I have long felt that if offering death is regarded as the ultimate kindness, then kindness must be truly dead.
Chris Chan | 06.29.06 - 3:38 pm | #

That is one of the most horrific things I have ever read. The fact that it was well-written, with a clear-eyed matter-of-factness, makes it all the more horrific.
Gene Branaman | 06.29.06 - 3:40 pm | #

As a matter of fact, there is no level of pain that opiates cannot cover. The double effect inevitably, unpredictably intrudes and the patient dies as respiration drops to zero. People are in pain because their doctors are afraid of losing their licenses or going to jail or jacking up their malpractice premiums by prescribing appropriate pain relief.

Pain relief is held hostage to the whims of the DEA and the bizarre US legal system. And those in horrible pain continue to suffer because we cannot be honest with each other about what it would take to relieve that pain and protecting doctors from the inevitable consequences of making the terminally ill pain free, a dead patient.

Make your peace with God and drift away in the arms of morpheus. The disease will get you or the pain medication will but you won't end up in hell a suicide and your friends won't end up there as murderers. If we can reform the laws so that this is possible, the demand for euthanasia will drop as well as its public support.
TM Lutas | Homepage | 06.29.06 - 3:50 pm | #

Fr. Paul Hanley Furfey wrote a book years ago entitled THE RESPECTABLE MURDERERS. She insists that he "still loves his wife", but goes on to say that since he can't cook and overeat anymore that his quality of life has collapsed. And the literary genre is not confession, but apologia! This ought to be saved as a classic "contribution" from the culture of death.
Tom Haessler | 06.29.06 - 3:53 pm | #

If this happened in California, shouldn't she be arrested?
Tom Haessler | 06.29.06 - 4:09 pm | #

A murder charge would seem to be appropriate.
Patrick Rothwell | 06.29.06 - 4:17 pm | #

Annie Lamott is Medusa. Just look at her photos.
Michaelus | 06.29.06 - 4:18 pm | #

The Brompton Cocktail is a marvel. Pity we don't have it here.
Ed the Roman | 06.29.06 - 4:34 pm | #

So very sad. Perhaps one day she will realize her sin and come to repentance. God knows.
Matthew | 06.29.06 - 8:04 pm | #

Hi Mark

"that intrinsically evil acts are only justifiable in the interest of the state, not in the interest of individual autonomy and comfort"

Can you shed some more light on this - it is something on my mind since reading your torture articles.
Leon | 06.29.06 - 9:03 pm | #

This makes me so sad obviously because the act was wrong, but also because I think Anne Lamott has a number of things very right. She is really twisted in knots on the life issues. And she has a lot of influence.

If you're familiar with her work, I think you can honestly say that she is a prayerful person with a deep affection, even love, for Jesus. She came to her conversion after almost drinking herself to death after an abortion. She can't seem to bring herself to say the abortion was wrong (later when she has a child out of wedlock, she has the child before she can't handle the idea of having another abortion, despite being literally broke), yet it is the source of her desperation to turn to Christ. She can't stop being pro-choice though...she doesn't even say "Oh I wouldn't do it but the law should be there anyway." She can't see that the God who saved her from her self-destruction wants everyone else a chance to live their fullest as well.

This has got to be the source of her warped attitude on assisted suicide. Ok, so the family and friend sharing at the end was lovely. But when do you learn that God is in control, not humans? And that you are created with human dignity that no one can take away, but even illness...you can't manufacture that dignity?! It is all appropriate to alleviate suffering, we're called as Christians to do that. But we're also called to show compassion--suffer with--that person until their natural death. It makes me weep that such a talented person as Lamott doesn't get that.

Don't make nasty comments about her appearance; you harm yourself in doing so. Pray that she has the grace to engage in a second conversion, a deeper one to recognize that dignity comes from God and life is to be cherished.
Susan | Homepage | 06.29.06 - 9:58 pm | #

Oh, just so it is clear (re-reading my comment)--when I say Lamott has a number of things right, I mean she says many things of value in her other books. There is nothing right about this essay.

Assisted suicide is gravely wrong.
Susan | Homepage | 06.29.06 - 10:00 pm | #

Leon,

I think Mark is being sarcastic there. But don't take my word for it, since I can't figure out half the time if he's serious or not. Heck, today I made the mistake of assuming the phrase "need for torture" meant that he thought individual conservatives WANTED torture (like a craving) as opposed to "need" meaning "necessary for intelligence purposes."
Sydney Carton | Homepage | 06.29.06 - 10:01 pm | #

I hope she gets arrested. The wife and friend, too, for conspiracy.

What was the wife thinking????
C.C. | Homepage | 06.29.06 - 10:11 pm | #

Leon:

I was being tongue in cheek. See my article "Toying with Evil" to see the parallel I draw between abortion excusers and torture/murder excusers. The rhetoric is disturbingly similar.
Mark Shea | Homepage | 06.29.06 - 11:40 pm | #

Susan,

Thanks for your charitable assessment of Anne Lamont, and thanks for reminding us that conversion is a process, not an event.
Tom Haessler | 06.30.06 - 12:04 am | #

Tom:

The conversion of St Paul was a 'process'?
Gerry O' Neil | 06.30.06 - 7:54 am | #

Would you feel better if he said "sanctification"? Or even just "education in the faith"?
Maureen | Homepage | 06.30.06 - 8:02 am | #

Gerry--even St Paul commented on the thorn in his side. If we don't recognize we are sinners--even post-conversion--we are in great danger.
Susan | 06.30.06 - 8:03 am | #

The conversion of St Paul was a 'process'?

Yes.
John Henry | Homepage | 06.30.06 - 8:15 am | #

Speaking from a limited perspective in terms of education...

The term "murder" seems to imply malice. I don't see it.

I saw nothing of praising her own courage either - just a recounting of an event.

Mohler speaks of such acts as denying God's providence as gracious and merciful. Again, from a limited, human perspective, I think God's record speaks for itself. Ask the children of Jericho, or ask Tzipora Weisel. I'd love to hear their input. Bluntly, I can't seem to regard God's providence as being anything like trustable. Inevitable? Often irresistable? Sure. But trustworthy? Oh, Hell No.

Lamott goes to a free-wheelin', liberal, presby church. She lacks a cultural and spiritual tradition which could further form and inform her. But she also lacks the burden of a tradition which repeatedly asserts that the carrying of a cross is somehow a free choice; that somehow, there's another option besides dying on a cross, or dying under it. A tradition whose source, when confronted with her own cross, calls the goddamned lawyers, and starts telling lies about the "best science of the time." Shall we trust God's Providence, there???

So, some go on and trust God's providence. Others, will lay hold of the powers available to them - some for what they see as "good", others for what only seems good at the time. We'll all see how it works out in the end.
Bubbles | 06.30.06 - 10:38 am | #

How horrific. And how sad.

One of Lamott's early books, "Bird by Bird," is an exceptional work on the art of writing. I've been in the process of losing respect for her over the years, as she's slipped deeper into her "postmodern Christian" phase.

This may not have been "murder" (no malice aforethought), but it certainly was a deliberate killing of an innocent person and she should be charged.
'thann | 06.30.06 - 11:01 am | #

Susan:

I don't see the specific connection between your remarks on sin and the conversion of St Paul.

Of course we are all sinners. ("The just man sins seven times a day.")

I can assure you that I am personally very aware of the fact that we are all sinners.
Gerry O' Neil | 06.30.06 - 11:13 am | #

Perhaps it would be better to say that for *some* people conversion is a process. It certainly was for me.
bearing | Homepage | 06.30.06 - 12:32 pm | #

Hello, Gerry O'Neil,

The point here is that we live in a world where "nice" people very often do thinks which are, objectively, murder. Like the Nazi officers who spent Christmas around the Christmas tree with their families singing Christmas carols after a week spent slaughtering Jewish children. God has never laid on us the burden of judging the ultimate worth or lack of it of any human being, while insisting that we obey objective moral norms that are knowable through reason and revelation. And His grace empowers us to come to a knowledge of these norms, but only gradually and through the mediation of helps like Scripture, the magisterium, etc. Living in the state of grace is compatible with huge blind spots (even on important ethical matters), especially if one has not yet been given the grace of membership in Christ's church. If Annie Lamont's intentions are good (something we can't really know), she still should be prosecuted for the common welfare of society. We should remember that our knowledge of moral truth is a gift from God that comes through membership in the Church His Son founded, not a result of the keeness of our intellect. Many intellectuals are tremendously obtuse about fundamental ethical questions. And many very simple people with very average I.Q.'s know that killing sick or terminally ill people is not the way to go.
Tom Haessler | 06.30.06 - 12:41 pm | #

For all adults, "conversion" is a process. Or to put it into technical theological language:

A. Moving from the state of either original sin (with either mortal sin or just venial sins) or just mortal sin (subsequent to a prior justification), an adult receives the grace of justification (getting into the state of grace) always through a SERIES of actual graces empowering the person to believe, repent, trust, etc. leading finally to perfect contrition or perfect love accompanied by an (implicit, or non-Christians and non-Catholics) desire for confession of any post-Baptismal sins.

B. Justification introduces the just person to a life which (among other things) leads to greater and greater sanctification, again, through a SERIES of actual graces that leads the person through deeper and deeper conversions (discussed as "nights" in some of the classical spiritual writers). This is what theologians call SANCTIFICATIO or JUSTIFICATIO SECUNDA.

It's all process, even for Saint Paul. What we know for sure about his experience on the way to Damascus, is that he came to believe that Jesus was the Messiah (intellectual conversion). We don't even know for sure whether his persecution of Christians was formal sin or material sin. His "zeal for the law" could even have been a spiritual preparation for the Damascus experience.

The difficult task that we have as Catholics is to learn how to confront the cultural of death without regarding the people caught in its traps as unredeemable or as guilty of formal mortal sin. Kind of like the duty to stop Jihadis because they are evil doers. We try to stop them because they seek to kill the innocent. Our focus should be on defense of life, not on the inner worth or lack of it on those caught in the trap of a false religion.
Tom Haessler | 06.30.06 - 12:54 pm | #

Hi Tom:

I enjoyed reading your penultimate post. Fascinating.

I'm not sure why your remarks were directed towards me though or how they address the question I asked about conversion.
Gerry O' Neil | 06.30.06 - 2:10 pm | #

Hi, Gerry,

Just trying to expand on your 7:54 A.M. post about Saint Paul and "conversion."
Tom Haessler | 06.30.06 - 2:22 pm | #

Tom:

Thank you. I appreciate your making the effort.
Gerry O' Neil | 06.30.06 - 2:29 pm | #

This illustrates rather graphically a point I've made before, but it might be well to reiterate.

No one -- regardless how "kindly" or "compassionate" the reason or the orientation of the one carrying out the act -- may be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.

Nor does passing a law make something right -- it must be in conformity with natural law. Neither may the exercise of life, liberty or property (the rights "of" as opposed to the the rights "to") be defined in such a way as effectively to abolish these natural rights.

Once you have decided that any of this triad -- life, liberty or property -- is "prudential" (that is, circumstances having nothing to do with the holder of the life, liberties or properties having violated justice determine whether or not one may live, exercise rights, or own things), you have, in essence, created a race of sub-humans, who exist only at the sufferance of "real" humans. In short, as Heinrich Rommen observed, by undermining in such wise the basis of natural law, the entire second table of the Law of Moses becomes mutable, and you can justify *anything.*
A. Nonymouse | 06.30.06 - 3:05 pm | #

With respect, I think you worded this one a little poorly, Mark. Intrinsically evil acts are never justifiable - by definition! I think you might have meant something else.
mpb | 06.30.06 - 8:13 pm | #

Excellent post, A. Nonymouse!
Tom Haessler | 07.01.06 - 11:33 am | #

If anybody feels ambitious, the San Jose Mercury News just ran her piece today (Sunday.) Letters can be sent to letters@mercurynews.com If they get 10 outstanding letters, maybe they'll actually run 1...
Margaret | 07.02.06 - 8:20 pm | #

Viele danke, Hr. Haessler, as the pope would say.
A. Nonymouse | 07.05.06 - 1:34 pm | #