The May 2010 Euthanasia Prevention Coalition Newsletter can now be found at: http://www.euthanasiaprevention.on.ca/Newsletters/Newsletter108(May2010)(RGB).pdf Bill C-384 was soundly defeated by a vote of 228 to 59. Check how the Members of Parliament voted at: http://www.euthanasiaprevention.on.ca/HowTheyVoted.pdf On June 5, 2010, we are co-hosting the US/Canda Push-Back Seminar at the Radisson Gateway Hotel at the Seattle/Tacoma Airport. The overwhelming defeat of Bill C-384 proved that we can Push-Back the euthanasia lobby in the US and Canada and convince people that euthanasia and assisted suicide are a dangerous public policy. Register for the Seminar at: http://www.euthanasiaprevention.on.ca/2010SeminarFlyer(RGB)(LetterFormat).pdf The Schindler family are being attacked by a Florida television station and Michael Schiavo. The Euthanasia Prevention Coalition is standing in solidarity with the Schindler family. My blog comments: http://alexschadenberg.blogspot.com/2010/05/att
Reflections from the pastoral ministry of an Evangelical Catholic Priest.
Every human life is precious. Not by virtue of the fact that we can become Catholic or adapt Catholic principles or any other particular religious principles. Not by virtue of the fact that one is ; female or male ; heterosexual or gay; married or single or any other particular attribute. Not by virtue of the fact that ones perception and sense of moral value is different or better or more or less than another's. But by a universal, fundamental and beautiful capacity to become ever-increasingly human.
ReplyDeleteEtty Hillesum
Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch Jewish woman, was arrested by the Gestapo, and eventually died in the gas chambers at Auschwitz in 1943. Between 1941 and 1943 she wrote a journal and some letters which were published as the book "Interrupted Life".
Etty had no training in any particular religious tradition. She had lived a life of friendships, infused with a love of literature, and had lived a remarkable encounter with a psychotherapist, a disciple of Jung. Remarkable then, her spiritual journey towards union with God, a journey which took place amid the world of atrocious suffering which was the Dutch concentration where she was held. With her there were sometimes as many as ten thousand Jewish men, women and children awaiting the trains which would carry them to Auschwitz.
In her letters and journal, she speaks of her experience of God. She does not cry out to God in anger, nor does she beg God for help. Rather she reveals a God who waits patiently at the door to our hearts for us to invite Him in and to give us His peace. The sole desire of Etty was to help each person discover that he or she is "a dwelling place of God".
And I promise you, yes I promise you, my God, that I shall try to find a “home” and a roof for you in as many houses as possible. There are so many empty houses, where I will bring you in as guest of honor.
Etty Hillesum, september 1942
By "coming to terms with life" I mean: the reality of death has become a definite part of my life; my life has, so to speak, been extended by death, by my looking death in the eye and accepting it, by accepting destruction as part of life and no longer wasting my energies on fear of death or the refusal to acknowledge its inevitability. Through non- acceptance and through having all those fears, most people are left with just a pitiful any mutilated slice of life, which can hardly be called life at all. It sounds paradoxical: by excluding death from our life we cannot live a full life, and by admitting death into our life we enlarge and enrich it.
Etty Hillesum, The Diaries, 3 July 1942