Letter to the Editor from Peachtree City, GA

Published: February 10, 2005

To the Editor:

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 (her review of) Clint Eastwood’s “Million Dollar Baby” (The Georgia Bulletin, Feb. 3) 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 lifts 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. Nor 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.

Ron Chandonia

Peachtree City

Editor’s note: The USCCB rating for the movie was included in the caption of the photograph included in The Georgia Bulletin’s review. The link to the movie reviews at the USCCB Web site is included on the main page of The Georgia Bulletin’s Web site (www.georgiabulletin.org).