As Utilitarian as the Nuremburg Laws Themselves

As longtime readers of this website know, I wrote many articles against the court-ordered starvation and dehydration of the late Mrs. Theresa Marie Schindler-Schiavo. I spoke at a rally in her defense on Saturday, March 12, 2005, that was held directly across the street from the hospice in Pinellas Park, Florida, where her execution by starvation and dehydration would commence six days later. The earliest article that I wrote on the subject was published on October 19, 2003, A Persistent Paralytic State. Another article, Affirming the Merchants of Death, was published on the American Life League website on November 11, 2003. (Those articles—as well as the ones written in 2005—were, of course, written when I was a sedeplenist who practiced the "resist but recognize" ecclesiology that I now recognize to be erroneous. It was because I still held onto the fiction of the legitimacy of Wojtyla/John Paul II's claim to be the Successor of Saint Peter that those articles were pretty widely circulated in "mainstream" circles, the last time that that would happen. One loses a lot of earthly "influence" and "respect" when one comes to understand that the Catholic Church cannot give us false doctrines and liturgies that are incentives to impiety and that are offensive to God. Deo gratias!)

The information that I obtained about the late Mrs. Schiavo's case was not from any television news network or from some mindless blatherer on the radio. I worked closely with those who knew Mrs. Schiavo's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler. Several of the people with whom I worked made frequent visits to her bedside through the last years of her life. The basic principle of Catholic moral teaching that I used in the analyses that I wrote was adduced from the Fifth Commandment prohibition against taking any action that has as its first and only end the death of an innocent human being.

There is only one thing that can result from the removal of food and water, no matter how administered, to a living human being: death. Mrs. Schiavo was not near death. A brain-damaged person is not a dead person.

A brain-damaged person is a living human being, something that will be repeated throughout this article just in case anyone is apt to forget this fact.

Indeed, there have been so many cases of supposedly "brain dead" human beings awakening in the past decade that anyone who lingers to the fiction of such "death," which was invented by the medical industry in 1968 as the justification for harvesting human bodies for their vital bodily members, is closing his eyes to truth. See, for example, No Room In The Inn For Jahi McMath, Every Once In A While, Dr. Paul Byrne on Brain Death, Stories That Speak For Themselves, Headless Corpses?, First-Hand Evidence Of Fraud, Why Should Death Of Any Kind Get In The Way?, Grand Illusion, Every Once In A While, Canada's Death Panels: A Foretaste of ObamaCare, Someone Was Killed To Keep "J.R." Alive, Trying To Find Ever New And Inventive Ways To Snatch Bodies, Dispensing With The Pretense of "Brain Death", Good Rule Of Thumb: Reject What Conciliarists Promote, To Avoid Suffering In The Name Of Compassion, Just Obey God, Death To Us All, Choosing To Live In States Of Apoplexy. Also of use is my book, Life, Death, and Truth: Under Attack by Medicine and Law.

Human beings need assistance to eat and to drink when they are newborn infants. Some may need assistance to eat and drink after an accident or a stroke. Food and water are basic to the survival of a human being. And while the mere sustaining of physical life is not the ultimate end of our existence, it is never permissible to withdraw food and water from a person who is not in danger of imminent death and cannot assimilate food (or for whom food and water actually exacerbates his condition prior to death). This appeared to me to be basic and beyond question. I did not understand at the time how any believing Catholic could assert that there were moral principles that could justify the removal of food and water, thus causing death not as a secondary end but as the only end of said removal.

Many saints, including Saint Camillus de Lellis, Saint John of God. Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, and Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, spent themselves in service to the incurables of their own day, seeing in them the very image of the Divine Redeemer, Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Two of the Corporal Works of Mercy are to feed the hungry and to give drink to the thirsty. While it is indeed the case that the point of human existence is not be kept alive indefinitely by the use of artificial means, food and water, no matter how administered, are ordinary care provided to living human beings. The late Mrs. Theresa Marie Schindler-Schiavo was a living human being. She was brain damaged. She was not dead. She was nowhere near death. Anyone who asserts this has his facts completely wrong. There is no such thing as brain death, as Dr. Paul Byrne discussed in his interview with Mrs. Randy Engel in 2007, Dr. Paul Byrne on Brain Death (From The Michael Fund Newsletter).

As I have in the past, therefore, I want to summarize once again the moral principles and salient facts of Mrs. Schiavo's case, noting that what made her case extraordinary was that she had family members who wanted to save her life and who had the financial wherewithal to support her over the course of time as there are plenty of people who get starved and dehydrated to death in this country precisely because no one objects to their being so executed. Indeed, this is a daily occurrence throughout the so-called "civilized" Western world and, as will be discussed later in this commentary, is in the news again because of the cases of Jack Dunlap and Margo Naranjo.

I. General Moral Principles

1) The morality of an act is determined by its objective nature. An evil act can never be made "moral" as a result of extenuating circumstances. An act that is otherwise licit might be immoral to pursue as a result of a preponderance of foreseen evil consequences that outweigh the good end to be sought (the principle of Proportionality).

2) Innocent human life is inviolable.

3) It is never permissible to undertake any action that has as its immediate and sole end the death of an innocent human being.

4) The preservation of physical life is not an ultimate end in and of itself requiring a variety of extraordinary medical means to preserve it.

4.1) To wit, no one is required in most instances to undergo chemotherapy or radiation treatment for cancer–or to undergo coronary bypass or heart valve replacement surgery, admitting that one’s age and circumstances have a bearing to play on whether there is any moral obligation to undertake such treatment or to submit to such surgery (a thirty year old married man with children may have an obligation to consider such treatment whereas there would be no such obligation in most instances for a man in his seventies or eighties, admitting that one has the option, of course, to choose such treatment if he is not being a burden unnecessarily to himself or others in doing so, as Pope Pius XII made clear in 1957).

4.2) Decisions to use or to continue extraordinary means, which are to be outlined in durable power of attorney forms and not in the death warrants that are called, most euphemistically, as "living wills" (see an article by Miss Mary Therese Helmueller, on the danger of living wills, Are You Being Targeted For Euthanasia?), depend upon a variety of circumstances. Such decisions involve what is known as the principle of the "double-fold effect," that is, that a morally licit action is undertaken that might result in a foreseen but unintended consequence that is not directly willed as the first end of the morally licit action.

Pope Pius XII outlined these basic principles in an allocution he gave to anesthesiologists in Italy on November 24, 1957:

1. Does the anesthesiologist have the right, or is he bound, in all cases of deep unconsciousness, even in those that are considered to be completely hopeless in the opinion of the competent doctor, to use modern artificial respiration apparatus, even against the will of the family?

In ordinary cases one will grant that the anesthesiologist has the right to act in this manner, but he is not bound to do so, unless this becomes the only way of fulfilling another certain moral duty.

The rights and duties of the doctor are correlative to those of the patient. The doctor, in fact, has no separate or independent right where the patient is concerned. In general he can take action only if the patient explicitly or implicitly, directly or indirectly, gives him permission. The technique of resuscitation which concerns us here does not contain anything immoral in itself. Therefore the patient, if he were capable of making a personal decision, could lawfully use it and, consequently, give the doctor permission to use it. On the other hand, since these forms of treatment go beyond the ordinary means to which one is bound, it cannot be held that there is an obligation to use them nor, consequently, that one is bound to give the doctor permission to use them.

The rights and duties of the family depend in general upon the presumed will of the unconscious patient if he is of age and sui jurist. Where the proper and independent duty of the family is concerned, they are usually bound only to the use of ordinary means.

Consequently, if it appears that the attempt at resuscitation constitutes in reality such a burden for the family that one cannot in all conscience impose it upon them, they can lawfully insist that the doctor should discontinue these attempts, and the doctor can lawfully comply. There is not involved here a case of direct disposal of the life of the patient, nor of euthanasia in any way: this would never be licit. Even when it causes the arrest of circulation, the interruption of attempts at resuscitation is never more than an indirect cause of the cessation of life, and one must apply in this case the principle of double effect and of "voluntarium in cause."

Extreme Unction

2. We have, therefore, already answered the second question in essence: "Can the doctor remove the artificial respiration apparatus before the blood circulation has come to a complete stop? Can he do this, at least, when the patient has already received Extreme Unction? Is this Extreme Unction valid when it is administered at the moment when circulation ceases, or even after?"

We must give an affirmative answer to the first part of this question, as we have already explained. If Extreme Unction has not yet been administered, one must seek to prolong respiration until this has been done. But as far as concerns the validity of Extreme Unction at the moment when blood circulation stops completely or even after this moment, it is impossible to answer "yes" or "no."

If, as in the opinion of doctors, this complete cessation of circulation means a sure separation of the soul from the body, even if particular organs go on functioning, Extreme Unction would certainly not be valid, for the recipient would certainly not be a man anymore. And this is an indispensable condition for the reception of the sacraments.

If, on the other hand, doctors are of the opinion that the separation of the soul from the body is doubtful, and that this doubt cannot be solved, the validity of Extreme Unction is also doubtful. But, applying her usual rules: "The sacraments are for men" and "In case of extreme measures" the Church allows the sacrament to be administered conditionally in respect to the sacramental sign. (Address to an International Congress of Anesthesiologists, November 24, 1957, right dab on my sixth birthday!)

4.3) While some have tried to apply this allocution to the provision of food and water by artificial means, something that is neither costly nor burdensome in any way today, such an application is erroneous.

4.4) Food and water, no matter how administered, do not constitute "medical treatment," whether ordinary or extraordinary. Eating and drinking are voluntary functions of the human body with which need assistance at the beginning of our lives as infants and sometimes at the end of our lives or when we have been the victims of a trauma that renders us incapable of eating on our own.

4.5) The removal of food and water, no matter how administered, can result in only one possible end: the death of an innocent human being. The principle of the double-fold effect does not apply here as the proposed course of action, the removal of food and water from an incapacitated human being who is no more near death than anyone else but simply needs assistance in eating and drinking, is morally illicit and cannot be undertaken so as to cause the death of an innocent human being.

As the late Father Martin Stepanich, O.F.M., S.T.D., noted in a letter that he had written to me in 2008:

As for a feeding tube being an "extraordinary means" of keeping a helpless patient alive, there is not doubt that it is "extraordinary" in the sense that such a tube is not the ordinary means of nourishing anyone, since God equipped us humans with mouths for partaking of food and drink and some of the medications needed. And, when feeding tubes were first introduced they were plainly something "extraordinary." However, in the course of time, they became quite commonly used, so that they could not really be looked upon as "extraordinary" any longer. They became ordinary means of keeping helpless patients alive, and they have saved the lives of countless many.

But whatever may have been the real or pretended reason why Michael Schiavo had Terri's feeding tube removed, it was all done in a very ugly way that it is sickening just to think about it. And it cannot be repeated too often that the merciless termination of Terri cannot possibly be justified before God. If Terri had bene already close to death at the time her feeding tube was removed, the only decent and humane thing to do would have been to continue providing her with what food or drink and medication she could still handle, and as long as it did her any good, and at that the same time to do the best to lessen her suffering until she peacefully expired. But to finish her off with a cruel starvation and dehydration? Never!

5) No one may undertake an action in the midst of a sickness that can have only his own death as its end. Suicide is excluded by the Fifth Commandment and by the binding precepts of the Natural Law that flow therefrom.

6) No one may authorize others to undertake actions in the midst of a sickness that can have only his death as its sole end. No one may assist in the suicide of others.

7) Spouses or parents who are derelict in their duty to provide basic care for their spouses or children in times of traumatic experiences may be deposed. Neither spousal nor parental rights are absolute. Both are subject to being yielded, albeit rarely and only in the gravest circumstances after exhortations to duty have failed to remedy the case of dereliction, in the face of the demands of the good of others involving life and death, both eternal and physical.

II. Observations of the Supernatural Order

1) A brain-damaged human being who is dependent upon others for nutrition and hydration is not being “impeded” from going back to God. It is He alone Who wills the time of the death of each of us.

2) A brain-damaged human being is no nearer to death than any one of us. To assert that the continuation of food and water, no matter how administered, to a living human being is “impeding” their return to God is to assert that any human being is thus impeding his return to God by eating and drink, hence making the Albigensians correct in their despising of their physical lives.

3) A brain-damaged human being is permitted by God to suffer over the course of decades, possibly, to help Him to redeem the world, making reparation for his own sins and those of the whole world. (One can do this by praying to offer up his future sufferings prospectively in the course of his daily prayers.)

3.1) Even those who have not offered up their future sufferings prospectively are helping Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to redeem the world by being a source of grace for those who administer to them in their time (however long or short that may be) of need. This is not an option in the supernatural order. We would not starve and dehydrate Our Lord. How can we starve and dehydrate members of His Mystical Body? Is it a burden to serve the suffering Christ around the clock, if necessary?

3.2) We must see the suffering Christ in those around us who are dependent upon us for their daily needs, counting it as a joy to serve them as we would serve Our Blessed Lord Himself. Does not the example of Saint Camillus de Lellis mean anything to us any more? Did he not care for the “hopeless” cases of his time? Was he not determined to serve the “hopeless” as he would serve Our Blessed Lord Himself? How has any of this changed?

3.3) A life spent in a state of a degree of brain damage is not one that is “wasted.” To care for another as we would care for Our Lord Himself earns merit for us and helps us to deny ourselves as we help another carry his cross as Simon of Cyrene helped Our Lord to carry His Holy Cross.

III. Personal Experience in and Knowledge of Such Cases

1) A Roman Catholic priest, aged 45, had a stroke around 1993. He was from Armenia, speaking English fluently. His parents spoke very little English. Hospital officials had decided to starve and dehydrate the priest, whose name I do not recall, to death because he was said to be in a “persistent vegetative state.”

Contacted in 1995 by several Catholics, I conducted an investigation for purposes of writing an article for The Wanderer. These are the facts:

1.1) The priest’s parents consented to the starvation and dehydration because they accepted the word of their son’s attending physicians that his condition was “irreversible.”

1.2) The priest himself, however, did understand what was going on around him. He communicated with blinks of the eyes to my informants when they visited him.

1.3) There is an important lesson here: most physicians today lie about the state of patients in these conditions. Why not? Most physicians support baby-killing. What is the big deal about lying when you support killing and/or have killed human beings yourself? To take the “word” of doctors seeking to declare a patient’s condition to be “irreversible” is imprudent and contrary to empirical evidence. Moreover, most physicians support the medical industry’s manufactured, profit-making of brain death, thus making most physicians today anti-life zealots who see disabled patients as “burdens” and not has images of the suffering Christ to be care for as one would for Him in the very Flesh.

1.4) My informants asked the priest if he wanted to be starved and dehydrated to death. He blinked his eyes to signal no (after the Catholics I knew had gotten him to confirm that he could understand them by blinking his eyes once for yes and twice for no). Tears welled up in his eyes when he was told what would happen to him.

1.5) Physicians dismissed the “blinking” of the eyes as “meaningless reflexes,” which is one of the standard ways by which they seek to dehumanize living human beings.

1.6) Pleas made to the priest’s parents to stop the dehydration and starvation of their son fell on deaf eyes. They believed that the doctors “knew best.”

1.7) The priest was starved and dehydrated to death.

1.8) I wrote up the story for The Wanderer, seeking comment from the hospital’s administrator. I remember well where I was when I checked my answering machine and listened to the feminist nun’s message, which threatened to sue everyone involved if the story was published. I was in a pay phone booth in front of an H.E.B. Supermarket in Corpus Christi, Texas, where I was to speak that evening.
1.9) I was undaunted by the threat. I had the facts cold. My informants, though, were spooked by the threat. The story never saw the light of day.

2) As noted earlier, Miss Mary Therese Helmueller, R.N., gave a talk at a conference in New Jersey in February of 1997 that was sponsored by Keep the Faith, Inc. Among the speakers at this conference was Dr. Harry Wu, who had been released just two years before from a Red Chinese slave labor camp for being a political dissent. Dr. Wu spoke of how Red Chinese officials dissected political prisoners alive–and without anesthesia–to take out their body parts and to sell them on the international black market.

2.1) Miss Helmueller related the following story, which was then included as an article in Homiletic and Pastoral Review:

How can this happen? A serious problem lies in the definition and interpretation of “terminal illness” which permits the inclusion of chronic illnesses and disabilities. Terminal illness is defined as “an incurable or irreversible illness which produces death within six months.” The fact is that many chronic illnesses such as diabetes and high blood pressure are incurable and irreversible and without medical treatment such as insulin and other medications these illnesses would also produce death within six months. Therefore, those with chronic illnesses or disabilities can be conveniently denied medical treatment and even food and water to make them terminal. Typically it is the elderly who arrive in the hospital that are at the greatest risk. But it could be ANYONE! Especially those whose life and suffering is viewed as useless and burdensome.

Difficult to believe? Well it was for our prolife lawyer until his mother-in-law was admitted to a hospital several months later for a stroke. She became “unresponsive” and “comatose” a few days after her admission. The neurologist wrote an order to transfer her to hospice refusing an I.V. and tube feeding stating “this is the most compassionate treatment.” Remembering my story, our lawyer requested the removal of all narcotics and demanded an I.V. and tube feeding. This infuriated the neurologist. He began to accuse the family of being uncompassionate and inhumane. To prove his point he began a neurological assessment on the patient. Just then she opened her eyes and pulling the physician’s neck tie, forced his face to hers and said very clearly “Give me some water!” It was obvious that she was awake, alert and orientated. He angrily cancelled the transfer to hospice and ordered a tube feeding and intravenous. Several weeks later she was discharged and was exercising on the treadmill! She escaped the death sentence. Unfortunately many others like my grandmother have not. A stroke does not make you terminal but not receiving food and water does! (See Are You Being Targeted For Euthanasia?, mindful of having to work through a few references to John Paul II.)

2.2) The facts Miss Helmueller presented will disabuse anyone of any trust in the “word” of attending physicians about the true state of those who are brain-damaged or declared to be “incurable.” Several have been the cases in recent years of those diagnosed as being in a “persistent vegetative state” of recovering after over twenty years in such a state, including some that have publicized recently.

3) Another case involved the late Hugh Finn. Hugh Finn was a popular television anchorman in Louisville, Kentucky, when he was injured in an automobile accident in March of 1995, suffering damage to his brain.

3.1) His wife, Michele Finn, moved him eventually to a facility in Manassas, Virginia, where he received minimal care and no rehabilitation.

3.2) Consider just these facts as related by Mrs. Mary Ann Kreitzer:

Michele called for a meeting in June at the nursing home where the Medical Director, Dr. Robin Merlino, announced they were going to "terminate" Hugh's feeding the next day. The announcement, a bombshell, sparked immediate objections from the family. Michele was determined. According to Tom Finn, a few days later she "chewed my head off and wanted to know why I wouldn't do what she wanted." Doctors had told her Hugh was in persistent vegetative state (PVS) and would never recover. He wouldn't want to live like that, Michele insisted. Finn was so angry over the exchange he told Hugh Michele was going to kill him, an act he immediately regretted. "[Hugh's] face turned red. He pinched his lips in. His hands were on his chest grabbing [at his clothing]. He shivered and shivered for 45 minutes. I had begun to believe what the doctors said [about PVS], but then I knew. 'You do understand!'"

Hugh's parents and siblings weren't the only ones who disagreed. Michele's own mother and sister opposed her. Mary Margaret Keely, Michele's mom, didn't believe the PVS diagnosis which describes a patient as unaware of his surroundings and unresponsive. At Christmas Hugh had thanked her for a gift and asked for Elaine, Michele's sister. I met Mrs. Keely at All Saints Catholic Church in Manassas. When she heard what Michele was going to do, she said, she immediately went to see her. "I told Michele I love her unconditionally, but I couldn't support her in what she was doing."

As things heated up John Finn, Hugh's brother, representing the family challenged Michele for guardianship. At the July hearing before Judge Hoss in Prince William Circuit Court he lost. Hoss gave Michele permission to remove the tube after 30 days and assessed John Finn $13,300 of her legal fees plus other expenses. The Finns planned to appeal.

Delegate Bob Marshall enters the fray

In September, with the family in total turmoil, Elaine Glazier, Michele's sister, horrified by the decision to starve her brother-in-law, called VA State Delegate Bob Marshall for help. She said Hugh was able to speak until March when a medication was discontinued. Marshall documented other troubling aspects of the case. A shunt put in to drain fluid from the brain hadn't been checked for over a year. If blocked it could affect Hugh's ability to speak. Hugh showed many behaviors inconsistent with PVS: tracking people with his eyes, following directions, nodding yes and no to questions, kissing, singing, and using eye signals. On Father's Day of 1997 he lifted his leg at daughter Keely's request. During the summer of 1998 he twice told nurse's aide Aubrey Elliott, "You can go now!" Because Hugh sometimes didn't swallow, a sign was posted over the bed reading "nothing by mouth." When a layman from All Saints who brought Holy Communion told Hugh he couldn't give it to him, Hugh cried. Marshall questioned the PVS diagnosis and called for a state investigation. Euthanasia is illegal in Virginia, but the Health Care Decisions Act permits dehydration and starvation of PVS patients who show "loss of consciousness, with no behavioral evidence of self awareness of surroundings in a learned manner." More and more states around the country are passing this type of legislation which many believe is 1990's doublespeak for "useless eater," an excuse to eliminate the helpless. Doubt about the PVS diagnosis was heightened when state nurse, Marie Saul, visited Hugh on Sept. 18th and reported he said "Hi" to her and smoothed his hair. "I was surprised at how normal he looked...If it had not been for his lack of responses...I would not have thought that he would be diagnosed as chronic vegetative." Despite her report, Judge Hoss denied a new hearing to reevaluate Hugh's condition. He did not order a PET scan test which can more accurately determine PVS, even though research shows patients are routinely misdiagnosed. [43% according to the British Medical Journal of July and October 1996.] Meanwhile, the media described Hugh as "comatose" and "vegetative" and implied he was terminal and being kept alive by artificial means. In a letter to the Washington Post after Hugh's death, his brother, Ed Finn, put that lie to rest. "Up until shortly before he died, my brother was unconscious only during regular sleep cycles. He was conscious at other times". . . .

It took Hugh nine days to die of dehydration. I met Joan Finn, his mother, outside the nursing home on October 7th. Obviously distraught she said, "Don't let anyone ever tell you this isn't a horrible way to die. No law should allow this!" A few days earlier she told a reporter "I just don't think that [Hugh] should be put to death. Tom and I are willing to take care of him." Except when sleeping, Hugh remained conscious with eyes open for eight days as the press reported his mouth drying out and his deteriorating condition. While the media quoted doctors' assurances of a comfortable death, the nursing home administered morphine and Hugh's parents said he seemed to be in pain and was "moaning and groaning something awful." On October 8th Hugh slipped into a coma and died the next morning. Michele had instructed the nursing home not to notify the Finns when Hugh died, so they didn't even receive the courtesy of a phone call. (Murder in Manassas, Virginia)

3b) My own investigation of the Hugh Finn case–and the subterfuge practiced by physicians–was published in The Wanderer. Much of the same information contained in Mrs. Kreitzer’s report was obtained in the process. Indeed, Hugh Finn's sister-in-law walked me through the history of the case as after she had opposed her own sister's plans to remove Mr. Finn's nutrition and hydration. The pattern was the same as that observed by Miss Helmueller and that which I had seen at work in the case of the Armenian priest and is the same in all such cases, which occur regularly here in the United States of America and throughout the world.

Contemporary Cases in England and Texas

Along with “brain death,” “palliative care,” and “hospice,” the starvation and dehydration of brain damaged human beings has become standard through the medical industry even though are times when those who are candidates for medical execution by one means or another outsmart the medical community. Such a case involves a teenager named Jack Dolan in Margate, Kent, England, which has similarities with to a case involving a young woman in the State of Texas, Margo Naranjo:

On Sunday, June 23, 15-year-old Jack Dolan did a backflip off Stone Pier in Margate, Kent, while hanging out at the beach with his friends. A student at Howard School in Medway, England, Jack was showing off for several friends and his girlfriend – it was his first trip to the beach without his parents due to his ADHD. The teenager was knocked out cold when he hit the water, and even though he floated face down with bubbles coming out of his mouth, his friends thought at first that he was joking. Then, he sank. 

Jack was underwater for eight minutes before he was rescued by a kayaker. His friends called emergency services; his girlfriend called his mother. Jack was attended to by paramedics, and then airlifted to King’s College Hospital, where MRI scans indicated damage to much of his entire brain. He also had a collapsed lung and began suffering from an infection. Doctors told the family that he was in a vegetative state and told them to say their goodbyes. But when they pulled him from life support, something amazing happened – something that stunned the doctors.  

Jack began breathing on his own. 

At first, the doctors’ optimism was cautious – while this was a positive sign, it only meant for certain that Jack’s brain stem was still working. But in the weeks since, other signs of recovery have emerged. Jack turned to his mother Lisa and spoke his first word since the fateful accident: “Help.” Then he began to wiggle his toes, move his arms, squeeze when instructed to, and he even smiled when the Dolan family dog, Chewbacca, climbed onto his bed and licked him.  

“He is so strong,” Dave Dolan told the press. “He got hold of his mum’s arm and said ‘help.’ The nurses cried. The doctors really don’t seem to know what is going on. Jack is very agitated. His arms are moving, and he has started to wiggle his toes. Before we felt there wasn’t much hope, but now Jack will lead the way.” The chances of Jack’s recovery still seem slim, but he has already proven the medical experts wrong every step of the way, and the Dolans hope that oxygen therapy could help their son regain some brain function and are asking for a reassessment of Jack’s condition. They are currently fundraising for medical costs.  

“He is still life-limited,” Dave Dolan said. “We think he can hear, but he can’t convert the speech. He definitely knows his mum’s voice, though. It’s a lot to take in, but we are feeling more positive.” 

Jack’s case is yet another example of how essential it is for family members to fight for their loved ones within the medical system – and to push for reassessments in difficult situations where brain trauma is involved. Earlier this month, LifeSiteNews covered the case of Margo Naranjo, a young woman who suffered severe brain injury in a car accident in Texas. Her mother recently released a video to Facebook announcing the family’s intention to withdraw her feeding tube – which she referred to as “life support” – which would end her life by denying her food and water. Margo was sitting next to her mother throughout this video, opening and closing her mouth, moving her yes. I wondered, watching the video, if Margo could understand what her mother was saying. 

After coverage of this public announcement, Margo was removed from the guardianship of her parents, and court documents obtained by LifeSiteNews indicated that Margo expressed a desire to live: 

Additionally, the home health care workers represent that they have created a system with Margaret to answer Yes or No questions by turning her head left or right. Reportedly when asked by home health workers and Adult Protective Services whether Margaret wished to discontinue treatment and go on hospice, she represented that she wanted to continue food, water, and medical treatment.

Perhaps Margo could hear her mother. She appears to have been conscious enough to express her desire for life. After all, doctors thought there was no hope for Jack, either – until he managed to utter a single word to his mother: “Help.” What a powerful and poignant reminder of what we owe to the most vulnerable among us. (Margo Naranjo and Jack Dolan prove the need for compassionate help, not assisted suicide.)

Many physicians today are all too ready to declare someone “brain dead” or in a “vegetative state.” Jack Dunlap was given such a diagnosis before God, the Author Life Himself, used him as an example to humiliate the so-called “professionals.” Our Lord is teaching us through Jack Dunlap that no human being is a “vegetable,” that every human being is entitled to receive selfless care and not to be treated in a utilitarian manner according to a so-called “quality of life” standard.

There are plenty of examples of those who have been declared to be “brain dead” or in a “permanently vegetative state” who have lived for years while their relatives have gained merit from caring for them, and there are times when some awaken to resume fully normal lives.

Here is an example from eight years ago:

Even in an era of seemingly endless media sources, when an item appears on one of the networks, it has traction. Take CBS Sunday Morning.

Correspondent Lee Cowan does a terrific job in telling the more- common-than-we-think story, in this case of Dylan Rizzo, who was involved in a devastating car crash in 2011 when he was 19.

Rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, “Within an hour neurosurgeons had removed the left side of his skull and part of the right to make room for his brain to swell,” Cowan explained.

Not unexpectedly he slipped into a deep coma. When he did awake he “had transitioned into what’s called a vegetative state,” where his eyes were open but he was unaware (or seemed unaware) of his surroundings.

Spoiler alert. Five years later Dylan has made tremendous progress in his recovery. But what makes the story so powerful is the larger lesson his recovery illustrates.

Let’s go back to 2011. Dylan didn’t make much progress in the month after he had awakened.

“Doctors broke the news to his parents that unless he came out of it soon, Dylan would likely stay in that vegetative state for life,” Cowen explained. More than one patient has had his or her organs harvested when that artificial–and unrealistic–deadline is met.

Then the all-important transition:

But one man, Joseph Giacino — not a medical doctor, but a researcher brought in to study the case — thought that Dylan’s brain might just need more time.

“We were sort of lumping everyone into this vegetative state category.”

Exactly. As we have written so often in NRL News Today, there is (what Cowan described as) “a growing number of experts warning of what he calls a “rush to judgment” in cases of consciousness.

Ciacino, a neuro-psychologist at Boston’s Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, is one of that growing number of skeptics.

“As many as 40% of individuals who have been diagnosed with vegetative state, actually retain some conscious awareness,” he said. “That’s a fairly alarming number.”

Ciacino dispatched at least one enduring myth in his conversation with Cowan. “The adage was, the brain is not a muscle, so you know, just simply exercising it is not going to help it,” he said. “Now, there’s evidence that if you do rehearsal of a particular behavior, including in a damaged brain, it may well get better.”

The bulk of the remainder of 9-minute video is a testimony to Dylan’s family, his doctors, his therapists, and Dylan himself. They pushed Dylan and Dylan responded.

Cowan ends his delightful story with additional evidence of Dylan’s optimism:

His amazing journey has surprised everyone — his friends, his family, and his doctors. The only person NOT surprised by it all is Dylan Rizzo himself.

Cowan asked, “You sort of knew that you were going to get better, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, it was guarantee-able,” Dylan replied. “I’m going to be better, that’s it. Just keep going. That’s what I always say, just keep going, that’s it.” (Man Recovers Five Years After Declared to be in a Vegetative State.)

Human beings are not vegetables. Even those with supposedly low brain functions are entitled to ordinary care, including the provision of food and water no matter how administered. It is an offense against truth to claim that the provision of food and water to a human being declared “brain dead” or in a “persistent vegetative state” constitutes “medical treatment.” That is a lie.  Dylan Rizzo was just one example of many that have broken through the steel curtain of the “mainstream” media in recent years. Jack Dunlap’s case is a bit more complicated, but he is certainly alive and entitled to ordinary care provided to a living human being.

Margo Naranjo’s case is different in that she is brain damaged but breathing on her own. Her mother, however, wants her to be starved and dehydrated to death in a hospice, claiming that her daughter’s death would be “peaceful” because she would be administered morphine, which just happens to stop the heart if given in high enough doses, of course, to block any pain caused by the starvation and dehydration. This is nothing other than open, undisguised euthanasia:

Margo Naranjo, the brain-damaged woman at the heart of a Texas euthanasia battle, has reportedly indicated that she wants to continue living.

On July 19, Texas attorney Courtland Kristoferson filed an Emergency Application for Issuance of Temporary Restraining Order against Margaret Grace “Margo” Naranjo’s parents and co-guardians, Mike and Cathy Naranjo, in which he stated that home health care workers had said Margo had communicated her wish to continue receiving food, water, and medical treatment to both them and Adult Protective Services.

LifeSiteNews has obtained a copy of the Emergency Application.

The document states that “the home health workers taking care of Margaret have represented that she is in good condition and that her health has not declined or deteriorated to the point hospice treatment is necessary. Despite that, the Co-Guardians have placed her on hospice.”

Additionally, the home health care workers represent that they have created a system with Margaret to answer Yes or No questions by turning her head left or right. Reportedly when asked by home health workers and Adult Protective Services whether Margaret wished to discontinue treatment and go on hospice, she represented that she wanted to continue food, water, and medical treatment.”

The Emergency Application stated further: “If Catherine Naranjo, Michael Naranjo, and any other person providing medical care to Margaret Naranjo is not immediately restrained, and further restrained on a temporary basis as requested in this Application, [Margo] will likely die, thus suffering a probable, imminent and irreparable damage by dying.”

Earlier this week, Mike Naranjo, who has live-streamed daily prayers for Margo ever since the June 21, 2020, auto collision that left her disabled, reported that a court order had removed him and Cathy as their daughter’s guardians and that Margo was still receiving food and hydration. He also indicated that he was getting along with the new guardian.

In a now-deleted prayer video, Cathy informed viewers that Margo was approaching the end of her life and that she was going into hospice care, where she would no longer receive nutrition and hydration, and was expected to die within “three to five days,” particularly because of the dehydration. Cathy represented this as honoring Margo’s wish, made four years ago, that she would not want to be kept alive by machines and as fulfilling her desire to go to heaven. (Margo Naranjo wants her hydration, nutrition to continue: court document.)

In an answer to the many prayers that have been offered for Margaret Grace “Margo” Naranjo, a court in the State of Texas has temporarily halted all efforts to starve and dehydrate her to death:

A Texas court this month issued a temporary restraining order to stop the dehydration and starvation death of a young woman seriously injured in a car accident. 

28-year-old Margaret “Margo” Naranjo suffered severe brain damage and became quadriplegic following a tragic vehicle collision in Nacogdoches, Texas in June, 2020. In a comatose state for roughly a month following the accident, Margo recovered sufficiently to breathe on her own and consume small amounts of food and water, Live Action reported. 

Her parents, Mike and Cathy, have posted frequent updates about Margo’s progress on social media since the accident. Per Live Action, Margo’s parents “have devoted themselves to caring for Margo, and praying for her recovery.”

Recently, however, Margo’s mother said she had decided to place Margo in hospice care and have her feeding tube removed, allowing her to starve to death. In a recent but since-deleted livestream, Cathy suggested that Margo wouldn’t suffer (any evident discomfort would be addressed with drugs like morphine), and would simply fall into a “deep sleep” and die a “peaceful” death within three to five days.

But Texas Right to Life pointed out that “[f]ood and water are not extraordinary care,” and Live Action emphasized that “Margo is not actively dying.”

“[S]he is not being kept artificially alive by machines, and she is not on life support,” Live Action’s Cassy Fiano-Chesser wrote in a Tuesday analysis. “She is able to process food and water, and she can breathe on her own. Margo would, like any other person, die if she was deprived of food and water. Without that deprivation, Margo would not die. A death by dehydration is particularly cruel, painful, and gruesome.”

The decision to place Margo in hospice care triggered a move by a Texas attorney to save the 28-year-old’s life.

Texas attorney Courtland Kristoferson filed an Emergency Application for Issuance of Temporary Restraining Order on July 19 against Margo’s parents.

“[T]he home health workers taking care of Margaret have represented that she is in good condition and that her health has not declined or deteriorated to the point hospice treatment is necessary,” the application reads. “Despite that, the Co-Guardians have placed her on hospice.”

The temporary restraining order has since been granted. Under the order, Margo will continue to receive life-sustaining nourishment and has been assigned a temporary guardian in place of her parents.

A funeral and a celebration of life scheduled for August 2 and 3 at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in Coppell, Texas were reportedly canceled after the pastor learned that Margo’s family had been planning to cause her death. The Catholic Church teaches that euthanasia is “morally unacceptable” and “constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator.”

In comments to LifeSiteNews, Texas Right to Life media and communication director Kim Schwartz cited remarks from Bobby Schindler – brother of Terri Schiavo, the young woman who became the subject of a lengthy legal battle and coast-to-coast controversy concerning her right to continue receiving basic care after she fell into a coma in 1990 – when asked to comment about the nature of euthanasia via deprivation of basic nourishment.

“I watched my own sister anguish through 13 days without food or water and there are no words that can properly describe this inhumanity,” Schindler said. “At the end, blood appeared in her eyes because her tissues were cracking from a loss of moisture.’”

Texas Right to Life has urged pro-life advocates to “pray for Margo to continue receiving food and water, as well as for the entire Naranjo family,” adding that “[p]eople who suffer serious brain injuries are still created in the image of God and deserve our protection.”

“Margo’s life holds intrinsic value and deserves care to meet her basic human needs,” the Texas-based organization said in its report.

Oregon Right to Life supports the sanctity of human life from the moment of conception until natural death, and opposes all cases of euthanasia, whereby a person is deliberately killed through direct action or omission, even if that act is by their permission. Examples of euthanasia include allowing disabled newborns to die of routinely treatable medical conditions, withholding food or water from the comatose, or lethally injecting a terminally ill patient. 

In Oregon, the legal form of euthanasia is physician assisted suicide, and is euphemistically called “death with dignity.” In this act, a physician prescribes lethal drugs knowing their patient intends to use the drugs to commit suicide. (Texas Court Stalls Effort to Euthanize Disabled Young Woman Via Starvation.)

This is, of course, a tragedy for the Naranjo family, for whom we must pray, especially for a conversion of heart among those family members who seek to “end” Margo’s suffering by killing her. There is nothing “compassionate” about euthanasia, which is a direct violation of the binding precepts of the Fifth Commandment.

However, is there no one to explain to them that their daughter’s condition is a cross that has been fashioned for them by the very loving hand of God from all eternity and that the graces won for them and for us all by His Co-Equal, Co-Eternal Divine Son by the shedding of every single drop of His Most Precious Blood during His Passion and Death on Good Friday and that flow into our hearts and souls by the working of God the Holy Ghost through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, is more than sufficient to bear with cross with love, joy, and gratitude?

As noted at the beginning of this commentary, such cases are all too common in this country and all around the world, calling to mind once again these prophetic words of Bishop Clemens von Galen, the Lion of Muenster, who opposed Adolf Hitler’s euthanasia program, enacted by means of the Nuremburg Laws of 1935, from the pulpit eighty-three years ago:

We must expect, therefore, that the poor defenceless patients are, sooner or later, going to be killed. Why? Not because they have committed any offence justifying their death, not because, for example, they have attacked a nurse or attendant, who would be entitled in legitimate self-defence to meet violence with violence. In such a case the use of violence leading to death is permitted and may be called for, as it is in the case of killing an armed enemy.

No: these unfortunate patients are to die, not for some such reason as this but because in the judgment of some official body, on the decision of some committee, they have become “unworthy to live,” because they are classed as “unproductive members of the national community”.

The judgment is that they can no longer produce any goods: they are like an old piece of machinery which no longer works, like an old horse which has become incurably lame, like a cow which no longer gives any milk. What happens to an old piece of machinery? It is thrown on the scrap heap. What happens to a lame horse, an unproductive cow?

I will not pursue the comparison to the end, so fearful is its appropriateness and its illuminating power.

But we are not here concerned with pieces of machinery; we are not dealing with horses and cows, whose sole function is to serve mankind, to produce goods for mankind. They may be broken up; they may be slaughtered when they no longer perform this function.

No: We are concerned with men and women, our fellow creatures, our brothers and sisters! Poor human beings, ill human beings, they are unproductive, if you will. But does that mean that they have lost the right to live? Have you, have I, the right to live only so long as we are productive, so long as we are recognised by others as productive?

If the principle that men is entitled to kill his unproductive fellow-man is established and applied, then woe betide all of us when we become aged and infirm! If it is legitimate to kill unproductive members of the community, woe betide the disabled who have sacrificed their health or their limbs in the productive process! If unproductive men and women can be disposed of by violent means, woe betide our brave soldiers who return home with major disabilities as cripples, as invalids! If it is once admitted that men have the right to kill “unproductive” fellow-men even though it is at present applied only to poor and defenceless mentally ill patients ” then the way is open for the murder of all unproductive men and women: the incurably ill, the handicapped who are unable to work, those disabled in industry or war. The way is open, indeed, for the murder of all of us when we become old and infirm and therefore unproductive. Then it will require only a secret order to be issued that the procedure which has been tried and tested with the mentally ill should be extended to other “unproductive” persons, that it should also be applied to those suffering from incurable tuberculosis, the aged and infirm, persons disabled in industry, soldiers with disabling injuries!

Then no man will be safe: some committee or other will be able to put him on the list of “unproductive” persons, who in their judgment have become “unworthy to live”. And there will be no police to protect him, no court to avenge his murder and bring his murderers to justice.

Who could then have any confidence in a doctor? He might report a patient as unproductive and then be given instructions to kill him! It does not bear thinking of, the moral depravity, the universal mistrust which will spread even in the bosom of the family, if this terrible doctrine is tolerated, accepted and put into practice. Woe betide mankind, woe betide our German people, if the divine commandment, “Thou shalt not kill”, which the Lord proclaimed on Sinai amid thunder and lightning, which God our Creator wrote into man's conscience from the beginning, if this commandment is not merely violated but the violation is tolerated and remains unpunished! (Three Sermons of Bishop Clemens von Galen.)         

These words were spoken at the height of the Nazi regime’s enforcement of Adolf Hitler’s 1935 Nuremburg Laws, which institutionalized the sort of eugenic social engineering that had been envisioned—and was in use on a de facto basis—in Germany’s Weimar Republic between 1919 and 1933 and in which, interestingly enough, Jewish eugenicists played an active role:

Support for eugenics came from a remarkable array of the ruling elite and the walls of the exhibition are lined with quotes in support of the movement. President Coolidge stated that "racial considerations" were "too grave to be brushed aside for any sentimental reasons." Squiers notes, "The people who saw themselves as uniquely fit to exert control wanted to exert it."

The second half of Squiers' exhibition heads to Germany, where Galton's ideas fed a centuries-old notion of the purity and virtue of the German "Volk." In the aftermath of World War I, the Weimar Republic employed a number of German and Jewish eugenicists to create a genetic blueprint for rebuilding a devastated Germany. Copies of slides used in a lecture identify degenerates: "Three Idiots," "Paranoid Alcoholic" and a young woman labeled "Good-natured manic state." (Eugenics in the Weimar Republic and Nazi Germany: A Photographic Exhibit.)

One should also remember that the removal of the “unfit” from “civilized” nations was the chief goal of the nefarious Margaret Sanger and her Birth Control League.

A world that has thrown off the sweet yoke of the Social Reign of Christ the King as it must be exercised by Holy Mother Church must be enslaved by the adversary to the tyranny of sentimentality and the irrational compulsion to discard every cross that Our Divine Redeemer sends to men for their sanctification and salvation in the vain effort to live as “trouble-free” as possible. This diabolical tyranny leads men to think and act in utilitarian ways, up to and including killing off loved ones whose “quality of life” is said to be “threatened” by a chronic disability or terminal illness.

We must lift our minds and hearts to Heaven as we embrace the Holy Cross, ever conscious of the price that Our Lord paid to redeem us thereon, a price that was shared by His Most Blessed Mother as she stood so valiantly under It. We do not not need hospice or end-life "counseling" sessions. We need the Holy Cross and Our Most Blessed Mother. Period!

Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., explained how deeply we must always united ourselves to Our Lord's sufferings:

Christ and His members must be one. They must walk the same road, not only during the liturgical service, when they are lifted up together in the mysteries of the sacrifice, but also in every event of life. Christ welcomed suffering, and accepted it freely; He did not flee the hardships of life. He makes suffering in us, His members, serve the spirit; He uses it as a means of freeing us from the world and all that is temporal and thus raises us from things of his world to the thins that are eternal.

Now, during Passiontide, we must begin to live and treasure pain and suffering. In the cross, in suffering, in or crucifixion with Christ, we shall find salvation. For Him and with Him we should bear all the slight injustices committed against us. For Him we should suffer freely and willingly the unpleasant and disagreeable things that occur to us. But our faith is weak. We flee from from the cross instead of holding it dear, instead of loving it and welcoming it our as Savior did.  (Father Benedict Baur, O.S.B., The Light of the World, Volume I, B. Herder Book Company, 1954, p. 595.)

Father Leen made a similar point in the conclusion of Why The Cross?

Why God should have decreed that the obedience of His Son should be expressed through the awful sufferings of the Passion, when it might have been expressed in a ritual act involving no such pain, is a secret of His inscrutable designs. All we can now is that the sacrifice of Calvary was decreed out of a merciful regard for man.

St. Thomas, while not pretending to solve this great mystery of pain, shows how, practically, the dreadful sufferings of Christ on Calvary aid man to profit by the salvation that these sufferings have merited for him. He points out that, though from the very beginning of His conception Jesus merited the divine life of grace for men, yet their remained obstacles to their profiting to the grace so won for them. The Passion was directed toward the removal of those obstacles.

Calvary brings home to men in a vivid way the great gravity of sin and the terrible tribulation that awaits it. The Passion, bringing home to the imagination, as well as to the mind, the loathsomeness of sin and the chastisement that it merits, act as a powerful deterred from evil. Calvary, by its example, encourages that heroism which is often demanded of men if they are to prove faithful to God in times of great trial and temptation. Above all, it moves men to the love of God, Who, in surrendering Himself to death on their account, gives such a convincing proof of His love for them. Love is, in final account, the great force in life, for love alone can inspire that sacrifice which is the price of unwavering fidelity to the Lord.

Every Christian who proves himself faithful in his vocation will deduce form his own experience the wisdom of the divine decree. He will learn by practical experience that it is only through contemplating with faith the sufferings of the Man-God that he nerves himself to abide in obedience to the Lord in spite of the hardships that such obedience so frequently entails. In a world that is ever at with Christ and His ideals, there is a constant call for heroism if one is to persevere to the end in loyalty to God. The Cross, is for the Christian, the standard that rouses his courage to withstand bravely the assault of the consequences with Christ, risen from the dead, “to walk in newness of life.”

Christ has traced for the Christian the path he most follow if he is to achieve himself and conquer happiness.

The life of Christ on earth was a career of conquest, closing in on the magnificent triumph of entry into heaven on the day of the Ascension. The Christian who wishes to share in Christ’s victory must be prepared to take active part in Christ’s struggle. He must, in other words, display, in conflict with the adverse forces within and without himself, the moral and spiritual qualities of his Leader.

The great obstacles to final success in this welfare of the spirit are the concupiscence of the flesh, the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life. If the Christian is to cleave his way to the peace that surpasseth all understanding, and the happiness which such peace gives, the concupsicences must be beaten down and reduced to a state of impotence. The poverty, chastity, and obedience of Christ are he weapons with which this result is achieved. These are the moral qualities of which Christ’s life was the sustained expression.

The Christian will catch a reflection of Christ’s noble distinction if he emulates Christ’s grand independence of men and things. His contempt for purely fictitious glory, and His utter disregard for any honor except that which comes of God’s approval bestowed on a man’s life and actions. He will capture something of Christ’s moral grandeur if, reproducing something of Christ’s chastity, he attains to that majesty of spirit over matter which leaves the will free to expand in the purest love for God and man. He will clothe himself with a measure of Christ’s serene sovereignty if, acquiring Christ’s humility, he brings his nature to its highest in harmonizing it completely with the mind and will of its Creator and Sovereign Lord. In this lies the achievement of perfect truth: through this the Christian attains the excellence that comes of the flawless realization of the divine ideal of manhood. Undeniably, all this involves bitter suffering for man’s fallen nature, but the follower of Christ must be ready to sacrifice with Him if he wishes ‘to be glorified with Him.’ (Father Edward Leen, S.J., Why the Cross?, originally published by Sheed & Ward in 1938, and republished in 2001 by Scepter Publishers, Princeton, New Jersey,  pp. 310-312.)

While death will come to us all at time that God has appointed for us from all eternity, we must be willing to suffer until the time of a true natural death, not one defined by the merchants of death, in a world of escapism that has rejected the necessity of redemptive suffering. We must be well-prepared to make a good death, which can occur at any time, of course, and to ready to make a good Confession of our sins to a true priest if God has granted us the grace to be conscious, alert and in full control of our rational ability to do so, something for which we must beg Our Lady every day. A lifetime of embracing suffering by uniting it to the Cross of the Divine Redeemer as a member of His true Church is the only path to prepare as adequately as possible for the fearful moment of the Particular Judgment that will be rendered to us by Christ the King, our Divine Judge.

Protestantism has created a Christianity without the Cross. Judeo-Masonry has created a world without Christianity. The end result must be slavery to the "professionals" in a world of unspeakable savagery.

Father Robert Mader offered words of great inspiration ninety-one years ago in the very country, Germany, where Bishop Clemens von Galen was to preach against the Hitlerian practices of eugenics, which involved the killing off of the feeble in body and in mind, most of which had originated during the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, that have become accepted as normal and nature in the "developed" world at this time, including here in the United States of America:

Following the destruction of Jerusalem, the Romans covered the places of hallowed memory to he Christian with rubble. The cave of the Holy Sepulchre was buried under such rubble, and over as well Golgotha pagan images and temples were erected in honor of Venus and Jupiter. For this reason the Christians did not go there anymore, in order not to be mistaken for idol-worshippers. Emperor Constantine ordered the temples and images torn down and the rubble carried away. After long and hard work the cave of the Holy Sepulchre was found. Not found away three crosses with nails were discovered, and along with them the superscription, which, however, lay separate from the cross.

Without doubt one of the these must be the Cross of the Savior, but there was no certain sign that would differentiate it from the crosses of the two thieves. This was given when a mortally il woman was suddenly cured by touching the true Cross. The Holy Cross was then encased in silver and precious gems, and a church was built over it, which according to Emperor Constantine's order was to be more magnificent than anything ever seen before. In memory of these events, the Church recalls the Finding of the Most Holy Cross on May 3, in order that on every day until the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross (September 14), land and people with be blessed with a splinter, a particle of the Cross.

We have every reason to remember these events. Christianity is the religion of the Crucified One. In his first letter to the Corinthians the Apostle of the Nations, St. Paul, declares: "For I judged not myself to know anything among you, but Jesus Christ, and him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2). St. Paul's preaching, no matter how many-sided it appears, always returns to the central Sun of Christendom: Jesus on the Cross, King of the World! Everything else is either a ray from this Sun, or it is nothing. In the Crucifix lies our entire dogmatic and moral theology, our entire teaching on faith and morals, our catechism. The Cross is our library. Every other book has value only inasmuch as the spirit of the Cross speaks in it.

Modernists have attempted to ban the old preaching of St. Paul, the Gospel of the Cross, to oblivion. The Cross means the teaching of the necessity of sacrifice and of grace, and this now lies under the rubble on which a new paganism has erected once again the pagan images and temples of Jupiter, Mercury, Venus and Bacchus--in other words, the absolutist state, capitalism, immorality, and addiction to pleasure. A certain superficial Christianity, which puts more value on being modern than on being Catholic and Biblical, and for which the imitation of the spirit of the times is more understandable than the imitation of Christ, has made itself a willing accomplice.

We have lost the Cross. We have a Christianity that no longer understands sacrifice and there is no Christianity or only a soulless version of Christianity. We need Constantines and Helens who will once again dig out the the Cross from under the rubble and make it their shrine and their sign, and who believe that the King's throne is the Cross.

The crucified King! In the family we must have a Finding of the the Most Holy Cross! The modern family has lost the crucifix, and in its place it has raised up the political hero, the artist, old pagan gods, nudity and the prostitute. The crucifix does not fit into the modern home. The modern living room preaches money-grabbing, pride, vanity, lasciviousness, laziness. The modern living room is the exaltation of the seven deadly sins. At least one is honest enough to feel the Cross no longer fits into this milieu and has got rid of it because in the long run the crucifix can only remain there where the spirit of the Crucified One remains, and the spirit of the Crucified is no longer there.

The spirit of the Crucified is the spirit of love and sacrifice, but the spirit of the modern family is the spirit of selfishness and enjoyment. The speech of the Crucified says: First the others, I come last! The speech of selfishness is: First I, then again I, the others come last! The Christian family is built on the notion of sacrifice and devotion. The concept of the Christian father is: Work from morning to evening for others. The concept of the Christian mother is: Care for others! Let the self always come last! The concept of the Christian child is: Respect, love, obedience. Father and mother first, only then I!

The notion of sacrifice is dying out in the modern family. The modern family is built upon the law of egotism. The modern family takes as its motto: "As much enjoyment and as little sacrifice as possible!" This is the source of Malthusianism. That is where characterless education comes from. And that is the doom of the family. Only the Cross and its sermon of self-discipline, self-denial and devotion can save the dying family. (Father Robert Mader, Cross and the Crown, edited and translated by Dr. Eileen Kunze, Sarto House, 1999, pp. 117-119.)

The myth of “brain death” and the practices of the modern "palliative care" industry are founded upon a rejection of the Holy Cross. So is most of modern medicine, especially for the chronically or terminally ill. We must embrace the Holy Cross of the Divine Redeemer, Christ the King, not flee from It, the very instrument of our salvation.

The only thing that must matter to us to remain faithful until we die and to be ready to suffer all, including actual martyrdom. Nothing we lose in this world, including our very lives at the hands of the evil men and women and mutants who make up the fascistic administration of the corrupt, physically decrepit, morally sick, and intellectually dishonest statist named Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., that is intent on crushing all opposition, matters if we persevere until the end in a state of Sanctifying Grace as members of the true Church, the Catholic Church, outside of which there is no salvation and without which there can be no true social order. Without Our Lady’s graces, though, we will be lost, which is why we had better be quite intent on praying her Most Holy Rosary daily.

In all the difficulties of these times, though, we must remember that we have nothing to fear as the graces won for us by the shedding of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and that flow into our hearts and souls through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, will be ever sufficient for us to carry whatever crosses in whatever circumstances of whatever time God has from all eternity appointed them to live and to work out their salvation in fear and in trembling.

The following prayers, found in The Raccolta, should fill us with peace in the midst of the difficult times in which we live:

Lord Jesus Christ, who didst say unto Thine Apostles: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I gve unto you,” regard not our sins but Thy merits, and grant unto Thy servants, that they whom the Almighty Father hath created and governeth, and whom Thou hast ordained unto everlasting life, may love one another with all their hearts for Thy sake, and may be made one in spirit and rejoice in Thy perpetual peace. Lord Jesus Christ, concerning whom the Prophet hath said: “And all kings of the earth shall adore Him, all nations shall serve Him,” extend thy reign upon the whole human race. Send upon all men the light of Thy faith, deliver them from all the snares and bonds of passion, and direct them to heavenly things; and graciously grant, that the states and nations may be united by means of Thine immaculate Bride, Holy Church, and through the intercession of the blessed Virgin Mary, Queen of Peace, may serve Thee in all humility; and that all tongues and peoples may form one great choir, to praise Thee both day and night, to bless Thee, to exalt Thee, O King of the nations and the Ruler thereof, O Prince of prince immortal King of ages. Amen. (The Raccolta: A Manual of Indulgences, Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences, approved by Pope Pius XII, May 30, 1951, and published in English by Benziger Brothers, New York, 1957, Number 703, pp. 558-559.)

O God, who art the author and lover of peace, in knowledge of whom is eternal life, whose service is a kingly state; defend us Thy humble servants from all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in Thy defense, may not fear the power of any adversaries. Through Christ Our Lord. Amen. (The Raccolta: A Manual of Indulgences, Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences, approved by Pope Pius XII, May 30, 1951, and published in English by Benziger Brothers, New York, 1957, Number 703, pp. 559-560.)

O merciful Queen of the Rosary of Pompeii, thou, the Seat of Wisdom, hast established a throne of fresh mercy in the land that once was pagan, in order to draw all nations to salvation by means of the chaplet of thy mystic roses: remember thy divine Son hath left us this saying: “Other sheep I have that are not of this fold; them also must I bring, and they shall hear  voice; and there shall be one fold, and one Shepherd.” Remember likewise that on Calvary thou didst become our Co-Redemptrix, by virtue of the crucifixion of Thy heart cooperating with Thy Crucified Son in the salvation of the world; and from that day thou didst become the Restorer of the human race, the Refuge of sinners, and the Mother of all mankind. Behold, dear Mother, how man souls are lost every hour! Behold, how countless millions of those who dwell in India, in China, and in barbarous regions do not yet know our Lord Jesus Christ! See, too, how many others are indeed Christians and are nevertheless far from the bosom of Mother Church which is Catholic, Apostolic and Roman! O Mary, powerful mediator, advocate of the human race, full of love for us who are mortal, the life of our hearts, blessed Virgin of the Rosary of Pompeii, where thou dost nothing else save dispense heaven’s favors upon the afflicted, grant that a ray of thy heavenly light may shine forth to enlighten those many blinded understanding and to enkindle so cold hearts. Intercede with thy Son and obtain grace for all the pagans, Jews, heretics and schismatics in the whole world to receive supernatural light and to enter with joy into the bosom of the true Church. Hear the confident prayer of the Supreme Pontiff [of Holy Church in these times of papal vacancy], that all nations may be joined in the one faith, may know and love Jesus Christ, the blessed fruit of thy womb, who liveth and reigneth with the Father and the Holy Spirit world without end. And then all men shall love thee also, thou who art the salvation of the world, arbiter and dispenser of the treasures of God, and Queen of mercy in the valley of Pompeii. And glorifying thee, the Queen of Victories, who by means of thy Rosary, dost trample upon all heresies, they shall acknowledge that thou givest life to all the nations, since there must be a fulfillment of the prophecy in the Gospel: “All generations shall call me blessed.” ((The Raccolta: A Manual of Indulgences, Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences, approved by Pope Pius XII, May 30, 1951, and published in English by Benziger Brothers, New York, 1957, Number 628, pp. 501-503.)

There is a whole lot of good, solid Catholic theology in the prayer just above.

Our Lady is the Co-Redemptrix of the human race.

Our Lady is the Seat of Wisdom.

Our Lady is our Refuge of Sinners.

Our Lady is the Treasurer of all the graces won for us by her Divine Son on the wood of the Holy Cross.

Our Lady is also our Immaculate Queen to whose Immaculate Heart has been entrusted the cause of world peace and the restoration of all things in her Divine Son, Christ the King, something that Pope Pius XII noted in his prayer consecrating the world to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which is honored during this month of August.

Queen of the most holy Rosary, help of Christians, refuge of the human race, victorious in all the battles of God, we prostrate ourselves in supplication before thy throne, in the sure hope of obtaining mercy and of receiving grace and timely aid in our present calamities, not through any merits of our own on which we do not rely, but only through the immense goodness of thy mother’s Heart. In Thee and in thy Immaculate Heart, at this grave hour of human history, do we put our trust; to thee we consecrate ourselves, not only with all of Holy Church, which is the mystical body of thy Son Jesus, and which is suffering in so many of her members, being persecuted, but also with the whole world, torn by discords, agitated with the hatred, the victim of its own iniquities. Be thou moved by the sight of such material and moral degradation, such sorrows, such anguish, so many tormented souls in danger of eternal loss! Do thou, O Mother of mercy, obtain for us from God a Christ-like reconciliation of the nations, as well as those graces which can convert the souls of men in an instant, those graces which prepare the way and make certain the long desired coming of peace on earth. O Queen of peace, pray for us, and grant unto the world in the truth, the justice, and the charity of Christ. Above all, give us peace in our hearts, so that the kingdom of God, may spread it the tranquility of order. Accord thy protection to unbelievers and to all those who lie in the shadow of death; cause the Sun of Truth to rise upon them; may they enabled to join with us in repeating before the Saviour of the world: “Glory to God in the highest, and peace to men of good will.” Give peace to the nations that are separated us from error or discord, and in a special manner to those peoples who profess a singular devotion toward thee; bring them back to Christ’s one fold, under the one true Shepherd. Obtain full freedom for the holy Church of God; defend her from her enemies; check the ever-increasing torrent of immorality; arouse in the faithful a practical love of purity, a practical Christian life, and an apostolic zeal, so that the number of those who serve God may increase in merit and in number. Finally, even as the Church and all mankind were once consecrated to the Heart of thy Son Jesus, because He was for all those who put their hope in Him an inexhaustible source of victory and salvation, so in like manner do we consecrate ourselves forever to thee also and to thy Immaculate Heart, Of Mother us and Queen of the world; may thy love and patronage hasten the day when the kingdom of God shall be victorious and all the nations, at peace with God and with one another, shall call thee blessed and intone with thee, from the rising of the sun to its going down, the everlasting “Magnificat” of glory, of love, of gratitude to the Heart of Jesus in which we alone can find truth, life, and peace. (Pope Pius XII, Rescript from the Secretariat of State, November 17, 1942, document exhibited, November 19, 1942, The Raccolta: A Manual of Indulgences, Prayers and Devotions Enriched with Indulgences, approved by Pope Pius XII, May 30, 1951, and published in English by Benziger Brothers, New York, 1957, pp. 345-347.)

The restoration of all things in Christ will occur miraculously at a time of God’s choosing. All we have to do is persist in our prayers as we maintain a joy-filled hope that we might, by virtue of the graces Our Lady sends to us, be able to plant a few seeds for the restoration of all things in Christ the King as a result of the Triumph of her own Immaculate Heart. To this end, especially in this month of August, which is, as noted just above, devoted to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, may we pray as many Rosaries each day as our state-in-life permits. 

Vivat Christus Rex! Viva Cristo Rey!

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

The Holy Machabees, pray for us.