying full membership in the group and establishing one's social position in the society.

The first divine command to the Jews, for example, was that every male child be circumcised, symbolizing the covenant between God and Abraham (Gn 17).

After the famous confrontation between Paul and other leaders of the early church (Acts 15 and Galatians 2), Christians pretty much rejected the necessity of
circumcision for becoming a believer in Christ.

The idea didn't entirely die, however. The theory that circumcision still held some spiritual benefits even for Christians, prompted at least some of the condemnations you speak of. The Council of Vienna (1311), for example, decreed that Christians should not be lured into Judaism or be circumcised for any reason.

The following century, the Council of Florence (1438-1435) ordered "all who glory in the name of Christian not to practice circumcision either before or after baptism, since whether or not they place their hope in it, it cannot possibly be observed without loss of eternal salvation."

Today, while nontherapeutic male circumcision remains common in some places, as a general practice it is forbidden in Catholic teaching for more basic reasons of respect for bodily integrity.The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "Except when performed for strictly therapeutic medical reasons, directly
intended amputations, mutilations and sterilizations performed on innocent persons are against moral law" (N. 2297).

Elective circumcision clearly violates that standard. It is an amputation and mutilation, and, to my knowledge, and as you note, no significant medical group in the world defends it as having any therapeutic value. In 1999 the Council on Scientific Affairs of the American Medical Association stated that neonatal circumcision is nontherapeutic because no disease is present and no therapeutic treatment is required.

Modern Catholic Church documents do not deal explicitly with the morality of elective circumcision. The above basic principles, however, clearly render it immoral. It violates the bodily integrity of infant male children and unnecessarily deprives them of a part of their body that can protect the glans of the penis during infancy
and serve at least a sexual function for adults.

My understanding from physicians is that circumcision rarely if ever arises as an ethical consideration. Usually it is requested by the parents for more social reasons such as, it's always been done in our family. In that case, the procedure might be carried out in some places rather routinely, even if it is not what the child needs
and no curative or remedial reason renders it ethical.

Originally Posted by Journal of Medical Ethics

The emergence of clinical circumcision owes much to the work of the eminent American orthopaedic surgeon Dr John Lewis A Sayre. Sayre’s first case involved the treatment of a 5-year-old for partial paralysis. In 1870, and following a number of further successful operations, he informed his colleagues that circumcision was the answer to a range of ailments: "Many of the cases of irritable children, with restless sleep, and bad digestion, which are often attributed to worms, is [sic] solely due to the irritation of the nervous system caused by an adherent or constricted prepuce" (p. 210).[6] This marked the beginning of the rise and rise of phimosis, an ill-defined and fluid pathology,[8]

This promotion of circumcision in the USA and the UK emerged at the same time as a rekindled interest in cliterodectomies and other experiments in sexual surgery. Significantly, both male and female circumcision were justified in terms of managing sexuality; yet, while cliterodectomies soon declined, with other forms of female genital mutilation eventually becoming a focus for domestic and international outrage, male circumcision became routinised in medical practice. In large part this was attributable to the belief that male circumcision cured masturbation, an accepted cause of degeneracy and insanity. Circumcision allowed the Victorians to manage cultural anxieties that had prompted an extensive campaign against masturbation.[7][8] Although this was a transatlantic phenomenon it should be noted that anxieties ran higher in the USA. As Hodges notes:

"American doctors saw sexuality as more of a threat to public health and social stability than did their European contemporaries. The American medical profession’s intense focus on sexuality was due in part to economic pressures, the lack of a rigidly defined class system, the rise of the middle class, the rise of immigration, and other sources of social tension" (p. 41).[7]

It was forcefully argued that circumcision diminished the incidence of masturbation by removing or preventing adhesions that would otherwise lead to the penis being handled, and hence to self-abuse.[8] Arguably, curing masturbation was understood as the most important health benefit of circumcision.[8]

Another key factor was the stigma created through the linkage of those with an uncircumcised penis with disease, pollution, and contagion. In professional and lay publications of the time the foreskin is typically characterised as "a harbour for filth" (p. 769)[9]:

"Indeed, anyone who has taken the trouble to compare the dry, pink-parchment-like, cleanly appearance of the glans of the circumcised with the sodden, swollen, uncleanly structure which is frequently presented to view when the prepuce of the uncircumcised is retracted cannot fail to have been struck by the contrast. In the latter case the space between the prepuce and the glans forms the very beau ideal of a place for the implantation and multiplication of bacteria of all kinds, the pent-up secretions furnishing them with an efficient nutrient medium in which to grow, the heat and moisture favoring their development, and the excoriations which are so liable to exist forming a ready means whereby their products may gain access to the general circulation" (p. 1870).[10]

This association helps to explain the shift evident from the 1880s onwards towards cleanliness as a justification for circumcision. In 1914 Abraham Wolbarst argued for universal circumcision as a "sanitary measure" (p. 92),[11] concluding that "the vast preponderance of modern scientific opinion on the subject is strongly in favor of circumcision as a sanitary measure and as a prophylactic against infection with venereal disease" (p. 95).[11] This shift occurred within a social move that saw cleanliness identified with good morals, and stigmatised the uncircumcised as not only unclean but—by association—of questionable morals.[12] In these terms Szasz locates circumcision within his model of the "Therapeutic State", a political system where "social controls are legitimised by the ideology of health". In this model, circumcision is emblematic of the "same puritanical zeal for health-as-virtue that has fuelled other typically American crowd madnesses, such as Prohibition, the War on Drugs, and the Mental Health Movement" (pp. 140–1).[12] Intimately tied to these discourses of cleanliness and morality, during this period circumcision became embedded as a signifier of class and racial differences.[13] By 1910 it was the most common operation in the USA,[8] and a routine one in the UK.