Reveling in Death
Ellen Wiebe loves her job. I would call her a ‘doctor’, for she is technically qualified as a physician. But since her job is primarily killing people, as Jonathon van Maren points out, especially the most vulnerable, the old, sick, dying and the unborn, and the first principle of medicine is primum non nocere – first do no harm – I would say that in a moral sense, she has disqualified herself from medicine, qua medicine. She glees in death, laughing during her interview in which she claims that in Canada, we don’t use the term ‘euthanasia’, but ‘assistance in dying’. ‘Assistance’? If that’s what you mean by injecting the ‘patient’ with a lethal concoction, and so murdering them. And, yes, murder is still murder, even if the victim cooperates. Try it sometime by hiring a hit man to assassinate you, and he’ll soon be hitting the bricks of a prison cell. But physicians and other practitioners are exempt, ever since euthanasia – ‘MAiD’ – was legalized in 2016.
People only buy the ‘assistance’ part since the patients, in the main, go along with their own demise. But this won’t be voluntary or assistive for long, and I wonder if the Wiebes of the world will still be cackling as they jab their bed-ridden, and good riddance, patients into eternity. Bed-ridden? I wonder if they’ll wait that long, and just off us, when we start drifting into early middle age, or a la Logan’s Run, even when we lose the pimply bloom of awkward adolescence. The devil loves death, and thanatophilila knows no limits. He and his minions would kill us all, if they got the chance. Of course, God has something to say about that: Choose life, that you and your descendants may live. Christ has conquered sin and death.
As a postscript and companion piece, here is a touching tale of a husband caring for his wife, stricken with early-onset Alzheimer’s (try to ignore his own insouciance mentioning his third Covid shot). His wife predicted she would get the debilitating disease, as did her mother, and seems to have vaguely wanted euthanasia should she do so. But he cared for her to her natural death, living to the full what life she could. Such we should all do, whatever God sends our way, until He takes us in His own way to Himself.
Carney’s Amoral Majority
After five defections – euphemistically described as ‘crossing the floor’ – and three by-elections, Mark Carney and his Liberals how have their coveted majority. One wonders what bowls of pottage were offered in back-room deals. In the archaic monarchical system that is the Dominion of Canada, this majority allows the newly-minted Prime Minister to rule[…]Continue reading→
Saint Kateri , Canada’s Protectress
This was the title given to Saint Kateri Tekakwitha, by Pope Benedict XVI, when he canonized her on October 28th, 2012, along with six others, in Saint Peter’ Square (she had been beatified by Pope John Paul II back in 1980). With Saint Joseph as our protector, along with the Canadian martyrs, we seem to[…]Continue reading→
A Tale of Two Benedicts
A grace-filled Holy Week to all our readers! As we await and prepare for the Resurrection about to dawn upon us, we might keep in mind two Benedicts: Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, requiescat in pace, elected on this day in 2005; and today’s commemoration of the mystic pilgrim, Benedict Joseph Labre, who died on this[…]Continue reading→
My Name is Bernadette
April 16th is a propitious day, for besides the anniversary of Father de Valk’s death, who founded Catholic Insight in its print form decades ago, and the commemoration of the ‘two Benedicts’, mentioned in accompanying posts, today we also recall Saint Bernadette Soubirous, the young visionary to whom the Virgin Mary appeared numerous times at[…]Continue reading→
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam and Suffering Joyfully
Saint Lydwina of Schiedam (1380 – 1433) was one of the countless and glorious ‘victim souls’ in the history of the Church, those whose lives are filled with suffering, often of an unimaginable intensity, but who suffer joyfully. She was a fifteen-year old Dutch girl, out skating one day, when she fell and broke one[…]Continue reading→
The Glorious Martyrdoms of Martin and Maximus
As we enter into Eastertide, we recall on this 13th of April Pope Saint Martin I (+655), one of the noblest, if most tragic, of the successors of Saint Peter. Born in Umbria, Italy, he was of noble lineage, with great intelligence combined with charity and love of the poor and the Church. While still[…]Continue reading→
Saint Stanislaus of Szczepanów
We celebrate Saint Stanislaus today (+ April 11, 1079), in light of this Easter Octave, a bishop and martyr who accepted the episcopacy only at the direct order of Pope Alexander II. He proved a wise and courageous leader of his flock, put to death by his own king, Boleslaus, for rebuking the monarch’s ‘immoral[…]Continue reading→
Saint Gemma Galgani
On this April 11th, in 1903 – the same year that the Italian Guiseppe Sarto was elected Pope later that summer as Pius X – a lovely, young Italian woman died, by the name of Gemma Galgani. She lived a brief life of 24 years, as did a number of other young saints, including Pier[…]Continue reading→
An Ideological and Improper Translation
I noticed something odd with the psalm reading at Mass the other day. Our bishops’ conference here in Canada has decreed that the Mass in English – Novus Ordo – use the ‘NRSV’, the ‘New Revised Standard Version’, an ‘updated’ translation of the original RSV, first published in 1952. This ‘new translation’ has the tendency[…]Continue reading→
Saint Jean-Baptiste de la Salle: A Teacher for Teachers
Jean-Baptiste de la Salle (1651 – 1719), a French nobleman, ordained a priest, founded the first order in the Church’s history entirely without priests, and this came about almost by accident. I say ‘almost’, for, of course, there are no accidents with God. Destined for ordination from an early age, Jean-Baptiste never looked back, even[…]Continue reading→