Your Money or Your Life

Benjamin Kubelsky was born in Chicago, Illinois, on February 14, 1894, but grew up in Waukegan, Illinois, to the north of the Windy City. The maternal grandfather of a former student of mine went to school with Kubelsky was working as an engineer at a radio station about sixty years later, recognizing his old friend and said, “Hey, Kubelsky, how are you?” Benny Kubelsky, however, was not pleased as he had by that time gained fame and fortune under the stage name of “Jack Benny” and simply scowled at his former schoolmate with his famous deadpan look.

One of the most famous of the comedic lines that Jack Benny delivered during his long career in radio and television was thought up by two writers who were brainstorming for ideas when they were writing for Benny’s radio program. One of them, John Tackaberry, was trying to think up a comedic comeback to the old choice given by thieves engaged in a stickup, “Your money or your life.” It was after pausing for a long time that Tackaberry said to his fellow writer, Milt Josefsburg, “I’m… thinking it over…” (Please see http://www.jimramsburg.com/your-money-or-your-life-audio.html for the detailed information ton a website that has links to—and, of course, a disparaging narrative about—Father Charles Coughlin’s radio broadcasts in 1937 and 1938 .)

Sadly, what is happening in the medical industry around the world is no joke as the modern Aztecs in white coats will take your life once your own money or that of your insurance plan’s coverage money is spent. Utilitarianism has replaced true medical care and the simple compassion that are required to be given to a human being who is suffering from an illness, whether acute or chronic, or has been injured by an accident or other traumatic circumstance. This reality has been discussed in many articles on this website.

The global reach of the utilitarian monsters of Modernity is beyond question, and it was demonstrated last month in a very tangible way as a man in India who had been declared “dead” after his relatives’ money had run out woke up at his own funeral:

An Indian man who had been declared dead woke up just before he was set to be buried during a funeral ceremony, according to reports.

Mourners at Mohammad Furqan, 20, was declared dead by Indian medical professionals, but his surprise awakening at the funeral in the Northern Indian city of Lucknow shocked mourners.

He was immediately brought to the hospital and put on a ventilator to support him, according to the Independent.

Furqan had been unconscious since June 21 when he got into an accident. Doctors declared him dead on Monday but coincidentally only after the man’s family told the hospital that looked after him they no longer had the funds to pay for his care.

The family told the Hindustan Times that the situation left them traumatized because they not only had to come to terms with Furqan’s passing, but then see him move during the funeral.

“Devastated, we were preparing for the burial when some of us saw movement in his limbs. We immediately took Furqan to the Ram Manohar Lohia hospital where the doctors said he was alive and have put him on ventilator support,” older brother Mohammad Irfan told the outlet.

“We had paid Rs 7 lakh [$10,000] to the private hospital earlier and when we told them that we had run out of money, they had declared Furqan dead,” he added.

The city’s chief medical officer also told the outlet that an investigation is underway into the country’s medical practices.

“We have taken cognizance of the incident and the matter will be thoroughly probed,” Narendra Agarwal told the outlet.

“The patient is in critical condition but definitely not brain dead. He has pulse, blood pressure and his reflexes are working. He has been put on ventilator support.” (Indian man wakes up at funeral after being pronounced dead by doctors.)

Lest anyone think that this case is “extraordinary,” the truth of the matter is that the modern Aztecs in the global medical industry really do use the availability of funds, whether provided directly by patient or a private or government-subsidized insurance program, as the determining factor as to whether simple treatment to sustain the life of a living human being. Even the provision of food and water, which is ordinary care that must be provided by a human being and in no way constitutes “medical treatment,” is withdrawn regularly in cases where the medical “professionals” have deemed someone to be “brain dead” or in a “persistent vegetative state.” The only time that these brutally cruel, protracted executions of innocent beings come to light and make news is when relatives raise objections.

Cases such as the late Theresa Marie Schindler-Schiavo and Vincent Lambert happen all the time as most people just take the “word of the doctors” at face value and begin to say their “goodbyes” as a child or a spouse or grandparent is starved and dehydrated to death, a process that is so cruelly painful that anyone who did this his pet dog or cat would subject to prosecution and sentenced to jail time. Not so, however, for the ghouls of Modernity in hospitals. Not so for the legions of “medical professionals” who kill off people by means of “palliative care,” which could be “prescribed” for any one of us if our “quality of life” is adjudged by the “professionals” to be “insufficient” to merit further medical treatment.

Mr. Timothy A. Duff, who spent over twenty years working to produce a New English Edition of The Mystical City of God, wrote the following after the medical and judicial execution of Vincent Lambert in France on July 11, 2019, that he had posted the following comment on another website that he sent to me a few days ago and gave me permission to use in this current commentary:

I am in a unique position to comment about whether feeding tubes are "extraordinary".

 My daughter Maria had Pompe Disease, a type of Muscular Dystrophy in which skeletal muscle degenerates. At the age of three she did not have the muscle strength to swallow liquid correctly (let alone solid food). Since deadly aspiration was inevitable her doctors and I decided a feeding tube was necessary.

Having almost attained my M.D. myself (left voluntarily), I understood the very low risk of the surgery required, a gastrostomy in which a small fistula (hollow tube) of tissue connecting the skin to the stomach is created. This procedure is far less risky than a tracheotomy necessary for a permanent ventilator tube, since the trachea is a sterile environment, while the stomach is the harshest environment in the body for bacteria and viruses (due to the acid). In fact, Maria needed a tracheotomy only after she aspirated apple juice in the hospital (and would have died if I were not by her side and ran to get a nurse who pulled a code blue).

So for 12 1/2 years my wife and I fed Maria through her "mickey button". This 5-minute procedure consists of opening a can of medically-complete liquid nutrition, attaching a 100-mL syringe to the button, and pouring the food in. It always went in easily and quickly, followed by water to flush the tube and provide hydration (which we could easily do at any time). Compared this with the time and effort to prepare food, cook it, and clean up, this was much easier.

Maria's nutritional status was excellent until she passed away May 11, 2013 as a result of the end-stage of her disease. Her feeding tube allowed her to live a life full of love, compassion and prayer for others, and sacrificial suffering which helped only God knows how many souls. 

The feeding tube was not only not "extraordinary" for us, but was one of the great privileges of our lives, the opportunity to practice corporal works of mercy for one of God's chosen suffering souls. And, good Lord Almighty!, we were only doing our grave duty as parents to feed our child! 

Withholding the feeding of someone with a feeding tube is a most heinous act of murder, making monsters of those who are duty-bound to preserve life.

Finally, the "controversy" surrounding the Terri Schiavo incident years back was very painful for Eileen and I, since we knew how easy tube-feeding is and could not understand the horrid lack of basic human compassion involved. And when "theology" is divorced from compassion, what is left is cold-blooded pragmatism.

This is entirely correct. The provision of food and water, no matter how administered, is ordinary care providing to a human being, and it is indecent to term the provision of food and water as “extraordinary” when it is nothing of the sort. What might have deemed an extraodinary means sixty or seventy years ago has become quite ordinary, relatively inexpensive and not in the least burdensome to anyone except to those who hath not the love and the time to care for a dependent human being. 

A newborn baby and an infant are in need of assistance from others to eat and drink, something this is the case frequently with those are weakened by some illness or have suffered a stroke or have a debilitating illness. We are toprovide to others what we would provide to Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ in the very Flesh, which is precisely what so many saints, including Saints John of God and the Saint Camillus de Lellis, whose feast was celebrated yesterday, Thursday, July 18, 2019, did with such selfless concern and compassion for the sick and suffering.

Saint Camillus de Lellis was a saint who was "made" by God directly after a life of sin. He was a headstrong, heartless young boy who was cruel to other children. He threw a rock at a girl who told him that she was going to report his bad behavior to her parents, telling her, "Good. You can tell them about this, too!" before launching his projectile. He caused great heartache to his saintly mother, who prayed the same kind of copious tears that Saint Monica had said for her wayward son, Augustine.

There was a difference, though: Saint Augustine lived a life of wanton pleasures before he was baptized while Saint Camillus de Lellis had had the benefit of infant Baptism. Camillus de Lellis simply rejected the graces that God sent to him through the loving hands of Our Lady, she who is the Mediatrix of All Graces, preferring his disordered will to the love of God. There was another difference: Saint Camillus's bad behavior brought his mother to an earthly death while he was yet a young boy. This made it possible for her, purged of whatever self-love and faults she possessed, to pray for her more perfectly from eternity than she ever could while on the face of this earth. It was those prayers from our saint's mother, no doubt, that caused God to intervene directly in his life.

Camillus de Lellis gambled so much that he quite literally lost the shirt off of his back once. He would engage in fisticuffs at the drop of a hat. God had to intervene directly in his life to change it as Camillus de Lellis, despite all of his terrible sins that were driven by his pride and his anger and his greed, had been a chosen soul all along although no one looking at him prior to God's direct intervention would have known that this was so. Perhaps it wise for me to "get out of the way" in order to let Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., paint the picture with his exquisite perfection as his introduction takes us to the account of the saint's life as found in The Roman Breviary

The Holy Spirit, who desires to raise our souls above this earth, does not therefore despise our bodies. The whole man is His creature and His temple, and it is the whole man He must lead to eternal happiness. The Body of the Man-God was His masterpiece in material creation; the divine delight He takes in that perfect Body He extends in a measure to ours; for that same Body, framed by Him in the womb of the most pure Virgin, was from the very beginning the model on which ours was formed. In the re-creation which followed the Fall, the Body of the Man-God was the means of the world's redemption; and the economy of our salvation requires that the virtue of His saving Blood should not reach the soul except through the body, the divine sacraments being all applied to the soul through the medium of the senses. Admirable is the harmony of nature and grace; the latter so honours the material part of our being that she will not draw the soul without it to the light and to heaven. For in the unfathomable mystery of sanctification, the senses do not merely serve such as a passage; they themselves experience the power of the sacraments, like the higher faculties of which they are the channels; and the sanctified soul finds the humble companion of her pilgrimage already associated with her in the dignity of divine adoption, which will cause the glorification of our bodies after the resurrection. Hence the care given to the very body of our neighbour is raised to the nobleness of holy charity; for being inspired by this charity, such acts partake of the love wherewith our heavenly Father surrounds even the members of His beloved children. I was sick, and ye visited Me, our Lord will say on the last day, showing that even the infirmities of our fallen state in this land of exile, the bodies of those whom He deigns to call His brethren, share in the dignity belonging by right to the eternal, only-begotten Son of the Father. The Holy Spirit, too, whose office it is to recall to the Church all the words of our Saviour, has certainly not forgotten this one; the seed, falling into the good earth of chosen souls, has produced a hundredfold the fruits of grace and heroic self-devotion. Camillus of Lellis received it lovingly, and the mustard-seed became a great tree offering its shade to the birds of the air. The Order of Regular Clerks, Servants of the Sick, or of Happy Death, deserves the gratitude of mankind; as a sign of heaven's approbation, angels have more than once been seen assisting its members at the bedside of the dying.

The liturgical account of St. Camillus' life is so full that we need to add nothing to it:

Camillus was a born at Bachianico, a town of the diocese of Chieti. He was descended from the noble family of the Lelli, and his mother was sixty years old at the time of his birth. While she was with child with him, she dreamt that she gave birth to a little boy, who was signed on the breast with a cross, and was the leader of a band of children, wearing the same sign. As a young man he followed the career of arms, and gave himself up to a time of worldly vices, but in his twenty-sixth year he was so enlightened by heavenly grace, and seized with so great a sorrow for having offended God, that on the spot, shedding a flood of tears, he firmly resolved unceasingly to to wash away the stains of his past life, and to put on the new man. Therefore on the very day of his conversion, which happened to be the feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, he hastened to the Friars Minor, who are called Capuchins, and begged most earnestly to be admitted to their number. His request was granted on this and on a subsequent occasion, but each time a horrible ulcer, from which he had suffered before, broke out again upon his leg; wherefore he humbly submitted himself to the designs of Divine Providence, which was preparing him for greater things, and conquering himself he twice laid aside the Franciscan habit, which he had twice asked for and obtained.

He set out for Rome and was received into the hospital called that of the Incurables. His virtues became so well known that the management of the institution was entrusted to him, and he discharged it with the greatest integrity and a truly paternal solicitude. He esteemed himself the servant of all the sick, and was accustomed to make their beds, to wash them, to heal their sores, and to aid them in their last agony with his prayers and pious exhortations. In discharging those offices he gave striking proofs of his wonderful patience, unconquered fortitude, and heroic charity. But when he perceived how great an advantage the knowledge of letters would be would be to him in assisting those in danger of death, to whose service he had devoted his life, he was not ashamed at the age of thirty-two to return again to school and to learn the first elements of grammar among children. Being afterwards promoted in due order to the priesthood, he was joined by several companions and in spite of the opposition attempted by the enemy of the human race, laid the foundation of the Congregation of Regular Clerks, Servants of the Sick. In this work Camillus was wonderfully strengthened by a heavenly voice coming from an image of Christ crucified, which, by an admirable miracle loosing the hands from the wood, stretched them out towards him. He obtained the approbation of his order from the Apostolic See. Its members bind themselves by a fourth and very arduous vow--namely, to minister to the sick, even those infected with the plague. St. Philip Neri, who was his confessor, attested how pleasing this institution was to God, and how greatly it contributed toward the salvation of souls; for he declared that he often saw angels suggesting words to disciples of Camillus, when they were assisting those in their agony.

When he had thus bound himself more strictly than before to the service of the sick, he devoted himself with marvellous ardour to watching over their interest, by night and by day, till his last breath. No labour could tire him, no peril of his life could affright him. He became all to all, and claimed for himself the lowest offices, which he discharged promptly and joyfully, in the humblest manner, often on bended knees, as though he saw Christ Himself present in the sick. In order to be more at the command of all in need, he of his own accord laid aside the general government of the order, and deprived himself of the heavenly delights with which he was inundated during contemplation. His fatherly love for the unfortunate shone out with greatest brilliancy when Rome was suffering first a contagious distemper, and then from a great scarcity of provisions; and also when a dreadful plague was ravaging Nola in Campania. In a word, he was consumed with so great a love of God and his neighbour that he was called an angel, and merited to be helped by the angels in different dangers which threatened him on his journeys. He was endowed with the gift of prophecy, and the grace of healing, and he cold read the secrets of hearts. By his prayers he at one time multiplied food, and at another changed water into wine. At length, worn out by watching, fasting, and ceaseless labour, he seemed to be nothing but skin and bone. he endured courageously five long and troublesome sicknesses, which he used to call the "Mercies of the Lord"; and, strengthened by the sacraments, with the sweet names of Jesus and Mary on his lips, he fell asleep in our Lord, while these words were being said: "May Christ Jesus appear to thee with a sweet and gracious countenance." He died at Rome, at the hour he had foretold, on the day before the Ides of July, in the year of salvation 1614, the sixty-fifth of his age. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, Volume XIII, Time After Pentecost: Book IV, pp. 126-130.) 

Saint Camillus de Lellis may have laid aside the Franciscan habit. He lived out the spirit of Saint Francis of Assisi, however, until he had breathed his last on July 14, 1614, as it was in the spirit of the Seraphic Saint, who had led a carefree, frivolous (but not sinful) life as a youth, that our saint of charity to all who needed it regardless of their circumstances or the state of their immortal souls at the time he found them in need exhibited throughout the course of his inspirational service to the sick and the dying.

Saint Camillus de Lellis never viewed someone who was sick as a “burden” and he never viewed them in a utilitarian cost-benefit manner. He gave to the suffering as he knew he was serving Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ mystically through them. In other words, Saint Camillus de Lellis was the antithesis of the worldly wise Azetecs, who are enabled all too frequently by “well-trained” theological “experts” who have never met a “brain dead” person they did not want to see killed off, and he approached the sick, the suffering and dying in a manner that puts to shame the “palliative care” industry whose minions are trained to incant soothing euphemisms robotically to convince patients and/or their relatives in a program of “care” that winds up killing them in the name of “compassion.”

The situation that arose in India last month may be unique in that the man who had been pronounced “dead” after his family’s money had run out, Mohammad Furqan, awoke at his own funeral. However, there is nothing unique about those being declared “brain dead” awakening to defy the “experts” and to correct, if that is possible, the mistaken positions taken by theological “experts,” about the absolute fraud that is the medical industry’s manufactured, money-making myth of “brain death.”

Here is but another example:

T. Scott Marr's children decided to pull the plug after he was declared brain dead. They said their final good-byes and were preparing his services.

But the "miracle man" had a different plan. After being unconscious for two days, he unexpectedly woke up after his doctors thought there was no hope of recovery and his breathing tubes were pulled out. Now, he's recovering at home after weeks of therapy at an Omaha hospital.

"This whole thing has been a miracle from God," Marr told KMTV. "I did not die. I didn't have to die. I'm back here, and I hope to give people some comfort and hope that if they are, in fact, going through anything like that, that it's a safe place."

In the two days Marr was unconscious, he said he had what some might call a near-death experience. He saw his late father walking along the street.

“He said, 'What are you doing here?' And I said I’m looking to work and he said, 'There’s no work here, you better get your butt home,'” Marr told local reporters.

His son, Drew, found his father Dec. 12 unresponsive, but still breathing, on his bed. He was rushed to Methodist Hospital and placed on a breathing machine in intensive care.

Doctors initially said the former basketball announcer had suffered a stroke, but they were worried that his case had reached an irreversible process, leading to brain death.

"Each time we would leave the hospital, we would kind of say our final goodbyes," his daughter, Preston Marr, told Fox News. "We thought we would never hear his voice again, see him open his eyes, and see who we were."

But all the changed after the plug was pulled. Preston was the first to see him begin to miraculously respond.

"It was surreal and my heart is beating out of my chest just thinking about it again," she said, "I keep replaying it in my head of him laying in his hospital bed, then smiling, and then moving his thumbs and then wiggling his toes, and then saying I love you."

She said it's almost unbelievable that he's well enough now to make himself peanut butter toast.

"It takes me a minute to be in the moment and truly realize what all this really means because the alternative would be he would be gone and I don't," she said, "...just to be with him and he's walking around. It's just really incredible."

After doctors did further testing, they found that Marr was suffering from a rare condition called posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome, or PRES, which is commonly caused by high blood pressure. But the doctors said the severe swelling Marr experienced was not atypical.

While miraculous, the process of recovery is still ongoing.

"He had to get his strength back," said Preston, a registered nurse at the stroke unit at Immanuel Medical Center. "He still needs 24-hour supervision right now because his brain went through a lot. He's having to retrain his brain."

The family is pitching in to care for Marr. Lauren, his other daughter, who is currently in nursing school, is also helping to care for their father.

GoFundMe page was set up to help pay for medication, hospital bills, and other expense.

Marr says the entire process strengthened what little faith he had.

“I’m not an extremely religious person. I don’t go to church every Sunday,” Marr told the World-Herald. “But I do believe in God. I believe with all my heart. And now this is just proof for me that everything I’ve ever heard is true. That he loves me. That he’s right there for me. It was pretty much a miracle.” (Nebraksa man says his miraculous recovery after plug was pulled is proof of God.)

Well, even though the people involved in this amazing story do not realize that “brain death” is a fraud, they are eye witnesses to one of the proofs that “brain death” is entirely fraudulent.  

Dr. Paul Byrne, whose courageous work has been noted on this site so many times before (see, for example, No Room In The Inn For Jahi McMathEvery Once In A WhileDr. Paul Byrne on Brain DeathStories That Speak For Themselves,Headless Corpses?First-Hand Evidence Of FraudWhy Should Death Of Any Kind Get In The Way?Grand IllusionEvery Once In A While,Canada's Death Panels: A Foretaste of ObamaCare, Someone Was Killed To Keep "J.R." AliveTrying To Find Ever New And Inventive Ways To Snatch BodiesDispensing With The Pretense of "Brain Death"Good Rule Of Thumb: Reject What Conciliarists PromoteTo Avoid Suffering In The Name Of CompassionJust Obey GodDeath To Us AllChoosing To Live In States Of ApoplexyObamaDeathCare, Dr. Byrne's Jahi is alive -- praise the Lord and pass the ammunition and an article that attorneys recently tried to use against Dr. Byrne in court in Reno, Nevada, Dr. Paul A. Byrne's Refutation), spoke at a conference in Rome, Italy, two months ago to explain the myth of "brain death" as it was "diagnosed" in the case of Jahi McMath, who had gone in for tonsil surgery and then developed a brain hermorrhage before being declared "brain dead" a week later:

ROME, Italy, July 12, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — In December 2013, a 13-year-old girl named Jahi McMath had tonsil surgery. Following the procedure, she had a brain hemorrhage. Less than a week later, she was declared “brain-dead” by the state of California. In 2018, her heart stopped beating, and she was declared dead by the state of New Jersey.

One girl. Two death certificates.

Dr. Paul Byrne, a U.S.-based neonatologist who treated Jahi — and has treated many other “brain-dead” persons throughout his long career — spoke at a conference held in Rome on May 20 about her harrowing experience.

The hospital employees “despised” her and “wouldn’t give her any nutrition,” Byrne told attendees at the gathering, which was organized by a Catholic lay group called The John Paul II Academy for Human Life and the Family.

Byrne said the way Jahi was looked down upon is basically par for the course when it comes to those the medical establishment deems “brain-dead.”

The doctors and nurses in California “wouldn’t call her by name,” he said. She “had no nutrition for three weeks.” When the hospital let her leave, they didn’t even let one sheet go with her, he added.

Jahi was eventually moved to New Jersey and given thyroid treatment. She began responding to the medicine and gave a thumbs up after hearing her mother’s voice. But it was too late. Years of poor medical care had taken its toll.

Jahi’s case is not unique. Byrne, who runs the Life Guardian Foundation, an organization that advocates against organ donation, also shared other heartbreaking stories about some of the patients he’s tried to help over the years, sometimes covertly.

“They moved very quickly” to declare Taquisha McKitty brain-dead, Byrne said. McKitty was a 27-year-old woman who overdosed on drugs in 2017. “In the United State, they get more organs from overdoses of drug abuse than accidents and gunshot wounds combined. It’s become a way of getting organs.”

Byrne played for the conference a video of McKitty in her hospital bed moving her legs, arms, and entire body. She was “deficient in thyroid,” which is essential to brain health, he said. They “refused to give her thyroid.” She was also low in Vitamin D. She died a year later.

The common theme of Byrne’s experiences is that American doctors do not treat “brain-dead” persons because the medical community wants to harvest their organs, the doctors don’t know how to treat them, or they are told by the hospitals they work for to deny care. Cost is also a factor, he said.

“These patients do not get any treatment … the doctors won’t do anything,” he exclaimed. “Blood counts, electrolyte [tests] … nutrition.”

“You’ve got to know how awful it is for the mother, the father, of these children. They suffered terribly. They see what it is with their children. They go to the hospital thinking that they’re going to get treatment, and they find themselves in this situation.”

Byrne shared a story of a father who offered $100,000 to any doctor who would treat his “brain-dead” son. Not one American doctor came forward, so he took his son to Guatemala, where he was treated with thyroid medication and a tracheotomy. The boy improved, but when he was moved to a hospital in New Jersey, they refused even to do a blood count. The boy eventually died.

Guatemala doctors “looked at all patients as living patients,” Byrne said. “The doctors … took excellent care of the patients.” In the U.S., things are different.

During his presentation, Byrne aired for the first time in public a video interview he did with a formerly “brain-dead” man named Zach Dunlap.

Dunlap was in an accident over 10 years ago. Declared “brain-dead” by doctors, he was just minutes away from having his organs harvested when his cousin, an off-duty nurse, began doing various tests on him in the hospital room. Dunlap’s eyes dilated when a light was shone into them, and he grabbed one of the nurses when his reflexes were tested.

“It wasn’t his time,” his cousin told Dr. Byrne. “I just knew it.”

Byrne, a devout Catholic, interviewed Dunlap’s wife and daughter as well as Zach in the video. He told them not to be organ donors because organ donation is what nearly killed Zach.

“It makes sense not to be an organ donor because every organ that’s transplanted is taken from a living person,” he said. “There are no organs you can get from a cadaver. You can get some tissues, but that differs from organs. Every organ that’s transplanted comes from a living person, and that living person is either no longer on earth or not the same as the person was before.” (Dr. Paul Byrne exposes how poorly the medical community treats "brain dead" patients.)

Dr, Byrne relies upon facts, not fake medical science nor fake medical diagnoses nor fake theology that is nothing other than pure utilitarianism. One cannot get bodily organs from a cadaver, and it is because even the modern Azetecs know this that their predecessors had to invent the myth of "brain death" in 1968 out of whole cloth as an ex post facto justification for the heart transplants that had been performed in South Africa by Drs. Christiaan and Marius Barnaard on December 3, 1967m and in the United States of America by Dr. Norman Shumway, three days later. I suppose, however, that it is easier for people to believe in the "medical professionals" and their myths about "brain death" than it is to believe that those who support the execution of the innocent preborn in the womb are liars and murderers in se and thus have no credibility whatsoever.

that Dom Prosper Gueranger wrote in honor of Saint Camillus de Lellis is one that we should be our own to honor the works of charity he performed and to help us understand that Our Lord Himself will demand a reckoning from those who do see disabled human beings as "burdens" to be "sent to God" by myth makers who make lots and lots of money by perpetuating the falsehood that the vivisection of human beings for their bodily organs is "giving the gift of of life" when it is actually a wicked work of body-snatching monsters: 

Angel of charity, by what wonderful paths did the Divine Spirit lead thee! The vision of thy pious mother remained long unrealized; before taking on thee the the holy Cross and enlisting comrades under that sacred sign, thou didst serve the odious tyrant, who will have none but slaves under his standard, and the passing of gambling was wellnigh thy ruin. O Camillus, remembering the danger thou didst incur, have pity on the unhappy slaves of passion; free them from the madness wherewith they risk, to the caprice of chance, their goods, their honour, and their peace in this world and in the next. Thy history proves the power of grace to break the strongest ties and alter the most inveterate habits: may these men, like thee, turn their bent towards God, and change their rashness into love of the dangers to which holy charity may expose them! For charity, too, has its risks, even the peril of life, as the Lord charity laid down His life for us: a heavenly game of chance, which thou didst play so well that the very angels applauded thee. But what is the hazarding of earthly life compared with the prize reserved for the winner.

According to the commandment of the Gospel, read by the Church in thy honour, may we all, like thee, love our brethren as Christ has loved us! Few, says St. Augustine, love another to this end, that God may be all in all. Thou, O Camillus, having this love, didst exercise it by preference towards those suffering members of Christ's mystic Body, in whom Our Lord revealed Himself more clearly to thee, and in whom His kingdom was nearer at hand. Therefore has the Church in gratitude chosen thee, together with John of God, to be the guardians of those homes for the suffering which she has founded with a mother's thoughtful care. Do honour to that Mother's confidence. Protect the hospitals against the attempts of an odious and incapable secularization which, in its eagerness to lose the souls, sacrifices even the corporal well-being of the unhappy mortals committed to the care of its evil philanthropy. In order to meet our increasing miseries, multiply thy sons, and make them worthy to be assisted by angels. Wherever we may be in this valley of exile when the hour of our last struggle sounds, make use of they precious  prerogative which the holy liturgy honours to-day; help us, by the spirit of holy love, to vanquish the enemy and attain unto the heavenly crown. (Dom Prosper Gueranger, The Liturgical Year, Volume XIII, Time After Pentecost: Book IV, pp. 130-131.) 

God found Saint Camillus de Lellis where he was: in the gutter. He did not leave him there. He showed him how to become a great saint by living these words to their fullest meaning:

[7] But the end of all is at hand. Be prudent therefore, and watch in prayers. [8] But before all things have a constant mutual charity among yourselves: for charity covereth a multitude of sins. [9] Using hospitality one towards another, without murmuring, [10] As every man hath received grace, ministering the same one to another: as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. (1 Peter 4: 7-10.) 

Saint Camillus de Lellis did not think that anyone was “dead” until he had taken his last breath, and he provided for the supernatural and temporal needs and the sick and dying up to and including the point of death and thereafter by means of praying for their souls after death.

The merchants of death in the world stand in stark contrast to Saint Camillus de Lellis and to another great apostle of Charity, whose feast day is celebrated today in the Catholic Church (not the counterfeit church of conciliarism), Saint Vincent de Paul, the founder of the Congregation of the Mission, whose charity for the poor and outcast was based in his love for Our Lord as He revealed Himself to us exclusively through His Catholic Church:

Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., contrasted Saint Vincent de Paul’s true charity with the false, narcissistic philanthropy of his own day one hundred sixty years ago:

But from the bagnio of Tunis, where he was a slave, to the ruined provinces for which he found millions of money, all the labours he underwent for the relief of every physical suffering were inspired by his zeal for the apostolate: by caring for the body, he strove to reach and succor the soul. At a time when men rejected the Gospel while striving to retain its benefits, certain wise men attribute Vincent’s charity to philosophy. Nowadays they go further still, and in order to logically deny the author of the works they deny the works themselves. But if any there be who still hold the former opinion, let them listen in his own words: What is done for charity’s sake is done for God. It is not enough for us to love God ourselves; our neighbor must also love him also must love him; neither can we love our neighbour as ourselves unless we procure for him the good we are bound to desire for ourselves – viz., divine love, which unties us to our Sovereign Good. We must love our neighbour as the image of God and the object of His love, and must try to make men love their Creator in return, and love one another also with mutual charity for the love of God, who so loved them as to deliver His own Son to death for them. But let us, I beg of you, look upon this Divine Saviour as a perfect pattern of the charity we must bear to our neighbour.'

The theophilanthropy of a century ago had no more right than had an atheist or a deist philosophy to rank Vincent, as it did among the great men of its Calendar. Not nature, nor the pretended divinities of false science, but the God of Christians, the God who became Man to save us by taking our miseries upon Himself, was the sole inspirer of the greatest modern benefactor of the human race, whose favourite saying was: 'Nothing pleases me except in Jesus Christ.' He observed the right order of charity, striving for the reign of his Divine Master, first in his own soul, then in others; and, far from acting of his own accord by the dictates of reason alone, he would rather have remained hidden for ever in the face of the Lord, and have left but an unknown name behind him.

'Let us honour,' he wrote, 'the hidden state of the Son of God. There is our centre; there is what He requires of us for the present, for the future, for ever; unless His Divine Majesty makes known in His own unmistakable way that He demands something else of us. Let us especially honour this divine Master's moderation in action. He would not always do all that He could do, in order to teach us to be satisfied when it is not expedient to do all that we are able, but only as much as is seasonable to charity and conformable to the Will of God. How royally do those honour our Lord who follow His holy Providence, and do not try to be beforehand with it! Do not, and rightly wish your servant to do nothing without your orders? And if this is reasonable between man and man, how much more so between the Creator and the creature! ' Vincent, then was anxious according to his own expression, to 'keep alongside of Providence,' and not to outstep it Thus he waited seven years before accepting the offers of the General de Gondi's wife, and founding his establishment of the Missions. Thus, too, when his faithful coadjutrix, Mademoiselle Le Gras, felt called to devote herself to the spiritual service of the Daughters of Charity, then living without any bond or common life, as simple assistants to the ladies of quality who the man of God assembled in his Confraternities, he first tried her for a very long time. 'As to this occupation,' he wrote, in answer to her repeated petitions. 'I beg of you, once for all, not to think of it until the Lord makes known His will. You wish to become the servant of these poor girls, and God wants you to be His servant. For God's sake, Mademoiselle, let your heart imitate the tranquility of our Lord's heart, and then it will be fit to serve Him. The Kingdom of God is peace in the Holy Ghost; He will reign in you if you are in peace. Be so then, if you please, and do honour to the God of peace and love.'

What a lesson given to the feverish zeal of an age like ours by a man whose life was so full ! How often, in what we can call good works, do human pretensions sterilize grace by contradicting the Holy Ghost! Whereas Vincent de Paul, who considered himself 'a poor worm creeping on the earth, not knowing where he goes, but only seeking to be hidden in Thee, my God, who art all his desire,' – the humble Vincent saw his work prosper far more than a thousand others, and almost without his being aware of it. Towards the end of his long life he said to his daughters; 'It is Divine Providence that set your congregation on its present footing. Who else was it, I ask you? I can find no other. We never had such an intention. I was thinking of it only yesterday, and I said to myself Is it you who had the thought of founding a Congregation of Daughters of Charity? Oh ! Certainly not. Is it Mademoiselle Le Gras? Not at all. O my daughters, I never thought of it, your “saeur servant” never thought of it, neither did M. Portail (Vincent's first and most faithful companion in the Mission. Then it is God who thought of it for you' Him, therefore, we must call the Founder of your Congregation, for truly we cannot recognize any other.'

Although with delicate docility, Vincent could no more forestall the actions of God than an instrument the hand that uses it, nevertheless, once the divine impulse was given, he could not endure the least delay in following it, nor suffer any other sentiment  in his soul but the most absolute confidence. He wrote again with his charming simplicity, to the helpmate given him by God; 'You are always giving way a little to human feelings, thinking that everything is going to ruin as soon as you see me ill. O woman of little faith, why have you not more confidence and more submission to the guidance and example of Jesus Christ? This Saviour of the world entrusted the well-being of the whole Church to God His Father; and you, for a handful of young women, evidently raised up and gathered together by His providence, you fear the He will fail you! Come, come, Mademoiselle, you must humble yourself before God.'

No wonder that faith, the only possible guide of such a life, the imperishable foundation of all that he was for his neighbour and in himself, was, in the eyes of Vincent de Paul, the greatest of treasures. He who had pity for every suffering, even though well deserved; who, by an heroic fraud, took the place of a galley-slave in chains, was a pitiless foe to heresy, and could not rest till he had obtained either the banishment or the chastisement of its votaries. Clement XII, in the Bull of canonization, bears witness to this, in speaking of the pernicious error of Jansenism, which our saint was one of the first to denounce and prosecute. Never, perhaps, were these words of Holy Writ better verified: The simplicity of the just shall guide them: and the deceitfulness of the wicked shall destroy them. (Prov. Xi, 3.) Though this sect expressed, later on, a supreme disdain for Monsieur Vincent, it had not always been of that mind. 'I am,' he said to a friend, 'most particularly obliged to bless and thank God, for not having suffered the first and principal professors of that doctrine, men of my acquaintance and friendship, to be able to draw me to their opinions. I cannot tell you what pains they took, and what reasons they propounded to me; I objected to them, amongst other things, the authority of the Council of Trent, which is clearly opposed to them; and seeing that they still continued, I instead of answering them, quietly recited my Credo; and that is how I have remained firm in the Catholic faith.'

But it is time to give the full account which Holy Church reads today in her liturgy. We will only remind our readers that in the year 1883, the fiftieth anniversary of the foundation of the St. Vincent de Paul Conferences at Paris, the Sovereign Pontiff Leo XIII proclaimed our saint the patron of the societies of charity in France. 

Vincent de Paul was a Frenchman by nation, and was born at (Ranquines, in the parish of) Pouy, not far from Dax in Gascony, (upon the 24th day of April, in the year of salvation 1576.) From a little child he showed remarkable charity towards the poor. His father removed him from keeping his cattle, in order to give him a school education, and he learnt earthly things at Dax, and theology both at Toulouse and at Saragossa. He took Priest's orders, and a degree in Divinity. In 1605, he was taken prisoner by Mahommedan pirates, who carried him off, and sold him for a slave in Africa. In his slavery he converted his owner, who was an apostate, back to Christ. Under the protection of the Mother of God, Vincent escaped from Barbary. He first visited the thresholds of the Apostles, and afterwards returned to France. He was the saintly Rector first of the Parish of Clichi, and afterwards of that of Chatillon. He was appointed by the King, Chaplain General for the galleys of France, and worked with extraordinary zeal for the health of the souls both of those who commanded and of the convicts who rowed. He was made Superior of the Nuns of the Visitation by St Francis de Sales, and discharged this duty for about forty years, with a wisdom which so approved itself to the judgment of their holy Founder, that he was used to say he knew no worthier Priest than Vincent.

The preaching of the Gospel to the poor, especially peasants, was the work at which he toiled unweariedly, till he was disabled by age. To this special work he bound himself and the members of the Congregation which he founded under the missionary Congregation of Secular Priests, by a perpetual vow approved by the Holy See. How great were his labours for bettering the discipline of the clergy, is attested by the building of Seminaries for the final education of young clerks, the number of meetings of Priests to discuss holy things, and the religious exercises preparatory to Ordination, for which, as well as for godly retreats by laymen, he wished that the houses belonging to his Institute should be always freely open. To spread wider the growth of faith and godliness, he sent his Gospel labourers not only into the several provinces of France, but also into Italy, Poland, Scotland, and Ireland, and also to Barbary and India. He assisted Lewis XIII. on his death-bed, and the Queen Anne of Austria, mother of Lewis XIV., put him upon the young King's Council of Conscience during the Regency, in which position it was his unceasing effort that none but the most worthy should be named to churches and monasteries, that civil contests, duels, and creeping false doctrines, from which himself shrank as soon as he met them, should be put down, and that all men should yield the obedience which was due to the decisions of the Apostolic See.

There was no kind of misery which he did not strive with fatherly tenderness to relieve. Christians groaning in Mahommedan slavery, foundlings, deformed children, young maidens exposed to danger, houseless nuns, fallen women, convicts sent to the galleys, sick foreigners, disabled workmen, lunatics, and beggars without number, all these he relieved, and devoutly housed in divers charitable institutions which remain to this day. When Lorraine, Champagne, Picardy, and other districts were desolated by plague, famine, and war, he made immense efforts for their relief. He founded many charitable societies, to find out and succour the unfortunate. Among these are remarkable that of Matrons, and that of Sisters of Charity which hath been so widely spread. By those of the Cross, of Providence, and of St. Guinevere he aimed at bringing up young girls as school - mistresses. Amid all these and other most anxious business-matters, he remained always looking simply to God, kind to all, true to himself, plain, upright, and lowly. From all honours, riches, and pleasures, he ever shrank, and was heard to say, that nothing gave him any pleasure, except in Christ Jesus, Whom it was his wish in all things to follow. With a body worn out with hardships, work, and old age, he gently fell asleep in the house of St. Lazarus at Paris, the chief house of the Congregation of the Missions, upon the 27th day of September, in the year of salvation 1660, and of his own age the 85th. He was famous on account of his life, his works, and his miracles, and Clement XII. inscribed his name among those of the saints, appointing for his Feastday the 19th day of the month of July. Finally, at the earnest prayer of many prelates, Leo XIII. proclaimed and established this hero of charity, illustrious for his services to all classes of men, as the patron before God in heaven of all charitable societies throughout the whole Catholic world which derive their origin in any way from his institution. (Matins, The Divine Office, Feast of Saint Vincent de Paul.)

How full a sheaf dost thou bear, O Vincent, as thou ascendest laden with blessing from earth to thy true country ! O thou, the most simple of men, though living in an age of spendours, thy renown far surpasses the brilliant reputation which fascinated thy contemporaries. The true glory of that century, and the only one that will remain to it when time shall be no more, is to have seen, in its earlier part, saints powerful alike in faith and love, stemming the tide of Satan's conquests, and restoring to the soil of France, made barren by heresy, the fruitlessness of its brightest days. And now,  two centuries and more after thy labours, the work of the harvest is still being carried on by thy sons and daughters, aided by new assistants who also acknowledge thee for their inspirer and father. Thou art now in the kingdom of heaven where grief and tears are no more yet day by day  thou still receivest the grateful thanks of the suffering and the sorrowful.

Reward our confidence in thee by fresh benefits. No name so much as thine inspires respect for the Church in our days of blasphemy. And yet those who deny Christ now go so far as to endeavor to stifle the testimony which the poor have always rendered to Him on thy account. Wield, against these ministers of hell the two-edged sword, wherewith it is given to the saints to avenge God in the midst of the nations: treat them as thou didst the heretics of thy day; make them either deserve pardon or suffer punishment, be converted or be reduced by heaven to the impossibility of doing harm. Above all, take care of the unhappy beings whom these satanic men deprive of spiritual help in their last moments. Elevate thy daughters to the high level required by the present sad circumstances, when men would have their devotedness to deny its divine origin and cast of the guise of religion. If the enemies of the poor man can snatch from his death-bed the sacred sign of salvation, no rule, no law, no power of this world or the next, can cast out Jesus from the soul of the Sister of Charity, or prevent his name from passing from her heart to her lips: neither death nor hell neither fire no flood can stay him, says the Canticle of Canticles.

Thy sons, too, are carrying on thy work of evangelization; and even in our days their apostolate is crowned with their zeal; develop in them thy own spirit of unchanging devotedness to the Church and submission to the supreme Pastor, Forward all the new works of charity springing out of thy own, and placed by Rome to thy credit under thy patronage. May they gather their heat from the divine fire which thou didst kindle on the earth; may they ever s4ek first the kingdom of God and His justice, never deviating, in the choice of means, from the principle thou didst lay down for the, of 'judging, speaking, and acting, exactly as the Eternal Wisdom of God, clothed in our weak flesh, judged, spoke, and acted.' (Dom Prosper Gueranger, O.S.B., The Liturgical Year, Volume 13, Time After Pentecost, Book IV, pp. 138-146.)

As we know, of course, the Vincent Fathers and the Daughters of Charity have succumbed to the conciliar revolution. I saw this first-hand in the immediate aftermath of the “Second” Vatican Council while an undergraduate at St. John’s University, Jamaica, Borough of Queens, City of New York, New York, from February of 1970 to January of 1973 (summer sessions were just beginning back in those days, and I availed myself of them to graduate in three years). Although I had much to learn about that insidious council, to which I paid no attention during my high school years (1965-1969) at Oyster Bay High School, Oyster Bay, New York, I knew that what was being taught by some of the theology and philosophy professors had nothing to do with the solidity of the Faith as I had learned it at St. Aloysius School, Great Neck, New York (1956-1962). Bizarre is the only word to describe some of those course, including one taught by a Passionist who believed that Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ was but a mere allegorical figure (he required us to read the indecipherable works of Joseph Ratzinger, Yves Congar, Henri de Lubac, Karl Rahner, and Edward Schillebeeckx). The situation got worse over time (see the anecdote in the appendix below), and I can’t even imagine what it has become like at my undergraduate alma mater since the ascendancy of the Argentine Apostate. Sadly, DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, is one of the major hotbeds of conciliar revolutionary activity, including active support of the homosexualist agenda (see, for example, "Diversity Partners"), and there is also a like association at the St. John's University School of Law that is listed on the university's official website (Celebrating Pervesity at the Law School Alma Mater of Mario Cuomo, Hugh Leo Carey, Ronald Brown, and Charles Rangel).

How about praying to Saint Camillus de Lellis and to Saint Vincent de Paul help us eschew worldliness once and for all so that by our prayers, penances, fastings and mortification we may truly have hearts conformed to the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary that overfloweth with unsurpassed love with such pitiable creatures as ourselves?

May every Communion we make and every Rosary we pray help to bring about a true increase of the charity of Christ the King into our immortal souls as we become more detached from the world and more attached to the joys of Heaven itself.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us!

Vivat Christus RexViva Cristo Rey!

Saint Joseph, pray for us.

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us. 

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.

Saint Camillus de Lellis, pray for us.

Saint Symphorosa on her sons, pray for us.

Saint Vincent de Paul, pray for us.

Appendix

From a 2009 Article, “Ashamed of the NAME Above All Names

Ah, we must remember that the covering up of the monograph IHS at Georgetown University is so very symbolic of how the true Catholic Faith has been covered up by the conciliarists in their perverse liturgies, in their doctrines, in their chancery offices, in their parishes and in their "educational" institutions. As I have noted in my articles about the scandal of the University of Notre Dame du Lac's pending award of an honorary doctorate to the pro-abort Barack Hussein Obama, all but a handful of the formerly Catholic universities and colleges in conciliar captivity have divested themselves of their "official" connection to the conciliar church, placing their actual, de jure control in the hands of a board of trustees that is not answerable to the local conciliar "bishop." This has permitted these institutions to accept Federal and state grant monies and to take down voluntarily what Communist regimes in the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Eastern Europe and Red China and North Vietnam and Cuba have had to do by force: to take down from their walls Our Blessed Lord and Saviour's Crucifix.

This covering up of the Catholic Faith at formerly Catholic institutions now under conciliar control has involved the hiring of non-Catholic professors and the recruiting of non-Catholic students so as to prevent professors who are of a mind to teach the Faith from doing so, especially by starting their class sessions with the Sign of the Cross and a confessionally Catholic prayer that would "offend" non-Catholic students. This sort of insidious attack on the honor and majesty and glory of God is a daily occurrence at these formerly Catholic institutions under conciliar control. It permeates the courses taught by most of their professors. It permeates the horrific "liturgies" offered on their campuses (and in the Newman Centers on the campuses of non-Catholic colleges and universities). It permeates the "advice" given in the "reconciliation room." It permeates the atmosphere of faculty meetings and the hiring decisions made by departmental personnel and budget committees. Believe me, this is not merely "academic" knowledge acquired from reading articles. This is first-hand knowledge that I have experienced in my own teaching career and second-hand knowledge that has been transmitted to me by various colleagues over the years.

To be sure, of course, I did my share of investigations as to the theological and liturgical corruption on Catholic educational institutions in conciliar captivity during my eight years of writing for The Wanderer. One of those investigations involved the scandal caused by the hiring in 1995 of a pro-abortion, law professor, Tanya Hernandez, who had worked for the Center for Reproductive Law and Public Policy, by the dean of the Saint John's University School of Law in Jamaica, Queen, New York, Rudolph Hasl, who had also removed a large Crucifix from the lobby of the then-named Fromkes Hall and replaced it with a mobile containing symbols of Judaism (a Star of David), Mohammedanism (the Islamic crescent) and Christianity (a cross without a cross), each of an equal size.

There was no room for Our Crucified Saviour in the lobby of the Saint John's University School of Law. The series of articles prompted the president of undergraduate alma mater, Father Donald Harrington, C.M., I was told by a student at a Wanderer Forum in Washington, D.C., in October of 1995, to rush into the office of a departmental chairman with a copy of The Wanderer in his hands, shouting "What are we going to about this? He's killing us", a shout that was loud enough to be heard by a professor, who related the story to the student who told it to me.

Nothing happened, of course, as a result of that series of stories. We can and must chronicle the attacks on the Faith that constitute a veritable pandemic within the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism. As those who foment these scandals always remain in perfectly good "canonical standing" in the structures of the counterfeit church of conciliarism, however, anyone who thinks that they are "fighting for the Faith" by seeking to "reform" these institutions from within is quite mistaken. These institutions are in the hands of apostates who are protected by apostate "bishops," who are appointed by apostate "popes."

The blame for the latest Georgetown University scandal rests squarely on the shoulders of the ethos of conciliarism, fed in very large measure by the ethos  of  the condemned heresy of Americanism that served as one of its principal building blocks before the "Second Vatican Council" and remains an essential pillar of the conciliar "faith," such as it is.