C(ulture of death)-403

There is what appears to be a trial balloon bill in Canada to legalize both euthanasia and assisted suicide scheduled appropriately for a Halloween vote.Fr. Dowd and Kristina have been posting on this. Looking at the bill I saw exactly the word I expected to see within the first paragraph.

This enactment amends the Criminal Code to allow any person, under certain conditions, to aid a person close to death or suffering from a debilitating illness to die with dignity if the person has expressed the free and informed wish to die.

Yes dignity the word that has been hijacked by so many groups to subvert so many things. From homosexual activists to euthanasia supporters you will often find some form of this word in either one of organizations pamphlets or directly used in their title. That somehow checking out early is suppose to be more worthy of of esteem or respect. If you are dying or suffering from the ravages of disease well we are really enlightened now and will put you down like a horse with a broken leg. Now isn’t that progress? We don’t have to worry about palative care and easing someone’s suffering; which more often needs true human compassion and communication and not a higher dosage of pain reducing drugs (though this is a usually a necessary component). Yep progress. In my mind most of what is called progress is like Michael Jackson’s moonwalk which only gives the appearance of moving forward while actually going backwards. Thus most who hide behind the term progress are truly moonwalkers. So progress in the care of the sick means directly killing them; so unlike say barbarian tribes killing off their elderly or leaving them behind to die. What you can’t see the difference between barbarism and progress in this regard? How backwards of you.

But back to the word dignity and especially the phrase "Death with Dignity." In this months This Rock magazine an article by the always enjoyable and very clear thinker Alice von Hildebrand writes about right and wrongs ways to influence people. One of the wrong ways is slogans.

Slogans –especially those designed to mask or distort the reality of what they convey–are rampant. "Death with Dignity" "pro-choice," "homophobia," "elitism", and "sexism" are examples. Once largely the province of politics, today they are epidemic in all domains of human life and win assent from people who fail to recognize that they are being manipulated and are reacting to irrational feelings, unfounded sympathies, or antipathies. The replace arguments and proofs, skirting man’s reason. In colleges and universities they foster academic deterioration, degrade learning, and anesthetize logic–all enemies of wisdom and truth. By acting on man’s emotions, they promote intellectual inertial. Some Catholics employ slogans to win assent to their agendas. Cleverly chosen words–Dark Ages, ghetto mentality, triumphalisim, and paternalism, for example –can trigger wild though unfounded enthusiasm or vicious hatred.

Exactly reducing intellectual arguments to vapid phrases that slice right through the intellect aiming for an emotional response. Death with dignity – what can be wrong with that? It is no surprise they don’t call it "Death by massive injection of organ eating toxic chemicals" or some other method.

This bill allows an eighteen year old who has mental pain without prospect of relief to request death. "has, while appearing to be lucid, made to a medical practitioner." To have the state kill you you only have to appear to be lucid. Missing from this bill is even any attempt to check for coercion. Those suffering can often see even a duty to die so as to prevent worry and stress for those close to them. While I am against any form of assisted-suicide this law is so vague that you can drive a bus load of depressed young people through it and into euthanasia chambers. The elderly and infirm in Western society are already being treated as inconvenient outcasts and it doesn’t take much to "want to help them out" to the other side especially since it is just so much more convenient for us.

So if you are Canadian do what you can to defeat bill C-407. Though all of us can pray to stop the inroads of the culture of death and to show real compassion by suffering with those who are at the end of life or are severely depressed.