{"id":6385,"date":"2006-08-22T00:33:25","date_gmt":"2006-08-22T00:33:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/party-of-death-or.html"},"modified":"2006-08-22T00:33:25","modified_gmt":"2006-08-22T00:33:25","slug":"party-of-death-or","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/party-of-death-or.html","title":{"rendered":"Party of Death or…"},"content":{"rendered":"

…something else?<\/a><\/p>\n

Wilfred McClay on the First Things<\/em> blog wonders if the problem is a "party of death" or actually a party of radical individualism that seeks life…for itself, independent and pain-free. And we know how well that <\/em>will work out.<\/p>\n

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Abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, the cannibalization of embryos\u2014all these things are linked, but they do not reflect a desire to promote death per se. Instead, they reflect a world in which the overwhelming desire of the sovereign individual will to have its way, and to order and manufacture a world it can live in without let or hindrance, is regarded as the chief source of value, or at any rate the value that trumps all others. They reflect a view of life that trivializes death, precisely because it fails to understand what life is. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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But life is unfreezable, and complete independence is a sterile fantasy, inconsistent with our human nature. That nature speaks to us continuously of the organic interdependency of things, the seasonality of things, of a world churned and roiled by the endless process of aging and decay, and the miraculous generation of new life out of them\u2014the ebb and flow of what the ancients called \u201cgeneration and corruption.\u201d The recognition of these things, and the acceptance of our place in them, is precisely why we care for the infirm and the weak and the hopeless among us, rather than feed them to the sharks, particularly when they are flesh of our flesh, or we of theirs. We do not do it because we believe in the abstract idea of the natural rights of each and every human being, although such beliefs are helpful and true and valuable for the durability of American democracy. We do it because our human nature commands us to if we are to play our part in the circle of life, the order of things, the drama of fecundity and endless generational succession, and be capable of the grateful, self-giving love for our forebears, and the willingness to yield the stage to our successors, which is the crowning virtue of the human heart, precisely because it recognizes and accepts that the unfreezable present is always being swamped and superseded by the onrushing tide of what is new. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read the rest.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…something else? Wilfred McClay on the First Things blog wonders if the problem is a "party of death" or actually a party of radical individualism that seeks life…for itself, independent and pain-free. And we know how well that will work out. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. 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