Would Walker Percy Be Surprised? Not Hardly!

Thanatos, the Greek god of death

‘Death Panel’: European Court Says Terminal Baby Must Die Despite Parents Funding Extra Care

The Thanatos Culture at work!

In Greek mythology Thanatos was the personification of death. He is the minor god that most inspires the morally bankrupt culture of death. Those who worship death, like the English death panel, are like the false mother in the Solomon story. The child must die to justify her grief. Misery loves company. It isn't grief that these doctor ghouls are justifying -- it's their lust for power and control. They think they are gods with the power over life and death. WE decree that WE know better than the parents and by OUR decree baby Charlies must "DIE WITH DIGNITY!" 

Not only would Walker Percy not be surprised. He wrote about this in The Thanatos Syndrome. His character, Fr. Smith, describes his World War II experience liberating Eglfing-Haar, a famous hospital outside Munich with a children's ward called the Kinderhaus. The English death panel could have worked there doing their dirty business:

What Would Walker Percy Think?

Anyone who's followed this blog for awhile knows I love to read. I'm pretty eclectic in my choices. My book club is reading Ratzinger's
Spirit of the Liturgy and will move from there to Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. Thinking about the liturgy got me to pick up the Ottaviani Intervention and I also just finished re-reading Walker Percy's The Thanatos Syndrome which is fascinating, especially in view of the "thanatos culture" we live in.

After reading Percy's fiction, I picked up a book of his essays which contains an interview with Zoltan Abady-Nagy conducted shortly after Percy celebrated his 70th birthday, a milestone I reached myself a few months ago. One thing really struck me in the interview. Addressing the question of whether literature is more "cognitive" or "morally judgmental" Percy said this: