Creator and procreator

We need to know the difference as well as the intimate link between the two. The other day while presiding at a wedding, I brought up this topic to underline an often forgotten and misunderstood truth of faith.

Newly-weds will most likely become parents soon, and they need to know the difference and the link between the two, so they can carry out their parenthood properly. There’s a lot more than meets the eye.

Creator, in the strict sense, is only God. He is the only one capable of bringing to existence something or someone out of nothing other than himself. As creator, God is the maker of everyone and everything. Everyone and everything is his creature. Everyone and everything cannot help but be a creature of God.

A procreator is the creaturely instrument who begets an offspring definitely not out of nothing, but from something. He only cooperates in the work of God’s creation. Everything that reproduces itself, in a sense, is a procreator, though the term is more properly used to refer to human parents.

A parent as the human instrument in the process of human reproduction begets a child obviously from some biological raw material that he or she has. But that’s not all. As procreator, he cooperates in the bringing into existence of another human being who is not purely a biological or a material being that can be reproduced biologically, but also a spiritual being that can only come directly from God.

In other words, every human person is not just a biological entity. He is, much more than biological, a spiritual being. His existence just cannot come about merely through biological processes.

His existence depends directly on God. In fact, everything depends on God directly for its existence even if its coming to existence goes through the different forms of reproduction.

In the case of man, his coming into existence depends first of all on the knowing and willing cooperation of the human instruments with God’s work of the creation of a human person. That is why, these human instruments, the parents, are called procreators, strictly speaking, since they have to actively cooperate in God’s creation.

Not so with the other creatures. They beget their offsprings in some automatic fashion dictated by some laws of biology and other laws of nature. And that’s simply because the plants and animals do not have intelligence and will that would enable them to cooperate actively with God in the process of reproduction. Their nature determines the kind of reproduction they can make.

This distinction is crucial since it will bring out the fact that the husband and wife as procreators of their children have to carry out their responsibility as procreators by always keeping in mind the will, the purpose, and the means God has for creating a person.

Begetting a child should not just be a physical, biological or emotional expression of one’s urges and love. Begetting a child has God in the middle of it. In fact, it has God at the beginning and end of it.

Parents as procreators should always bear this fundamental truth in mind, and conform their duty to beget children according to this truth. In our country, thanks to God, we still have a generally religious culture that recognizes every child as a gift from God. That fact is indeed a blessing, but we need to go much further than such basic recognition.

According to our Catechism, God has a plan for the creation of every person. Parents as procreators should fully do their part in fulfilling the divine purpose for the creation of a person. I would say this is their most important responsibility as parents. This is the summit of their responsibilities. Everything else has to be subordinated to this.

In the Compendium of the Catechism, we have the following point that articulates God’s plan for man:

“God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. In the fullness of time, God the Father sent his Son as the Redeemer and Savior of mankind, fallen into sin, thus calling all into his Church and, through the work of the Holy Spirit, making them adopted children and heirs of his eternal happiness.” (1)

It is important therefore that couples who want to enter into marriage be made to realize this duty more deeply and effectively. Once married, they should be constantly guided and helped so they can carry out this responsibility properly.