But first a note from Robert Royal: Today we have two commentaries on a horrific development in England - the approval of an assisted suicide law. Fr. Kiely writes from London; Professor Esolen from closer to home. Before final approval, there are still some hurdles for the proponents to get over. But we know from sad experience in other countries what a degradation of respect for human life that final approval would bring. This is only one of many such challenges we're going to be facing in all the developed countries and elsewhere in the next year, and beyond. Which is why our work here at The Catholic Thing is becoming even more urgent. As is yours. You are an essential part of what happens here and in our supposedly advanced societies. If things like this are going to be stopped - they still can be - we must all work together. You know how. Please, do it today. Click the button. Send a check. But act, today, to advance The Catholic Thing.

Now for today's columns...

Cast off the Darkness

Fr. Benedict Kiely

To begin Advent in darkness, both physical and metaphorical, seems very appropriate. It is a gloomy time of year, the nights are drawing in early, the atmosphere is cloudy and damp: gloomy is the right description. From the Old English for darkness, we know it can describe despondency and a lack of hope, a sense which approaches despair.

There is much that might make us gloomy at the moment, not least the awful vote in the British House of Commons on Friday allowing the euthanizing of those deemed not worthy of life. Although this crime against the Fifth Commandment has been allowed for years in other formerly Christian countries, such as Canada or Holland, and has had terrible consequences, all of which were said to not to be possible when the laws were introduced, the fact that Britain still has the external vestiges of being a Christian country make this moment worthy of more than gloom; it is now a different country, with post-Christian laws and government.

The pretense, the falsehood, of a national Church, a Christian monarch, and the paraphernalia of State Christianity must be called out for what it is: an illusion, play-acting, a stage set behind which is emptiness. If the King signs this legislation, which he will, as with the legalization of abortion in 1967, the process begun by Henry VIII, declaring himself as the Supreme Head of the Church of England, will have reached its final, ugly, and fetid dissolution.

Perhaps that kind of language is intemperate, some might say; there are safeguards, there will be no "slippery slope," no one will be coerced, the State will never force anyone to die. Everywhere euthanasia, state-sanctioned suicide, for that is what it is, has been allowed, the safeguards have changed. In Holland, children of 12 years old and up, can be euthanized.

We must be under no illusions as Christians. It is not business as usual, keeping quiet, keeping our heads down, hoping none of the encroaching darkness will overwhelm us. What if you are a doctor, or nurse, or some other kind of medical professional, and you are expected to participate in this? What if you get sick or incapacitated and your relatives decide it's time for you to go? It won't happen, we are told. But something has happened that is very bad. When we need roaring bishops, like lions, all we get are meows from kittens.

Who will speak, who will act, who will be witnesses? It can only be us, individual men and women of faith who do not participate in the evil. The protestant theologian, Stanley Hauerwas has written some very pithy and simple words, which give us a plan for how to respond. He wrote: "I say in 100 years, if Christians are known as a strange group of people who don't kill their children and don't kill their elderly, we will have done a great thing."

What is probably the earliest Christian document - other than the Gospels - that we have, the Didache, written at some point in the first century A.D., says that there ar...