Good Bye...

A friend of mine who lives in another country last night posted a message simply saying 'good bye'.

Cue all of his friends and myself being incredibly alarmed and writing messages on his Facebook page asking if he was okay. No reply came. He is a similar age to me and I think that he can be something of a depressive (as we can all be).

I was about to start my third decade of the Rosary for him when I received a message from him apologising. He told me it was a 'cry for help'. Of course, all his friends on Facebook thought the worst and that our friend had 'done something silly'. The inference I received from a conversation afterwards is that he is going through something of a difficult time for one reason or another and that while not exactly a statement of direct intent, this message would appear to have indeed been an exasperated 'cry for help'.

The reactions to his returning to Facebook to apologise to friends who were deeply worried about him varied. Some expressed anger that he had led good friends to believe he was contemplating suicide, or had indeed carried it out. Of course, this individual would not qualify as 'terminally ill' even though in truth we are all terminally ill in as much as we will all die one day. He also has a successful career and job prospects and lives well, I believe, in another country. However, like alcoholism, drug dependency, relationship breakdown, and a raft of social evils, the contemplation of suicide and suicide itself cuts like a knife through all the social strata in society. Very often, it seems, suicide is carried out by the successful and wealthy perhaps more than the poor and forgotten in society.

"Great idea, mate, you have our full support..."

Was not the reaction he received. The reaction then, to this young man's plea, was horror, fear, anxiety, anger, sympathy, compassion and a genuine sense that we must find out whether he is okay. Above all, nobody wanted to hear that our friend, who we love, had killed himself. Now, I ask those who support assisted suicide whether a man issuing a 'cry for help' would receive, in his hour of darkness, the emotional support that would challenge the idea of suicide in a 'post-legalised assisted dying' world or country?

Are we really saying that a person suffering a 'terminal illness' - that their life is worth less than this man's life? Are we really saying that those people in care homes, in hospices, lying in hospital beds, those to whom we are, as a society, called to show protection and care, humanity and compassion - that they are woth less than him? Or is it not simply the case that the very idea of self-killing - and the assistance of it - is repugnant to us universally and that we deem it an outrage, if not, periodically, conceptually for ourselves in our own condition, which we often cannot see objectively, then towards those who we love?

Next he will be dancing on your grave

That Lord Carey and Desmond Tutu have come out in support of this horrendous proposal is an outrage to the Christian world. The sanctity of human life is absolute because it cannot be relative without destroying its very definition and meaning. We cannot say that some lives are more sacred than others. We cannot, as Christians, or as human beings, say that some lives are more worthy of being called life than others. We have been suffering and dying for a long time, since we have lived in this vale of tears. Suicide has been around for a long time. Many of us have been there and come close to it because of the weight of our own despair in personal circumstances. If suicide was made easy and as acceptable as those behind this law wish to make it, this would devalue not only the lives of the aged, vulnerable and infirm, but the lives of everyone - every man, woman and child.

Pray, pray, pray that this repulsive bill, dressed so cleverly in compassion and pity, will be rejected for what it ultimately is - the transference of the power of life and death from God to the British State, for its citizens - not only on the transient whim of those citizens, but on the fallible and grossly distorted preconceptions of British doctors, whose vocation to protect and save human life will have been transformed into a new role of being hit men for the British state, albeit - at first - with the easily manipulated consent of its vulnerable victims. May God help this country and rebuke those who forget Him and the history of the bloody totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, that we all, universally, abhor.

My friend and all people are worth 'hundreds of sparrows', but more than this, all men and all women are worth an infinite value the price of which is revealed in the Death and Resurrection of the Son of God. Do not let these wolves in sheeps clothing, be they Anglican or anyone else, tell you anything different. The author of this song below, Mark Linkous, killed himself. I have no idea why he did it, but gifted and often highly sensitive people are vulnerable to it and prone to such tendencies. His fans were, as you can imagine, not thrilled upon hearing the news. Pray for all who long for the hope that Our Lord Jesus Christ brings those who believe in Him and who place themselves in His merciful care. In an age of such ephemeral and passing joys, we know, as Catholics, that our only real Hope is in Him, because He is the hope that does not deceive.