NYT article on the beginning of life

Assuming that the immortal soul is infused at conception is indeed the pars tutior, this gets back to what I was saying about firearms safety.

Not to engage in Clintonian semantics, but it then becomes a question of defining the terms "human life" and "homicide".  Does human life exist in that liminal space, assuming there is one, between the moment of conception when unique DNA is created, and the first cell starts dividing, and the moment when the immortal soul is infused?  And does the crime of homicide only take place when one kills an unborn conceived entity that has an immortal soul?  (And every living thing has a "soul" of sorts, an animating force --- otherwise it wouldn't be living --- but the question that then begs to be asked and answered, in the case of a conceived human entity, is whether that animating principle is an immortal soul, and if not, when does the immortal soul come into being?)

First, CCC 2270 which you cited:

Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.

And then there is CCC 366, to which I referred:

The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not "produced" by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection.

Some see the word "immediately" and incorrectly think that this means "at the moment of conception".  That is not what "immediately" means in this context.  Here, it means "without mediation", or to use the words of CCC 366, "it is not 'produced' by the parents".

The tortured comments of Pope Francis about personhood being "disputed", as he put it, then, are not wrong, but they are confusing.  (So what else is new?)

Finally, the dogma of the Immaculate Conception strongly hints at the immortal soul existing from the first moment of life.

I could probably hack my way through Pius IX's Latin, but I would defer to your reading, as you have actually studied Latin in a formal setting, whereas I've had to teach myself, largely by osmosis.  

Yeah I saw that but I'm a little leery of reading anything put out by Irish media nowadays. As has been discussed on forums before, the whole country is on a bit of a pro-abortion anti-Church kick these days. Logically, I can understand why, as they're one of those regions where the clergy and religious wielded too much power and often abused their power, abused people, or were just needlessly harsh or even mean or cruel. However, as a Catholic trying to live by the Church teaching, I am not interested in hearing someone with hangups about the Church trying to poke holes. I'm beyond the phase of my life to care about that much less support it or want to read it or care why someone wants to go on in that way, they can just go do that on their own clock and leave me out.