Via Wesley Smith: Dueling headlines in this Bay area newspaper perfectly illustrate our suicidal split personality. Prevention for some, facilitation for others. We can’t have it both ways, folks. No, really. We can’t. It turns out assisted suicide actually increases other suicides.
27 Yr. Old Quadriplegic Wants to Die
27 year old Dan Crews was paralyzed in a car accident when he was 3 years old. He is paralyzed from the neck down and though he can speak and eat, his diaphragm muscles cannot move air through his lungs so he must be hooked to a ventilator in order to breathe. He’s lived this way for 24 years. He … Read More
Locked-In Quadriplegic: “All Life is Worth Living”
Excellent! France has awarded its Legion of Honor to a woman who has been a locked-in quadriplegic for 30 years (h/t Wesley Smith). And, get this: it’s for her fight against euthanasia and assisted suicide! Maryannick Pavageau (shown here with her daughter Myriam (r) and Senator Monique Papon (l), who bestowed the award) had a stroke which left her completely … Read More
TOB Tuesday: Suffering as a Gift from God
This is an excellent article from Steve Pokorny at Catholic Exchange. A bit of an intro: Throughout human history, since Adam and Eve, there has been the temptation to want to take the powers of life into our own hands. There is the insidious idea that is floated through our fallible minds that if we manipulate things to our liking, … Read More
My Morning Meditation With St. Gianna
I love this mug (and this saint) See what else St. Gianna, who gave up her own life so that he unborn child would live, said about suffering. A related post worth re-visiting: The Paradox of the Cross Find this mug and others like it at Catholic to the Max
The Beauty of Human Weakness
In Australia last week, the Supreme Court ruled that 49 year old quadriplegic Christian Rossiter has the “right to die” if he so wishes. The problem is Rossiter is not going to just die, he’s going to starve himself to death by refusing to be nourished with food and fluids through a feeding tube. What is most heart-breaking about this … Read More
Pacino to Play “Dr. Death”?
It seems that his status as a convicted murderer has been treating Jack Kevorkian quite well these days. First he gets paid $50,000 to speak to some 4,000+ college students at the University of Florida last January shortly after his release from prison. Now it’s being reported that HBO Films will air a biopic about “Dr. Death” that is set … Read More
Christ Teaches Us How to Die
This Sunday’s Mass readings reminded us that we are nearing the end of Lent and the Way of the Cross will soon be upon us. We were told that it was Christ’s suffering and death that made Him the “source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (Heb 5:7-9) and that we too, like a grain of wheat, must … Read More
Bioethics Students Weigh in on Daniel James’ Assisted Suicide
A few weeks ago a bioethics teacher at Foothill Technology High School contacted me saying that they have been reading my blog at length in class and wondered if he could have his students respond to my post about Daniel James – the UK rugby player whose parents took him to Switzerland for an assisted suicide. I submitted to being … Read More
Holocaust Lessons Not Learned
Good news from Berlin (h/t Wesley Smith): German historians have started compiling a central register of 9,000 mentally ill people murdered as part of the Nazis’ euthanasia policy, most of whom were previously unidentified. More than 100,000 people are believed to have been killed during a drive inspired by Hitler that was carried out in six extermination centres in Germany … Read More
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