Rod on the COE's statement

This is more like it! Today, Rod is the man!!!!

Church of Mordor
One learns to expect outrage upon outrage from the poor old Church of England in her death throes, but even this took me aback: the C of E has endorsed infant euthanasia for the most severely disabled infants.

We keep crossing these bright red lines, all in the name of compassion, and the greater good. To be fair, the Anglican policy report does not call for the wholesale killing of disabled infants, and says only that it is in some cases compassionate to withhold or withdraw treatment when the situation for particular infants seem hopeless, and the cost of keeping a severely deformed infant alive is astronomical. It's worth having a discussion over when it is appropriate to allow a human being to die a natural death. But this report from the C of E, coming as it does in a time and place where the sense of the sacredness of human life is rapidly being lost, and replaced by a utilitarian and materialist ethic that judges the value of life on the basis of its absence of suffering within it and its usefulness to the wider community, ought to set off alarms. How is it that we can find the money to fund wars of choice in faraway lands, but are beggars when it comes to providing for the weakest and the sickest?

Where are the Cardinal Galens among us today? In his famous 1941 sermon condemning Nazi euthanasia programs, the Cardinal said: "[T]here are sacred obligations of conscience from which no one has the power to release us and which we must fulfil even if it costs us our lives. Never under any circumstances may a human being kill an innocent person apart from war and legitimate self-defense.

He went on:

If you establish and apply the principle that you can kill 'unproductive' fellow human beings then woe betide us all when we become old and frail! If one is allowed to kill the unproductive people then woe betide the invalids who have used up, sacrificed and lost their health and strength in the productive process. If one is allowed forcibly to remove one's unproductive fellow human beings then woe betide loyal soldiers who return to the homeland seriously disabled, as cripples, as invalids. If it is once accepted that people have the right to kill 'unproductive' fellow humans--and even if initially it only affects the poor defenseless mentally ill--then as a matter of principle murder is permitted for all unproductive people, in other words for the incurably sick, the people who have become invalids through labor and war, for us all when we become old, frail and therefore unproductive.

Then, it is only necessary for some secret edict to order that the method developed for the mentally ill should be extended to other 'unproductive' people, that it should be applied to those suffering from incurable lung disease, to the elderly who are frail or invalids, to the severely disabled soldiers. Then none of our lives will be safe any more. Some commission can put us on the list of the 'unproductive,' who in their opinion have become worthless life. And no police force will protect us and no court will investigate our murder and give the murderer the punishment he deserves.

Who will be able to trust his doctor any more?

He may report his patient as 'unproductive' and receive instructions to kill him. It is impossible to imagine the degree of moral depravity, of general mistrust that would then spread even through families if this dreadful doctrine is tolerated, accepted and followed.

Woe to mankind, woe to our German nation if God's Holy Commandment 'Thou shalt not kill,' which God proclaimed on Mount Sinai amidst thunder and lightning, which God our Creator inscribed in the conscience of mankind from the very beginning, is not only broken, but if this transgression is actually tolerated and permitted to go unpunished.