To Avoid Suffering In The Name Of Compassion

by Thomas A. Droleskey

Pain and suffering are two of the many consequences of Original Sin and of our own Actual Sins. It is only the true Faith, the Catholic Faith, that teaches men the truth about pain and suffering, exhorting them to recognize that each of must suffer on account of the vestigial after-effects of Original Sin in the world and on account of our own personal sins.

The Catholic Faith alone teaches men that they must see in suffering and pain and humiliation and rejection and calumny and ridicule and ostracism and poverty and ill-health the path of our sanctification and salvation.

The Catholic Faith alone provides men with the means to accept with joy and with gratitude each of the sufferings that come our way. She alone has the graces, won for us by the shedding of every single drop of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, the Mediatrix of All Graces, to equip men to carry their crosses with equanimity as they seek to make reparation for their sins and those of the whole world as the consecrated slaves of the Divine Redeemer through His Blessed Mother's Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart.

Catholics understand that nothing we suffer in this mortal, passing vale of tears that is the equal of what one of our least Venial Sins caused Our Lord to suffer in His Sacred Humanity during His Passion and Death and that caused His Most Blessed Mother to suffer as those Seven Swords of Sorrow were pierced through and through her Immaculate Heart, out of which His Most Sacred Heart was formed and is perpetually united in a bond of perfect love. Catholics know that they have no reason to complain or grumble about anything that happens to them in this life. They have only to accept the adorable will of God as He manifests it for them in their lives, accepting suffering and pain and rejection as the means by which they can save their souls and give honor and glory to Him as they are conformed more perfectly with the patience and obedience exhibited by His only begotten Son on the wood of the Holy Cross.

While there are times when intense, debilitating and/or physically incapacitating pain can be relieved by various types of over-the-counter analgesics or prescription medications, we are not to expect that we can live our lives without enduring our share of pain. We are also to understand and to accept the fact that the we will suffer more and more pain, both emotional and physical, as we grow closer and closer to God through Mary Immaculate as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His true Church.

Many saints prayed to suffer for love of Our Lord and the souls for whom He shed His Most Precious Blood on the wood of the Holy Cross, being willing to take up themselves various penances to make reparation for the sins of others just as Our Lord took our own sins upon Himself as He suffered and died for us to make atonement for those sins. Other saints prayed specifically for the gift of martyrdom so that they could make expiation for their own sins by a perfect act of self-immolating love for the Most Blessed Trinity and thus go straight to Heaven after their deaths. Catholics embrace suffering as the path of their salvation.

Although, as noted just before, it is licit to seek to relieve various types of physical aches and pains by the use of various palliatives, it is not licit to seek to end that pain by committing suicide, either by ourselves or with the assistance of others. No one of us suffers anything within the depths of our souls that can match what Our Lord endured in His Agony in the Garden. No one of us suffers anything within the depths of our souls that can match what Our Lady endured as she suffered a true martyrdom of her spirit as she stood so valiantly at the foot of her Divine Son's Holy Cross. The graces won for us by Our Lord and that flow into our souls through Our Lady's loving hands are sufficient for us to embrace with love each one of the crosses that we are asked to bear.

We are never to have recourse to agents of the devil such as Jacob "Jack" Kevorkian, the aptly-named "Dr. Death," who died yesterday in Royal Oaks, Michigan, at the age of eighty-three. Contingent beings, that is, creatures who did not create themselves, are not the arbiters of moral right and moral wrong. There are simply no exceptions to the inviolability of innocent human life. The Fifth Commandment, "Thou shalt not kill," admits of no exceptions for the direct, intentional taking of an innocent human life.

Sadly, it is the case time and time again in our world of emotionalism and sentimentalism that find that proximate antecedent roots in the false, naturalistic, anti-Incarnational, religiously indifferentist and semi-Pelagian principles that men and women seek to anesthetize their pain in life with illegal substances and excessive consumption of alcohol and, unable to accept pain as the penalty for human sins (their own and those of the whole world), they want an "easy exit" from their suffering. Jack Kevorkian was simply a creature of the twisted world created by the revolt of an Augustinian monk named Father Martin Luther, O.S.A., on October 31, 1517, when he posted those ninety-five theses on the door of Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany.

This sick, perverted world created by Luther's revolt against the Catholic Church has wound up convincing non-Catholics and Catholics alike that there is "no purpose" to human suffering, which is why even the pain from the mildest headache must be alleviated immediately and why any kind of permanent discomfort must be treated with a variety over-the-counter and/or prescription pharmaceuticals. This naturalistic, sentimentally-based aversion to pain and suffering, rooted in Luther's belief that one is "saved" by making his "profession of faith" in the Name of Our Saviour Jesus Christ without having to work out one's salvation in fear and in trembling as one seeks to make reparation for one's sins and those of the whole world, leads many people to conclude that it is morally licit to starve and dehydrate brain-damaged human beings death, that it morally licit to use increasingly higher doses of morphine in a hospice or a hospital to expedite the death, by heart failure, of a terminally ill patient, that is an act of "compassion" to kill an innocent preborn baby who has been diagnosed in utero with some kind of malady that would cause him to suffer throughout his life.

As I used to explain to my college students when I exploded the various shibboleths and slogans used by pro-aborts to justify the chemical and surgical execution of the innocent preborn under cover of the civil law:

"Which one of you can tell an expectant mother that her baby will be perfectly happy throughout the course of his life?

"Which one of you can tell an expectant mother that her baby will never get ill, will never experience pain of any kind, will never break a limb, will never be ridiculed by his siblings or peers, will never be rejected in friendship or in love, will never fail an examination, will never lose a job, will never suffer from economic distress?

"Which one of you can tell an expectant mother that her child will never die or know the sufferings of old age prior to death if it is God's Holy Will or them to live a long life?

"Each of us comes into life with spiritual deformity, Original Sin. Each one of our Actual Sins deforms our souls all the more, darkening our intellects and weakening our wills. The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity became Man in His Most Blessed Mother's Virginal and Immaculate Womb to remedy these deformities, to make it possible for us to make reparation for our sins so that our souls would be as white as wool.

"Those who are born with physical or mental deformities are given to us by Our Lord to see His very image within them as we seek to serve them as we would serve Him in the very Flesh. Those who suffer are given to us to be occasions of grace for us so that we can go out of ourselves and to perform for them the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy. Far being something to flee, suffering is a great gift of the merciful, loving God to permit us an opportunity to make reparation for our sins as we conform our hearts to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

"Nothing you or I can ever suffer is the equal of what we caused these twin Hearts of matchless love to suffer during the events of Our Divine Redeemer's Passion Death. Embrace suffering with joy and gratitude. It is the path to your salvation as a member of the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order."

 

Can you see why I am no longer employed as a college professor of political science?

 

An aversion to all pain and discomfort will lead many to seek the "Great Escape" represented by the self-annihilation that is suicide. The devil has convinced so many today that the "angels of death" who pose as false "angels of mercy" such as Jack Kevorkian have the "final solution": to their suffering. So much for the Holy Cross in this, our shallow, sick, perverted world of naturalism and emotionalism and sentimentality wrought by Protestantism's revolt against the Social Reign of Christ the King that was institutionalized by the multi-faceted and inter-related forces of Judeo-Masonry. Got a problem? Take a pill. Take lots of pills. Who wants to suffer?

Got a terminal illness? Check into a hospice one day, leave as a corpse within a short time thereafter. Is it any accident that such prominent figures in the world of baseball as George "Sparky" Anderson and Harmon Killebrew entered hospices and died quickly thereafter. Indeed, Sparky Anderson, who managed the Cincinnati Reds to two successive World Championship titles (1975 and 1976) and the Detroit Tigers to one (1984), died the day after he was admitted to the killing center that is hospice. Killebrew died at home after having entered hospice to have his "meds" given to him to "ease his pain," a mere euphemism for euthanizing a human being as though he is but a dog suffering needlessly in pain for weeks on end with no relief in sight:

Anderson, who directed the Big Red Machine to back-to-back championships and won another in Detroit, died Thursday from complications of dementia in Thousand Oaks, Calif. He was 76. A day earlier, his family said he'd been placed in hospice care. (Hall of Fame manager Sparky Anderson dies.)

Just days after announcing that he would be entering hospice, Minnesota Twins Hall of Fame slugger Harmon Killebrew lost his battle with Esophageal Cancer at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona with his family by his side on Tuesday morning, May 17, 2011. He was 74. (A Friend of Hospice Dies.)

 

Killebrew's case is particularly sad as he spent the last decade of his life supporting the adult killing centers known as hospice:

"I have spent the past decade of my life promoting hospice care and educating people on its benefits. I am very comfortable taking this next step and experiencing the compassionate care that hospice provides. I am comforted by the fact that I am surrounded by my family and friends." (A Friend of Hospice Dies.)

 

Harmon Killebrew spent the last decade of his life promoting murder in the false belief he was aiding people to relieve their pain, becoming a victim of the very false compassion that he had convinced himself was such a service to the sick and the dying. Harmon Killebrew spent the last decade of his life promoting hospice, which is but a demonic end-of-life parallel to abortuaries, where innocent human life is snuffed out in the wombs of mothers. That's not a way to approach the Particular Judgment.

Make no mistake about it: "hospice care" involves the direct, intentional killing of innocent beings. Life ends when God wills it so, not as the dosage of various drugs is increased gradually so as to stop their hearts. No one can authorize the direct, intentional killing of themselves or of others. This is completely forbidden by the Fifth Commandment.

You doubt my word about hospice?

Well, consider this analysis from 2005:

Hospice has developed a good reputation for providing compassionate care for dying patients.  A key principle is that hospice care neither artificially prolongs life nor hastens death.  Unfortunately, this principle is no longer consistently followed in hospice care.  This lack of consistency requires a “buyer beware” attitude when evaluating which hospice might be appropriate to provide truly compassionate end-of-life care.

Illinois Right to Life offers a Hospice Checklist to help evaluate the underlying philosophy of care practiced by any specific hospice.  Seeking answers to the questions on this checklist should be helpful in that evaluation.

As with any new information, I was initially skeptical that hospice could be killing people.  Calls from two nurses no more than one week apart informed me that morphine overdoses are being used to kill hospice patients.  Once I started to investigate on my own, I was helped by receiving a copy of a book published by Hospice Foundation of America, entitled Living With Grief: Ethical Dilemmas at the End of Life.  Actions called ethical in this book are anything but ethical.  Buried in the middle of the book, in a chapter extolling the ethics of assisted suicide, are statements that reveal typical hospice care often hastens death.

Here is a telling sentence that summarizes the means used to hasten death: “It is well known that hastening death is practiced and approved in many ways in contemporary terminal care when suffering is extreme and irremediable – for example, by terminal sedation, by delivering pain relief sufficient to cause death by incidentally suppressing breathing, or by withdrawing nutrition and hydration.  Given the obligation to relieve suffering, such practices are not incompatible with the physicians’ oaths.”  

“Extreme and irremediable” suffering turns out to be nothing more than patient (or caregivers) concerns about “quality of life” and “dying with dignity.”  Tragically, abuses of patient rights are becoming more common at those hospices controlled by “right to die” leadership.  Actions may be taken to hasten death either against the wishes of relatives or of patients themselves.

I have received phone calls and emails from a number of people who witnessed occurrences of this practice.  In one case the wife made a decision to get hospice involved in her husband’s care during his recovery from both surgery and another medical procedure to remove a brain tumor.  Even though the brain tumor was declared to be in total remission by the surgeon and the patient was not in pain, pain medications were forced on the patient.  This was the initial stage of the process that too often leads to an eventual overdose on morphine.  I was asked for advice by the patient’s niece who witnessed the mistreatment of her uncle that was occurring. 

In another case, a mother was on a feeding tube and being cared for by one of the younger sons among her eight children.  The oldest daughter arrived one day to take their mother to hospice “because she would not want to live this way.”  Most of the siblings, who opposed this move to hospice, needed to get an attorney involved even to get the opportunity to learn where their mother was taken so they could visit her.  They learned that their mother was no longer being given food through her feeding tube.  Even though she had not been taking pain medication at home, she was now being given pain medication under hospice care. (Dangers of Hospice.)

Whether death is hastened by denial of food and water or suppression of breathing using overdoses of morphine, this is certainly not death with dignity!  

 

The situation is even worse now than it was in 2005, something that is documented in a 2012 discussion of "hospice care":

 

Every day, thousands of families have a loved one of theirs placed in hospice care, thinking that hospice is simply a place where elderly people die a comfortable, peaceful death. Days later, their loved one dies, and their family assumes that the person’s death was due to complications from an ailment they had, or just “natural causes”. But what they don’t know is that their loved one was murdered. And an unfortunate majority of others don’t realize it, either.

Hospice is a type of care that “cares” for elderly people who have illnesses. Their motive is to make the end of their life as peaceful as possible. Or at least, that’s what they say their motive is.

The reality is that hospice is actually a tool of the New World Order. Just as abortion kills unborn babies, hospice kills off old people, as a means of what is known as “population control”. When a patient is placed in hospice, they are assigned not only nurses, but also a doctor, who is instructed to take all of their medications away. The only drug they take is morphine, which is used for pain management. Now, morphine is indeed a good drug to use to manage one’s pain, but it can be extremely dangerous if too much of it is administered to the patient. And that is precisely what happens, the patient is given enormous overdoses of the drug. After several days, they go into a coma as a result of the levels of morphine they received. This is most dangerous for the person’s soul, because the last few hours are when the battle between God and satan over a soul are greatest. Thus, the person needs this time to ask God forgiveness of their sins, and to prepare for their judgement. Being unconscious makes this impossible, thus giving the devil a better chance of stealing the soul because they didn’t repent of their sins in time. While in a coma, the person also suffers from starvation because neither the doctor nor the nurses feed the patient when they are in this state. Eventually, they die.

Contrary to what hospice will attempt to tell families, it is the overdoses of morphine that kills the patient. Hospice is essentially an euthanasia group, and in fact, the first hospice was opened in France as an OPEN euthanasia facility.

The nurses and doctors who work for these facilities, most of whom are ignorant Protestants or perhaps even atheists, are told that they’re “doing the old people a favor” by making their death more peaceful. The problem with this is that we don’t have the right to end the lives of other people, only God does. These hospice facilities, therefore, are committing a mortal sin by performing such despicable acts. It is a violation of the 5th Commandment: “Thy shall not kill”.

Matt Abbot, a Traditional Catholic writer for “RenewAmerica”, has written numerous articles on the dangers of hospice. In an article written in 2005, Abbot posted an e-mail he received from Ron Panzer, founder of Hospice Patients Alliance. Here is part of what Panzer had to say:

 

“What the public did not know is that the first hospice in our nation, the Connecticut Hospice, was founded by a major representative of the euthanasia
movement, Florence Wald, MSN, who stated that assisted suicide should be available for just about any reason at all:

‘I’ll tell you the way I see it, and I know that I differ from Cicely Saunders, who is very much against assisted suicide. I disagree with her view on the basis that there are cases in which either the pain or the debilitation the patient is experiencing is more than can be borne, whether it be economically, physically, emotionally, or socially. For this reason, I feel a range of options should be available to the patient, and this should include assisted suicide.’ (JAMA. 281; 1683-1685, May 12, 1999, Hospice Care in the United States: A Conversation with Florence S. Wald, M. J. Friedrich)” The rest of Abbot’s article can be read here: http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/abbott/050330

The conclusion, therefore, is that hospice is not the caring, loving thing that it is portrayed to be. It is an invention of those who favor euthanasia, and its motive is to end the lives of elderly folks through overdoses of morphine. Hospice, therefore, should be avoided like the plague. Please do not give hospice access to any of your loved ones, or they will be another victim.

God Bless. (Current Dangers of Hospice.)

No, crazy, old, pro-life "extremist" and "idealist" Droleskey is not making any of this up. Hospice care involves the direct, intentional killing of innocent human beings. "Hospice care" has been and continues to be directly linked to the euthanasia movement, which, of course, is directly linked to the pro-baby-killing movement. Yet it is that this "care" is considered "loving" even by many Catholics despite all of the documented evidence that exists to prove what hospices today in today's un-Catholic world.

We have reached a point in this country where the killing of the preborn, both by chemical and surgical means, and of the chronically or terminally ill is considered to be normal enough to receive full protection under the cover of the civil law. This is why three states in the United States of America (Oregon, Washington and Vermont) permit "assisted suicides" under some conditions. Physicians in the State of Montana can use an "assisted "suicide" defense if they wind up being prosecuted for helping a patient to kill himself. After all, if the civil law can permit the dispatching of innocent human beings in their mothers' wombs, what's the logic of preventing people from killing themselves, with or without the "assistance" of co-conspirators? 

In reality, though, very few people are actually using "physician assisted" suicide as hospitals and hospices kill off the innocent even day, sometimes, as noted in the articles quoted just above, putting people into comatose states of drug overdoses to get them into hospice, whereupon they become ready prey for the harvesting of their vital body members. 

Far more dangerous than the infamous caricature named Doctor Death Jack Kevorkian, who died on June 3, 2011, are those men and women in white coats in hospitals and hospices who routinely dispatch human beings by various devices, including increasingly higher doses of Dilantin and potassium chloride and morphine. The same "profession" that gave us baby-killing, both by chemical and surgical means, under cover of law has given us, first in a de facto manner and now in a de jure manner in some states, the abject, direct, intentional killing of the infirmed and disabled and the chronically and terminally ill, using a variety of linguistic devices to anesthetize and/or justify the reality of these killings while at the same misrepresenting the true state of patients' health in order to expedite their deaths to take advantage of "living wills" and/or organ donation laws to harvest their bodies for "spare parts" before they are actually dead. (Please re-read Dr. Paul Byrne on Brain Death (From The Michael Fund Newsletter.)

Yes, false high priests and priestesses must reign supreme as the arbiters of right and wrong, of what is considered legal and illegal, of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. Whether these high priests and priestesses serve in public office or in the health care industry or in the mass media or in education or business or a thousand other confused places in this world of chaos in which we live, large numbers of people are willing to trust them, the "experts," rather than the true God of Divine Revelation Who they themselves will meet in the face at the moment of their own Particular Judgments. The secular "magisterium" is infallible. Who cares about the magisterium of the one and only true Church that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ founded upon the Rock of Peter, the Pope, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order?

Yes, we must trust men and women who promote sin under the cover of the civil law and abroad in what passes for popular culture to guide us. We must trust the "doctors" when we are sick because they do know best, of course.

Right?

We must trust the word of "doctors" who are all too eager to carve up people for their vital body members while convincing patients and their relatives that there is such a thing as "brain death," which their industry manufactured in order to institutionalize a lucrative money-making scheme that preys on the pain of the ill and the desire of relatives to show "compassion."

We should take the word of the doctors?

Says who?

Take the word of those who believe in the killing of babies in the womb and who do not fear the judgment of God on their immortal souls at the moment of their deaths?

Take the word of those who use the same linguistic devices from Hell to dehumanize the elderly and the infirmed and the disabled and the chronically and terminally ill as they have done with the preborn?

Take the diagnosis of these proven killers and liars uncritically and at face value? Says who?

This report, written by Miss Mary Therese Helmueller, R.N., in 1997 and published in Homiletic and Pastoral Review in January of 1998, might, leaving aside references to the now "Beato Giovanni Paolo II il Grande" that are made in several places in the article, give you pause for reflection on taking the word of men and women who are committed to killing before birth and who engage in deceits of all kind before before and after birth:

In 1984, while working as charge nurse in the intensive care unit, a 20-year-old man asked, “Can you give my mother enough morphine to let her sleep away?” I was horrified. “I can not kill your mother,” I responded. That was only the beginning. Recently, an 80-year-old was admitted to the emergency room and the physician said, “LET’S DEHYDRATE HER”; one more patient was sentenced to die in hospice with NO TERMINAL DIAGNOSIS and once again, THE LIVING WILL determined the death of a 70-year-old man regardless of how he pleaded to live. I can no longer remain silent.

Your life may be in danger if you are admitted to a hospital, especially if you are over 65 or have a chronic illness or a disability. The elderly are frequently dying three days after being admitted to the hospital. Some attribute it to “old age syndrome” while others admit that overdosing is all too common. Euthanasia is not legal but it is being practiced. Last year the New England Journal of Medicine reported that 1 in 5 critical care nurses admit to having hastened the death of the terminally ill! I believe the percentage is much higher. I have worked with nurses who even admit to overdosing their parents. No one knows the exact euthanasia rate in the United States, however Dr. Dolan from the University of Minnesota states that 40 percent of all reported deaths is probably a conservative estimation. If this is true then the United States is executing euthanasia at a higher percentage rate than the Netherlands where it is also illegal but widely practiced.

Did you know that many doctors and nurses whom we trust are speaking openly about their desire to practice euthanasia? In fact they are even speaking about ending their OWN lives when they reach the age of 65 or BEFORE if diagnosed with an illness. Some even admit to stealing the drugs for their own lethal injection. Think about it. These are the same people who will determine the value of YOUR life. If they do not value their own, how can you expect them to value yours?

I am a registered nurse in the St. Paul/ Minneapolis area with 15 years experience in emergency and critical care. My knowledge of euthanasia not only comes from my experience working in the critical care units throughout the Twin Cities, but also comes from a personal tragedy and loss in 1995. This is my true story. My hope is that you will educate others and protect yourselves and loved ones.

On Monday, February 20th, my grandmother was admitted to a local Catholic hospital with a fracture above the left knee. She was alert and orientated upon admission but became unresponsive after 48 hours and was transferred to hospice on the fourth day and died upon arrival.

I was in Mexico City conducting a pilgrimage and unable to be at her side so there were many questions upon my return. The doctors could not tell me the cause of her death so I began to search for the answers and was fortunate to obtain the hospital chart. It then became very clear that my grandmother had been targeted for euthanasia!

Carefully tracing the events it was evident that my grandmother became lethargic and unresponsive after each pain medication. She would awaken between times saying “I don’t want to die, I want to live to see Johnny ordained”; “I want to see Greta walk.” Johnny was her grandson studying in Rome to be a priest and Greta was her new great-grandchild. Even though over-sedation is one of the most common problems with the elderly she was immediately diagnosed as having a stroke. When she became comatose a completely hopeless picture of recovery was portrayed by the nurses and doctors who reported that she had a stroke, was having seizures, going in and out of a coma, and was in renal failure.

The truth however can be found in the hospital chart which indicates that everything was normal! The CAT scan was negative for stroke or obstruction, the EEG states “no seizure activity” and all blood work was normal indicating that she was not in renal failure! How were we to know that the coma was drug induced and that all the tests were normal? Why would they lie?

Looking over the chart it is clear that obtaining a “no code” status was the next essential step in executing her death. This is an order denying medical intervention in emergency situations. The “no code” was aggressively sought by the medical profession from the moment of her admission but was not granted by my family until it appeared that she was dying and there was no hope. Minutes after obtaining the “no code” a lethal dose of Dilantin (an anti-seizure medication) was administered intravenously over an 18-hour period. It put her into a deeper coma, slowing the respiratory rate and compromising the cardiovascular system leading to severe hemodynamic instability. The following day she was transferred to hospice and died upon arrival. The death certificate reads “Death by natural causes.”

My grandmother had no terminal diagnosis but the hospice admitting record indicates two doctors signed their name stating that she was terminally ill and would die within six months. How was this determined? The first doctor, who was the director of hospice, never came to evaluate her or even read the chart. More interesting is the fact that the second doctor was on vacation and returned three days after her death! Obviously these signatures were not obtained before or even upon her admission to hospice. How can this be professionally, morally or even legally acceptable? Can anyone therefore be admitted to hospice to die? It certainly seems possible especially if sedated or unresponsive. In fact, this hospice has recently been under investigation for accepting hundreds of patients who had no terminal illness.

It could happen to you

How can this happen? A serious problem lies in the definition and interpretation of “terminal illness” which permits the inclusion of chronic illnesses and disabilities. Terminal illness is defined as “an incurable or irreversible illness which produces death within six months.” The fact is that many chronic illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure are incurable and irreversible and without medical treatment such as insulin and other medications these illnesses would also produce death within six months. Therefore, those with chronic illnesses or disabilities can be conveniently denied medical treatment and even food and water to make them terminal. Typically it is the elderly who arrive in the hospital that are at the greatest risk. But it could be ANYONE! Especially those whose life and suffering is viewed as useless and burdensome.

Difficult to believe? Well it was for our prolife lawyer until his mother-in-law was admitted to a hospital several months later for a stroke. She became “unresponsive” and “comatose” a few days after her admission. The neurologist wrote an order to transfer her to hospice refusing an I.V. and tube feeding stating “this is the most compassionate treatment.” Remembering my story, our lawyer requested the removal of all narcotics and demanded an I.V. and tube feeding. This infuriated the neurologist. He began to accuse the family of being uncompassionate and inhumane. To prove his point he began a neurological assessment on the patient. Just then she opened her eyes and pulling the physician’s neck tie, forced his face to hers and said very clearly “Give me some water!” It was obvious that she was awake, alert and orientated. He angrily cancelled the transfer to hospice and ordered a tube feeding and intravenous. Several weeks later she was discharged and was exercising on the treadmill! She escaped the death sentence. Unfortunately many others like my grandmother have not. A stroke does not make you terminal but not receiving food and water does!

A clear understanding and definition of euthanasia is essential for a correct and moral judgment. Unfortunately the meaning is being altered by those who hold society’s values and by those who seek financial gain. According to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and reaffirmed by Pope John Paul II in his encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae euthanasia is defined as “an action or omission which of itself and by intention causes death, with the purpose of eliminating all suffering

The killing in hospitals today is commonly referred to as “the exit treatment” and disguised by the word “compassion.” Many doctors and nurses honestly believe that this is the most compassionate treatment for the elderly, the chronic and terminally ill, especially those whose suffering is seen as hopeless, inconvenient and a waste of time or money. Those who hold this twisted and corrupted idea of compassion actually believe they are doing good because suffering has no value and materialism is their god. For instance, how often have we heard that Medicare and Medicaid are “running out?” “So why not relieve pain and lighten the financial burden of our families and society?”

As a result, many patients are intentionally oversedated and forced to die from dehydration, starvation or over medication. “Death by natural causes” will be officially documented on the death certificate. Did you know that this is the exact same proclamation on the death certificate of St. Maximillian Kolbe? Everyone knows however that he died from a lethal injection in Auschwitz concentration camp after many days of dehydration and starvation!

Pope John Paul II states clearly in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae: “Here we are faced with one of the more alarming symptoms of the ‘Culture of Death’ which is advancing above all in prosperous societies, marked by an attitude of excessive preoccupation with efficiency and which sees the growing number of elderly and disabled as intolerable and too burdensome.”

Many souls are being denied the opportunity to reconcile with God and family members because their death has been hastened or deliberately taken. This is a grave and moral injustice. Pope Pius XII in his Address to an International Group of Physicians on February 24, 1957 stated, “It is not right to deprive the dying person of consciousness without a serious reason.” Pope John Paul II confirmed this in Evangelium Vitae saying, “as they approach death people ought to be able to satisfy their moral and family duties, and above all they ought to be able to prepare in a fully conscious way for their definitive meeting with God.”

Recently the Carmelite Sisters shared this tragic story of a friend whose husband was euthanized. Her husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer but was not expected to die for several months to a year. He had been away from the Catholic Church and the sacraments. He also was estranged from his children. One day he complained of pain that was not relieved by medication. The wife spoke to the nurse who then called the doctor. When the doctor arrived he gave an injection through the intravenous line. The husband took three breaths and died! The wife screamed, “I did not ask you to kill my husband!” “We needed time to reconcile our marriage and family.” She continued to cry, “He needed time to reconcile with God and the Church!”

It is evident that euthanasia is being even more cleverly planned and executed. A very holy priest from St. Paul was called to the hospital by a nurse to administer the last sacraments to a hospice patient. When the priest arrived he was surprised to find the patient sitting up in the chair! He visited with the patient approximately a half hour then heard his confession and administered the last sacraments. Just before he left the room the patient jumped up in bed and the nurse administered an injection. Perplexed and concerned, the good priest called the hospital upon returning to the rectory. The patient had already expired!

There is a good and legitimate purpose for hospice units, but how can it ever be morally acceptable to transfer patients to a unit to die when they have NO TERMINAL ILLNESS? How can sedating a patient and refusing a tube feeding and intravenous be considered compassionate? Dehydration and starvation is not a painless death! Has this become the Auschwitz of today? A convenient and economically efficient place to dump the unwanted, imperfect, and burdensome of our society?

Would a “living will” prevent these tragic events? The living will makes you a clear and easy target to be euthanized. A “living will” has nothing to do with living. It is your death warrant. It actually gives permission to facilitate your death by denying medical treatment. Did you know that it was originally developed by Luis Kutner in 1967 for the Euthanasia Society of America? It is the most cost effective tool for hospitals, insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid. Therefore, since 1990 it has been deceptively packaged and promoted as a patient’s right known as “the Patient Self-determination Act.” If cutting care for those patients who ask for it wasn’t so successful in saving money and controlling the budget, why then did it originate in the Senate Finance Committee and why was it supported by the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health? These are finance committees whose only interest is controlling the budget! It is obvious that the living will is all about saving money, not your life!

Many people fear the loss of control that comes with illness and hospitalization. Tragically, they are deceived in thinking that the “living will” protects them and restores this control in their lives. Nothing could be further from the truth. No one knows the exact condition in which they will be admitted to the hospital. The “living will” is written in very broad terms leaving it open to the interpretation of medical professionals and others who stand to benefit from your demise. Remember your best interests or your interpretation may not be theirs! Can you imagine writing general instructions or signing a legal contract for the care of your Mercedes Benz several years before any problem occurs? “Please do not give oil or gas”; “If in three days it can not be fixed stop everything and trash the car.” How absurd and ridiculous! It takes time to diagnose and treat even car problems! If we would not foolishly demand this for a car then how can we demand it for a human life which has an eternal value?

Recently, a 70-year-old was admitted through the emergency room in respiratory distress. He was placed on a ventilator and transported to the intensive care unit. He was awake, alert and orientated anxiously writing notes: “I don’t want to die”; “I changed my mind”; and “Please don’t take me off the machine.” He was very persistent and urgent with his pleading. I soon understood why! His family and physicians were meeting to discuss a serious problem. He had signed a “living will” declaring that he did not want “any extraordinary measures.” He was now viewed as “incapable” of making any decisions and they wanted to follow his wishes as stated in the legal document! Very convenient for those who do not want their inheritance spent on hospital costs and for those who do not want to be bothered with a “useless burden” to our society!

Today hospitals and health care facilities are required to ask patients if they have a living will or lose government funding! The question is proposed in such a way to create pressure on patients so that they think it is something good, desirable and necessary. “Do you know that you have a right in the state of Minnesota to possess a living will?” Please remember that the living will targets you for euthanasia by denying you medical treatment. Living wills kill; they do not protect you. Instead, I urge you to obtain a copy of “The Protective Medical Decisions Document” (PMDD) from the International Anti-Euthanasia Task Force, P.O. Box 756, Steubenville, Ohio 43952. Sign it and keep it among your records. Please get rid of your living will!

Can you or a loved one be targeted for euthanasia without a living will? The course of events and treatment in my grandmother’s short hospitalization are documented. She did not have a living will. Please know the following steps—it could save your loved one’s life.

1)    Oversedation causing lethargy and unresponsiveness. Difficulty or inability to awaken a patient.

Some patients, especially the elderly, are very sensitive to pain medications which are slowly metabolized by the liver. Toxic levels build quickly with very small doses commonly producing lethargy and unresponsiveness. Elderly patients require approximately 20% less of the normal adult doses.

2)    A hopeless picture of any recovery. The patient appears to be comatose and dying. The medical staff affirms this with overwhelming reports and statements.

3)    No code status also referred to as DNR/DNI (do not resuscitate/ do not intubate)—The consent is obtained from the family.
It is a request to deny a patient delivered emergency care in a life-threatening situation.

4)    Lethal doses of Dilantin or narcotics —(morphine)

This will hasten the death, shortening the hospital stay and expenses.

5)    Transfer to hospice without tube feeding or intravenous. Due to sedation and inability to eat or drink the patient will die of dehydration and starvation. (Life Matters: Are You Being Targeted for Euthanasia?).

 

Yes, of course, the preservation of physical life is not an ultimate end in and of itself. We must, however, see in the disabled and the infirmed the elderly and the chronically and terminally ill the very image of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, considering it to be our privilege to serve them, perhaps even for years on end, as we would serve Our Lord Himself. Those who are dependent upon others for their daily needs can thus serve as a source of grace for those who treat them with the genuine compassion as shown by Saint Camillus de Lellis to the incurables and the hopeless of his own day. How many graces are being thrown away by relatives who refuse to suffer along with their loved ones until God chooses to take them unto Himself in His good time, no matter how long a time may be involved?

The care provided by Catholic physicians and consecrated men and women in the religious life is not what inspires the modern hospice industry, whose practitioners, no matter their intentions, do indeed play God in the name of "compassion" and "mercy."

It has been given only to a few authentic mystics and those sentenced to die on a certain date and time as a just penalty for the commission of heinous crimes after having been adjudged guilty after the discharge of due process of law know for certain when it is they are to meet the moment of their Particular Judgment. If the modern hospice industry is being run in accordance with the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law, which it is not, of course, then how is it possible for them to predict with complete accuracy "how long" a certain "patient" has to live?

To wit, we know of a situation last year when a woman telephoned a hospice facility to check on the condition of her paternal uncle, whereupon the attending nurse told her, "It won't be long now."

How is it possible to know this unless one is monitoring the effects of the drugs being pumped into a living human being to induce death?

It is not.

Consider how bad the situation is in the land in the United Kingdom, the land that gave us socialized medicine in a supposed "free" society:

LONDON, June 21, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - An eminent British doctor told a meeting of the Royal Society of Medicine in London that every year 130,000 elderly patients that die while under the care of the National Health Service (NHS) have been effectively euthanized by being put on the controversial Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), a protocol for care of the terminally ill that he described as a “death pathway.”

Dr. Patrick Pullicino, a consultant neurologist for East Kent Hospitals and Professor of Clinical Neurosciences at the University of Kent, claimed that doctors are putting people on the LCP without proper analysis of their condition, citing “pressure on beds and difficulty with nursing confused or difficult-to-manage elderly patients” as factors.

According to the Daily Mail, the doctor sounded the alarm that of the approximately half million deaths in Britain each year of elderly people who are in hospital or under NHS care, about 29 percent, or 130,000, are patients who were on the LCP.

The Liverpool Care Pathway, developed by the Royal Liverpool Hospital and the Marie Curie hospice in the 1990s, and described by its formulators as a “template” to guide the care of the dying, was approved in 2004 by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the government’s health scrutiny body in charge of rationing health services. 

The LCP, reportedly adopted nationwide by more than 300 hospitals, 130 hospices and 560 care homes in England, allows for withdrawal of water and nourishment, and “continuous deep sedation” for patients judged to be incurable. Combined with withdrawal of fluids, deep sedation leads quickly to death.

Pullicino related the personal experience of removing a man from the LCP who went on to live another 14 months, proving that the claim of the diagnosing doctor that the man had only hours to live was “palpably false.”

“I found him deeply unresponsive on a Monday morning and was told he had been put on the LCP. He was on morphine via a syringe driver. I removed the patient from the LCP despite significant resistance,” Pullicino told the Royal Society of Medicine. “His seizures came under control and four weeks later he was discharged home to his family.”

“The lack of evidence for initiating the Liverpool Care Pathway makes it an assisted death pathway rather than a care pathway,” Pullicino stated. “Very likely many elderly patients who could live substantially longer are being killed by the LCP.

“Predicting death in a time frame of three to four days, or even at any other specific time, is not possible scientifically. This determination in the LCP leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy. The personal views of the physician or other medical team members of perceived quality of life or low likelihood of a good outcome are probably central in putting a patient on the LCP.”

“If we accept the Liverpool Care Pathway we accept that euthanasia is part of the standard way of dying as it is now associated with 29 per cent of NHS deaths,” Dr. Pullicino concluded.

According to the Daily Mail, a Department of Health spokesman panned Dr. Pullicino’s assertions. “The Liverpool Care Pathway is not euthanasia and we do not recognise these figures. The pathway is recommended by NICE and has overwhelming support from clinicians – at home and abroad – including the Royal College of Physicians,” the unnamed spokesman said.

However, Pullicino’s claims echo a similar statement last year by Dr. Clare Walker, President of the Catholic Medical Association in the UK, where she said, “euthanasia is being widely practiced in the NHS in an official way” under the LCP protocol.

Dr. Walker explained that “she is regularly contacted by distressed healthcare professionals and managers who describe their experience of witnessing repeated instances of unofficial active euthanasia in their local areas,” adding that, “in some hospitals the LCP has become known as the Lazarus Care Pathway due to the number of people who have been put on it inappropriately, are not moribund and subsequently need to be actively treated.”

Alex Schadenberg, Executive Director of Canada’s Euthanasia Prevention Coalition, responded to Dr. Walker’s statement at the time, saying, “Whether active euthanasia is actually widespread is unknown and anecdotal at best but the reality is that the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition regularly receives phone calls and emails from family members and friends of people whose medical care-givers appear to be intentionally causing their death.

“Many of these cases are concerned family members reacting to end of life decisions that are made because the person is actually dying, whereas, sometimes these cases appear to be euthanasia.” (130,000 elderly patients killed every year by 'death pathway')

Finally, consider the plea that a daughter had made to a district attorney's office after her own father, who was suffering from Parkinson's Disease and was not nearing death, was killed by the use of morphine in a hospice:

Message to prosecutors:

If I had called you saying that a young man had provided a teenage girl with a gun to carry out a suicide pact, you would have immediately reacted and called an investigation. You would have found that young man guilty.

But I called to say that my father was medically killed (euthanized) against his will by a hospice and I'm told to call an investigator myself. And he tells me to call more people, other agencies. And they tell me call other people and other agencies. And no one listens. So, this hospice is free to continue ending the lives of people who are unaware of what is happening or too drugged to stop what is being done to them.

I can no longer save my father's life, but I can certainly try to help the next innocent parent from being starved and drugged to death. But I would like you to explain to me how it is that when the hospice plainly killed my father it was not murder. The nurse knew that my father had no medical need for morphine, no pain, and gave him more morphine even when my father was already in a coma ... a coma caused by the sedative Haldol and morphine the hospice gave him against his will.

My father was stable, alert and conscious and refused to go to hospice. He was not even terminal; he had Parkinson's disease and was not declining at all. The hospice chose to stop allowing my father to have any food or water, but he wanted to live and pleaded and begged not to be forced into hospice. He knew what they would do.

The nurse increased the dosage of morphine when there was no medical need. She chose to kill my father! She knew exactly what she was doing.

Why do you do nothing, Mr. District Attorney? Why? Who are you to judge that my father's life is not as valuable as any other U.S. citizen? How dare you do nothing when my father was murdered! Because of your decision not to act, and the decisions of other DAs just like you all across the USA, thousands and thousands of US citizens are being killed with impunity. You know the cases gathering dust on your desk, in that file cabinet. You know what I am writing to you about.

I have now learned of other cases of medical killings. Other families have had their loved ones killed, and they report the same response by other DAs, just like you. They do nothing ... act sympathetic ... but in the end, they allow some hospice staff nurse or physician to kill their patients without even a slap on the wrist ... without even a reprimand. Your actions show that you agree that these US citizens should be killed. If you believed otherwise, you would be acting to prosecute these cases. The shame is on you, for you are now responsible. Can you live with that knowledge?

Why are you responsible? Because those who perpetrate these killings know that you have done nothing, and they count on your complicity in the killing. That's what you have given them up to this point: a legal atmosphere where "the culture of death" allows these medical killings to continue, where they are routine, and where US citizens are killed with no punishment at all for the killers! (Daughter of Father Killed in Hospice Complains to District Attorneys.)

No one wants to investigate the murder of innocent human beings in hospices as there is "gold in them thar hills." That is, the hospice industry is a money-maker, and money-makers donate to the electoral campaigns of district attorneys.

Remember, George Greer, the Florida judge who sentence the late Mrs. Theresa Marie Schindler-Schiavo to a cruel execution by starvation and dehydration, received a campaign donation from the pro-euthanasia attorney, George Felos, who represented Mrs. Schiavo's faithless, adulterous husband, Michael Schaivo:

As if the circumstances surrounding Terri Schiavo could not get any more suspicious, the Center for Reclaiming America has uncovered evidence that Pinellas-Pasco County Circuit Judge George W. Greer accepted a campaign contribution from the law firm of Michael Schiavo’s attorney only one day after "Terri’s Law” was declared unconstitutional by a Pinellas county court. This appears to establish a clear conflict of interest between Judge Greer and the best interests of Terri Schiavo.

Judge Greer has been responsible for establishing "the facts” in the case of Terri Schiavo. Sadly, he has dismissed or ignored testimony from 33 physicians (15 neurologists) who are willing to testify that Terri is not in a persistent vegetative state and can improve, he has refused to allow the Florida Department of Children and Families to conduct a criminal investigation of Michael Schiavo, he has refused to honor a subpoena from the U.S. Congress, and he has blocked virtually all efforts from the Schindler family to save the life of their daughter.

According to public records available from the Florida Department of State: Division of Elections, Judge George W. Greer received a campaign contribution from the law firm of Felos & Felos during his re-election efforts in the spring of 2004.

Of course, no direct evidence suggests collusion between the two parties, but the timing of the campaign contribution is highly suspect. (Greer Got Donation From Michael Schiavo's Attorney, George Felos. See also the appendix below for more information.)

 

The killing of innocent human beings is a profit-making industry today, and it has gained support from Catholics and non-Catholics under the banners of "choice," "freedom," "dignity," "mercy" and "compassion."

While they are indeed many individual Catholics who seek to provide authentic compassion to their dying relatives, such brave souls are relatively few in number today.

Far more common are those situations where patients are told lies by their attending physicians and accept heavy sedation even though they do not realize that they are being advised to authorize the beginnings of efforts to kill them by positive, pro-active means that are always proscribed by the binding precepts of the Divine Positive Law and the Natural Law. 

Consider these comments, which were offered to me in an e-mail sent by a Catholic attorney on Thursday evening, August 8, 2013,the Feast of Saints Cyriacus Largus and Smaragdus, after the initial posting and revision of this article:

Just read your article on death peddlers for the aged. You are 100% correct.  In my practice I often see the last medical records in probate cases. Older patients routinely put on morphine IV drip for no reason.  Their adult children are pressured to "let Mom go, she's had a long life."  This is demonic.

No, I am just not making any of this up. It is real. Be forewarned not to be deceived by the medical industry as was my own late mother, authorized the use of heavy sedation as she was in the final throes of quickly spreading stomach and esophageal cancer in March of 1982.

My mother was not well-formed in the Holy Faith, asking me at one point during her suffering if she could be given a "pill" to put her "to sleep." I told her that she could not authorize her own killing and had to embrace the Holy Cross. I was speaking a different language to her than she understood. I love my mother dearly. I pray for the repose of her immortal soul every day. She did not, however, know anything about offering her sufferings, which were indeed very intense, to Christ the King through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary in reparation for her sins and for those of the whole world.  In other words, she wasted her suffering.

Catholics must see in their sufferings as gifts fashioned for them from all eternity by the loving hand of God to prepare them better for the Particular Judgment as they do their Purgatory time as members of the Church Militant on earth. Heavy sedation, given in the name of "compassion" and "mercy," of course, makes this less possible, and it prevents many souls who might have had deathbed conversions from being lucid enough to even think about doing so. Thus it is that heavy sedation given in the name of "compassion" winds up serving as the pathway for the killing of human beings and as a means of preventing many of those so killed from saving their souls.

We cannot, as mentioned above, live in a vacuum and think the "doctors know best."

The "doctors" don't have the interests of Christ the King at heart, do they?

Why should we take their word at face value, perhaps even going so far as to dismiss the efforts of believing Catholics to come to the rescue of people whose very humanity has been dehumanized and thus targeted for execution because they are said to be "living corpses"?

This has application of course in the specific instances of the care of the disabled that have been in the news in recent years, including that of the late Mrs. Theresa Marie Schindler-Schiavo, whose death on March 31, 2005, as a result of a court-ordered dehydration and starvation has been the subject of numerous articles on this site (see Five Years Later). It is vital to get our facts right and to quit relying upon the "word" of those who are committed to the killing off of human beings under various euphemisms and all too frequently under totally false pretenses.

Bishop Clemens von Galens of Munster, Germany, condemned the Nazi eugenics laws in 1939 and thereafter. His words speak to us prophetically today just as strongly as they did to his own people sixty-nine years ago:

It is a deeply moving event that we read of in the Gospel for today. Jesus weeps! The Son of God weeps! A man who weeps is suffering pain pain either of the body or of the heart. Jesus did not suffer in the body; and yet he wept. How great must have been the sorrow of soul, the heartfelt pain of this most courageous of men to make him weep! Why did he weep? He wept for Jerusalem, for God's holy city that was so dear to him, the capital of his people. He wept for its inhabitants, his fellow-countrymen, because they refused to recognise the only thing that could avert the judgment foreseen by his omniscience and determined in advance by his divine justice: “If thou hadst known . . . the things which belong unto thy peace!" Why do the inhabitants of Jerusalem not know it? Not long before Jesus had given voice to it: “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!" (Luke 13,34).

Ye would not. I, your King, your God, I would. But ye would not! How safe, how sheltered is the chicken under the hen's wing: she warms it, she feeds it, she defends it. In the same way I desired to protect you, to keep you, to defend you against any ill. I would, but ye would not!

That is why Jesus weeps: that is why that strong man weeps; that is why God weeps. For the folly, the injustice, the crime of not being willing . And for the evil to which that gives rise which his omniscience sees coming. which his justice must impose if man sets his unwillingness against God's commands, in  opposition to the admonitions of conscience, and all the loving invitations of the divine Friend, the best of Fathers: “If thou hadst known, in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! But then wouldst not!.: It is something terrible, something incredibly wrong and fatal. when man sets his will against God's will. I would) than wouldst not! It is therefore that Jesus weeps for Jerusalem.

Dearly beloved Christians! The joint pastoral letter of the German bishops, which was read in all Catholic churches in Germany on 26 June 1941, includes the following words.

“It is true that in Catholic ethics there are certain positive commandments which cease to be obligatory if their observance would be attended by unduly great difficulties; but there are also sacred obligations of conscience from which no one can release us; which we must carry out even if it should cost us our life. Never, under any circumstances, may a man, save in war or in legitimate self-defence, kill an innocent person.”

I had occasion on 6th July to add the followings comments on this passage in the joint pastoral letter:

“For some months we have been heating reports that inmates of establishments for the care of the mentally ill who have been ill for a long period and perhaps appear incurable have been forcibly removed from these establishments on orders from Berlin. Regularly the relatives receive soon afterwards an intimation that the patient is dead, that the patient's body has been cremated and that they can collect the ashes. There is a general suspicion, verging on certainty. that these numerous unexpected deaths of the mentally ill do not occur naturally but are intentionally brought about in accordance with the doctrine that it is legitimate to destroy a so-called “worthless life” ” in other words to kill innocent men and women, if it is thought that their lives are of no further value to the people and the state. A terrible doctrine which seeks to justify the murder of innocent people, which legitimises the violent killing of disabled persons who are no longer capable of work, of cripples, the incurably ill and the aged and infirm!”

I am reliably informed that in hospitals and homes in the province of Westphalia lists are being prepared of inmates who are classified as “unproductive members of the national community” and are to be removed from these establishments and shortly thereafter killed. The first party of patients left the mental hospital at Marienthal, near Munster, in the course of this week.

German men and women! Article 211 of the German Penal Code is still in force, in these terms: “Whoever kills a man of deliberate intent is guilty of murder and punishable with death”. No doubt in order to protect those who kill with intent these poor men and women, members of our families, from this punishment laid down by law, the patients who have been selected for killing are removed from their home area to some distant place. Some illness or other is then given as the cause of death. Since the body is immediately cremated, the relatives and the criminal police are unable to establish whether the patient had in fact been ill or what the cause of death actually was. I have been assured, however, that in the Ministry of the Interior and the office of the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Conti, no secret is made of the fact that indeed a large number of mentally ill persons in Germany have already been killed with intent and that this will continue.

Article 139 of the Penal Code provides that “anyone who has knowledge of an intention to commit a crime against the life of any person . . . and fails to inform the authorities or the person whose life is threatened in due time . . . commits a punishable offence”. When I learned of the intention to remove patients from Marienthal I reported the matter on 28th July to the State Prosecutor of Munster Provincial Court and to the Munster chief of police by registered letter, in the following terms:

“According to information I have received it is planned in the course of this week (the date has been mentioned as 31st July) to move a large number of inmates of the provincial hospital at Marienthal, classified as ‘unproductive members of the national community’, to the mental hospital at Eichberg, where, as is generally believed to have happened in the case of patients removed from other establishments, they are to be killed with intent. Since such action is not only contrary to the divine and the natural moral law but under article 211 of the German Penal Code ranks as murder and attracts the death penalty, I hereby report the matter in accordance with my obligation under article 139 of the Penal Code and request that steps should at once be taken to protect the patients concerned by proceedings against the authorities planning their removal and murder, and that I may be informed of the action taken".

I have received no information of any action by the State Prosecutor or the police.

I had already written on 26th July to the Westphalian provincial authorities, who are responsible for the running of the mental hospital and for the patients entrusted to them for care and for cure, protesting in the strongest terms. It had no effect. The first transport of the innocent victims under sentence of death has left Marienthal. And I am now told that 800 patients have already been removed from the hospital at Warstein.

We must expect, therefore, that the poor defenceless patients are, sooner or later, going to be killed. Why? Not because they have committed any offence justifying their death, not because, for example, they have attacked a nurse or attendant, who would be entitled in legitimate self-defence to meet violence with violence. In such a case the use of violence leading to death is permitted and may be called for, as it is in the case of killing an armed enemy.

No: these unfortunate patients are to die, not for some such reason as this but because in the judgment of some official body, on the decision of some committee, they have become “unworthy to live,” because they are classed as “unproductive members of the national community”.

The judgment is that they can no longer produce any goods: they are like an old piece of machinery which no longer works, like an old horse which has become incurably lame, like a cow which no longer gives any milk. What happens to an old piece of machinery? It is thrown on the scrap heap. What happens to a lame horse, an unproductive cow?

I will not pursue the comparison to the end, so fearful is its appropriateness and its illuminating power.

But we are not here concerned with pieces of machinery; we are not dealing with horses and cows, whose sole function is to serve mankind, to produce goods for mankind. They may be broken up; they may be slaughtered when they no longer perform this function.

No: We are concerned with men and women, our fellow creatures, our brothers and sisters! Poor human beings, ill human beings, they are unproductive, if you will. But does that mean that they have lost the right to live? Have you, have I, the right to live only so long as we are productive, so long as we are recognised by others as productive?

If the principle that men is entitled to kill his unproductive fellow-man is established and applied, then woe betide all of us when we become aged and infirm! If it is legitimate to kill unproductive members of the community, woe betide the disabled who have sacrificed their health or their limbs in the productive process! If unproductive men and women can be disposed of by violent means, woe betide our brave soldiers who return home with major disabilities as cripples, as invalids! If it is once admitted that men have the right to kill “unproductive” fellow-men even though it is at present applied only to poor and defenceless mentally ill patients ” then the way is open for the murder of all unproductive men and women: the incurably ill, the handicapped who are unable to work, those disabled in industry or war. The way is open, indeed, for the murder of all of us when we become old and infirm and therefore unproductive. Then it will require only a secret order to be issued that the procedure which has been tried and tested with the mentally ill should be extended to other “unproductive” persons, that it should also be applied to those suffering from incurable tuberculosis, the aged and infirm, persons disabled in industry, soldiers with disabling injuries!

Then no man will be safe: some committee or other will be able to put him on the list of “unproductive” persons, who in their judgment have become “unworthy to live”. And there will be no police to protect him, no court to avenge his murder and bring his murderers to justice.

Who could then have any confidence in a doctor? He might report a patient as unproductive and then be given instructions to kill him! It does not bear thinking of, the moral depravity, the universal mistrust which will spread even in the bosom of the family, if this terrible doctrine is tolerated, accepted and put into practice. Woe betide mankind, woe betide our German people, if the divine commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”, which the Lord proclaimed on Sinai amid thunder and lightning, which God our Creator wrote into man's conscience from the beginning, if this commandment is not merely violated but the violation is tolerated and remains unpunished!

I will give you an example of what is happening. One of the patients in Marienthal was a man of 55, a farmer from a country parish in the Munster region I could give you his name who has suffered for some years from mental disturbance and was therefore admitted to Marienthal hospital. He was not mentally ill in the full sense: he could receive visits and was always happy, when his relatives came to see him. Only a fortnight ago he was visited by his wife and one of his sons, a soldier on home leave from the front. The son is much attached to his father, and the parting was a sad one: no one can tell, whether the soldier will return and see his father again, since he may fall in battle for his country. The son, the soldier, will certainly never again see his father on earth, for he has since then been put on the list of the “unproductive”. A relative, who wanted to visit the father this week in Marienthal, was turned away with the information that the patient had been transferred elsewhere on the instructions of the Council of State for National Defence. No information could be given about where he had been sent, but the relatives would be informed within a few days. What information will they be given? The same as in other cases of the kind? That the man has died, that his body has been cremated, that the ashes will be handed over on payment of a fee? Then the soldier, risking his life in the field for his fellow-countrymen, will not see his father again on earth, because fellow-countrymen at home have killed him.

The facts I have stated are firmly established. I can give the names of the patient, his wife and his son the soldier, and the place where they live.

“Thou shalt not kill!” God wrote this commandment in the conscience of man long before any penal code laid down the penalty for murder, long before there was any prosecutor or any court to investigate and avenge a murder. Cain, who killed his brother Abel, was a murderer long before there were any states or any courts of law. And he confessed his deed, driven by his accusing conscience: “My punishment is greater than I can bear . . . and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me the murderer shall slay me” (Genesis 4,13-14).

“Thou shalt not kill!” This commandment from God, who alone has power to decide on life or death, was written in the hearts of men from the beginning, long before God gave the children of Israel on Mount Sinai his moral code in those lapidary sentences inscribed on stone which are recorded for us in Holy Scripture and which as children we learned by heart in the catechism.

“I am the Lord thy God!” Thus begins this immutable law. “Thou shalt have not other gods before me.” God ” the only God, transcendent, almighty, omniscient, infinitely holy and just, our Creator and future Judge ” has given us these commandments. Out of love for us he wrote these commandments in our heart and proclaimed them to us. For they meet the need of our God-created nature; they are the indispensable norms for all rational, godly, redeeming and holy individual and community life. With these commandments God, our Father, seeks to gather us, His children, as the hen gathers her chickens under her wings. If we follow these commands, these invitations, this call from God, then we shall be guarded and protected and preserved from harm, defended against threatening death and destruction like the chickens under the hen's wings.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!” Is this to come about again in our country of Germany, in our province of Westphalia, in our city of Munster? How far are the divine commandments now obeyed in Germany, how far are they obeyed here in our community?

The eighth commandment: “Thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not lie.” How often is it shamelessly and publicly broken!

The seventh commandment: “Thou shalt not steal”. Whose possessions are now secure since the arbitrary and ruthless confiscation of the property of our brothers and sisters, members of Catholic orders? Whose property is protected, if this illegally confiscated property is not returned?

The sixth commandment: “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” Think of the instructions and assurances on free sexual intercourse and unmarried motherhood in the notorious Open Letter by Rudolf Hess, who has disappeared since, which was published in all the newspapers. And how much shameless and disreputable conduct of this kind do we read about and observe and experience in our city of Munster! To what shamelessness in dress have our young people been forced to get accustomed to” the preparation for future adultery! For modesty, the bulwark of chastity, is about to be destroyed.

And now the fifth commandment: “Thou shalt not kill”, is set aside and broken under the eyes of the authorities whose function it should be to protect the rule of law and human life, when men presume to kill innocent fellow-men with intent merely because they are “unproductive”, because they can no longer produce any goods.

And how do matters stand with the observance of the fourth commandment, which enjoins us to honour and obey our parents and those in authority over us? The status and authority of parents is already much undermined and is increasingly shaken by all the obligations imposed on children against the will of their parents. Can anyone believe that sincere respect and conscientious obedience to the state authorities can be maintained when men continue to violate the commandments of the supreme authority, the Commandments of God, when they even combat and seek to stamp out faith in the only true transcendent God, the Lord of heaven and earth?

The observance of the first three commandments has in reality for many years been largely suspended among the public in Germany and in Munster. By how many people are Sundays and feast days profaned and withheld from the service of God! How the name of God is abused, dishonoured and blasphemed!

And the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” In place of the only true eternal God men set up their own idols at will and worship them: Nature, or the state, or the people, or the race. And how many are there whose God, in Paul's word, “is their belly” (Philippians 3:19)” their own well being, to which they sacrifice all else, even honour and conscience ” the pleasures of the senses, the lust for money, the lust for power! In accordance with all this men may indeed seek to arrogate to themselves divine attributes, to make themselves lords over the life and death of their fellow-men.

When Jesus came near to Jerusalem and beheld the city he wept over it, saying: “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes. For the day shall come upon thee, that thine enemies . . . shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another; because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation.” Looking with his bodily eyes, Jesus saw only the walls and towers of the city of Jerusalem, but the divine omniscience looked deeper and saw how matters stood within the city and its inhabitants:       “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem . . . how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings ” and ye would not!" That is the great sorrow that oppresses Jesus's heart, that brings tears to his eyes.   I wanted to act for your good, but ye would not!

Jesus saw how sinful, how terrible, how criminal, how disastrous this unwillingness is. Little man, that frail creature, sets his created will against the will of God! Jerusalem and its inhabitants, His chosen and favoured people, set their will against God's will! Foolishly and criminally, they defy the will of God! And so Jesus weeps over the heinous sin and the inevitable punishment. God is not mocked!

Christians of Munster! Did the Son of God in his omniscience in that day see only Jerusalem and its people? Did he weep only over Jerusalem? Is the people of Israel the only people whom God has encompassed and protected with a father's care and mother's love, has drawn to Himself? Is it the only people that wou1d not ? The only one that rejected God's truth, that threw off God's law and so condemned itself to ruin?

Did Jesus, the omniscient God, also see in that day our German people, our land of Westphalia, our region of Munster, the Lower Rhineland? Did he also weep over us? Over Munster?

For a thousand years he has instructed our forefathers and us in his truth, guided us with his law, nourished us with his grace, gathered us together as the hen gathers her chickens under her wings. Did the omniscient Son of God see in that day that in our time he must also pronounce this judgment on us: “Ye would not: see, your house will be laid waste!” How terrible that would be!

My Christians! I hope there is still time; but then indeed it is high time: That we may realise, in this our day, the things that belong unto our peace! That we may realise what alone can save us, can preserve us from the divine judgment: that we should take, without reservation, the divine commandments as the guiding rule of our lives and act in sober earnest according to the words: “Rather die than sin”.

That in prayer and sincere penitence we should beg that God's forgiveness and mercy may descend upon us, upon our city, our country and our beloved German people.

But with those who continue to provoke God's judgment, who blaspheme our faith, who scorn God's commandments, who make common cause with those who alienate our young people from Christianity, who rob and banish our religious, who bring about the death of innocent men and women, our brothers and sisters with all those we will avoid any confidential relationship, we will keep ourselves and our families out of reach of their influence, lest we become infected with their godless ways of thinking and acting, lest we become partakers in their guilt and thus liable to the judgment which a just God must and will inflict on all those who, like the ungrateful city of Jerusalem, do not will what God wills.

O God, make us all know, in this our day, before it is too late, the things which belong to our peace!

O most Sacred Heart of Jesus, grieved to tears at the blindness and iniquities of men, help us through Thy grace, that we may always strive after that which is pleasing to Thee and renounce that which displeases Thee, that we may remain in Thy love and find peace for our souls!

Amen.

 

Anyone who does not think that the situation in Nazi Germany that was described so clearly and condemned so forcefully by the late Bishop Clemens von Galens in 1941 obtains in the United States of America and elsewhere in the world at the present time is spiritually blind. We are living through the precise situation now as that described and condemned by Bishop Clemens von Galens.

Please do yourself a favor and re-read the late bishop's remarks again.

Yes, I have included these remarks before, at the end of the interview on brain death that Dr. Paul Byrne gave to Mrs. Randy Engel. It is important to do so again as Bishop von Galens's remarks resonate with Catholic truth and serve as prophetic warnings to us not to trust in the diagnoses and judgments of doctors who have accustomed themselves to lying and killing.

Bishop von Galens's sermon from the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost in 1941 also discussed the cogent point that it is easier for men to break the Fourth through Tenth Commandments under cover of law when they have violated the First through Third Commandments. Consider this passage once again:

And the first commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” In place of the only true eternal God men set up their own idols at will and worship them: Nature, or the state, or the people, or the race. And how many are there whose God, in Paul's word, “is their belly” (Philippians 3:19)” their own well being, to which they sacrifice all else, even honour and conscience ” the pleasures of the senses, the lust for money, the lust for power! In accordance with all this men may indeed seek to arrogate to themselves divine attributes, to make themselves lords over the life and death of their fellow-men.

 

Although admitting, as noted above, that the proximate causes for the astounding advances in evil that we have seen before our very eyes in the past fifty years is the result of the overthrow of the Social Reign of Christ the King in the Sixteenth Century and the contempt that this has bred for His Deposit of Faith and the authority of His true Church, it is nevertheless also true that the astounding advances in evil that we have seen before our very eyes in the past fifty years have resulted at least in part as the result of a chastisement that God is permitting us to endure as a punishment for our failure to seek to restore all things in Him. How can we stop the advance of evil on the devil's own terms of naturalism, no less think and speak naturalistically about the state of disabled, dependent human beings?

Moreover, it is not unreasonable at all to consider that this advance of evil has been made more possible by the fact that the conciliar "pontiffs" have dared to arouse the wrath of God by having "other gods" before them. All of the conciliar "popes"" opposition to the evils of the day, including abortion and euthanasia, come to nothing because they continue to offend God by giving respect publicly to false religions, failing to recognize that as serious as abortion and euthanasia and other crimes are as sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance they are ultimately lower on the scale of the hierarchy of evil than violations of the first three Commandments, especially violations of the First Commandment by the respect shown publicly to false religions. "Nature, or the state, or the people, or the race" must therefore triumph as God is so blasphemed and mocked, resulting in the degradation of the inviolability of innocent human life.

After all, it is a pretty easy thing to kill off innocent beings by dehumanizing them when one grows accustomed to offending God by having a steady diet of "other gods" before one. God will not let such offenses go unpunished. More to the point perhaps is this: How can Catholics in the conciliar structures be expected withstand the Americanist culture of emotionalism and sentimentality born of the Protestant Revolt and the rise of Judeo-Masonry when the conciliar church's liturgical rites are sacramentally barren? Yes, perhaps more to the point.

 

We have returned to a world that looks very much like the one that existed before Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ's Incarnation, Nativity, Hidden Years, Public Life and Ministry, and His Passion, Death and Resurrection, a world described by the late Father Edward Leen as one where people lived lives that alternated between pleasure and cruelty:

With the exception of that comparatively small number of heroic men and women who have, from the dawn of consciousness, pursued unfalteringly the path of perfection, Christians as a rule belie the promises of their baptism and continually present obstacles to the increase of divine grace in their souls. Differing in many respects, we are alike in this, that we are all sinners, and that we have not only once, but perhaps several times in our lives disappointed God.

Under the reign of Satan men were hard and unfeeling, without pity or tenderness. The one thing they looked up to was the physical power to dominate, and the one thing they feared was the helplessness of poverty. Their life was divided between pleasure and cruelty. Pride and haughtiness instead of being regarded as defects were regarded as manly virtues. Weakness was almost synonymous with vice, and all this tended to fashion hearts imperverious to the grace of God and to every human feeling. Conversion of heart was for them extremely difficult. What God required on the part of man as a necessary condition of their friendship with Him was to them abhorrent, for the practice of the Christian virtues of submission, humility, and patience would be regarded by them as degrading. They had to learn that what was not degrading to God--since nothing could degrade Him in reality--could not be degrading to them. Turning to God postulated on their part not only a change of heart, but also a change of mentality. Their human values were almost all wrong. In the terse words of St. Ignatius describing the pagan world" "They smite, they slay and they go down to Hell". (Father Edward Leen, In The Likeness of Christ, Sheed and Ward, 1936, pp, 17-18.)

 

Behold the false "pity" and "tenderness" represented by the likes of those who believe in hospice and/or in the starvation of dehyradtion of innocent human beings or the medical industry's manufactured, profit-making scheme known as "brain death," a false pity and tenderness that has resulted in actual euthanasia, as opposed to the eupehemized euthanasia practiced in hospices, whether on a de facto or de jure basis, in several nations around the world, including in Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands, which also permits the "involuntary" euthanasia of children according to the Groningen Protocol (Newborns Who Suffer are “Better off Dead” and Netherlands grapples with euthanasia of babies)

What are the organized crime families of naturalism in Washington, District of Columbia, concerned about these days?

The money, the money, the money.

What about the debt that this "civilized" nation and other "civilized" nations owe to God for the promotion of sins that cry out to Heaven for vengeance under cover of the civil law?

We must lift our minds and hearts to Heaven as we embrace the Holy Cross, ever conscious of the price that Our Lord paid to redeem us thereon, a price that was shared by His Most Blessed Mother as she stood so valiantly under It. We do not not need hospice or end-life "counseling" sessions. We need the Holy Cross and Our Most Blessed Mother. Period!

Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., explained how deeply we must always united ourselves to Our Lord's sufferings:

Christ and His members must be one. They must walk the same road, not only during the liturgical service, when they are lifted up together in the mysteries of the sacrifice, but also in every event of life. Christ welcomed suffering, and accepted it freely; He did not flee the hardships of life. He makes suffering in us, His members, serve the spirit; He uses it as a means of freeing us from the world and all that is temporal and thus raises us from things of his world to the thins that are eternal.

Now, during Passiontide, we must begin to live and treasure pain and suffering. In the cross, in suffering, in or crucifixion with Christ, we shall find salvation. For Him and with Him we should bear all the slight injustices committed against us. For Him we should suffer freely and willingly the unpleasant and disagreeable things that occur to us. But our faith is weak. We flee from from the cross instead of holding it dear, instead of loving it and welcoming it our as Savior did.  (Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., The Light of the World, Volume I, B. Herder Book Company, 1954, p. 595.)

 

Father Robert Mader offered words of great inspiration in this regard eighty years ago now in the very country, Germany, where Bishop Clemens von Galens was to preach against the Hitlerian practices, most of which had originated during the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, that have become accepted as normal and nature in the "developed" world at this time, including here in the United States of America:

Following the destruction of Jerusalem, the Romans covered the places of hallowed memory to he Christian with rubble. The cave of the Holy Sepulchre was buried under such rubble, and over as well Golgotha pagan images and temples were erected in honor of Venus and Jupiter. For this reason the Christians did not go there anymore, in order not to be mistaken for idol-worshippers. Emperor Constantine ordered the temples and images torn down and the rubble carried away. After long and hard work the cave of the Holy Sepulchre was found. Not found away three crosses with nails were discovered, and along with them the superscription, which, however, lay separate from the cross.

Without doubt one of the these must be the Cross of the Savior, but there was no certain sign that would differentiate it from the crosses of the two thieves. This was given when a mortally il woman was suddenly cured by touching the true Cross. The Holy Cross was then encased in silver and precious gems, and a church was built over it, which according to Emperor Constantine's order was to be more magnificent than anything ever seen before. In memory of these events, the Church recalls the Finding of the Most Holy Cross on May 3, in order that on every day until the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (September 14), land and people with be blessed with a splinter, a particle of the Cross.

We have every reason to remember these events. Christianity is the religion of the Crucified One. In his first letter to the Corinthians the Apostle of the Nations, St. Paul, declares: "For I judged not myself to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ, and him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2). St. Paul's preaching, no matter how many-sided it appears, always returns to the central Sun of Christendom: Jesus on the Cross, King of the World! Everything else is either a ray from this Sun, or it is nothing. In the Crucifix lies our entire dogmatic and moral theology, our entire teaching on faith and morals, our catechism. The Cross is our library. Every other book has value only inasmuch as the spirit of the Cross speaks in it.

Modernists have attempted to ban the old preaching of St. Paul, the Gospel of the Cross, to oblivion. The Cross means the teaching of the necessity of sacrifice and of grace, and this now lies under the rubble on which a new paganism has erected once again the pagan images and temples of Jupiter, Mercury, Venus and Bacchus--in other words, the absolutist state, capitalism, immorality, and addiction to pleasure. A certain superficial Christianity, which puts more value on being modern than on being Catholic and Biblical, and for which the imitation of the spirit of the times is more understandable than the imitation of Christ, has made itself a willing accomplice.

We have lost the Cross. We have a Christianity that no longer understands sacrifice and there is no Christianity or only a soulless version of Christianity. We need Constantines and Helens who will once again dig out the the Cross from under the rubble and make it their shrine and their sign, and who believe that the King's throne is the Cross.

The crucified King! In the family we must have a Finding of the the Most Holy Cross! The modern family has lost the crucifix, and in its place it has raised up the political hero, the artist, old pagan gods, nudity and the prostitute. The crucifix does not fit into the modern home. The modern living room preaches money-grabbing, pride, vanity, lasciviousness, laziness. The modern living room is the exaltation of the seven deadly sins. At least one is honest enough to feel the Cross no longer fits into this milieu and has got rid of it because in the long run the crucifix can only remain there where the spirit of the Crucified One remains, and the spirit of the Crucified is no longer there.

The spirit of the Crucified is the spirit of love and sacrifice, but the spirit of the modern family is the spirit of selfishness and enjoyment. The speech of the Crucified says: First the others, I come last! The speech of selfishness is: First I, then again I, the others come last! The Christian family is built on the notion of sacrifice and devotion. The concept of the Christian father is: Work from morning to evening for others. The concept of the Christian mother is: Care for others! Let the self always come last! The concept of the Christian child is: Respect, love, obedience. Father and mother first, only then I!

The notion of sacrifice is dying out in the modern family. The modern family is built upon the law of egotism. The modern family takes as its motto: "As much enjoyment and as little sacrifice as possible!" This is the source of Malthusianism. That is where characterless education comes from. And that is the doom of the family. Only the Cross and its sermon of self-discipline, self-denial and devotion can save the dying family. (Father Robert Mader, Cross and the Crown, edited and translated by Dr. Eileen Kunze, Sarto House, 1999, pp. 117-119.)

 

The modern hospice industry is founded upon a rejection of the Holy Cross. So is most of modern medicine, especially for the chronically or terminally ill. We must embrace the Holy Cross of the Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, not flee from It, the very instrument of our salvation.

May we always trust in the tender mercies of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as we fly unto It through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to which this month of August is dedicated, so that we can embrace suffering with love, knowing that a safe and sure shelter awaits us in the love of these two Hearts if only we persevere until the end in states of Sanctifying Grace as members of the Catholic Church.

We do not play God in life. We want to know, love and serve Him as He has revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church so that He will greet us when we meet Him at the Particular Judgment with these consoling words:

 

 

 

Well done, good and faithful servant, because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will place thee over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord. (Matthew 25: 21.)

Isn't it time to pray a Rosary of reparation to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus through the Immaculate Heart of Mary?

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us, now and the hour of our death.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saints Cyriacus, Largus, and Smaragdus, pray for us.

See also: A Litany of Saints

 

Appendix

Hospice care delivers Hemlock nightcap

by Debi Vinnedge

Celebrate Life magazine

(See Hospice care delivers Hemlock nightcap)

After piecing together the players involved in Terri Schiavo’s death, it’s crystal clear that she was merely a pawn in a much larger agenda, one intently focused on the legalization of physicianassisted suicide and euthanasia in America. The plan was simple: sell the idea that no one should have to live with disabilities; sugarcoat the organization’s name and intent; secure funding; and last but not least, infiltrate the legislature, the healthcare network and even the Catholic Church to the point that Margaret Sanger would’ve been proud.

A rose by any other name…

Beginning in the 1930s, a group intent on advancing legalized suicide founded the Euthanasia Society of America. To make their cause more socially palatable, they would eventually change their name in the mid-sixties to Choice in Dying and then infiltrate the hospice industry with the so-called right-to-die agenda. That goal would be realized decades later through their merger with Partnership for Caring and Last Acts, a coalition of hospices worldwide.

In 1980, euthanasia advocate Derek Humphry founded the Hemlock Society of America in Santa Monica, California. It grew to over 50,000 members with 90 U.S. chapters. Humphry’s group provided substantial financing for physician-assisted suicide legislation, including the eventual enactment of Oregon’s 1997 law. But to advance euthanasia nationwide, a more subtle approach would be needed.

In 2003, Hemlock chapters across the country renamed themselves Death with Dignity, Compassion and Choices, Caring Friends, Compassion in Dying and End of Life Choices. While their names changed, their motives most certainly did not. Consider Humphry’s words from a 2004 speech: “For too long, the Judeo-Christian religions have dominated ethical thinking in the West... Unfortunately, Anglo-American law makes no distinction on these grounds: A person cannot ask to be killed. We must get this modified.” Humphry’s latest book, Good Euthanasia Guide 2004, godlessly attests: “Don’t bother to acquire this book if you are a person who believes that a religious deity is in sole charge of your life and dying.”

Financial backing

Meanwhile, pro-death foundations invest unprecedented funding to rid the world of those deemed a burden to society. With the 1994 formation of Project Death in America, for example, multi-billionaire founder George Soros stoked $15 million to promote euthanasia in healthcare facilities nationwide.

Soros’ fixation on death is both intimate and appalling. In a January 1995 interview with The New Yorker, Soros spoke of his own father’s struggle with cancer and his apparent irritation that his father did not wish to die. “Unfortunately he wanted to live,” Soros stated. “I was kind of disappointed in him... I wrote him off.

In 2002, the PDIA gave $1.2 million to fund the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, whose position states: “Were euthanasia and PAS [physician assisted suicide] being practiced in a regulated fashion, the hospice and palliative care approach should be that of non-interference in the receipt of these services, and non-abandonment of the person seeking assistance in suicide.”

Similarly, the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation has given the Hemlock/Partnership for Caring and Last Acts merger, now known as Last Acts Partnership, over $1 million. According to the foundation, a longtime supporter of Planned Parenthood and euthanasia, Last Acts was the launching pad for an $11.25 million grant to “elevate awareness” and “inspire improvements” on end of life health care. The Johnson Foundation stated, “The program works at a number of clinical sites to encourage doctors to introduce palliative care earlier in patients’ diagnoses and to change the culture of medical institutions, which often focus exclusively on cure.” In other words, promote euthanasia, but do it deceptively.

The connection

The stage was set; the money was in. The pro euthanasia groups had new names. Many board members of Last Acts Partnership also served on the National Hospice and Palliative Care’s (NHAPC) board, which proclaims itself “the largest nonprofit membership organization representing hospice and palliative care programs and professionals in the United States.” Enter Mary Labyak, CEO of the Hospice of the Florida Suncoast, who also was on the boards of Partnership for Caring, Last Acts and the NHAPC. While there are over 100 Hospice corporations in Florida, the Suncoast Hospice directly operates Woodside Hospice, where Terri Schiavo spent the last five years of her life. If you don’t smell a rat yet, keep reading.

The cast of characters in Terri Schiavo’s case who had direct ties to Hospice is both astonishing and frightening. Remember, Terri never should have been in hospice at all, since it is a federally funded program for dying patients. But the court decided she was PVS and, therefore, terminally ill. Now if a condition misdiagnosed as much as 43 percent can be considered “terminal,” patients can be brought to hospice for feeding tube removal while the government pays the tab. How very convenient.

And when Terri was placed there in April 2000, Michael Schiavo’s attorney George Felos was an active Suncoast Hospice board member and former chairman. No conflict there, right?

Now enter Everett Rice, Pinellas County Sheriff from 1988 through 2004, who was charged with investigating Terri’s 1990 collapse, but neglected to turn the case over to the homicide division. Rice, a close friend and campaign backer of Judge George Greer, was also a Florida Hospice board member.

Was it mere coincidence that John Lenderman, brother to Woodside board member Martha Lenderman and fellow judge of George Greer in the Sixth Judicial Circuit Court, also served on the advisory board for Suncoast Hospice in 2000—the same year Terri was admitted? He was a key member of the Pinellas County Domestic Violence investigation committee, but surely he would not have hindered an investigation into complaints against Michael Schiavo, or would he?

Perhaps we should question Martha Lenderman herself, who served on the Suncoast Hospice board with Felos in 2000 and later became chairman in 2002-03, during Michael’s second attempt to starve Terri. Ms. Lenderman was a consultant with the Florida Department of Children and Families, putting her in a position to influence the DCF investigation on Terri’s abuse and neglect.

And what about the glaring collusion between intertwined Hospice affiliations and prominent Florida lawmakers?

Not only do both state Rep. “Gus” Michael Bilirakis (R) and Senator Jim King (R) tout themselves as former board members of Florida Hospice, but they both lobbied for the fateful 1999 legislation that ruled feeding tubes were artificial life support. During pro-life pressure over Terri’s case in the 2004- 2005 legislative sessions, Florida lawmakers scrambled to amend that, but Senate president King quashed the motion. “As soon as you put something on the floor, as well-intended as it may be, anybody can amend it,” King stated. “Then all of a sudden I’m sitting there facing a bill or bills that can dismantle what I consider to be my legacy.”

That “legacy” began in 1998 with King’s creation of the Florida Panel on End of Life Care for the purpose of amending Florida statutes on end-of-life issues. Among the notables on that panel was Suncoast Hospice’s CEO, Mary Labyak.

Project disGrace

In the background another quietly sinister group became formal advisors to the End of Life Panel. Known as Project Grace, their board members include none other than Mary Labyak, Schiavo attorney George Felos and one more link in the Florida corruption: Sister Pat Shirley, O.S.F., officially representing the St. Petersburg diocese.

Project Grace’s motive was to use religion and the clergy to convince the patient or family that withdrawal of medical care, including food and water, was morally acceptable, even in non-terminal patients. Indeed, Sr. Pat began promoting the Project Grace advance directives agenda at Catholic parishes around the diocese. When staunchly pro-life R.N. Jana Carpenter, a known activist, discovered a scheduled seminar at her own parish, she confronted her pastor, arguing that Project Grace did not conform to Catholic teaching. Despite assurance that the project had Bishop Robert Lynch’s approval, Carpenter persuaded him to postpone the workshop.

In a subsequent meeting where Ms. Carpenter pointed out the deep flaws of Project Grace, Sr. Pat smugly responded that Fr. Kevin O’Rourke, bioethicist at Loyola University in Chicago, enthusiastically supported their philosophy. Fr. O’Rourke is the same priest who later called the March 2004 Vatican statement requiring artificial hydration and nutrition “irresponsible.” According to O’Rourke, “If a person does not have the potential for cognitive-affective function it means that the person cannot pursue the friendship of God, the purpose of life, through his or her free actions. Therefore, the moral imperative to help the person toward health and existence is no longer present.”

O’Rourke was outwardly hostile toward pro-lifers in the Terri Schiavo case, calling their attempts for interceding “despicable.” “The government of Florida is a laughingstock for the rest of the country,’’ O’Rourke said in a November 2003 statement to the Miami Herald. “Anyone who knows the law knows this is an abuse of personal rights.”

Using such statements from “Catholic” ethicists, Project Grace member and euthanasia author Lofty Basta, M.D., who openly campaigned for Terri Schiavo’s death, described how they convinced the End of Life Panel to include PVS in legislative amendments. More disturbing, Project Grace held that advanced directives requesting medical treatment should not oblige the physician to provide it—a statement right out of O’Rourke’s own writings.

With a program so blatantly in opposition to Catholic tenets, both the Catholic Medical Association and the National Catholic Bioethics Center quickly denounced it. But that did not stop the Diocese of St. Petersburg from continuing to promote the program to its parishes and Catholic healthcare facilities.

Former St. Petersburg Diocesan Respect Life director Sharon Iler was obviously mesmerized by the Project Grace philosophy. In October 2003 the St. Petersburg Times quoted her saying: “Christians partner with God in the sense that [H]e grants free will and autonomy over their bodies... Family members may decide to stop efforts that prolong a loved one’s life. That’s all right with God.”

Was it this O’Rourke/Project Grace mentality that caused Bishop Lynch to ignore the Schindlers’ pleas to save their daughter? Or perhaps the persuasion of another nun, Sr. Karen Burns, O.S.F., another former board member of Suncoast Hospice on staff at St. Anthony’s Hospital, where Project Grace was implemented?

Should we not question why, despite pro-life pleas, the diocese refused to encourage Catholics to “get out and vote” in the 2004 Greer reelection, especially when his opponent openly supported the Vatican position? Instead, sadly enough, the diocesan attorney firm, Devito and Higham, shelled out maximum financial contributions to Judge Greer’s reelection campaign.

Whatever conclusion is drawn, it is certain that Terri’s fate was sealed as the deposits hit the bank and the co-conspirators basked in their success. Meanwhile, a chilling pattern has descended on America. From Griswold to Roe to Browning to Schiavo, the legal precedent for “privacy” has swelled into an ugly demonic entity that will launch the right to die movement into full-blown euthanasia in this country within the next decade. It happened with abortion in less than eight years and it will happen again. The question remains: Will we be able to stop it?

Debi Vinnedge is executive director of Children of God for Life (COGForLife.org) in Largo, Florida.