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In vitro, like artificial insemination, is essentially a veterinary practice. There is nothing wrong with in vitro fertilization for pets, farm animals, endangered species and other non-human entities.

The problem with human in-vitro fertilization is that it is a subhuman way to conceive a creature who has the dignity of being, in fact, sacred: an image of God.

It comes down to the question of: is sex sacred, ir isn't it? The Church teaches that for humans (all humans, not just Catholics), sex IS sacred. For us, is it a constitutive element of a sacrament, the Sacrament of Matrimony -- which means that marital lovemaking is actually a channel which God uses to make you holy!

Since human beings are God's image-bearers, marital sexual love is the only appropriate way to bring them into being. In other words (it sounds strange to our totally crass and secularized ears, but here it is): only sexual intercourse is sufficiently dignified to bring a human person into existence with his/her dignity intact.

"Begotten, not made." That means a lot. Something that is "made" is a product, and products are inherently inferior to the producer. A product is a commodity. A commodity is a thing -- something which can be owned or discarded, bought, sold, traded, used. (Which is exactly what can be done wih an IVF embryo.) But a creature which is begotten has exactly the same nature and dignity as the one who begot him.

This kind of thinking may seem kind of high-altitude and rarefied at first, but it's clearer if you look at artificial procreation as a whole, and where it is headed. It is clearly headed toward taking humans out of the "person" category and into the "product" category. Read Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" or C.S. Lewis' "The Abolition of Man."