One of my students, Jason McCart, provides a very personal reflection on two of my earlier posts:
After having had a conversation with a person this weekend, I felt compelled to respond to Michael Scaperlanda's posts "A more perfect Human" and "The Worship of Retardation." My 7 month old daughter is presently an in-patient in Denver Children's Hospital and has been for about 6 weeks. Last Thursday night she received the liver transplant we had been waiting for since she was born. Our daughter is our first child, and my wife and I were overjoyed when she was born. The range of emotions, circumstances, and stresses were unimaginable, nearly intolerable. But, as of last Thursday, we made it. Our daughter was pretty ill by the time she received a liver transplant, but the transformation in her since then is nothing short of miraculous. She's like a different child, a "normal" child. For the second time in our daughter's life, we are overcome with joy.
But there are other families in the same hospital that haven't been so lucky. Their children may need to have multiple organs transplanted, or they just can't stay healthy enough for long enough to actually receive a transplant. My heart hurts for those families and those children. They are hanging on, day to day, hoping for their miracle, knowing it may not come. They know that it's possible their little one may not be long for this world. I've been there.
One of these is a single mother whose 2 year old son is waiting on a liver transplant. But this child is very ill. Every time they think they may have an organ, something always seems to be in the way. He has a fever, or his white cell count is too high, or he's lost too much weight that week, and so on. She is really struggling. She's alone with her son, as near as I can tell, and we look in on her daily. She was so happy for us when our daughter was transplanted, genuinely happy, and yet her son needs the same thing and can't seem to get it. He's been waiting much longer, too.
One day, this woman had some visitors. I was pleased to see that someone had come to see her. They brought flowers, toys for the little one, and a basket filled with food. I stopped by to introduce myself and tell them what we shared. As the conversation turned serious, the women in the room asked for a rundown of the little boy's condition. "Well," the mother explained, "he is getting to the point he really needs a liver. His condition will improve, then worsen, and then improve again for a while . . . but it's like one step forward and two steps back." "What will happen if he doesn't get a liver?" "Well, you can't live without your liver, so eventually he would die."
Next was the moment that brought me back to Michael Scaperlanda's posts. The visitor looked this mother in the eye and asked "Well, don't you think that maybe that would be for the best?"
It's hard to describe my physiological reaction to that question. My hands started to sweat. My stomach was queasy, and my eyes lost focus. Even if you, for some perverse reason, actually believe that it might be for "for the best," why would you ever put that thought into this mother's head? Some of the others tried to change the subject quickly, but the damage was done. The mother turned to her little boy and started stroking his head. I knew exactly what she was feeling – that she might lose him, and no one would care. You see, for that particular visitor, that little boy's life was imperfect, and therefore not as valuable. I'll bet she would never have asked the same question of a mother whose child was "healthy."
I caught up to the visitor, a middle age woman, later that night in an area on the floor resembling a lounge. We exchanged greetings, and she told me that she was happy my daughter was doing better. I thanked her. She asked me if I thought she had hurt her friend's feelings earlier. I told her that "yes, I think you put an idea in her head that scared the hell out of her." I asked her if she knew what she was asking, and we talked about the implications of her idea, and I could tell it was easy to change her mind. I think that she just hadn't thought through what she was saying, but in the future I'm confident she will. Still I thought it was remarkable, and very telling, that such an idea would even crop up in that place and under those circumstances.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Susan posted some profound thoughts on Forgiveness and Power on her personal blog, Creo en Dios. SInce it touches on the subjects of rights, justice, and mercy, I thought it fitting for a cross post here.
Steve asks many important questions in his post. Near the end of the post, he says: "Finally, perhaps wrongly, I see a pattern of specific criticism against Catholic Democratic politicians."
My perception is that the recent criticisms of Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden were made for very specific reasons tied closely to public statements each of them made about the (their) Catholic faith and not to their general views on abortion. If memory serves, Nancy Pelosi publicly said that the Catholic Church had only recently (in the last 50 years or so) come to the belief that abortion was wrong. She was publicly corrected by bishops on her mistaken view of Church teaching and Church history. Joe Biden publicly stated that he accepted as a matter of faith (a private matter) that human life begins at conception because his Church tells him this. He was publicly corrected by bishops because the Church does not teach that life begins at conception as a matter of faith. Instead, the Church teaches that abortion is wrong because science teaches that human life begins at conception.
Steve says: "I would appreciate direction to places where the American Bishops have specifically criticized Republican politicians on abortion or other issues." If I am right about the recent criticism of Pelosi and Biden, I think the predicate question is: Are there recent instances where Catholic Republican politicians have publicly misrepresented or misunderstood Church teaching and then been criticized by bishops.
Although the Catholic faith wasn't - as for as I am aware - publicly misunderstood or misrepresented by Catholic politicians, The Archbishop of Oklahoma City and the Bishop of Tulsa were very outspoken against a harsh state immigration law sponsored by a non-Catholic Republican (see my February 2008 First Things essay on this topic). Our former republican governor (Frank Keating) is Catholic. Several years ago, while governor, he attempted to articulate why the Pope was wrong (a nice guy but wrong is what I think he said) on the death penalty. Our archbishop had every priest in the diocese read a letter at every mass on a particular weekend criticising - indeed condemning - the Governors statement.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
The Sixth Annual Christian Legal Scholar's Symposium will take place Oct. 10-11 at the Hyatt Regency Washington on Capital Hill as part of the 2008 Christian Lawyer Global Convocation. For details and a schedule for this excellent conference, click here. A National Student Leadership Convention for Christian law students will take place at the same location on the same dates.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Here is just a small part of Leon Kass' must read lecture given at the Holocaust Museum in D.C. and exploring the dangers in the salvific view of science.
Persons who happen still to be born with [genetic diseases and abnormalities, from Down’s syndrome to dwarfism], having somehow escaped the spreading net of detection and eugenic abortion, are increasingly regarded as “mistakes,” as inferior human beings who should not have been born. Not long ago, at my own university, a physician making rounds with medical students stood over the bed of an intelligent, otherwise normal ten-year-old boy with spina bifida. “Were he to have been conceived today,” the physician casually informed his entourage, “he would have been aborted.” A woman I know with a child who has Down syndrome is asked by total strangers, “Didn’t you have an amnio?” The eugenic mentality is taking root, and we are subtly learning with the help of science to believe that there really are certain lives unworthy of being born.
Not surprisingly, in the face of these practical possibilities, prominent intellectuals are now providing justification for this view of life. The current journals of bioethics, no less, are filled with writings that sweetly sing the song of Binding and Hoche, albeit it without the menacing German accent. But not all are so reticent. Here for example are remarks from the writings of Peter Singer, DeCamp Professor of Bioethics in the University Centerfor Human Values at Princeton, on the question of killing infants with serious, yet manageable, diseases such as hemophilia:
When the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects for a happy life, the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed. The loss of a happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second [even if not yet born]. Therefore, if killing the hemophiliac infant has no adverse effect on others, according to the total view, it would be right to kill him.
In a recent magazine interview, Singer was asked, “What about parents conceiving and giving birth to a child specifically to kill him, take his organs, and transplant them into their ill older children?” Singer replied: “It is difficult to warm to parents who can take such a detached view, [but] they’re not doing something really wrong in itself.” The interviewer then asked: “Is there anything wrong with a society in which children are bred for spare parts on a massive scale?” The Princeton Professor of Bioethics replied, “No.” Do not underestimate what it means for us that such coolly lethal opinions, regarded since 1945 as barbaric, are today again treated with seriousness and honored with a chair at Princeton.
HT: Robert George
"Given that Palin had complete foreknowledge of her child's severe disability yet nevertheless chose to have it, it is hard not to see her choice as anything less [than the 'worship of retardation.']"
Professor Robert George comments that this blog post "by someone named Nicholas Provenzo at something called the Center for the Advancement of Capitalism, states a view that is widely held by many liberals of my acquaintance and some extreme libertarians (which, I gather, is what Provenzo is), but rarely spoken aloud. Provenzo is stating what many think, but aren't quite yet willing to say. In effect, he holds that children with Down's Syndrome are Lebensunwertes Leben--lives unworthy of life. Reading this comment should cause us to dedicate ourselves even more deeply to the great and urgent cause of protecting the weakest and most vulnerable members of the human family."
"As a profound counterwitness to Provenzo's comment, I'm linking the text of a lecture by the great Leon Kass that he presented at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. It is a warning to us that the eugenics mentality has indeed taken hold again in the elite sector of the culture, and reminding us of its consequences. We must resist it, and fight against it, with all our strength."
UPDATE: I inadvertently caused some confusion in my attempt to be provocative by quoting that part of Provenzo's comments dealing with "worship of retardation." Robert George writes: "Just to be clear, what many people of my acquaintance agree with is the proposition that the retarded, when detected in utero, should be aborted. This is the idea of eugenic abortion which Dr. Kass so powerfully attacks. I do not think that many people buy into Provenzo's nutty rhetoric about "the worship of retardation." Even committed eugenicists don't typically believe that people who do not abort retarded children are "worshipping." retardation. Their claim is that families, society, and even the mentally retarded children themselves are better off when the children are aborted."
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Wednesday, September 17, 2008
I continue to enjoy the reflection papers and robust discussion in my jurisprudence seminar, which focuses on Catholic Perspectives on American Law. One student, Jason McCart, wrote a paper reflecting on Avery Cardinal Dulles' chapter, Truth as the Ground of Freedom. In looking at the consequences of the "just do it" culture, Mr. McCart remarked on what I see as a growing trend. He said: "We’ve gone beyond 'do what feels good' to 'do whatever, and see if you can feel something.'
