Suicide.

It is two months short of the death anniversary of a friend of mine. She committed suicide. Having been depressed for a number of years, the disease finally overwhelmed her and she lost sight of her options. I remember hearing about it from my friend, and the shock hung around me for days. Death is no stranger to me in my short life, I lost a schoolmate to a horrific road traffic accident when I was 11. We used to take the bus the bus to school. We must have attended each other's birthday parties. When I was 17, my choir mistress passed away while giving birth. It was her first child. Two years later, I watched as multiple myeloma robbed my grandfather of his last breath. Over time, the saintly Irish Jesuits who ran my parish in Singapore, all succumbed to their age. I watched another uncle pass away just before I left for college, and then a dear and holy priest from lung cancer. A friend lost her father in junior college, and later on, a very young friend, barely out of junior college, succumbed to a brain tumour. To add to that, I am a medical student. The business of medicine, in a sense, is death. From day one, we are in the anatomy lab, dissecting our cadavers, our first patients, albeit deceased. Long before we meet live patients, we learn pathology, a subject that deals a lot with discovering how disease killed a patient. Yet, suicide is a different matter.

I have friends who have had friends or relatives who committed suicide, but this is my first one. Yet, I know every suicide will always hit hard. Perhaps, it is having sat on the ledge myself. Perhaps, it is the Catholic understanding, as St Thomas Aquinas notes, that suicide is always a mortal sin, the unforgivable sin, the complete and abject lost of hope in God's mercy. The paradox to God's infinite mercy. There is never a sin that God will not forgive, for His love is that boundless, yet, to be forgiven, one must seek it. 

To die in mortal sin is to kill the soul, to completely remove oneself from the sanctifying grace of God and His loving embrace. A mortal sin is a grave sin always performed with knowledge and full consent. It is the immediate passport to hell and eternal damnation. Christ is gracious to us till the very end, always attempting to guide us back to Him, into His loving arms, yet at the end, He still respects the choices we have made, and in His infinite justice, gives us what we deserve. [NB: I am have not argued for the morality of suicide here. It is clearly evil, and there are others who have done and will do a far better job than I on the subject. I recommend the reader to look at these lovely posts on St Peter's List, here, here, and here, for 22 arguments against Euthanasia, which when voluntary is suicide, and when sanctioned without consent, is murder.] 

It is no wonder that in the past, The Church denied funerals to individuals who had chosen to imitate Judas. The stance has now softened with the recognition that the majority of suicides are done out of sheer desperation brought about by depression. These poor people were certainly non compos mentis, and that may remove the consent, and lessen their culpability.  However, I cannot even begin to imagine the horror such acts bring to family members. I was not close to this friend, yet, I wondered constantly, what went through her mind? Did she repent at the last moment? All this wondering was vain speculation. I shall never know, perhaps, until I meet Our Lord. The sheer paralysing helplessness that someone I cared about may be now enduring the eternal fires of hell.

Yet, again that too is speculation. The Church, while She declares that there are many in hell, does not wish to speculate as to whom is in hell; the only one we know, through tradition, is the betrayer who kissed our Lord. After all, it is not within the power of the Church to pass such Judgment. That alone is Christ's.  

And, as my confessor consoled me, it is in Christ's infinite mercy that one must hold onto in such times. St Augustine taught that God's goodness is such that he 'brings good even out of evil', and in that thought, one finds again the comfort of hope. For here, the poor tormented soul is completely and utterly at the mercy of God. And, it is there, that in His infinite mercy, should the soul be willing at the last second, He may accept her contrition. This is the beauty of God's goodness, for He even took the Thief with Him, at the last moment, into paradise.

Lest, we fall into the heresy of Balthazar, one must remember that God is still just, and that the cooperation of the soul, her search for forgiveness is still necessary. Yet, it is in this Hope, and the knowledge of the God's justice and mercy, in the abandonment to His Divine Providence, that we can still pray for these souls. Lent is upon us. Each Friday in great season of Lent permits one to seek a plenary indulgence. Perhaps, my dear reader, you may, in a spiritual act of mercy, seek an indulgence for these souls, and those Holy Souls in purgatory.

In te Domine, speravi, non confundar in aeternam. In Thee, O Lord, I have Hoped, never let me be confounded. - Ps XXX.ii

Apologies!

I cannot find time for a post today. I will try and make it over the week. Sorry!

For those who said a prayer for me, thank you very much! I passed the OSCE.

An Exercise in Free Will Pt 2

A while back, I was in a microbiology lecture pursuing the online magazine, Aeon.co in order to stay conscious. I came across this article written by Michael Ruse, director of History and Philosophy of Science in the University of Florida, entitled, 'The God Decision'. The long 3,000 word article, of which the good author spends only about ~300 words actually actually arguing his thesis and the remainder bashing the Catholic Church (did I mention he's one of them new atheists?) asks the pertinent question about whether is it is moral to raise one's children to believe in God. The article is very sloppily written for a philosopher; hey, it has to be, if you have a medical student pointing out the non sequiturs, and runs through a few ideas, before he drops morality altogether and runs on his opinions. However, I can't be bothered to deal with new atheists, many of whom are rather illiterate; it is the original question that he poses that interests me tonight. Is it moral to raise one's children to believe in God?

Well, the short answer is, yes. (But Ruse believes otherwise)

Of course, if one doesn't believe in God, then one has no moral obligations to teach one children such. This is the case, wherein one can claim invincible ignorance over not knowing God, or being properly convinced that there is one. After all, one cannot pass on faith if one doesn't have it. This is what Ruse argues, and that's alright so far. It is necessary to have a belief in a truth, whether true or not, in order to anchor our exploration of the truth. If one is truly open to the truth, as St Augustine was in his philosophical tour through Manichaeism, then God will surely bless him with the truth.

However, such openness to ideas is hardly seen nowadays and there is a certain abject intellectual laziness that permits most people. I have entered arguments with many people over issues like abortion, euthanasia, and other subjects that the world has decided to go to war with the Catholic Church about. Sadly, most of the time, the same poor arguments are thrust in my direction, and the same straw men erected to be burnt. Their weapons, having been obtained from such illustrious Journals of Philosophy as the New York Times, or The Daily Mail, or The Irish Times, are easily disarmed, but they are none wiser to it. If they would just spend more time actually examining the stand of the Church, to take the time to invest in reading, it would probably make a significant difference to their perception of reality.

Rant aside, there is another point that Ruse was trying to argue. That it is immoral to teach one's children about God even if one believed in him. He puts this forward in the usual relativistic way, that it is okay if the belief is harmless, but when it comes from a bastion of moral truth, then it is wrong. Taken at its face value, his argument is absurd enough to not require comment. Why would anyone deny their children the gift of salvation? The chance to know Christ, the God who created them, who gifted them to their parents, who is a person who wants to love them? It would absurd to think that such a thing could even come across a believer's mind!

However, with a slight twist to the context, there are the foolish, who out of some misconceived idea of how children work and what reality is, think it is alright to allow children the leeway to choose for themselves, of course when the time is right, which is usually the arbitrary legal age of 18. It is, after all, a matter of exercising free will. Children have this free will too, right? Therefore, we cannot impose our belief system on their will. It's wrong.

Now, of course, if one's parents are invincibly ignorant and agnostic, then as with the case above, it would be fair to raise one's children to make their own decisions regarding religion. (Btw, Dr Ruse, atheism is belief system as well) They have free will after all. However, in the case of those have beliefs, then the question becomes one of grave matter, and of course of stupidity. Children do not come to parents preprogrammed with twelve years of catechism and training in critical thinking, they come to parents essentially in the state of tabula rasa. They long to learn what is true and what is false, and how to differentiate the two, and whom do they learn from? Their parents. Thus, it would an offense against free will to deny them that anchor of apparent truth that comes from having a belief. And, it is from this anchor that they will be able to turn when facing difficult questions, and seek answers from it, and along the way to discover what is really true.

However, in denying them that state, instead allowing them to raise themselves, with their unformed cognitive centres, parents are denying them the ability to truly use their free will to affirm what is true. It's just silly. It also speaks volumes about the parents' own religious convictions. I promise you that you will never hear any parents say, 'well, Jim, ya know what. I'm gonna let little Timmy here decide whether the sky is blue on his own. If he asks me about it, I'm gonna tell that that's just my opinion, and he has to come to his own conclusion.'

Obviously, children do not work that way, and they will end up learning what their parents believe in anyway, through the means of observation, be it atheism, agnosticism, or theism. However, how well the child will be able to make use of their free will will certainly depend on how honest and sincere their parents are in addressing contradictory beliefs.

PS: I wish I could work this over again; I wanted to develop it a bit more philosophically instead of rant, but I have an OSCE (practical) tomorrow which needs revision. Prayers appreciated!

An Exercise In Free Will

An atheist friend of mine was recounting to me his short stint in a protestant church. It was a pentecostal church and he didn't have too good an experience there. The leaders of the church had been to controlling and interfering with his life, attempting to dictate what he could do and what he couldn't. It's not an unfamiliar tale, having many other friends from these 'church of bob' places recount such an experience to me too. I couldn't help but think that I'd have never ever had such a problem in Catholicism.

That might sound strange to many a modernist ear! After all, the Church is full of rules, has its own codex of law and lawyers, on top countless documents which provide instructions on many a situation. Many things are clearly spelled out as grave sins, some even excommunicable. Yet, I have never even heard of such strategies of coercion before. Politics, yes. Scandal, yes. But, to be coerced into following rules, no.

Okay, to be fair, there is a lot of gripe from those who have fallen away from Church or those who live in a constant state of mortal sin. Many of this groups are fronts for political agendas and want to change the truth that Christ gave His bride to guard jealously; mostly because they want to continue living in sin. That aside, one certainly doesn't hear stories of priests giving ultimatums to people to stop cohabitating or they have to stop coming for Mass. Rather, there is generally a gentle and loving encouragement to continue coming for Mass, and to stop offending our Lord, and seek his reconciliation in the sacrament of Penance.

This is all do to with the gift of free will. It is through this great gift that God has given Man the power and potential to love, and at the same time made Himself powerless to Man in this aspect. God cannot force Man to love Him, though God loves Man unconditionally. No, He has given Man the ability to be his own agent, and to make that choice. And, that transfers into the Church which He established as well.

The Eternal Father, ever the perfect parent, knows our fallen our human natures are, and how foolish, hence He allows us to choose Him, or to continue making mistakes and offending Him. Yet, ever the loving Father, He has been there always, waiting to receive us back. He knows that to learn all these on our own would probably be fatal, knowing how silly we are, and how addictive the evil one has made the temptation of worldly things, hence He has given us Holy Mother Church so that She will provide us with the guidelines to Eternal Life. Even then, He is constantly giving us undeserved graces, and cajoling us at every moment, hoping that we will abandon our sinful ways, and return to His merciful embrace. However, we must choose to do so, and to then submit to His perfect ways.

Well, God, who is perfect, understands free will and human nature better than anyone. However, original sin has made us stupid, disordered our appetites, and weakened the resolve of our wills. Hence, I can understand why church of Bob has attempted to do what it does, as will anyone trying to parent rebellious adolescents. Pastor Bob sees the soul in trouble, and attempts to stem the damage. I know this all too well, for I have been guilty of it. Being an ENTJ, I naturally have (some) foresight, many plans, and many high expectations. I have forced the people that have come to me for help to conform to those expectations, sometimes overestimating their abilities. By the grace of God, and through many mistakes, I have come to accept that gift of free will which God has given all His children, and more importantly, to have a greater faith in Him, to be patient, to trust in His providence, and to pray more for those I wish to help. After all, it is God who will help them and not I.

In another sense, it is that of authority. Pastor Bob is trying to be a good father, and authority that he doesn't necessarily have, in the sense he isn't actually the father of those people in the way real fathers have authority through natural law, and also without Holy Orders and hence without divine authority. On the other hand, the Church, and her priests, being granted authority by God, do, and She chooses to use it in the way of the prudent parent, to bring her children to an understanding of responsibility and virtue. Hence, Hers is always the gentle, but firm approach. Rarely, does she perform a slap on the face, but only so that her child will recognise the hysteria of sin that she has been in. On the hand, I am similar to Pastor Bob, and I can only play the physician, to provide advice where possible, but it is ultimately up to the patient to choose to comply or not.

7 Post Week

Jennifer Fulwiler, one my favourite Catholic bloggers, has started a 7 post week thing. On impulse, I signed up. On my perfect vision hindsight, that was probably a baaaaad idea. Medics typically don't talk about anything much apart from school, and apart from school, we hardly have any time. However, I will try to write a post a day, probably the night before, within half an hour, before bed. I hope that they will be somewhat substantial, God willing. Otherwise, I beg your forgiveness for meaningless and superficial updates about my extremely boring life. eg. Today, I fell asleep in class, and I tried to memorise microbio. I hate bugs. There are so many of them. I wish I could kill them all...kill them...with fire!

However, for new visitors, you're most welcome to peruse the previous posts!

To be or not to be?

There comes a time, actually, many times over the course of a medic's training, from the MBBS to residency, where the medic develops some form of existential crisis. Often, it happens in the preclinical years, where one drowns in an ocean of knowledge, information that is both imperative to examination and paramount to practice, yet it is an ocean that knows no depth. One sits in a small life boat in the middle of the storm, textbooks weighing down the small vessel as waves crash and water seeps into the hull.

I have been thinking about this storm for quite awhile. Every year, we lose classmates. Some don't make it pass the year, some quit. I wasn't close to any of them, but to me, and perhaps, to me alone, knowing about the war that awaits, it feels as though we've lost brothers-in-arms. It is something to mourn, as one drudges through Pathology, trying to memorise the course of pneumonia and identify neoplasms on histology slides. Together with being far from home, and from loved ones, perhaps even the cross of being a traditional Catholic in a former Catholic country has worn me done, and I find myself wondering, what else could I have done?

Medicine has always been my first choice, since I can recall. I've never thought of pursuing anything else, and anything that would potentially upset my chosen career path were instantly abandoned. I fought a long, hard, and bitter battle to finally enter medical school, though, along the way, it has always been suggested that I am not inclined for medicine, given my poor academic history, and perhaps other paths were better than me. Humanities, it had suggested, might have been a better avenue for academic investment. Alas, I am stubborn, very, very stubborn.

Yet, now, my mind drifts longingly back to summer, to that month where I was interning at a kindergarten, the happiest days I had last year. I'd never wanted to wake up and go to school as much as I did in those 4 short weeks. It wasn't just the colleagues who shared interesting conversations over breakfast, but more importantly, it was the chance to work with the little ones. It's no joke, quite a tiring affair, enough though, it's only  half a day. These small, precious children, who want to be loved and want to love. They have their own world, which they deign to share with you, but, they appreciate you, and they show it. It is a very simple, yet very profound life.

It is far away, far removed from the complex web of operations that is the hospital. Far from the endless things to remember, the patients to see, the tests to interpret, the integration of many different areas of knowledge. The exhaustion and lack of appreciation from incorrigible patients who will literally die, but very slowly, holding onto poor habits and vices. It does tempt one to wonder, what life would have been down the road of liberal arts? I could be young Thomistic lecturer somewhere, teaching literature, exploring the fascinating world of theology and philosophy. Soaking up culture in the various performances that I could attend, writing books. Though of course, there is hardly a place in the modern university for a Thomist. Or maybe, to do early childhood, and go back to the kindergarten...

It has been a horrible year so far. I broke my heart again, after just fixing it. (It doesn't get the 'never again memo',  endured a few health issues, and had work piled on by the dump truck. That said, I don't think I shall remove my self from this career, disturbed for scrubs, and not leisurely suits. There is a deeper calling, it moves stealthily amongst the hardships, pain, and the long nights. It hooks onto your soul, in a soft whisper, reminding, that to love is to suffer.

I lost my sanity on the special holidays,
I lost my sanity with the smell of coffee.

Of Medics and their Pious Wives.

'Then I do not think you know what love is," she said softly. "To love is to wish the other's highest good, as I understand it....That is the love of a Christian, at least,' - Marjorie Manners, Come Rack! Come Rope!

Today, I was listening to the Ven. Fulton Sheen tell the story for the conversion of Fr Felix Leseur, OP. Fr Leseur, pictured above, was a medical doctor in Paris and the erstwhile editor of an atheist newspaper that ran in city. His wife, yes, his wife, was the simple pious Servant of God, Élizabeth Leseur, won his conversion by offering up her life in exchange for his soul....and his vocation.

After she passed away from breast cancer in 1914, Dr Leseur discovered a note written to him in her papers. It said: "In 1905, I asked almighty God to send me sufficient sufferings to purchase your soul. On the day that I die, the price will have been paid. Greater love than this no woman has than she who lay down her life for her husband."

This eventually lead to the crumbling of the walls of atheism when he visited Lourdes after her death to write a book about its falsity, eventually, he was ordained priest of the order of preachers and began many a sermon with, 'As my wife, Élizabeth, says...'

This reminded me of a lovely book that I had finished last month on the life of Servant of God, Dr Nagai Takashi, a pioneering radiologist with the University of Nakasaki in Japan. Like Fr Leseur, Dr Nagai's soul was also won by the pious prayers and sufferings of his Catholic wife-to-be, Midori.

The story of Nagai and Midori, which you can read in full in Fr Paul Gynn, S.M.'s book, A Song for Nagasaki, is almost a fairytale worthy of a hollywood movie (which is in post production). The atheistic Nagai, having discovered Pascal's Penseés, searched for a Catholic family to stay with while completing his medical studies. As the perfect plan of God will have it, the family also had a beautiful, single, and pious daughter. They met for the first time when Nagai was invited to partake in the Christmas festivities on Christmas eve, a very foreign holiday. That night, through the correct diagnosis of appendicitis and by carrying Midori on his back through a blizzard to the hospital, he saved her life. Midori would later save his soul.

There is another fairytale event that occurred before their official courtship. Dr Nagai was conscripted and sent off to fight in the Sino-Japanese war in Manchuria. As with all young army boys away from home, he and his platoonmates took the opportunity during their first weekend off to get drunk and go to a brothel. There, facing the prostitute, Nagai was unable to carry out the act, losing all desire for it. He later writes in one of his books, that at that precise moment, 'a young woman was praying for me before a statue of the Blessed Virgin in Nagasaki Cathedral.' A discovery made, when he received her letter a few days later, together with a catechism.

He eventually returned, and went to see Midori, hoping to apologise to Midori for a prior transgression, but unable to say anything, he placed the cardigan she knitted for him and left. Much pain did he cause her in that moment of confusion, and through the whole war. From the book,

Tears coursing down her cheeks, she prayed: 'Jesus, here is his cardigan. I begged you to bring him back and you did. Thank you. You know that I love him, Lord, but that someone far more academic than I must be his wife. I suppose you smile at me, Lord, for even dreaming of marrying him! Now that he is safely back from the war, I shall meet some of the men my parents and the go-between suggest. I offer you the pain he has brought me, Lord, as a prayer that he will receive the gift of faith.'

She felt drained. She tried to busy herself but finally slipped out of the house and walked the quarter mile to the cathedral. At its entrance was a stone crucifixion scene. She glanced up at the Sorrowful Mother and murmured interiorly as she passed: 'You always said yes to God. Help me, Mother, to say yes. But why does God make life so painful? I feel lost. Show me the way.' She entered the dim cathedral, knelt and took out her rosary. It was Friday, the day for the five sorrowful mysteries. That matched the pain in her heart. Twenty minutes later, she lifted her head as she rose from her knees-- and froze on the spot. Nagai was kneeling up at the front of the cathedral absorbed, it seemed, in prayer. It seemed that Christ was saying: 'Midori, your task is finished. Now that he is home with me, you must forget him.' Her genuflection was the heaviest she had ever made.

Shortly after, Dr Nagai was baptised and took Midori for his bride.

God certainly uses such romantic stories to remind us to hope and to aspire toward true love, that is the love of the Cross. To choose to suffer and wish for the highest good of another. Not all of our sufferings will bear fruit before our eyes as Midori, sometimes it will happen after we pass, like Élizabeth Leseur, yet, the end is the same, love will eventually conquer all.

That, and I also noticed a trend! It's seems atheist doctors have it easier finding pious Catholic wives. Guess, I better start studying Dawkins. Hmmmmm...


Abp Fulton Sheen tells the story of Fr Leseur, OP