The Moment I Recognized the Culture of Death

[Valin]

NRO: Human Exceptionalism:

Wesley J. Smith

January 13, 2013

 

Over at First Things, the First Thoughts blog has re-published the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus’s last speech (2008) to the National Right to Life Committee. In it, he asks when his audience first noticed the culture of death, and recounts his own awakening. From, “We Shall Not Weary, We Shall Not Rest:”

 

The culture of death is an idea before it is a deed. I expect many of us here, perhaps most of us here, can remember when we were first encountered by the idea. For me, it was in the 1960s when I was pastor of a very poor, very black, inner city parish in Brooklyn, New York. I had read that week an article by Ashley Montagu of Princeton University on what he called “A Life Worth Living.” He listed the qualifications for a life worth living: good health, a stable family, economic security, educational opportunity, the prospect of a satisfying career to realize the fullness of one’s potential. These were among the measures of what was called “a life worth living.”…

 

Neuhaus looks out at his congregation and sees the very types of people who Montagu denigrated as having lives not worth living:

 

In that moment, I knew that I had been recruited to the cause of the culture of life. To be recruited to the cause of the culture of life is to be recruited for the duration; and there is no end in sight, except to the eyes of faith.

 

I had a similar epiphany when I learned that my friend Frances had been persuaded to kill herself by reading Hemlock Society literature.........(Snip)