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Tuesday 23 October 2007

Dr. Death's heir, Rev. Ms. Death

(I was going to ruminate on why female ministers so often have names like "Kristi," but this is too important to get bogged down in issues such as my own sacerdotal envy.)
http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=876
A United Church of Christ minister has formed an "End of Life Consultation Service," i.e. a group who feel it is their pastoral duty to do an end run around reactionary state legislatures that won't pass laws allowing people to off themselves with the assistance of their priests.
Dennis Di Mauro, in First Things:
The new organization plans to man a 1-800 hotline that would provide potential callers with “volunteers [who would] visit patients and families in the home, and together they [could] identify a path to peaceful dying, well-suited to an individual’s illness and circumstances.” After the consultation, the clients would then be free to “obtain and self-administer the means” of killing themselves.
I admit, to my shame, that I did not know how large a part "religious" leaders, or do I mean religious "leaders" played in the rise of the god Abortion.
Indeed, one cannot fail to see the parallel between the creation of the ELCS and the effort forty years ago by activist clergymen and women to legalize abortion.
The pro-choice movement in the 1960s and 1970s was greatly assisted by many Christian denominations’ support for the liberalization of existing abortion laws. The American Baptist Church, the Episcopal Church, the two denominations that became the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, the United Methodist Church, and the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) all spoke out in support of legal abortion. Even the Southern Baptist Convention, which is today seen as one of the most pro-life denominations, originally approved of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, calling it an advance in the efforts for “religious liberty.”
We are losing our souls as a society.
When I receive a solicitation for an organization to whose goals I say, not just "no," but "HELL, no!" I send back the pre-paid envelope, to cost them.
Is taking advantage of the 800 number of a consultation service with such an evil aim illegal or unethical?, I wonder.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"End of Life Consultation Service"

Boy it's hard to come up with a pleasant name for a group that just wants to kill a lot of people, isn't it? Kevorkian, End of Life Consultation Service, Planned Parenthood, Nazi Party...

-Gavin