Pushing Suicide When Love Will Do…

I don’t know how I missed this piece, a guestpost at Jim Blazsik, by someone I think I may have heard of before, a woman who calls herself Sr. Kerry of the Immaculate Heart. who gives a brief bio here and also describes the organization she is apparently in the process of forming, the Institute of the Queen of Peace.

None of that is what matters, though. What matters is the incredible truth she has written here, asking “Is Suicide the Answer”, and recounting her experiences in a UK hospital setting. The piece is long, moving and difficult to excerpt, but after recounting the death of a woman who understood when it was time to stop additional treatment (which is very different from expediting death with a “compassionate” injection), and her own experiences of faith and illness, Kerry writes:

One night in the emergency room I was in serious trouble. I nearly died that night. I was in the doctors arms. All I could do was say, ’Lord help me, Mother help me’ over and over again. I stopped and the doctor whispered into my ear, ’keep praying’.

In that blessed doctor science and faith made peace. I could not believe it.

I came out of that crisis with two things ringing in my ears. The first is that within every disability there is some ability and the second, I will concentrate on what I can do rather than worry about what I can’t.

The sanctity of life was really brought home to me by the last days of our previous pope, John Paul ll. He tried so desperately to get out the Easter message but failed to get out a single word. Millions (70% of them under 25) packed into St. Peter’s Square. The love of God so shone from the dying, disabled man’s eyes that millions and millions of people were drawn to God through His servant who was in such suffering. Was John Paul ll so useless that he should have been culled? When you see a disabled person do you think that his life is so meaningless that he should have been put to death?

The media mercilessly use very sick people to manipulate the mass population who fear death. Who fear needing people. Some of those put to death in the clinic in Zurich are young and disabled but have not been given the chance to come to terms with what has happened or to engage in physical therapy and faith-therapy where they can see those others who have become disabled witness to the full life it is possible to have.

Oh, that resonated with me; I’d written something similar a while back:

I think we are living in a time of extraordinary grace and instruction. At a time when one man is trying to get the courts to allow him to starve his wife to death, we are watching a man who stubbornly wants to use his own body to teach us the great lesson: that every life has value, even if that life is in a less than mobile condition, or even if that life holds just enough consciousness to comprehend love, and to understand abandonment. He is demonstrating the remarkable power of faith and prayer. And most importantly, he is demonstrating that, far from “imposing his will,” on things, the pope continues to serve at the pleasure of the Almighty, and that he will continue to do so, despite the displeasure of Mr. Dickey.
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As America watches the case of Terri Schiavo unfold, John Paul II staggers the ambition and reason of the world, and teaches, without a word spoken, the truth the secularist do not want to hear. One man, nearly rendered mute, his body broken, is nevertheless unbowed in the face of their scorn, and he will not be deterred.

Kerry writes:

I hate to say this but it is true. The atheists are the ones that cannot face death so they are pushing for killing. The ’culture of death’ that they promulgate will further degenerate our society. I am sorry that I see so many people dumped in hospitals with no contact whatsoever with their ’family’. However, I have been called upon in the most strange of situations to read the Bible by someone’s bed or pray my Rosary or just sit there awhile answering the questions that trouble them as best I can.

There is a good death and it is not suicide. The artificial technologies keeping you alive are removed. The patient is made comfortable: usually this means anti-sickness and powerful pain relief. Then if no family is available, then none is available. Be it on their souls. The point now is whatever the form said (if it was filled out in the first place) the person may have need of spiritual comfort and for the journey Beyond to be eased by a loving face. A face that sees in you Jesus Christ Our Lord.

That is a good death.

You’ll want to read this whole compelling piece, (and her story of life under socialized healthcare and then -if you have never read it before- I will direct you to something I wrote as my brother S was dying, which fleshes out my thoughts on the notions of “compassion” and “physician aid-in-dying” and the myriad ways society would prefer to anesthetize their way through life and death, instead of fully living, and fully dying.

Pushing Suicide when Love will do…