Parallels

The parallels that life presents are sometimes bigger than the lives they directly touch.

An example;
The nation held it’s breath, last week, and watched while the final chapters of Terry Shaivo’s murder got played out. And let’s not decieve ourselves, kids… that’s what it was. She had a heart attack, many years ago, but that’s not what killed her. What killed her was a husband who lacked a heart, backed by the Hemlock Society Glee Club.

Then, so soon afterward, comes word that Pope John-Paul II is on his way to meet the Lord he has served for so many years… after weeks.. indeed, years, of his own struggles against death… both his, and that of others.

The timing of these two events is remarkable. There’s a lesson in the juxtaposition of these two passages from this world. I’m not sure I’ve got my arms around all the lessons therein… or for that matter, if anyone ever could. But there are points even I can see, even if I’ve not worked out all the levels of implication yet.

Investor’s Business Daily editor George Meumayr writes this week, to the subject of Terry Shaivo, saying in part;

“Under judge-made law, euthanasia has become America’s most astonishing form of premeditated murder, a cold-blooded crime in which husbands can kill their wives and even turn them into accomplices to it through the telepathy of “their wishes.” To wonder if we’re on the slippery slope sounds like an obtuse moral compliment at this point. The truth is we’re at the bottom of the slope and have been for quite some time, standing dumbly as the bodies of innocent humans pile up around us. As we sift through them — puzzling over how they got so numerous — we’re reduced to mumbling sophistries about compassion and consent.

This is the “humane holocaust” of which Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, a culture that kills the weak, from deaf unborn children to mute disabled women, and calls it mercy. Those responsible for this humane holocaust look into the mirror and see Gandhi, but it is Hitler who glances back. If someone had taken the passages of Mein Kampf that speak of euthanizing “unfortunates” and inserted them into the columns from newspapers and magazines cheering Schiavo’s death, would anyone have known the difference?”

(H/T McPhillips)

And then along comes the Pope, who declares it, by way of his example, to be a virtue to ‘go down swingin’, and declares in so doing, the move toward abortion, euthenasia and so on… the culture of death, in short, as utterly LACKING in virtue.

It interests me, the relative positioning of the Pope and his followers, versus those who cheered for Terry Shaivo’s death. Consider this with me. Hugh Hewlett writes of the Pope;

“With Reagan and Solzhenitsyn, John Paul II represents the three forces of opposition to communism that shattered the evil empire, the Soviet Union –the American-led West, the Eastern European resistance, and the Russian dissident movement. “

Belmont Club, in their commentary on the matter, correctly brings up a couple more names of the like: Margaret Thatcher, and Lech Walensa.

Interesting; Of those who cheered for Terry Shaivo’s death, and those who fought to preserve that life; which side of the politcal and social isle, whom do you suppose it was that chose to confront the evil empire as such, and which were those who figured we’d be better off with containment of the monster the USSR represented, instead of the elimination of it, all the whiile moving us toward a more socialist model here in the west?

Granted, that this is a generalized argument, as are all such. There are exceptions. But it seems to me that as a rule, the holders of each of these positions tended to line up remakably true to the named groups. These each are, in my estimation, the markings of a very different angle in the foundations of what constitutes thinking of each group.

There is something to all of this, a continuity of thought and action, which I fear is too large for most people to grasp. This implication is clear to me, though; We’re dealing with the difference between Good, and Evil.

One side… the one backing the culture of life, is willing to recognize the great truth that evil exists… and they’re willing to say what is an is not evil. More, they’re willing to act based on those convictions, to fight against what they see as evil.

The other, what I will call the culture of death, won’t call something evil, but will repeatedly insist that there is no good and evil, (Let’s not be judgemental, after all) and that there is only power, and those willing or unwilling to seize it. Interesting, how those who make that claim are invariably those seeking power, and usually, are evil. And isn’t it interesting that these latter, have so often tried to kill off the former… as they did the Pope, President Reagan, and Lech Walensa?

(And look what they’re saying about the pope over at the DU(H))

There’s another similarity of the names above, that’s is interesting and important, as well; None of them had proof that their actions would create the positive situations that they did. But they took those actions, anyway. That’s courage. That’s faith… that’s greatness… and their like is not among the culture of death. Those of that mold assume there’s no hope for recovery, even while the person involved is alive, and strong, and in the end took nearly two weeks to kill.

If there is a culture war, it is to decide the question of which direction of these two chocies, which of these two roads, are we as a culture going to travel. It may be a struggle, but I think I know which way that’s going to go, eventually.

I think you do, too.