Originally published at crisis magazine
Wesley Smith is a pro-life bioethicist with the Discovery Institute who frequently writes in conservative publications like National Review. A recent essay was titled: “Assisted-Suicide Death Ceremonies Becoming Normalized.”
People should not be surprised. In Canada, where getting a doctor to kill you (they call it “Medical Assistance in Dying,” MAID) has been legal since 2016, almost one in every twenty Canadians now dies from MAID. America’s ten or so “physician-assisted suicide” states have also successively loosened restrictions, including on eligible conditions, certainty and proximity of death, and residency to make this a tourist growth industry.
Anthropologist Mary Douglas once observed that “[a]s a social animal, man is a ritual animal.” That’s true. There’s a reason why there are more churches with set liturgies than free-style prayer. There’s a reason people who eschew doctrine and morals still like smells and bells. There’s a reason people who reject organized religion still indulge in vacuous “spirituality.”
Orthodox. Faithful. Free.
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As atheistic secularism transmogrifies into a religion, it takes on aspects of religion. The zealous creedal commitments of the woke is one sign. But the search for visible signs, for ritual actions
