The dark and deceptive movement to legalize doctor-prescribed suicide shields its ugly nature with platitudes of compassion and dignity while avoiding the harsh reality. Asking for the legalization of killing is clearly the most slippery of slopes endangering young and old alike for the most subjective of reasons under some misguided notion of the common good. It challenges long-standing prohibitions, be they found in religious tradition, common law or just plain common sense.
And then, everyone once in awhile someone exposes the emperor’s nakedness – calling out the raw reality of what this is all about. Such is done in a fascinating article found, of all places, on the website of The American Muslim. It is written by the Rev. Frank Julian Gelli, an Anglican priest. He exposes the dark underbelly of the pro-death movement. Using candor, irony and satire Gelli attacks the notion that any good could come from allowing physicians to prescribe medicine so people can commit self-murder.
Following are the leading paragraphs from that article entitled: “Euthanasia: a Modest Proposal”
It is in the air. Eu and Thanatos. Two Greek words, meaning a ‘good death’.
Sir Terry Pratchett, science fiction novelist and Alzheimer sufferer, made a documentary about ‘assisted dying’. The aim: to make euthanasia legal in Britain. Sir Terry’s wife is not in favour, apparently, but he is. Golly! Verily, the Book of Proverbs is right, ‘a good wife is worth more than rubies’. I confess: If I had a wife, I would like her to be like Mrs Pratchett.
Euthanasia-talk is topical indeed. Elderly people in British care homes are victims of spending cuts. The quality of their care is deteriorating. Privatisation has resulted in falling standards. The financial crisis bites. State support is short. It can’t go on like this. And so on.
Good death fans of course swear up and down that it is voluntary euthanasia they are proposing. No one would be forced to top himself. Fair enough, conceptually. Still, when I was a parish priest I have dealt long enough in funerals and bereavements to be perhaps a wee bit sceptical of the happy concept. Where there is will, there is a way. Geddit?
That, however, you can argue, is carping. We must take the bull by the horns. Tackle the problem at the roots. Enough of pussyfooting. Time has time to be truly radical.
In 1729 the Irish writer Jonathan Swift published his pamphlet, A Modest Proposal for Preventing Children of Poor People in Ireland from being a Burden to the People or Parents…’etcetera. Simply put, Swift suggested that the large, excess child population of Ireland should be eaten. A one year old’s flesh was most delicious, nourishing and wholesome food, the great man averred.
It was a brilliant, stupendous idea. Because it bypassed the matter of the child’s voluntary submission to his lot. At the age of one, children are not capable of consent, so the matter of their agreeing to being eaten could not arise. It was ideal, moral, socially useful cannibalism. Swift was a genius.
So am I. A genius-like priest. Immodestly, I propose something similar. Let us eat the old folks. It not fair they should feel useless cast-offs. Their dignity demands they should have a use. As food. Let us eat them.
To read the entire article go to: http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/tam.php/features/articles/euthanasia_a_modest_proposal/0018635
