{"id":354,"date":"2015-02-13T10:02:30","date_gmt":"2015-02-13T15:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/?p=354"},"modified":"2016-05-14T11:04:24","modified_gmt":"2016-05-14T15:04:24","slug":"thanatophilia-for-the-love-of-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/?p=354","title":{"rendered":"Thanatophilia: For the Love of Death"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Supreme<\/a>

Appointed for life, not one<\/em> made a stand for life.<\/p><\/div>\n

A week has passed since the Supreme Court’s unanimous 9-0 decision to strike down the laws prohibiting what is euphemistically called ‘physician assisted suicide’.\u00a0 In a nutshell, the Court has decided the current law prohibiting physicians to commit what really amounts to murder is \u2018unconstitutional\u2019.\u00a0 That is, the current proscriptive law violates the 1982 Charter\u2019s rights to autonomy and freedom of conscience.\u00a0 At the order of the Court, Parliament now has one year to pass a law framing under what circumstances people may request help from a physician to commit suicide.\u00a0 So much for the Hippocratic Oath’s first premise:\u00a0 First, do no harm<\/em>.\u00a0 But that Rubicon was passed nearly half a century ago, with Trudeau Sr.’s\u00a01969 Omnibus Bill permitting abortions.\u00a0 Of course, there were numerous restrictions added to that original law, all of which are now dust in the wind, especially since the Court’s 1988 ruling to strike down the laws governing abortion in Canada.\u00a0\u00a0 The judges back then expected Parliament to draft a new and ‘improved’ law on abortion, something the MP\u2019s under Brian Mulroney never got around to, leaving Canada one of the few nations in the world with no laws governing abortion (except various medical provisos, like only physicians can perform them).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The same may well happen for so-called euthanasia.\u00a0 For the next year, at least, the Court has left the current law in place (since when did the Court become a legislative body?), and physicians will still be charged if they kill their patient.\u00a0 Thank God for small mercies.\u00a0 After that, who knows?\u00a0 Will there be a law, or will Parliament again not want to touch the issue, as it does want, even to this day, to touch the issue of abortion?\u00a0 Will physician-assisted suicide, like the killing of the unborn, be left ‘decriminalized’, a personal decision between a patient and his doctor?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Yet, as Father Raymond de Souza put it well in a recent column<\/a>, it will be the weak, the deformed, the poor, those who cannot speak and have none to speak for them, who will suffer.\u00a0 Sure, in the short term, the rich and powerful will decide when and how to die.\u00a0 But what of those who cost the system so much to keep alive?\u00a0 Our health-care system (along with everything else in the province) is in a state of near-financial collapse, so the motive of money may do the talking or, more accurately, the killing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

We are a society in love with death, a paradoxical proposition for a society that claims to live to the full.\u00a0 But that is just the problem.\u00a0 When one is no longer able to live ‘to the full’, to gather the rosebuds and frolic in the sun, when old age, dementia and stiffness in the bones sets in, then what is there to life?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The crux here, really, is the question of suffering:\u00a0 Are we just animals, in whom suffering is basically pointless?\u00a0 Or is our suffering redemptive, worth something in the eyes of God and eternity?\u00a0 We have no moral problem (or should not have) euthanizing animals who are in great pain.\u00a0\u00a0 Their suffering is limited to a bodily dimension; therefore, if we can end it, we should.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Not so human beings, however, who are made in image of God, and whose sufferings have a spiritual quality and worth, which can be, should be, offered up in union with the sufferings of Christ and His Mystical Body.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This, of course, will sound strange to an atheist or agnostic; indeed, many Christian and non-Christian religious communities have lost sight of the spiritual value of suffering.\u00a0 Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said that he was dismayed at how much suffering in hospitals went ‘unused’, since it was not voluntarily united with Christ’s.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Hence, the vast groundswell of support for euthanasia across our fair, now-nearly-pagan land.\u00a0 Some may hesitate to accept euthanasia based on the slippery-slope argument:\u00a0 Where do we draw the line on who lives and dies?\u00a0 Who decides?\u00a0 What constitutes ‘consent’ for suicide?\u00a0 One need only witness the current labyrinthine discussion attempting to figure out the basis of ‘consent’ for casual sex, to predict what will happen when we try to decide what constitutes consent for death.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

These a posteriori<\/em> arguments, convincing others from the evil effects of allowing euthanasia, are good, and should be used to full effect.\u00a0 However, they are not enough. One must accept, a priori<\/em>, that human life is sacred and inviolable, because, as the Catechism reminds us, \u201cfrom its beginning it involves the creative action of God and it remains for ever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end.\u201d\u00a0 Therefore, as the paragraph continues \u201cGod alone is the Lord of life from its beginning until its end: no one can under any circumstance claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human being<\/em>\u201d.\u00a0 (#2258; italics added)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Need we remind ourselves that the Nazi \u2018final solution\u2019 began with psychiatrists being given the right in law to kill off \u2018mental defectives\u2019 in 1930\u2019s Germany?\u00a0 Have the Court justices never read history?\u00a0 Is there not one amongst them with the wisdom and foresight to see what they have begotten?\u00a0 It makes me despair even further of our educational institutions and our culture.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I recall years ago visiting what used to be called the Queen Elizabeth Hospital for the Incurables (its name has since changed in our politically-correct age).\u00a0 Therein, I saw patients in varied, but radically debilitating, stages of suffering.\u00a0 Malformed women, microcephalic, with little more than stumps for arms and legs, hooked up to tubes, and moaning all day; people in comas, with bedsores; brain-damaged people, with enough memory just to be aware of the neglect of their families.\u00a0 And so on.\u00a0 Each of them costs perhaps hundreds of dollars a day to ‘keep alive’, to nourish, bathe, medicate.\u00a0 Part of me thought, why?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Of course, we keep them alive because our culture just does not kill people.\u00a0 After all, we are a Christian nation…or were.\u00a0\u00a0 Our Christianity has now dwindled to minority-status, and with its decline, the moral foundations it offered have also attenuated.\u00a0 Can we now articulate why we keep all those ‘incurable’ patients alive?\u00a0 Is there in fact such a thing as a life not worth living?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our Supreme Court has answered that question with a resounding and unanimous, yes<\/em>, and it is up to you, at least for now, whether your own life is ‘worth living’.\u00a0 Soon, likely enough, others will decide for you, especially if you are weak and vulnerable.<\/p>\n

 
\nThere was a 1967 novel called Logan’s Run<\/em>, (turned into a cheesy 1976 movie with Michael York which has, apparently, a number of shots of gratuitous nudity; I am so glad the 70’s are over, but their effects remain; read the book: as per usual, it is better).\u00a0 Anyway, the novel takes place in a post-apocalyptic underground society where, to control the population, everyone is voluntarily ‘euthanized’ at age 21.\u00a0 An embedded crystal in your hand tells you when your time is nearly up, by turning red.\u00a0 Of course, there are those who don’t want to die, and who try to run.\u00a0 They are invariably captured by a police force termed ‘Sandmen’, who track them down and euthanize them, often by more violent means.\u00a0 Logan is one such Sandman; but when his time comes, and his own crystal glows ruby-red, well, guess what, he too realizes that life is worth living, and tries to run…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I, for one, have no plans to go peacefully into that great goodnight at the hands of our medical profession.\u00a0 You may see me running one day.\u00a0 I am a few years past the tender age of 21, but could still, I hope, outrun most of the doctors.\u00a0 Perhaps, however, it won’t be physicians chasing us, and our benign State will have their own Sandmen in the near future.\u00a0 After all, once some deaths are seen as a ‘good thing’, it won’t be long before avoiding<\/em> some deaths will be seen as a ‘bad thing’…<\/p>\n

 
\nBishop Sheen’s popular 1950\u2019s television show (at the time, it drew in 10 million viewers a week, an unbelievable number, competing with the king of television, Milton Berle) was in fact called ‘Life is Worth Living’.\u00a0 Even if we do not always experience the fullness of that ‘worth’ in our own, or others’, lives, we are bound by the command of God, to whose authority alone it belongs to give life, or take life.\u00a0 For we all return to Him in the end, but at the time of His own choosing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

February 13th, 2015<\/p>\n

\n

<\/h1>\n<\/header>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A week has passed since the Supreme Court’s unanimous 9-0 decision to strike down the laws prohibiting what is euphemistically called ‘physician assisted suicide’.\u00a0 In a nutshell, the Court has decided the current law prohibiting physicians to commit what really amounts to murder is \u2018unconstitutional\u2019.\u00a0 That is, the current proscriptive law violates the 1982 Charter\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,5,2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1282,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions\/1282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnpaulmeenan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}