Date: 2005-03-19 (reprinted by permission of ZENIT News Service):A "Disability Vendetta" Surfaces in Hollywood
HOLLYWOOD, California, MARCH 19, 2005 (Zenit.org).- The recent Academy Awards saw the triumph of two films that promote a favorable view of euthanasia. "Million Dollar Baby," a story about a female boxer severely wounded in a bout, won four of the top Oscars, including that of best director for Clint Eastwood. Hilary Swank won for best actress for her portrayal of Maggie Fitzgerald, who ends up prostrated with a spinal injury. Her pleas to be helped in seeking release from suffering by death are fulfilled.
The Oscar for best foreign film went to "The Sea Inside," which depicts the real-life case of Spaniard Ramón Sampedro, who ended up a quadriplegic after a diving accident. His requests to put an end to his life met were turned down after legal battles, but he committed suicide by drinking a cyanide-laced mixture. The awards won by the films have focused attention on the situation of severely injured or handicapped people, with many protesting that the cinematic versions so popular in Hollywood are both dangerous and demeaning.
The British Telegraph newspaper reported Jan. 23 that the National Spinal Cord Injury Association, one of America's most respected organizations for disabled people, accused Eastwood of a "disability vendetta." The association described the concluding scene of "Million Dollar Baby" as a "brilliantly executed attack on life after a spinal cord injury." Protesters in Chicago from the organization Not Dead Yet claimed that the film "promotes the killing of disabled people as the solution to the 'problem' of disability." Matthew Eppinette, from the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, pointed out in a commentary published by the organization Feb. 28 that the film portrays humans as if they were mere animals to be put out of their suffering.
On the contrary, he stated, "Euthanasia, suicide and assisted suicide are wrong because they deliberately end a human life -- a life that bears the image of God." Moreover, even being a quadriplegic does not prevent us from deepening our relationship with God.
People in this situation certainly suffer greatly, Eppinette pointed out. But, as the example of Christopher Reeve amply demonstrated, "even the most severely paralyzed can live a rich and vibrant life, given proper care and support."
Real-life testimonies
In fact, many people in this situation have published testimonies affirming their will to live. Daniel Timmons, writing in Canada's National Post last Oct. 8, described how he has lost much of the use of his hands and legs. He suffers from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. "Every day is not only a difficult physical struggle, but also a torturous psychological one," he explained.
"From my own experience, it's a challenge to see the purpose of living when your body declines so rapidly and fear fills your mind," stated Timmons. Nevertheless, he opposes assisted suicide, noting that it would be more accurate to call it assisted killing.
Our dignity does not depend on existing without pain, he added. "If people's suffering prevents them from seeing the value of living, they deserve our pity. But no one should deliberately act to kill them."
The case of another ALS sufferer, Jules Lodish, was described in the New York Times last Nov. 7. Reporters visited his Bethesda, Maryland, home when he had already lived for 10 years with the disease. By now almost every muscle in Lodish's body is paralyzed and he types into a computer by twitching the muscles of his cheek.
Asked how he feels about his life, Lodish responded: "I still look forward to every day."
Linda Ganzini, a professor of psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, told the New York Times that many patients have deep religious beliefs that help sustain them, and they are able "to find hope in the future, find meaning and tolerate the daily ongoing losses that they are experiencing."
Living flawed lives
From London, Jane Campbell [pictured right], a commissioner for the Disability Rights Commission, spoke of her experience suffering from spinal muscular atrophy. Writing in the Times on Dec. 2, she explained what happened when in January 2004 she was admitted to hospital with severe pneumonia. The consultant who was treating her commented that if she were to go into respiratory failure "he assumed that I would not want to be resuscitated on a ventilator." She replied: "Of course I would want to be ventilated." The same scenario was repeated the following day with another consultant, and Campbell feared for her life. Scared that the doctors would let her die, she refused to sleep for the next 48 hours.
"This incident, and similar ones that come to the attention of the Disability Rights Commission, reflect society's view that people such as myself live flawed and unsustainable lives and that death is preferable to living with a severe impairment," she explained in the article.
She also noted that the concept of terminal illness is not easy to define. More than a quarter of the doctors who authorize assisted deaths in Oregon said that they were not confident they could give an accurate six-month prognosis.
Another recent testimony came from Spain, where a champion of the Athens Para-Olympics, José Javier Curto, described to the newspaper La Razón that after 11 years of living in a wheelchair, due to a muscular disease, he is firmly opposed to euthanasia.
Our lives belong to God, he said, with or without suffering. Moreover, he affirmed that the case of Ramón Sampedro was not typical. In fact, he calculated that the great majority of paralyzed want to keep on living and are opposed to euthanasia.
Another case from England is that of Baroness Chapman of Leeds [pictured left], reported in the Telegraph on Feb. 6. Baroness Chapman sits in the House of Lords, where the British government's Mental Capacity Bill at the time of writing was being debated. The bill, it is argued, would open the doors to euthanasia. The baroness was born with brittle bone disease. At her birth, the doctors maintained she would be unable to communicate and would have no noticeable mental function. She took her seat in the Lords last October, and in her maiden speech condemned the Mental Capacity Bill, saying, "If this bill had been passed 43 years ago, I would not be here."
After a few months of her birth in 1961 she said the doctors sent her home, saying there was nothing more they could do for her. "They sent me home to die," she said, "and I'm still waiting."
Born with 50 bone fractures, she has suffered 600 fractures in all, and at only 2 feet 9 inches tall she has had to overcome serious obstacles. Yet, "I think that in any situation a person should be given every chance to survive," she argued.
True compassion
In a speech Nov. 12, John Paul II outlined the ethical principles that should guide medical treatment. "Medicine is always at the service of life," he told participants in the International Conference of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers. And when treatment cannot overcome a serious disease, then efforts should be directed to the alleviation of suffering. In every case it is important to remember "the inalienable dignity of every human being, even in the extreme conditions of terminal illness," the Pope said.
Euthanasia can be motivated by sentiments of compassion, or by a false idea of preserving dignity. But instead of relieving suffering it just eliminates the person, the Holy Father pointed out. A lesson Hollywood needs to learn.
[Reprinted by permission of ZENIT News Service]
People were offended when Pope John Paul II referred to ours as a "culture of death." Yet who can possibly contend that we are not head over heels in love with death? Our love affair with death comes out in the violence of the action movies we love, our television programming (both of which consume unquestionably too much of our time), our guns, our language, our driving habits, our pace of life which has so little time for a cup of coffee with others, for our children, our parents, our personal relationships. Who can ignore the 4000 unborn children we kill each day in abortuaries across the United States (yes, that's 4000 in the USA alone, God bless America)! Now we're clamoring for the right to kill ourselves off at the other end of our lives, to terminate one another's lives and our own when we feel the "quality" we judge appropriate (whatever that is) has ebbed sufficiently out of them. 
Our country's legal maneuverings to see that Terri Schiavo (pictured right) has her sorry life snuffed out is but the latest installment in the unfolding saga of our love affair with death. What, we've managed to legally maneuver ourselves into a corner where she can't even be provided water to keep her hydrated as her live slips away (let alone a feeding tube to keep her alive). From what I hear, she's perfectly capable of swallowing water. Thirst is a lower brain function, and she's perfectly capable of feeling thirsty. I understand that the symptoms that arise when one is deprived of water sufficiently closely resemble those of influenza, or the flu. It can be an excruciating way to die-- what did someone think that appropriate during Holy Week or something!? 
get a puppy and deprive it of food and water for several ways and simply observe it die, taking notes on their observations. Do you not think the students would not protest such a lab exercise, even if it were perfectly legal? Do you not think someone might not even try to slap a lawsuit on such a professor? ... But we can't legally find a way to save the human life of Terri Schiavo (pictured left) whose lower brain functions are at least as functional as those of any puppy? One of my son's has the following bumper sticker on his Honda Civic: "Being pro-choice is easy when you're not the one being killed." Amen to that. How does the ride feel, my friends, as we gather momentum on the greased skids to hell? Smile. Have a nice day.
Karl Keating's e-letter of March 8, 2005, lists the following Vatican discipline cases during the pontificate of Pope John Paul II. The list was reportedly taken from the leftist National Catholic Reporter, which provided it as "evidence" of the "repressiveness" of the current pontificate. Keating's own conclusion is just the opposite, that if there is a scandal here it is that so few have been disciplined as to be almost laughable--only 24 in 26 years! I would add one further observation. All but one of the cases cited (Lefebvre) was left-wing. This should furnish some consolation to Catholic traditionalists who worry that the Vatican has been too hard on faithful, conservative Catholics while being too soft on liberal dissidents. Proportionately this certainly hasn't been the case. Still, when it comes to the big picture, Keating's point is well taken: this pontificate has probably leaned much more toward the laissez-faire side of things than towards discipline. Here's the list:
I am always suspicious when well-known public figures in the Catholic world, long known for their leftist rhetoric and often dissident views, are reported to have turned coat and enthusiastically embraced the magisterial orthodoxy. Yet this is exactly what is being reported in recent news about Walter Cardinal Kasper, Peter Hans Kolvenbach, S.J., and Edinburgh Archbishop Keith Patrick Cardinal O'Brien. I have written about at least one vignette in Kasper's history of dissent from Vatican views in an essay entitled "
Again, here is a passage from an interview with Kolvenbach (pictured right) relating to inter-religious dialogue. (The full interview, conducted by Giuseppe Rusconi, was published in issue 1, 2005, of "Il Consulente RE," a bimonthly distributed only by mail, which is sent to about 3,500 ecclesiastics and religious, published by Gruppo RE, which specializes in financial services for men and institutions of the Church): 
Even the controversial Archbishop Keith Patrick O'Brien of Edinburgh, Scotland, who has a well-deserved reputation for being a progressivist and dissenter on various Church teachings, was recently reported in the New Oxford Review (February 2005) to have come out with guns blazing against Scotland's proposed sex education program as "state-sponsored sexual abuse of children." In the NOR article, entitled "Reflections on the Church Hierarchy" (pp. 34-29), Tom Bethell writes:
Switzerland. 
Reflecting on Christopher's own comments about Schaeffer [pictured left], I couldn't help observing a number of things. Good ol' Schaeffer! While he was being treated for the cancer that eventually killed him, Schaeffer refused to be treated in a 
The basic question, of course, centers on the authority to define canonicity. The question of pseudonymity that he treats in his second post is a secondary detail, and I won't address it here. Rather, I wish to comment briefly on the question of circular reasoning that he raises in his second post.
Al Kimel, at 
Dan Brown deserves far less attention than he's getting in the press these days, except for the fatal combination of (1) beguiling charm and (2) deception that animates his recent work of--I wish people could get this into their heads--FICTION, 
The 
Other books by Thompson include 
His world was the absurd world of existentialism gone to seed. Albert Camus asked us to consider as a serious philosophical question why we do not commit suicide. There are two facts, he said, of which he was utterly certain: (1) that he could not live without a meaning in life; and (2) that life has no meaning. He chose to embrace an "absurd existence" and live, though his life was cut short prematurely by an auto accident. The death of 
Soft Parade, one of his last albums, he begins a song with the shout: "You cannot petition the Lord in prayer!" The more recent suicide by shotgun blast of Seattle grundge group, Nirvana's lead singer, 
His was a "Generation X" version of the same. And now the doyen of sex, drugs or insanity, the duke of fear and loathing himself, makes his grand exit. How sad, a life with no purpose. The so-called "wisdom of Silenus" of ancient Sophoclean tragedy, cited by Nietzsche in his Birth of Tragedy, is that it would have been best never to have been born; and the second best to die as quickly as possible. Neither turns out to have been the case with Thompson. He could have taken his life earlier, but chose to take it only after 67 years of life. Perhaps he enjoyed his sex, drugs, and insanity more than one suspects. Then again, what kind of enjoyment would it be that led ultimately to suicide? The final judgment, of course, is not ours to make, though one fears that someone may be inclined to agree with Silenus in this one point: that when all is said and done, it may have been better for such an individual never to have been born. I, at least, will defer to the divine tribunal on that one.
Our Lutheran brethren may not be aware that although Brother Martin Luther opposed the abuse of indulgences, he was not opposed in principle to indulgences themselves. In his famous 95 Theses, Luther declared not only that those who were licitly commissioned by the Pope to grant pardons (indulgences) and were faithfully carrying out their tasks were to be received "with all reverence," but also that any who spoke against the "truth of apostolic pardons" (indulgences granted with the full authority of the Church) should be declared "anathema and accursed"! Here, in fact, is Luther in his own words from his 95 Theses (pictured below, right):
69. Bishops and curates are bound to admit the commissaries of apostolic pardons, with all reverence.
The answer is simple. Imagine you're apprearing in court after having received a speeding ticket for driving recklessly fast. Let's assume you're sorry for your recklessness, have resolved never to drive in such a manner again, and have already confessed your sin to God (and received sacramental absolution, if you're a Catholic). God has forgiven you. But you still have to face the magistrate in traffic court. You can't simply tell the judge: "Jesus has paid for my sins on Calvary, so I shouldn't be required to pay a fine." Temporal punishments can still follow even after sins have been forgiven. Now what business does the Church have with temporal punishments? When most of us die, we aren't yet perfectly sanctified. We haven't overcome all of our bad habits, paid all our debts, or taken care of all those unresolved issues that we've repressed somewhere in the recesses of our memories. We have stuff that still has to be taken care of, even if Christ has paid for our sins and earned our eternal salvation. The purging of all this remaining garbage in our souls is the business of Purgatory; and this is where the Church has always claimed the authority to grant remission of some or all of one's temporal punishments that would await him in Purgatory provided he fulfills certain conditions for an indulgence (pardon) while still alive. (A nice, clear explanation of Purgatory can be found in Peter Kreeft's book, 
Anyone wishing to master or even gain an elementary acquaintance of Aristotelian thinking or Thomistic metaphysics must begin by learning what amounts to a new language--the language of Aristotle (pictured left), who was the teacher of Alexander the Great. In many ways this is analogous to learning the language of computers, where one must learn about "hard drives," "USB ports," "gigabytes," "CD-ROMs," and so forth. In the case of Aristotle and Thomistic metaphysics, you have to become familiar with the vocabulary that includes words like "substance," "accidents," "quality," "relation," "essence," and so forth.
Alessandro Zangrando reports in the latest issue of 
In other words, Forte is trying to change an historic event, the resurrection of Christ, into a myth, into a kind of fairy tale that cannot be proven.