Denver, Colo., Jun 3, 2016 / 03:02 am (CNA).- By now, everyone's probably seen the ads on YouTube touting the “romantic comedy of the year.” A young, shapely woman in a red dress, and a handsome man – in a wheelchair?The short clips are brilliant, and the intrigue is palpable. Could it be? A mainstream, box-office hit that portrays a person with disabilities as a desirable partner?The answer is both a yes, and a horrifying no.While everyone can handle death as a tragic but compelling end of a good romance, it's a bit different when a character – despite being happy in love – chooses to kill himself.But this is the premise of “Me before You,” originally a best-selling book in the U.K. before it was made into a film with breakout stars Emelia Clarke and Sam Claflin.When a cautious small town girl takes a caretaker job for a moody business mogul paralyzed in a recent accident, their unlikely relationship becomes a friendship that eventu...
Denver, Colo., Jun 3, 2016 / 03:02 am (CNA).- By now, everyone's probably seen the ads on YouTube touting the “romantic comedy of the year.” A young, shapely woman in a red dress, and a handsome man – in a wheelchair?
The short clips are brilliant, and the intrigue is palpable. Could it be? A mainstream, box-office hit that portrays a person with disabilities as a desirable partner?
The answer is both a yes, and a horrifying no.
While everyone can handle death as a tragic but compelling end of a good romance, it's a bit different when a character – despite being happy in love – chooses to kill himself.
But this is the premise of “Me before You,” originally a best-selling book in the U.K. before it was made into a film with breakout stars Emelia Clarke and Sam Claflin.
When a cautious small town girl takes a caretaker job for a moody business mogul paralyzed in a recent accident, their unlikely relationship becomes a friendship that eventually blossoms into love. He teaches her to broaden her horizons and abandon the timid outlook that has been holding her back in life, while she helps him find happiness despite disability.
In the end, he admits that his six months with her have been the best months of his life, and acknowledges that he could have “a very good life” going forward. But it is not the life he wants – and so he kills himself, ultimately with her support.
Yet beyond this, there's something eerily familiar about the movie. The youth, beauty and gripping narrative recall another campaign for assisted suicide, and that was the very real death of Brittany Maynard in 2014.
After receiving a grim prognosis of six months to live due to an aggressive brain tumor, Maynard and her husband relocated to Oregon in order to take advantage of the Death with Dignity law, which legalized physician-assisted suicide in the state.
Compassion and Choices, an advocacy group for right-to-die causes, latched on to Maynard’s youth and beauty after she approached them, asking how she could advocate for rights to assisted suicide for other people. They produced a video featuring Brittany and her family, complete with soothing music and beautiful photos, in which she calmly explains her situation and decision to kill herself.
So what do these two have in common?
Both attempt to normalize assisted suicide by taking the “ick” factor out. A glittering romantic blockbuster, a heart-wrenching People magazine spread with gorgeous photos of the brunette sufferer – both say “look at these beautiful people doing this – you can too.”
How else is anything advertised to us?
But when emergency hotlines exist for those on the same edge, how do we differentiate between rescuing someone from the depths and “respecting their decision”?
Take the real story of Luke, a fresh-faced, 19-year-old man with a full life ahead of him. Luke was depressed for four years and tried to kill himself by crashing his car at 60 miles an hour. He survived. He wants to live now. And what he said about the assisted suicide movement was stark: if someone was on a bridge and wanted to jump, we'd try to save them, right?
Right?
Perhaps it's the violence that makes us shudder. Putting a gun to your head, throwing yourself off a building, slitting your wrists – what if Claflin's character or Maynard chose one of these methods? What would the narrative be then?
But no, taking a lethal dose of barbiturates and passing “in peace” as your vital organs shut down one-by-one makes all the difference. And yet, there is no difference. All we've done is put lipstick on something which, despite our glamorizing attempts, is the same awful, isolated despair.
What's arguably most insidious about the character's decision to kill himself is the tired but re-dressed “quality of life” argument: that existence isn't worth it if it's not on our ideal terms. Never mind that this logic justifies ethicists such as Peter Singer making the case for selective infanticide.
The most important thing is that we actualize ourselves the way we see fit – and that anything less renders us the right to shut it down, to call it all off.
Let's be clear: suffering is real, suffering is hard. Suffering makes us not want to live. But when did we determine that life could be without it? It simply can't. And it's the ones who've chosen to keep existing through great adversity that ironically show us how much life is worth living.
When we make reality our enemy, anything is justifiable if it threatens what we've imagined for ourselves. And so we don't flinch at anyone – a fictional hero, a beautiful brunette, a victim of horrific sexual abuse – pulling the trigger.
PARIS (AP) -- The swollen Seine River kept rising Friday, spilling out across its banks and some streets in Paris as curators at the Louvre scrambled to protect a huge trove of art from the museum's priceless collection from the flooding....
PARIS (AP) -- The swollen Seine River kept rising Friday, spilling out across its banks and some streets in Paris as curators at the Louvre scrambled to protect a huge trove of art from the museum's priceless collection from the flooding....
NEW YORK (AP) -- Donald Trump says the federal judge presiding over a lawsuit brought by former Trump University students has an "absolute conflict" in handling the case because he is "of Mexican heritage."...
NEW YORK (AP) -- Donald Trump says the federal judge presiding over a lawsuit brought by former Trump University students has an "absolute conflict" in handling the case because he is "of Mexican heritage."...
During the recent release of The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection and the National Review Board's 2015 Annual Report on the Implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter was mistakenly named as an eparchy and as non-compliant. Bishop Steven J. Lopes was ordained the Ordinariate's first bishop in February 2016. The Ordinariate did not participate in the 2015 audit due to its new ecclesiastical structure in the United States. In collaboration with StoneBridge Business Partners, the Ordinariate will participate in a data collection for the 2016 audit, with a scheduled onsite visit for the 2017 audit. The information in the report was gathered between July 1, 2014, and June 30, 2015. The report on the response of the Catholic Church in the United States to clergy sexual abuse includes an annual survey conducted by Georgetown University's Center for Ap...
During the recent release of The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) Secretariat of Child and Youth Protection and the National Review Board's 2015 Annual Report on the Implementation of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter was mistakenly named as an eparchy and as non-compliant.
Bishop Steven J. Lopes was ordained the Ordinariate's first bishop in February 2016. The Ordinariate did not participate in the 2015 audit due to its new ecclesiastical structure in the United States. In collaboration with StoneBridge Business Partners, the Ordinariate will participate in a data collection for the 2016 audit, with a scheduled onsite visit for the 2017 audit.
The information in the report was gathered between July 1, 2014, and June 30, 2015. The report on the response of the Catholic Church in the United States to clergy sexual abuse includes an annual survey conducted by Georgetown University's Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) and an annual audit to numerous dioceses and eparchies.
(Vatican Radio) A Vatican summit of legal experts from around the world opens on Friday to discuss ways of combatting human trafficking and organised crime. The two day meeting has been organised by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and is scheduled to include an audience with Pope Francis and the signing of a final declaration.Over a hundred judges, magistrates, prosecutors, and representatives of legal organizations from some 20 different countries are sharing best practices from their experience of working to fight trafficking, slave labour and the trade in human organs. In particular they are exploring how they can better incorporate humanitarian values into their legal systems, how to enhance judges’ appreciation of the needs of survivors and how money confiscated from the traffickers can be directed towards their victims.Among those addressing the opening session of the meeting is Ambassador Susan Coppedge, the new U.S. Ambassador at Large for Monitoring and Combating...
(Vatican Radio) A Vatican summit of legal experts from around the world opens on Friday to discuss ways of combatting human trafficking and organised crime. The two day meeting has been organised by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and is scheduled to include an audience with Pope Francis and the signing of a final declaration.
Over a hundred judges, magistrates, prosecutors, and representatives of legal organizations from some 20 different countries are sharing best practices from their experience of working to fight trafficking, slave labour and the trade in human organs. In particular they are exploring how they can better incorporate humanitarian values into their legal systems, how to enhance judges’ appreciation of the needs of survivors and how money confiscated from the traffickers can be directed towards their victims.
Among those addressing the opening session of the meeting is Ambassador Susan Coppedge, the new U.S. Ambassador at Large for Monitoring and Combating Trafficking in Persons. She talked to Philippa Hitchen about her own work in this field and about her hopes for the Vatican conference…
Listen:
Ambassador Coppedge begins by praising the Vatican for convening this summit on sharing ways of improving the prosecution of traffickers and bringing justice to their victims.
She explains how she began her career “prosecuting polluters” at the U.S. government’s environmental enforcement section. She then met individuals who’d been trafficked and “felt a real calling” to represent those who don’t have a voice within the judicial system, those who felt their families had abandoned them and society had overlooked them.
The vulnerabilities of victims
The ambassador talks about the type of trafficking victims she worked with as “anyone who had vulnerabilities”, including American kids who’d run away from home, as well as Latin American, African and Asian women recruited into prostitution or domestic servitude.
She notes that traffickers tend to exploit those they know best because they understand “how to speak to them” and how to threaten their families. Traffickers, she says, trade in lies, in threats and when those don’t work they use physical violence.
Raising rights of girls and women
The State Department’s response to the problem, Ambassador Coppedge says, is based on educating the public about what trafficking is and erasing the vulnerabilities of victims, adding that “by raising the rights of girls and women everywhere you’re decreasing their vulnerability to trafficking”.
Recounting some moving examples of young survivors who were able to confront their traffickers, the ambassador says she has been impressed by the resilience of young people .
Church plays vital role
She says the Church and NGOs have a vital role to play, working at community level to educate people with a message of caring for their fellow citizens. Pope Francis, she concludes, has done “a remarkable job” in raising the issue of “the victimization of individuals based on economic imbalances” and in raising the profile of the trafficking problem on a worldwide scale.
(Vatican Radio) There are a great many hymns written in honour of the Sacred Heart. These hymns make a strong appeal to the emotions. One reason perhaps why the devotion grew so fast was that it counteracted an overemphasis on rationalistic religion. Monsignor Philip Whitmore...Listen to a musical meditation presented by Monsignor Philip Whitmore and produced by Veronica Scarisbrick:
(Vatican Radio) There are a great many hymns written in honour of the Sacred Heart. These hymns make a strong appeal to the emotions. One reason perhaps why the devotion grew so fast was that it counteracted an overemphasis on rationalistic religion. Monsignor Philip Whitmore...
Listen to a musical meditation presented by Monsignor Philip Whitmore and produced by Veronica Scarisbrick:
Vatican City, Jun 3, 2016 / 12:03 am (CNA).- Thirteen-year-old Veronica Cantero Burroni fulfilled a dream on Wednesday, when she got to see Pope Francis, who offered her a warm embrace at the end of his general audience.Veronica, who turns 14 this month, lives in the Argentine city of Campana and gets around in a wheel chair due to a neurological disease. However, this has not stopped her from becoming a writer and publishing five books.One of them is entitled “The Thief of Shadows.” On May 30 in Naples, it was awarded the “2016 Elsa Morante Award for young people,” one of the most prestigious literary honors in Italy.Speaking to the Argentine daily La Nación, Veronica said she told the Pope “that I loved him a lot. And he told me that they had told him that I was very good at writing and asked me to pray for him. And through his embrace, I realized that he loved me a lot.”Niña argentina que escribe desde los 7 años, reg...
Vatican City, Jun 3, 2016 / 12:03 am (CNA).- Thirteen-year-old Veronica Cantero Burroni fulfilled a dream on Wednesday, when she got to see Pope Francis, who offered her a warm embrace at the end of his general audience.
Veronica, who turns 14 this month, lives in the Argentine city of Campana and gets around in a wheel chair due to a neurological disease. However, this has not stopped her from becoming a writer and publishing five books.
One of them is entitled “The Thief of Shadows.” On May 30 in Naples, it was awarded the “2016 Elsa Morante Award for young people,” one of the most prestigious literary honors in Italy.
Speaking to the Argentine daily La Nación, Veronica said she told the Pope “that I loved him a lot. And he told me that they had told him that I was very good at writing and asked me to pray for him. And through his embrace, I realized that he loved me a lot.”
— ACI Prensa (@aciprensa) June 1, 2016
She also gave him a copy of her fifth book with a special dedication.
“At an encounter with young people in Cuba, he said that all of us have an eye of flesh and an eye of glass: the eye of flesh to see the reality of what surrounds us, and the eye of glass to dream with. And so I dedicated the book to him, telling him I was thanking him for teaching me to use the eye of glass because this for me was a dream that I was living, as well as using the eye of flesh,” she related.
Veronica was accompanied by her mom, Cecilia Burroni, who said that “what's beautiful is that her physical limitations don't stop her.”
NEW YORK (AP) -- Rising drug and alcohol overdoses, suicides, and disease from chronic alcoholism - labeled "deaths of despair" by one expert - are cutting the lives of white Americans short by nearly a half a year on average....
NEW YORK (AP) -- Rising drug and alcohol overdoses, suicides, and disease from chronic alcoholism - labeled "deaths of despair" by one expert - are cutting the lives of white Americans short by nearly a half a year on average....
LELHAR, India (AP) -- On a crisp morning in February, Indian troops surrounded a sleepy, riverside village in the disputed mountain region of Kashmir. Intelligence had suggested three anti-India rebels were hiding out in homes set among the willows and poplar trees....
LELHAR, India (AP) -- On a crisp morning in February, Indian troops surrounded a sleepy, riverside village in the disputed mountain region of Kashmir. Intelligence had suggested three anti-India rebels were hiding out in homes set among the willows and poplar trees....
