A Russian Orthodox priest speaks out against Britain's culture of death

Today I had the pleasure of renewing my acquaintance with Archpriest Andrew Phillips, who leads one of Britain's 40 Russian Orthodox parishes in Colchester. Archpriest Andrew has kindly sent me some of his recent personal reflections on pro-life issues:

"After 1945 we were to be provided by the Welfare State with care ‘from the cradle to the grave’. Instead, it rather looks as though, with legalised abortion on demand and creeping euthanasia, we are being provided with death from the cradle to the grave.

In the NHS today, where one of our daughters works as a nurse, patients who refuse to die are called ‘coffin dodgers’. Everything must be accounted for, everything has a price – the accountant’s mentality introduced into everything by Mrs Thatcher and ardently pursued by Mr Blair. Today, life and death decisions are overseen by NICE, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, the ironically-named organisation which decides whether we can afford care for the sick or not. It was prophesied by C. S. Lewis, also in 1945, in his novel ‘That Hideous Strength’, which is about a devilish and anti-human organisation called N.I.C.E. – the ‘National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments’. That organisation should definitely have been called NASTY.

Financial pressures decide our ‘best interests’ - life or death. DCS - Deep Continuous Sedation – with deprivation of food and fluids - is the fate of more and more terminally ill. DCS is in fact simply a disguised, politically correct term for euthanasia. Yet, the Gospel of Christ proclaims not ‘Euthanasia’ (‘Good Mortality’), but Athanasia – Immortality.

It is the same with abortion, the politically correct term for infanticide or child-murder. It is no good referring to a child as ‘an embryo’ or ‘a foetus’, it is still a child and its abortion is still murder. We are told that we must be ‘pro-choice’ (another disguised name), but what is this choice: to murder or not to murder? This is no more a choice than that made by the Nazis in their death camps. In reality, there is only one choice. It is not ‘pro-life’ or ‘pro-choice’, it is pro-life or anti-life.

The Western culture of death is the culture of suicide. Does the Western - and Westernised – world want to live or want to die? I know where I stand."

Comments on this blog? Email them to johnsmeaton@spuc.org.uk
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