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Contents      Don Bosco's Place in History & Today    Home-Page

Cybernetics, Noah's Ark, Lord Joffe, Mercy Killing, Euthanasia, Assisted Suicide & Environmental Health

"The first law of history is not to dare to utter any falsehood; and then never to remain silent about the truth," insisted Pope Leo XIII: "Primam esse historiæ legem ne quid falsi dicere audeat; deinde ne quid veri non audeat" (Sæpe numero considerantes, 18 August 1883, in A. A. S., 3, 1884, 268 et ss). Philip H. Robinson's Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide (London: CTS, 2003) is inadequate.

"Truth," wrote Luigi Ricceri, "is a multi-facetted diamond," and indeed, as Associate Professor of Architecture Bodvar Schjelderup reminds us: "The intricately complex and undeniably clear connections in evidence between phenomena belonging to different periods in time and to quite distinct cultural traditions can only be explained in terms of a potential insight behind the screens of history, a movement from possibility and chance conditions to consequences and fulfilment in process at a much higher level of survey than that of human genius and skill."

Among Christians respect for documentary sources is ideally, as Pope Paul VI hoped, "a reflection of their respect for Christ and for the Church, which enables us to provide ourselves, and those who will be reached by our words, with the history of this particular phase of transitus Domini in the world... Even the most modest document, preserved in this spirit, becomes a sign of Christ's presence in the world, a proof of his mission, a footprint of the Mystical Body left in the onward march of history." (26 September 1963, Insegnamenti, I, 1963, pp. 614 et s).

According to Francis Desramaut the problems confronting serious readers of any of the twenty volumes of the Memorie Biografiche di San Giovanni Bosco (San Benigno Canavese - Torino, 1898-1948) by Jean-Baptiste Lemoyne (vols. I-1X), Angelo Amadei (vol. X) and Eugenio Ceria (vols. XI-XIX), with an Index volume by E. Foglio, are, even though all (save for vol. XX) also available in Dutch, English and Spanish translation, "at times as complex as those of the synoptic gospels" ("The methods adopted by the authors of the Memorie Biografiche", in Patrick Egan & Mario Midali, editors, Don Bosco's Place in History, Roma: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano, 1993, p. 39).

Although Father Lemoyne was "scrupulously honest in using the testimony of other people which he had always transcribed with great care", so that his "honesty and integrity" could not be faulted, his "mental approach" leaves us with much to be desired - the way he wove together the various narratives at his disposal "in volume I, for instance, projected a medieval view of the supernatural and this was evident even more so, in successive volumes of the Memorie Biografiche." (Pietro Stella, "An Assessment of our Knowledge of Don Bosco and of the Works about him" in Don Bosco's Place in History, pp. 24-5).

Note, too, that neither Father Lemoyne nor Father Stella is to be identified with Don Bosco himself: "The study of religious founders is far from easy even though we can call upon many scientific methods of investigation. Founders resist any explanation that is purely historical, sociological or psychological. When we approach them, we encounter something elusive, and even when we think we know them well, closer study always reveals something new. How can this mystery, this inexhaustible richness be explained? Simply by recalling that when we encounter a Founder, it is G-d working through him." (Th. Grzeszczyk, Il carisma dei Fondatori, Collana "Sanctitas in caritate", Roma, 1974, p. 11.)

Robert Cornuke's Ark Fever (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House, 2005) includes copies of some July 2005 colour photographs taken in northern Iran on the Mian-Se-Chal mountain near the Caspian Sea; what they show may be petrified remains of Noah's Ark. (His earlier attempts to locate St. Paul's shipwreck on the Munxar Reef in St. Thomas Bay, in other words, quite close to the site of the likely remains of an indefinitely old temple of Astarte/Tanit/Isis/Diana/Juno on the eastern side of the island of Malta, fell very far wide of the mark.) Provided Jews and Christians remember that their scriptures located the Ark not precisely on Mount Ararat, which is in Turkey, but simply somewhere in a broad range of mountains north of Assyria known at the time as 'rrt', 'Ararat' or 'Urartu', this discovery need occasion no surprise. Muslims and perhaps especially Iranian Muslims are, on the other hand, differently placed, since the Ark, according to the Holy Quran, came to rest on Mount Jabal Judi, a location never traditionally identified as anywhere near the Caspian Sea. . .

Jean-Marie Galot (1747-1794), a priest and one of several French freemasons who supported not revolution but the principles of liberty, equality and fraternity in the context but of a reformed constitutional monarchy, was sent to the guillotine and, in due course, beatified by Pope Pius XII (cfr Liberi Muratori di ieri e di oggi, Roma: Camelo editore, 1986, p.219, as cited in the important footnote no.24 about Freemasonry on p.155 of Franco Molinari's "Church and World in Don Bosco's Storia Ecclesiastica" in Egan & Midali's already mentioned Don Bosco's Place in History, but nowhere referred to in Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's papally authorized Declaration on Freemasonry of 6 November 1983, which is quoted and discussed by the then Grand Master Giuliano di Bernardo in his La Ricostruzione del Tempio - Il Progetto Massonico per una Nuova Utopia, Venezia: Marsilio, 1996, and also in the same Professor's earlier, less than accurately translated into English, but otherwise still useful Freemasonry and its image of Man - A Philosophical Investigation, Tunbridge Wells: Freestone, 1989). More recently.

Robert Cornuke's Relic Quest (Wheaton, Illinois: Tyndale House, 2005) includes a suggestion (pp. 240-46) that, at the Second Coming of Jesus to His Father's Temple in Jerusalem, both the Ark of the Covenant and the Mercy-Seat at present kept in Ethiopia will be carried from there in solemn procession back to this Holy City (cfr. Psalm 68: 24, 29, 31; 132: 8-14; Isaiah 18: 7; 52: 10-11; Jeremiah 3: 17; Ezekiel 43: 4-7; Matthew 25: 31; Acts 8: 26-39).

NUT members are uncomfortable with Sir Peter Vardy's sponsorship of Gateshead's Emmanuel City Technical College, yet 88% of US citizens reject Darwinian evolution. Peter Sellick's "Is it a bird? Is it a plane?" in Common Theology (Vol. 2, no. 1, Summer 2006, pp. 15-17) is, especially in its fifth paragraph, a less than helpful contribution to our improved appreciation of G-d's Intelligent Design in creation. As well as Hans Zillmer's Darwin's Mistake - Antediluvian discoveries prove dionosaurs and humans co-existed (Adventures Unlimited Press, 2005) and John C. Whitcomb & Henry M. Morris's excellent The Genesis Flood - The Biblical record and its scientific implications, with a Foreword by John C. McCampbell (Phillipsburg, Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 44th printing, 2003), Derek S. Allan & J. Bernard Delair's When The Earth Nearly Died..., republished as Cataclysm - compelling evidence of a cosmic catastrophe in 9500 B.C. (Gateway Books: 1995, 1997) deserves careful consideration. Nevertheless, if during the whole of your remaining life on Earth you are determined to read no more than one book, let it be Peter Plichta's God's Secret Formula - Deciphering the Riddle of the Universe and the Prime Number Code (Element Books 1997; paperback 1998) - a translation of: Gottes geheime Formel (Albert Langen George Müller Verlag in der F. A. Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung GmbH., München, 1995).

Joseph Caselli's English translation of Joseph Aubry's one volume edition of The Spiritual Writings of Saint John Bosco (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Don Bosco Publications, 1984) very clearly shows that this saint was, although in his time very much involved in most aspects of life on Earth, even more concerned with what comes next. When, for instance, on 1 March 1881, Count Louis-Antonio Fleury-Colles of Toulon and his wife, Maria-Sofia of the Buchet barons, asked him to go to Marseille to bless their 17-years-old and only son, Louis, who was then dying of tuberculosis, Don Bosco, in addition to praying for the young man's recovery and comforting his parents, also prepared their son to sacrifice his life for the love of the Lord and, in fact, young Louis died on 3 April. Sixty-six or seventy-six (the English translation is not entirely free from printing mistakes) of the saint's letters, most of them written to the Count in the course of the following six years, have survived and all of them were originally written in French, save this one from Turin of 22 May 1881, which was in Italian, a language Don Bosco knew the Countess couldn't read:

"Most respected Attorney Colle,
I am aware that your wife is upset because of certain things I declined to write about. As to this, I will come to the heart of the matter with a few words. The parents' hearts were too attached to their only son. Too much tenderness and emotion; yet, he remained good always. Had he lived, he may have met great dangers, through which he might have been drawn into evils ways after his parents' death. That is why G-d removed him from danger by taking him to Heaven, whence he will soon become the protector of his parents and of all those who have prayed and will go on praying for him..."

Writing on 16 March 2006 to all Roman Catholic parish-priests in England and Wales about the House of Lords' debate on 12 May next of Lord Joffe's Assisted Dying for the Terminally Ill Bill, Archbishop Peter Smith of Cardiff characterised it as "the next step in a concerted and highly organised campaign to legalise euthanasia and assisted suicide in England and Wales". An accompanying leaflet from the Care Not Killing Alliance states that legalising assisted suicide is wrong, that a law allowing assisted suicide but not euthanasia would be subject to abuse, and that what needs to be promoted is more and better palliative care.

Money is nowhere mentioned in the Alliance's leaflet, but their website includes a facility for online donations and the Archbishop letter highlights the need for financial support, as well as for prayer and effective lobbying. Dr Vincent McKee's "Catholic Interests at Westminster - Future Prospects?" (in Who's Who in Catholic Life 2005, Manchester: Gabriel Communications, pp. xvi-xviii) appreciates that "Britain is neither wholly secular nor a model of Christian democracy" and, while paying tribute to a few individual parliamentarians, believes that "overall, prospects for Catholic interests look less than encouraging... On the whole, Catholic lay organisations for all their valiant efforts are poorly co-ordinated and lacking in terms of political focus."

If as much money were given to each terminally ill person being "cared for" as is currently paid in salaries and wages to those doing the "caring", would that, I wonder, make any difference to the progress of this debate? The National Health Service receives massive government funding, currently the equivalent of about £80 per family per week. Since "more and better palliative care" means either increasing that charge or spending less on something else, the lessons of Stafford Beer's Designing Freedom - The Massey Lectures, Thirteenth Series: 1973 (Canadian Broadcasting Company, 1974, pp.20, 24-5, 55-6) remain immediately relevant:

"You will not need a lot of learning to understand what I am saying; what you will need is intellectual freedom. It is a free gift for all who have the courage to accept it. Remember: our culture teaches us not intelllectual courage, but intellectual conformity... Our culture insists on the uniqueness of the individual, but our society cannot live up to that. This is no criticism, it is a scientific fact. Our culture also insists on the absolute freedom of the individual, but our society cannot live up to that either. That too is a scientific fact... We cannot do everything we conceive as socially desirable...
At work and at home science and technology are driven relentlessly forward towards a society of conspicuous consumption... Growth is the order of the day... Therefore people must be persuaded that this is what they want, that this constitutes the good life, and this is science in the service of man. But I believe that the society of conspicuous consumption is proving to be the most alienating force the world has ever known, and that the fantastic consumption of drugs (both legally prescribed and illegally acquired) is a useful index to the degree of alienation now in evidence... Something has gone very wrong."

For some further and more detailed discussion of the rights and wrongs of mercy killing, euthanasia, assisted suicide, palliative care and any related legislation, I refer you not only to www.donoharm.org.uk and www.righttolife.org.uk, but also to the March/April 2003 issue no. 40 of Philosophy Now - a magazine of ideas, and to five items in particular: Joel Marks on "Moral Moments" (p. 47), Lars Elgstam on "Democratic Decisions and the distribution of Power" (pp. 23-26), Antony Flew on "Human Freewill & Divine Predestination" (pp. 27-29), Tim Chappell on "Why Euthanasia is in Nobody's Interest" with a reply by Joachim Jung (pp. 10-12), and Joachim Jung on "Withdrawing from Life" with a reply by Tim Chappell (pp. 13-16):

"It is unbearably hard to depart this life alone. To do so requires resoluteness, taciturnity and iron discipline. The horror excited by this design is markedly alleviated if the would-be suicide finds a congenial partner... On the brink of death most people do not like to be left alone, particularly if they are to quit life of their own free will [Did Don Bosco offer young Louis that choice?]. Providing assistance in suicide is a precept of charity implying advantages for both the perpetrator and society. [Don't believe everything written in Euthanasia - What do Catholics believe? (CTS Essentials, LF32, 2005 - ISBN 1 86082 349 1). Food and water given by tube are treatment, not just basic care, but normally may be given, if desired. The parable of The Good Samaritan teaches that we should willingly make personal sacrifices on behalf of even our worst enemy, whenever he or she is in need.] ... It is an asset for the suicide if a physician or a friend can attend or accompany him without facing legal restrictions."

"In order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful to them and that they may render more copious thanks to G-d... they are allowed to see perfectly the sufferings of the damned... the Divine justice and their own deliverance will be the direct cause of the joy of the blessed, while the pains of the damned will cause it indirectly... the blessed in glory will have no pity for the damned." (Summa Theologiæ, III Supp. xciv, 1-3, as quoted above and consistently critiqued by Antony Flew)

As David Hume wrote (in On Suicide): "I believe that no man ever threw away life, while it was worth keeping." Why was it that G-d, according to Genesis, chose only to save Noah and his family from death by flood? And what teaching are we to derive from that example? One thing we need to steer clear of in exploring our options is, if Don Bosco's evaluation of our shared human condition is correct, "too much tenderness and emotion". Get real!

According to Mark D. Chapman's Blair's Britain - A Christian Critique (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 2005), values for Blair are a matter of faith and not reason, and reason's task is simply that of applying to any particular situation or range of situations those values which faith supplies. Since, however, not only have church membership and practice in Britain halved in the last forty years, but Dr. Rashad Khalifa (1935-1990) was martyred precisely on account of his belief that in the Holy Quran "for the first time in history we have a scripture with built-in proof of divine authorship - a superhuman mathematical composition" (cfr. J. Argüelles, Time & the Technosphere, Bear & Company, 2002, p. 230), talk of the Common Good in today's increasingly globalised world can all too obviously result in the suppression of cultural pluralism and interpersonal dialogue. Is that truly what we want?...

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