We Canadians are in more than one way an aging society; will this also entail our spiritual death? Binks' story is a severe warning. But his post also links David Warren who argues
The forces sustaining civilization are always less visible, and more powerful, than the forces of barbarism can understand. And the greatest of these defences is truth itself: the truth that was written from the beginning into the human heart, and will persist to the end. For every human being is endowed with a conscience, whether he wishes to have it or not. He may use various kinds of painkiller to suppress feelings of guilt, for crimes that really are crimes in the sight of God and nature; but the cause of that pain will never go away.
Hence, what we see in the streets around us every day: disinterested acts by people who believe only in self-interest; acts of decency, from people who hardly know what they are doing. Why, this past week, I even witnessed a gratuitous act of kindness towards a man, by a hardened feminist! (Can you believe it?)
2 comments:
The price of such cowardice is any expectation that one would believe such a story. The story, as told, is one of casual disregard for life. The described abandonment of May, by Binks, only makes sense if other parts of the story are not true. If the communication did never occur as claimed, then I can see a preist shuting his mouth. Otherwise, such communication would have likely secured a more vocal advocacy from a death row inmate, than from this self supposed priest. Does anyone short of poorly considered characters of a maudlin morality play walk so casually away from such a responsibility?
Yes, my sense is that something is missing from the story, that we are being asked to take something on faith. It becomes a question of how much "license" to grant Binks in representing a concern with some peoples' propensity to pull the plug. It may be that Binks tried a little to appeal to authorities and got nowhere in the face of medical officials declaring his claims were fanciful; it may be he is rather more hopeful than sure that he had communication with May. It may be he was, at the critical moment, a confused coward who didn't believe his own experience and was shut up by authority or an angry family who didn't believe him. It could be May would only respond to him; maybe she wanted to die. From reading him, I can't quite believe he is a man who would go along quietly with murder; and he must have some grounds for using this story to bring to attention the desire of some to walk away from difficult cases and costs.
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