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Child euthanasia in Belgium - a Catholic country gone terribly wrong


From What's wrong with Belgium, Tracey Rowland writes of the lack of authentic Catholic culture there:

I first visited Belgium in 2004 to attend a theology conference in Leuven. The conference Mass was the most bizarre liturgical experience of my life. It did not take place in any of the many churches in Leuven but in the conference room itself. Part of the ritual took the form of watching a video of the September 11 attack on the twin towers while listening to mood music. One of the participants from Holland was dressed in a folk costume and looked like a member of the band The Village People. There was also a Nigerian priest who was treated like an idiot because he expressed respect for Cardinal Arinze. I took some flak for being critical of the culture of modernity and one polite person apologized to me by saying, “you see, around here people think of you as an ally of Joseph Ratzinger”!

My overall impression was that Leuven was like a town that had been hit by a neutron bomb—the kind of bomb that kills people but leaves buildings intact. All the Gothic buildings remained—the outward symbols of a once vibrant Catholic culture were still on view as tourist attractions—but the people who worked within the buildings seemed not to be the original inhabitants, but another people who had moved in after some terrible cataclysm and were ill at ease with what had gone before. Our Lady, the Seat of Wisdom, and Patroness of Leuven, appeared marginalized.
And more of the "soul" of Belgium, archetyped by that country's entry in the Eurovision song contest, which was fear that love leads to death:
Last year one of the worst songs in the entire Eurovision contest was the entry from Belgium. It was called “Love Kills.” The refrain of the song was:

Waiting for the bitter pill
Give me something I can feel
‘Cause love kills over and over
Love kills over and over

Whatever this means exactly it’s a radical inversion of the normal juxtaposition of love with life and generativity. Other countries offered the usual assortment of Eurovision styles, some heavy metal, some punk, a few soft ballads, but the Belgian entry stood out as something very dark and creepy, a culture of death pop song.

Could New Zealand follow in yet another attempt to mandate the killing of people by their doctors? Brendan Malone thinks so in his post The circle of death is now almost complete in Belgium, and NZ could be next.

Comments

  1. At least the Roman Catholic monks of Belgium are still making amazing beer! :-P

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  2. LOL! Maybe the beer will help guide them back!

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  3. Hi William,



    I agree, this is Nazism all over again, just with a kinder face.


    I didn't know that about Napoleon, that he proved that the cycle of repetition could be broken. Interesting.


    I think we don't learn because we don't want to be responsible - I see that in myself, a yearning to go back to when I didn't know as much and then didn't know whether things were right or wrong. I've kind of gotten over that now, but I remember it being a big pull for me some years back.


    So, I'm hoping that because this is a period of great need, that grace will abound. Your comment has reminded me of this post from a couple of years back: Never before has there been a generation of men so unsuitable

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  4. Napoleon was a great student of military history. He never made a mistake on the battlefield, if that mistake appeared in the histories of battles that he studied copiously. Thus he repaired his errors before he ever made them. His only mistakes appeared when he faced something new, and was forced to adapt.
    Also, thank you for posting the link to the previous article. It is good to be reminded that the armor of God awaits the faithful. Even when hope seems distant.

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  5. That was an interesting article by Tracy Rowland. Chilling is the word! I think William is onto something regarding history repeating itself. I do think that euthanasia, though proposed as a choice, is simply a pressure. The fact its available makes it a pressured choice for those in need of care. I believe the Pope has a favourite book called 'Lord of the World' written by Robert Hugh Benson around the beginning of the 20th century. Its uncanny what he managed to get right...including euthanasia.

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