New UPDATE: 15:55 UK time: Thanks be to God, Alfie is still alive! Flo Hoy at Alfie's Army public site announces: ''We are thankful that our lawyer Mr. Diamond was able to get the execution temporarily stopped. There are negotiations happening right now and we ask for your urgent prayers that God would show us the way to end this nightmare, in a way that is good for everyone and allows Alfie to go. Thank you for your support and please stay close to us.'' To which Torch of The Faith can only add: God be Praised and Keep up those prayers everyone!
Emergency Update: It is now 12:58 here in the UK. We see that Caroline Farrow has tweeted: ''There is still a court case pending, yet Alder Hey are proceeding to euthanise Alfie Evans at 1:30. They do not respect the rule of law, or anything but their own agenda.'' PLEASE PRAY NOW FOR ALFIE!!!
We were horrified to read at LifeSiteNews last night, more of the shocking details of how Alder Hey intends to end the life of little Alfie Evans.
LifeSiteNews has reported that Thomas Evans has released a legal document from the NHS Foundation Trust outlining the dreadful details.
In a nutshell Alder Hey are proposing to limit the number of people in attendance to just four, whilst infusing poor Alfie with the drugs Midazolam and Fentanyl, whilst his ventilation is removed.
As we said in the hurried update to our article yesterday afternoon - at which point we did not know of the inclusion of Fentanyl - this sure moves the situation over into one of active euthanasia. By that we meant to underscore the fact that the cruel death planned for Alfie was no longer the removal of ventilation, but it is that combined with the suffocating infusion of drugs.
In light of that, we might just as well have said it was cruel murder.
LifeSiteNews' headline says it all: Chemical suffocation? How Alder Hey doctors want Alfie Evans to die.
The enforced removal of ventiliation against the wishes of the parents, especially when a number of people are testifying to cognitive responsiveness in Alfie, would be wicked enough in itself. However, the addition of this lethal cocktail of drugs moves things into the state of absolute and cruel barbarity.
Good grief people: They want to drug the little lad to ensure his death!
Many readers will know that Caroline Farrow has courageously and ceaselessly spoken out in defence of Alfie Evans and his family.
Of this latest development, she has tweeted: ''Tom Evans has released the details of the plan for his son's death. The hospital plan to withdraw all drugs, then administer midazolam (used on death row) to suppress his breathing then withdraw ventilation so he suffocates to death... Do not be fooled that the death planned for Alfie is in any way ''dignified'' or even painless.''
Insanely, her twitter feed shows that people are attacking her for mentioning death row in this context, whilst they are spectacularly failing to see the evil in the use of these drugs to help finish off an innocent toddler. As we say here on Merseyside: If they had brains, they'd be dangerous!
God bless Caroline Farrow for her faithfulness.
We've also been reading and listening to more on-line video information describing more of the details of the experiences of Alfie's family at Alder Hey. It is sobering stuff.
Even as I'm writing this, I notice that Thomas Evans is putting fresh information on-line, to state that the provision of a requested couch for Alfie's mum Kate to sleep on has been denied.
All of this makes the strange silence of Archbishop Malcolm McMahon and Bishop Tom Williams of the Archdiocese of Liverpool lamentable in the extreme. Many Catholics around the world are wondering why they have not done anything practical to help the family. They are the local bishops; and Bishop Williams is chair of the official Health and Advisory Group. As such, their lack of support is simply insufferable.
We must also ask why has there been so much overt support for Alder Hey and for the ruling of the courts in the official communications from the entire Bishops' Conference of England and Wales?
In charity, I attempted to cut Bishop Tom Williams some slack on that front in yesterday's article; but thinking things through in the darkness of last night, in the context of all that Alfie's family have been through, and now this evil news about the planned last minutes of Alfie's life, when taken together with the horribly officious statement released by Alder Hey just after the Supreme Court ruling on Friday, this cuts no ice in the final analysis.
By the way, when I said my late friend Fr. Michael Williams defended Bishop Williams' pastoral care of staff and chaplains in the NHS, this was well before that bishop commited the worst and most scandalous of his enormities, which were briefly described yesterday. God bless him, poor Fr. Mike was spared all of that by being taken to his eternal reward before those events transpired.
Then, too, as far as we can see there has been no official apology for the leaking of that awful memo which, whilst affirming Alder Hey, suggested that Thomas and Alfie Evans were not even Catholics. The release of such as text, followed up by a complete lack of apology, is both insensitive and singularly lacking in compassion.
If the Bishops of England and Wales, most especially Archbishop McMahon and Bishop Williams of Liverpool, are to rectify their former conduct, and a deafening silence which is by now being criticised all over the world - it was even mentioned in America on EWTN recently - then they must act rapidly today.
And now, this news about the drugs which have been proposed for Alfie's demise make their ongoing silence utterly inexusable; especially as Thomas Evans had actually approached the Church for help.
If the hierarchy do not do something to act today, then the words of St. John Fisher - that lone voice who remained faithful from among the English hierarchy during the widespread apostasy of his day - will be applied to them even more deservedly than it has been up until now:Truly, the fort has been betrayed, even of those who should have defended it!
A beautiful and innocent baby, a baptised member of the local church, one of Our Lord Jesus Christ's own little ones is effectively to be ''put down'', but his bishops have nothing to say on the matter? Even though one of them - Bishop Williams - provides chaplaincy care at the very hospital in which this atrocity is to take place?!!!
There is something strangely symbolic about the collapse of our once Christian civilization into a state of such clinically sanitized barbarity, in the fact that the Alder Hey hospital has scheduled to drug Alfie, thus ensuring a suffocating death, on the very day that the Catholic Church's traditional calendar celebrates St. George, the Protector of England.
In recent days, newspaper reports on this case have included Thomas Evans' memorable line, ''This is not justice. It is cruel, murderous bureaucracy.''
The intention to withdraw Alfie Evans' life support, against the wishes of his parents, the testimony of those who witness to his cognitive improvement and the availability of ongoing help at Rome's Bambino Gesu Hospital, is indeed murderous bureaucracy.
With the plan to administer these drugs to Alfie Evans today, this murderous bureaucracy descends into the state of a new and unheard of level of barbarism; at least for this nation, which was once such an important part of our formerly Christian civilization.
So ends the Great in Great Britain...
Now it is neither Christian, nor civilized.
As the late Fr. Benedict Groeschel once reflected: ''We are descending into the worst form of paganism. Where every man will be a wolf to his neighbour.''
May God have mercy on us all...
Still, there remains some hope in the fact that the ordinary people of Liverpool have resisted this latest barbarity. They have done what they so often do in times of grave trial. Be it the Fever, the Blitz, the Battle of the Atlantic, the economic hardship of the Thatcher era or the disaster of Hillsborough and its injustices; there is no doubt that in tough times, Scousers stick together! And now, in the face of this latest injustice, they are once again demonstrating a massive outpouring of tangible love and genuine humanity for Alfie and his family. May God's grace continue to build on this basic good nature and human decency.
And may God save little Alfie Evans!
Please do keep up the prayers - it is not too late for a miracle yet.
Our Lady of Walsingham, St. John Fisher, St. George and Msgr. James Nugent - Pray for us!