From Justin Trudeau’s eyebrow apparently falling off during a press scrum (apparently it may have been an optical illusion), to his tiff with President Trump, along with the imposition of crippling tariffs (just wait until they hit the automobile industry), it has not been a good week for our Prime Minister and Canada. I wonder what Trump really thinks of our boyish leader, and of this Dominion north of the border? It is difficult to believe there was a time, many moons ago, when British North America could have competed with the United States in money and military, but now, well, now we beg for crumbs like the Syrophoenician woman, our country mired in unmanageable debt, and sinking fast under Trudeau’s and the Liberal’s ineptitude. A trade war with the United States would be a decidedly one-way affair.
President Trump and Kim Jong Un met today in Singapore, the populist president and the ruthless chubby dictator, governing a police state, responsible for the torture, confinement, starvation and deaths of untold numbers of his people, their ‘beloved leader’, who just last year was threatening to nuke L.A. I wonder what history will make of this, all smiles and handshakes? A shrewd diplomatic move, or a Neville Chamberlian moment? Can peace flow from such a man as Jong Un? What they said of the ancient Greeks, applies here: beware communist tyrants bearing gifts.
There is currently a public inquiry into the nefarious deeds of Elizabeth Wettlaufer, the nurse who has confessed to murdering eight of her elderly patients, and attempting to kill another six. She would surreptitiously inject them with insulin while alone on night shift, for reasons that are not fully clear. There is a whole raft of lawyers, costing millions one may presume, all arguing and dealing over who is responsible, for there were numerous red flags over Ms. Wettlaufer’s behaviour before she was caught (murder by insulin is not easy to detect), none of which stopped her from working, if such be the term. May we not save the expense and rigmarole, cut through the morass and ask the simple question whether deliberately killing an innocent human being is an intrinsic evil. If not, then it is all a matter of circumstance. After all, was she not doing what many physicians are already doing under the auspices of M.A.I.D., murdering her patients, with the difference being that thin, vague, amorphous moral line of ‘voluntariness’? If a patient wants death, he can get it, all paid for, not too many questions asked (yet), but who’s to say who wants to die, and what if they should want to die, or, unconscious, you presume that, of course, they would want to die, suffering like that with bedsores, dementia, abandonment, loneliness, waiting for the black void to overtake them? I fear that we will soon catch up with Nurse Wettlaufer, as we did with Dr. Jack Kevorkian, and both will be hailed as secular heroes in the culture of death.
But the blood of its martyrs, even of its unwitting victims, builds the Church and the culture of life, as grace flows from sacrifice, touches souls and hearts, and some wake up and realize what is at stake. A priest, Father Richmond Nilo, was killed in the Philippines yesterday, shot four times through a window as he was preparing for Mass, with his blood pooling before a statue of Our Lady. Requiescat in pace, Padre, and intercede for us if you are already in heavenly bliss. There will be many more like Father Nilo, but fear not, for their, and hopefully our, reward will be great in heaven.