Tuesday 15 November 2011

Smeaton Battles Dr Death

Medicine Man: Dr Philip Nitzchke
Do read Paul Smeaton's excellent accounts,  in parts one and two, of his dicing with 'Dr Death' at Dragonhall Community Centre in Covent Garden, London.

I hear he isn't coming to Brighton this year, but, perhaps without an awareness of the irony, Nitzchke is concentrating on Eastbourne in the South East.

Eastbourne is sometimes described as 'God's waiting room' since many retired and elderly live there. It isn't entirely fair on Eastbourne, of course, because there are people young and old who live there, but there we go. Nitzchke sees his role in life as that of a doctor 'helping people along' on their journey out of this World and into the next. Where we would say that we can 'help people along' in suffering, old age and infirmity through our care and our prayers, and after natural death by our prayers, Nitzchke takes the more maverick view that we can help people along by helping them kick the bucket. In other words:

"Here you go love, here's the barbiturates and you basically put the bag over your head like this, but remember, I'm not recommending suicide or promoting it in any way. No, not like that, like this, dear." 

John Smeaton has some advice on what we can do in order to complain about Nitzchke's activity in the UK. I expect that, sadly, Paul will have been most likely a lone voice in the wilderness speaking out against the activity of someone who once, presumably, took the hippocratic oath.

This is one individual Theresa May should have definitely considered blocking from gaining entry to the UK. Well done to Paul for challenging him and giving him the Church's view of what is really, to put it mildly, a very reckless and really terrible thing to be doing.  Essentially, as anyone who has heard of Nitzchke will know, he prepares the ground for people to commit suicide, selling 'suicide kits' to the vulnerable and basically showing people how it is done. May God protect Eastbourne's elderly, sick and vulnerable from the terrible beliefs of Dr Philip Nitzchke. I know we are living in an age in which moral relativism is endemic, but even though we have the obvious 'evil dressed up as good' situation here, it is difficult to make sense of what Nitzchke is doing. What was unthinkable years ago is very much on the table now.

2 comments:

Left-footer said...

John Smeaton is very much a lone voice crying in the wilderness, reviled by Catholics of the superior sort, who describe him as "shrill".

He's the best kind of hero, dogged and unafraid of unpopularity. I wish the bishops were as "shrill".

I guess John the Baptist was a bit shrill, too.

Mulier Fortis said...

Eastbourne's reputation as "God's Waiting Room" may be hotly disputed by the younger people living there, but their argument isn't helped by the fact that there is a street with five funeral parlours on it (and two more round the corner)... known to the locals as "Death Row"

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