Having failed to convince the public that killing babies in the womb is courageous and compassionate, American devotees of the Culture of Death have now trained their propaganda guns on the elderly and the disabled. What Jane Wilson called an "unsettling turn" in Clint Eastwood's "Million Dollar Baby" is in fact a cinematic endorsement of euthanasia.Last month the National Spinal Cord Injury Association accused Eastwood of a "disability vendetta," describing the last scene of his film as a "brilliantly executed attack on life after a spinal cord injury." The group's chief executive said Eastwood was using the "power of fame and film to perpetuate his view that the lives of people with disabilities are not worth living." The disability-rights group Not Yet Dead has picketed "Million Dollar Baby" because, as one of its reviewers argued, the film "plays out killing as a romantic fantasy and gives emotional life to the `better dead than disabled' mindset."
As the USCCB review of the film indicates, because of the artistic power of the film "our sympathies and humane inclinations may argue in favor of such misguided compassion, but our Catholic faith prohibits us from getting around the fact that, in this case, the best-intended ends cannot justify the chosen means: the taking of a life."
It hardly seems coincidental that such a film is coming out at the same time self-styled progressives are demanding that the state of California lift its ban on doctor-assisted suicide. As the Terri Schiavo case so sadly illustrates, the Catholic Church is one of the few institutions in this country willing to take a stand for those whose lives depend entirely on the care of others.
Jane Wilson noted with approval that the Hollywood elite loved "Million Dollar Baby." She did not mention that this is the same elite that rejected "The Passion of the Christ" as overly violent and propagandistic. Not did she point out that our bishops have given "Million Dollar Baby" a rating of O - Morally Offensive. I think Catholic readers have a right to expect greater moral clarity in the archdiocesan paper, even in the film reviews.
RE: Catholic church supporting pro-euthanasia film Million Dollar Baby - just as this reviewer repeats the carnard that this is a movie about boxing and not about mercy killing - the Jesuit magazine America review of MDB couldn't praise it enough for its content and 'message'.
Pretty sick.
Why do commentators so often say a person is a "devout Catholic," when the person clearly doesn't believe the Catholic Faith? I guess it's shorthand for "performs rituals popularly associated with the Catholic Church, irrespective of belief."
Nothing in your letter suggests that you saw the movie, or reflected on it yourself, rather than merely spouting other people's talking points. Yet another movie hater.