Rev. Ignatius -W. Cox, S. J, Ph.D.
Mercy Killing is Murder
The way in which the same moral question will thrust itself periodically on public attention is a curious phenomenon. It becomes a dangerous phenomenon, indicating a widespread moral malady, when with each periodic recurrence, more and more individuals of great potential influence take the wrong side, the ethically unscientific view, the immoral solution.
Just ten years ago, in 1925, there were four so-called mercy killings within the short space of four months, two in Paris, one in the United States and one in England, The cases cited started a rapid fire of comment. It was the old question of euthanasia, a good death; the right of men to die by their own choice or the choice of others, when death seemed preferable to life.
And now the whole question is up again and is being fiercely debated. According to an Associated Press dispatch from London, ’A campaign to establish 'the right of persons suffering from incurable disease to die,’ has been announced.’ The occasion of this campaign was the reputed confession by a British doctor of five ’mercy slayings.’ An advocate of euthanasia, a distinguished British surgeon, Lord Moynihan, declares, according to the press, that he and other influential members of the medical profession with some clergymen will meet to make plans to put the whole question before the country. ’The right to die is gaining support throughout the country,’ Lord Moynihan is quoted as saying: ’And we believe we will not find opposition except from Roman Catholics who are objecting for obvious reasons.’ His Lordship does not state what these obvious reasons are. I presume that he means that the Catholic Church insists on what is an obvious philosophic, moral and religious fact, that human life in its beginning, progress and end belongs to God alone, and only God has the moral right to determine its end.
This obvious fact, however, escapes men of great standing in this country. Dr. Alexis Carrel, winner of the Nobel Prize, in a press interview elaborates what he put in his new book, ’Man, the Unknown’. ’Sentimental prejudices,’ he is quoted as saying, ’should not stand in the way of civilization. It is my opinion that not only incurables but imbeciles … habitual criminals, as well as the hopelessly insane, should be quietly and painlessly disposed of.’ Dr. Frederick Bancroft, member of the New York City Cancer Committee, according to the press, admits that the matter is difficult, but says: ’I do not see why a person should be condemned to agony. I do not see why we shouldn’t give humans the same treatment we accord to animals.’ And a Protestant minister and a Jewish rabbi in Buffalo are said to have approved the appeal of Miss Becker for a mercy killing.
Other doctors and some of the public are shocked at these ’mercy killings’ and their outspoken defense. Many doctors have embraced the atheistic and materialistic liberalism which considers man as only an animal. Why be surprised if the logic of that doctrine be reduced to act by treating man as a mere animal? Many doctors theoretically and practically accept as a medical function the task of tampering with the source of life. To doctors in many States, there is granted the so-called 'legal right’ to determine when and if life shall begin. Why 'lot be logical, why not extend this legal right to include their right to determine if and when human life shall end?
As a matter of fact, this power to pass sentence upon and to end, under certain conditions, unborn human life is the so-called 'legal right’ of doctors right here in New York state. Some doctors are not satisfied with the restricting conditions; they want even more power; they want to liberalize the law and gain further legal rights over unborn human life. Dr. A. J. Rongy, ,a Jewish physician in New York City, has written a book to promote this campaign. He thus puts himself on record, to use his own words, ’as a true believer in the ideals of liberalism.’
Like Lord Moynihan, the British doctor ’who expects only opposition from Roman Catholics,’ like the birth control propagandists, who became fanatical whirling dervishes at the mention of the Catholic Church, Dr. Rongy speaks quite frankly about the unalterable stand of the Catholics against physicians tampering with unborn life. He states quite clearly that Christianity in the beginning launched a drastic revolution against pagan morality. And then note this: ’The pendulum is swinging back and we are close to the ancient ways of thought.’ Right, Dr. Rongy. We are simply weltering in a damnable sea of pagan ideology and pagan conduct. Does that explain why a western District Attorney declared in 1932 that there were over fifty deaths in one year alone in his city from criminal operations, in violation of the doctor’s famous Hypocratic oath. If the medical profession loses the confidence of the people, it will be the medical profession itself which is to blame. The end of medical science is to save human life, not to stop it at its source, not to destroy unborn life, not to end disease and suffering by slaying the patient. The doctors in regard to contraception, sterilization, unborn life and euthanasia should refuse to be the grave diggers of the nation or of humanity.
All this shows a lowered estimate of human dignity, a denial of God’s right over human life and its life-giving functions. All this is a cancerous growth eating at the mentality of men and women in high places and camouflaged as sympathy for human suffering. It is a sympathy which is the product of that pagan and cynical fatalism, which has no basis for a philosophy of suffering. It can only send forth its rebellious cry against the Christian philosophy of pain and suffering in the words of Swinburne:
’Thou has conquered, 0 Pale Galilean! The world is grown gray with thy breath.’
It cannot see, as you can see, the glory human sufferings casts over man when endured with patience and Christian fortitude. It cannot see that every sorrow and pain may be a shadow of Christ’s outstretched and caressing hands, or that crushed flowers give the sweetest perfume. However, modern doctrine on pain is the necessary and logical result of the false and unscientific liberalism which is its motivating force.
Such liberalism is unvarnished paganism, and paganism historically and logically leads not to human liberty, but to the enslavement of man, the treatment of human beings as cattle, the inhuman denial of elemental human rights. After the inauguration of the Nazi regime in Germany, where we are witnessing an organized attempt to revive old German paganism, the Ministry of Justice announced its plan to authorize euthanasia. It was to be safeguarded so that no life still valuable to the State should be wantonly destroyed. And in that the secret of paganism is out. A citizen is not for himself, is not vested with rights antecedent to the State, is not a child of God, but is only the tool, the plaything, the instrument of the deified State.
And German paganism, as exemplified by its ruthless sterilization program, is gaining distinguished adherents in the United States. Dr. Cutten, of Colgate, advocated this fall, before students and faculty, sterilization for certain unfortunate classes in our social organism. And Leon F. Whitney, in his emotional and partisan book, ’The Case for Sterilization’, expresses what is in the mind of many eugenists. Echoing Lord Moynihan, the birth controllers and Dr. Rongy, he says: 'The main, and most seriously taken, objection comes, as would naturally be expected, from the Roman Catholic Church.’
I could go on citing instance after instance of this cheapened estimate of human dignity and destiny. founded on inadequate knowledge of man. Every man today is the unknown man, due to a materialistic philosophy. begotten of the streets and incapable of rising to a view of man which transcends time and space. Recently, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a prominent writer and suffragist, committed suicide and explained it by a note which read: ’Human life consists in mutual service … but when usefulness is over, it is the simplest of rights to choose a quick and easy death.’ So that is the meaning of human life, usefulness to others. The suicide was defended by another prominent feminist. Suicide has been openly vindicated by Lord Bertrand Russell and Sydney Hampden.
This cheap and tawdry philosophy of human life, masquerading under a maudlin sentimentality, lack of fortitude and fear of pain, has gotten to the masses. There is a wild outcry against gunmen and racketeers, who are quick on the trigger in self-defense and in aggression. Are these gunmen who despise human life any more guilty than those in high places who preach from the housetops a materialistic and atheistic liberalism. which has enslaved the minds of the masses with the idea that God, human dignity and the natural law are without meaning?
I have not called attention to this sordid and debased mentality inorder to refute it here and now. Homicide is a denial of God’s ,exclusive right over human life. Nor is it my purpose to enlarge on the fact that much so-called humanitarianism, the cry to relieve the sufferings of incurables, the cry of the right to suicide the cry of the right and duty of individuals to tamper with the very sources of life. the cry of the right of society to protect itself by annihilation of the defenseless, is grounded on a hard-boiled, cruel, fatalistic, cynical, pagan aspect toward life which casts our helpless infants on the mountaintops to be the food of vultures and wild beasts. It is the same ruthless philosophy which enslaved whole nations that Roman and Greek patricians might live in ease, rottenness and corruption. Many of the modern proposals are grounded on that evolutionary theory which maintains that human development must come by the rigid and ruthless elimination of the unfit. Euthanasia, social betterment, contraception for the poor, therapeutic abortions, eugenics by way of sterilization are humanitarian shibboleths and catch phrases covering up a cruel ideology and frequently a bitter and ruthless class warfare.
What I do want to emphasize is the cheapened regard for human life, based on materialism and atheism, which has become widespread under the impulse of a false, unscientific and immoral liberalism. This is fact number one. Fact number two is the growing hatred, contempt, fear and snarling opposition to the Catholic Church by those liberals who see clearly that Catholic philosophy and Catholic dogma alone stand in the way of their propaganda. The so-called liberals are growing in power and influence; their ideas have penetrated the masses. Their assaults on our judicial structure have been in large measure successful. They have been busy liberalizing our laws, that is, paganizing them. The struggle has reached the stage of bitterness and resentment.
Are educated Catholics blind to the fact that we have here all the elements of persecution? Sinclair Lewis has just written a book on Fascism under the title, ’It Can’t Happen Here’, meaning it can happen here. Catholics in the United States are living in a fool’s paradise. They read of and hear of the persecutions of Catholics in Mexico, in Germany, and in Russia. They fold their arms and beguile and hypnotize themselves with the phrase, 'It can’t happen here.’ Well, it can happen here. As a matter of fact, it is happening here covertly at this moment.
A bitter conflict between false liberalism and the Catholic truth which makes men free is being waged anew. A spark can start a conflagration, the end of which no man can foresee. Nor can the Catholic laity, least of all the educated Catholic laity be indifferent or neutral in this struggle; you are the body of Christ and members of His members. Christ is in you and you in Him. To be indifferent to the sufferings of Christ’s body in Mexico, in Germany, in Russia is to be indifferent to Christ; it is the right, nay the duty, of educated Catholics in America to be prepared for the inevitable struggle. I advise my listeners to read the Encyclical of that brilliant Pope and leader, Leo XIII, on the 'Chief Duties of Christians as Citizens.’
Virtual Vendée’s Editorial Note:
Author was a Professor of Ethics, teaching on Fordham University (United States). This speech was broadcasted by Radio Station WLWL on November 15,1935.
