Tea at Trianon: Rejecting Euthanasia

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Rejecting Euthanasia

From The Catholic Weekly:

Nearly a month ago Anna Corry was given just days to live. The 50-year-old former nursing educator has endured an aggressive type of breast cancer since her diagnosis in January last year. This January she and her husband Martin and their sons Michael, 17, Dominic, 14, and Andrew, 11, received the news that although chemotherapy had shrunk the 10cm tumour near her heart, the cancer had spread through her body. Apart from a miracle, there is no hope for a cure.

The parishioner of St Bernadette’s, Castle Hill, wants to share her thoughts on euthanasia and assisted suicide – as a voluntary assisted dying law comes into force in Victoria next year, and a parliamentary committee investigates the issue in Western Australia. She is opposed to both and believes opting to shorten her own life would have robbed herself, and her family and friends of “an incredible amount of joy” over recent weeks. Some say that churches should stay out of the debate around dying and the law, but Anna says she has discovered through her own experience arguments against legalising euthanasia which are quite apart from her Catholic faith. (Read more.)