Passive euthanasia

Euthanasiecentrum Hadamar

"Stargardt describes how one German doctor in 1939 tipped off the families of mentally handicapped patients in his sanatorium that their loved ones were destined for extermination, and urged their removal.  Few took advantage of his warning.  Are we sure, absolutely sure, that in the same circumstances American or British people would have displayed greater compassion?"

     Max Hastings, "How the Germans closed ranks around Hitler," a review of The German war:  a nation under arms, 1939-1945, by Nicholas Stargardt (New York:  Basic Books, 2015), among other titles.  The New York review of books 62, no. 16 (October 22, 2015):  30 (28-31).

Why we name our children

"These two words, 'Faith,' and 'Elijah,' they point to all my husband had to say to this world: 'Put your faith in the Lord.'"

     Rachel Swasey, at a memorial service for her husband Garrett Swasey in Colorado Springs, 4 December 2015.  Rachel got only one thing wrong:  Elijah means not just "The Lord is God," but rather "The Lord is my God."

"absolute pacifism is unsustainable"

Wikimedia Commons

"We give thanks at this hour that that indeed happened, and it is not only the countries that were occupied by the German troops and delivered from Nazi terror that give thanks.  We Germans, too, give thanks that liberty and law were restored to us through that military operation.  If ever in history there was a just war, this was it:  the Allied intervention ultimately benefited also those against whose country the war was waged.  Such an observation, it seems to me, is important, because it demonstrates on the basis of a historical event that absolute pacifism is unsustainable.  This, of course, in no way diminishes the duty to ask very carefully whether and under what conditions something like a 'just war' is still possible today:  that is to say, a military intervention conducted in the interests of peace and according to moral criteria against unjust regimes."

     Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, "A conference given by Cardinal Ratzinger at the Church of Saint-Étienne in Caen, June 5, 2004" ("conférence intitulée «À la recherche de la paix», donnée à Saint Etienne de Caen, le 5 juin 2004"), in Europe today and tomorrow;  addressing the fundamental issues, 2nd ed., trans. Michael J. Miller (San Francisco:  Ignatius Press, 2007), 86 (85-100).  Communio:  revue catholique internationale 29, no. 4 =no. 174 (juillet-août 2004): 108 (107-118). I was put onto this by Timothy George, "After dinner, a beheading," First things, 30 November 2015:

The fact that the Normandy landings "also served the good of those against whose country war was waged. . . . shows, based on a historical event, the unsustainable character of an absolute pacifism."

"Une telle constatation me paraît importante, car elle montre, sur la base d'un événement historique, le caractère insoutenable d'un pacifisme absolu." 

p. 91 (111-112 in Communio):

"in defending the law against a force [(force)] that aims to destroy law, one can and in certain circumstances must make use of proportionate force [(force)] in order to protect it.  An absolute pacifism that denies the law any and all coercive [(coercitif)] measures would be a capitulation to injustice, would sanction its seizure of power, and would abandon the world to the dictates of violence [(violence)]. . . .  But in order to prevent the force of law itself from becoming injustice, it must be subjected to strict criteria that should be acknowledged as such by all.  It must inquire into the causes of terrorism, which very often is rooted in injustices that are not countered by effective measures.  Therefore it must strive by all means to remove the preexisting injustices.  Above all, it is important to offer forgiveness again and again in order to break the vicious circle of violence [(violence)]. . . .  In all these cases it is important that there not be just one political power that maintains law and order.  Particular interests then become too easily mixed up in the intervention and obscure the clear vision of justice.  A genuine ius gentium [international law] is urgently necessary, without hegemonic dominion and its accompanying interventions:  only in this way can it be evident that it is a matter of protecting the rights common to all, even those who find themselves, so to speak, on the opposite side."

Cf. An unprincipled pacifism. 

"Visit this place, O Lord"

St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek 391, 11.

Visit this place, O Lord, and drive far from it all snares of the enemy; let your holy angels dwell with us to preserve us in peace; and let your blessing be upon us always; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

     Compline/Daily devotions at the close of day, 1979 Book of common prayer.

Lord, we beg you to visit this house and banish from it all the deadly power of the enemy.  May your holy angels dwell here to keep us in peace, and may your blessing be upon us always.  We ask this through Christ our Lord.

     Night prayer after Evening prayer on Sundays and solemnities, Liturgy of the hours.

Visita, quaesumus, Domine, habitationem istam et omnes insidias inimici ab ea longe repelle; angeli tui sancti habitent in ea, qui nos in pace custodiant, et benedíctio tua sit super nos semper. Per Christum.

     Completorium, Post II vesperas dominicae et solemnitatum, Liturgia horarum.

     This is not, of course, present in either Bruylants or Corpus orationum, nor have I yet tried to push it back behind the "980+" given in CANTUS (e.g. St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek 391, 11 (above, initial 4 ("V")), where it is associated with the dedication of a church), though Rubén M. Leikem, cited below, finds it "outside of the Divine Office" in the context of an "Order for the visitation of the sick" as no. 1029 of the mid 9th-century sacramentary of Monza (in Monza, Kapitelsbibliothek cod. F1/101), albeit, according to the 1957 critical edition ed. Dold and Gamber, as a later interpolation ("The following [three prayers] stands (in place of a prayer 'In hospitale'?) on a many-lined erasure in a clumsy later script with many errors:") (258n42).  (Not that, given the interpolation, it matters, but the sacramentary of Monza is said to belong to the second group of "Gelasians of the 8th-century" that includes St. Gall (above?), Triplex, Rheinau, Phillips, Angoulême, and Monza, and that derives from a systematic revision of the first, namely the Gelasian and Gregorian-Paduan (257n40).)
     Nikolaus Gihr (whose theological commentary may be worth a look) says of the date of composition only that "The wording shows clearly that this oration stems from a time when Compline was still prayed not in the church but in the cloister or the dormitory immediately before going to bed" (Prim und Komplet des römischen Breviers, liturgisch und aszetisch erklärt (Freiburg im Breisgau:  Herder, 1907), 333).

     This, I'm assuming, is nothing more than a translation:

Ἐπισκέψαι ἱκετεύομεν κύριε τήνδε οἴκησὶν, καὶ πάσας τὰς τοῦ ἐχθροῦ ἐνέδρας αὐτῆς ἄπωσον·  οἱ ἄγγελοί σου οἰκῶσιν ἐν αὐτῇ ἐν εἰρήνῃ φυλάττοντες ἡμᾶς.  Καὶ ἡ εὐλογία σου ἀεὶ ἐφ' ἡμᾶς εἴη.  Διὰ Χριστοῦ.

Bibliography (as noticed only; I have not conducted a proper search):

• Leikam, Rubén M. "La oración Visita, quaesumus, Domine, habitationem istam." Ecclesia orans 19, no. 2 (2002): 247–64.  I have not yet completely mastered this one, which provides, on p. 260, a critical edition limited to the 8th/9th-century-and-following (mostly following) sources covered by the article.
• Alonso García, Ireneo. "Edicion Tridentina del Manual Toledano y su incorporacion al Ritual Romano." Salmanticensis 6, no. 2 (1959): 323–99.  Gives, on p. 58, an example of the incorporation of this prayer into a 16th-century "Exorcism of a house vexed by a demon [(Exorcismus domus a demonio vexatae)]".  Apparently the exorcism that includes this prayer was present in the Rituale Romanum current in 1959 (on which, see also Leikam, 258 ff.).  Whether it remains in De exorcismis et supplicationibus quibusdam (1999) I don't know.
• Gihr, Nikolaus.  Prim und Komplet des römischen Breviers, liturgisch und aszetisch erklärt.  Freiburg im Breisgau:  Herder, 1907.

"reading unimportant books about the important books that I haven't had time to read"

roger-scruton.com

"academic knowledge is as much a distraction from the life of the mind as an application of it."

     "In twenty years of university teaching, poring over footnotes in journals devoted to the study of footnotes, attending conferences in which small increments of knowledge are swamped by large swathes of ignorance, and reading unimportant books about the important books that I haven't had time to read, I retained a longing for the ideal of the collegiate life.  I envisaged a society of friends for whom ideas are captured from the world of real experience, and brought to the place of dialogue, there to be the source and object of our shared interest.  But I came to see that it is far easier to create this society for yourself than to find it in institutions of higher learning."

     Roger Scruton, "Living with a mind," First things no. 258 (December 2015):  45 (43-48).

Religion in the making

"Professor Whitehead. . . . has not spent as many years in America as I have, but he has been very quickly adopted into the fraternity of the American Godhead.  America is said to be 'on the make'; Professor Whitehead's religion must be 'in the making.'  Even in America, a motor-car 'in the making' is not so much prized as a motor-car which is made and will run; but apparently luxury articles like religion are more valuable 'in the making' than when they are made.  It is the hopeless belief of a person who knows that when his religion is made, it won't run; but he enjoys making it."

     T. S. Eliot on Science and the modern world (1925) and Religion in the making (1926) in "'The return of Foxy Grandpa'" (1927), as published for the very first time in New York review of books 62, no. 15 (October 8, 2015):  31 (31-32), in advance of its appearance in "volume 3 of the forthcoming eight-volume edition of The Complete Prose of T. S. Eliot:  The Critical Edition," ed. Frances Dickey, Jennifer Formichelli, and Ronald Schuchard.  In response to an inquiry from Edmund Wilson as to why the essay had not appeared as promised in Wyndham Lewis' The enemy, Eliot said, "'On the whole I think I should prefer not to publish this note elsewhere.  I am not satisfied with it and if I had time I should already have revised it'" (32).

"la bouille pour les chats"

     "I still recall the stupefaction with which, reading, a very long time ago now, the otherwise very estimable Gospel commentaries of the late Father [Marie-Joseph] Lagrange, I stumbled upon his explication of the 'manifold more' [('surcroît')] promised by Christ, in this world, to those who abandon [(auraient . . . abandonné)] everything for him [(Lk 18:30; cf. Mt 19:29, Mk 10:30)].  The fact is (said this very edifying [(édifiant)] and even more observant [(observants)] religious to us) that when one has pledged oneself to a great order, one finds oneself suddenly provided with all of the comforts one could ever want, without having to do anything to acquire or retain them [(presumably Évangile selon saint Luc, 7th ed., Etudes bibliques (Paris:  J. Gabalda, 1948))]. . . .  It is difficult, in the face of an avowal so simple-minded, not to think of the sarcastic reference to the lilies of the field that Gibbon directed against those he called 'the monks of Magdalen' [(Edward Gibbon, Memoirs; in Miscellaneous works of Edward Gibbon, Esquire, vol. 1 (Dublin, 1796), p. 38)], 'who neither toil nor spin. . . .'
     "But I was still naïve myself at this time.  I was only completely smartened up on this subject about twenty years [later (il y a vingt ans environ)] by my participation in a 'seminar' on 'religious poverty' in conjunction with which I had been assigned the task of setting forth the biblical doctrine on the subject, on the supposition that there was one.  I developed the idea that, according to the whole Bible, poverty 'in spirit' presupposes evidently a real [(effective)] disposition to deprive oneself of the obviously [(bien entendu)] superfluous, and even of a good part of what we all tend to consider the necessary.
     "I had hardly finished speaking when a venerable Jesuit, the most famous specialist in moral theology at that time, rose to address me:  'Father, that biblical poverty about which you have just spoken is a matter of some interest [(c’est très intéressant)], but [surely] you know that this has nothing to do with religious poverty.  [Religious poverty] is defined exhaustively by the renunciation of the ownership of what one utilizes.  According to this [understanding], whether one is in fact more or less provided with the goods that those who have not taken such a vow are able to enjoy, or not, changes nothing. . . .'
     "As if in order to prevent me from assuming that this was only a question of one of those opinions of the schools that one can, in [the context of a commitment to] Holy Church, take or leave at will, a Dominican, just as venerable and scarcely less illustrious, at once finished me off [(paracheva sur-le-champ ma déconfiture)].  'What you have just said is perfectly exact, not only from a canonical point of view, . . . but according to the most strict theology, in truth the only [theology] worthy of the name.  Indeed, the Summa theologiae establishes irrefutably that the vow of poverty, just as that of chastity or that of obedience, does more honor to God, by itself and by it alone, than the practice of that virtue when it is not consecrated by the vow [(ST II-II.88.6?)]. . . .'
     "I can say that after this I [finally] understood that no reform of [(dans)] the Catholic Church that does not begin with a reform of this ascesis in particular, in order that it might have an impact on the ethical and theological levels as well, will ever amount to anything more than [(ne serait jamais de)] a great deal of effort for nothing [(la bouille pour les chats, the [preparation of] gruel for cats, an 18th-century expression whose significance remains somewhat obscure)].  This, at least, had the advantage of immunizing me in advance against all possible deception when the shipwreck of the greatest reform [ever] called conciliar [(la grandissime réforme dite conciliaire)] followed almost instantaneously upon its launch."

     Louis Bouyer, Religieux et clercs contre Dieu (Paris:  Aubier Montaigne, 1975), 119-121.  On those same three purifications, see also here.