The sexual revolution, and the Baby Boomer generation that launched it, has often been said to have embraced as its motto Jeremiah’s phrase of “Non Serviam!”
“Of old time thou hast broken my yoke, thou hast burst my bands, and thou saidst: I will not serve. For on every high hill, and under every green tree thou didst prostitute thyself.”
– Jeremiah 2:20
This declaration of “I will not serve” is attributed by Jeremiah to the people of Israel in their rejection of God, but more generally it is attributed to Lucifer, in his refusal to serve the Creator-God and his desire to himself be worshiped. How appropriate then is “Non Serviam!” to describe the mentality and long term effects of the sexual revolution, with its rejection of authority, tradition and morality, its idolization of youth culture and sexual libertinism, and the wreckage it has strewn in its path.
The Baby Boomers began to reach retirement age within the last decade, and many of them grew more conservative and gained wisdom with time. Unfortunately, much of their generation is still marked by the echoes of the Non Serviam! of the 1960s. However, there is a corollary of that motto that is emerging, that could be characterized as a new proclamation: “Non servietur mihi!” To the cry “I will not serve!” many they have added “I will not be served!”
In Scripture, when Jesus talks about Judgment, He declares,
“For I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and you gave me to drink; I was a stranger, and you took me in: Naked, and you covered me: sick, and you visited me: I was in prison, and you came to me… Amen I say to you, as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren, you did it to me.” – Matthew 25:35-36, 40
The tip of the spear in the present battle regarding stealth euthanasia (i.e., hastening death by neglect or intention while pretending to provide appropriate end-of-life care) is death by dehydration. In the vast majority of cases of stealth euthanasia death occurs primarily due to withdrawal of fluids, leading to volume depletion, organ failure, shock, and death. The symptoms of dehydration, a horrible way to die, are almost always masked by narcotic analgesics, sedatives and/or antipsychotics. When stealth euthanasia in not requested but imposed, it is not only unethical and a violation of the Fifth Commandment , but also an obvious violation of the basis on which Jesus said we would be judged: “I was thirsty, and you gave me no drink.”
The Baby Boomer generation not only is quietly acquiescing to the stealth euthanasia agenda, in many instances it is requesting the legalization of assisted suicide. The same generation that idolized youth and sex with a throaty “Non Serviam!” is refusing to bear the ignobility of sickness, old age and vulnerability with a horrified and raspy “Non servietur mihi!”
One can almost hear a Boomer’s generational lament:
“I will not serve. I will not be served! Because whatsoever you do to the least of his brothers that you do unto Him. And I’ve always done everything for me, I’ve never done anything for Him. I’m not going to start now!
“Non Serviam! Non servietur mihi!”
“I’m not going to let them do unto Him by humbling myself in letting them do unto me. I will not serve. I will not suffer. I would rather die. Now and in eternity. I will shake my fist in the face of God, spit in His eye one last time before I refuse my last meal, take my last pill, draw my final breath, and make my “last act” one of eternal rebellion and thus damnation.”
This rejection of suffering and the ignobility of aging short circuits the cycle of grace that comes both in serving “the least of these brothers and sisters of mine” and in being served as “the least of these.” It makes impossible the redemptive nature of suffering described by St. Paul (2 Corinthians 11:24), “who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church.”
By accepting the suffering God does not deign to alleviate, we unite our suffering with that of Christ, for our own salvation and that of many souls who might otherwise perish. By humbling ourselves so that we may be served, those who serve us may attain Grace and thus Eternal Life.
Why accept natural death? Because instead of final rebellion it is final surrender. It says:
“Please Lord let this cup pass me by. But not my will but thy will be done. If that means taking of this cup of spoon feeding or tube feeding or IV hydration, FIAT! Thy will be done! If that means letting others care for me, giving up my rugged independence and my radical autonomy, so be it! I am not sufficient unto myself. Without God I am nothing.
If that means letting others clean my face or my behind – this, Lord, seems too much to bear! Who can ask this?!? But this too I accept. Fiat. So be it.
Thy will be done. I humble myself and permit others to serve You in my person, in my weak and vulnerable and suffering body, in the ignobility of age and sickness and weakness. I accept that where once I did for others, now I must permit others to do unto me. Because I am little, I am one of the least of these now, and in His Providence He calls forth the next generation to love selflessly and serve meekly.
I must swallow my pride. I am no longer the strong one, the hero, the warrior. I am now the one who needs protected and He calls new warriors into the arena to protect me, feed me, cloth me, bathe me. And whatever these new warriors do unto me, that they do unto Him.
I permit others to console Your Heart by consoling and caring for me in my need. That alone makes it possible to bear this cross, accept this ignobility, humble myself. Because in doing it to and for me, they do it to and for You.”
Good end of life care is based on corporal and spiritual works of Mercy, yielding spiritual riches. Euthanasia and assisted suicide prevent the graces that flow from these works from ultimately saving souls and giving honor and glory to God. They yield spiritual aridity and poverty, and they destroy souls.
Ultimately the battle against stealth euthanasia is a battle for eternal souls – our own souls, the souls of those for whom we fight and for whom we care, and the souls of those who care for us.
Outstanding exposition on the gift of life from Almighty God with the understanding that because of that gift, we are not the landlords of our bodies but rather the tenants, i.e., what God has given, man can NEVER take away.
A corollary to what is presented here can be found at the following link.
Euthanasia Replacing Medicine
http://www.personal.psu.edu/glm7/m011.htm
Many questions arise pertaining to the application of physician-assisted suicide. In particular, “How do we strike a rational balance among all considerations and ensure approximate ‘equal justice under the law,'”? Typically, advocates admit to “not having answers to these questions” but go on to offer some interesting “suggestions”.
One such suggestion that I’ve observed deserves examination. “In the absence of a power of attorney the patient-doctor relationship should be the main focus on terminal decisions. If, however, medical personnel refuse to follow patients’ wishes … they should be subject to legal liability.”
What do you do when someone in a fit of despair is heard to say, “I don’t want to live any longer”, and horror of horrors, a family member, neighbor, or “friendly” doctor just happens to take this literally? Is this carte blanche for the plug to be pulled on this individual’s life when at some future date he finds himself incapacitated in a hospital? If so, the Hippocratic oath has become the “hypocritic” oath and no medical professional could ever be trusted which is the consequence of subjecting same to “legal liabilities” for keeping patients alive. Legal liabilities for keeping patients alive, is this what advocates call a “rational balance”? If something sounds wrong, more often than not, it is. The confusion is a primary example why there are no strictly legalistic answers to these questions.
According to a Dutch Commission report, 11,800 patients were euthanized in 1990 through active measures, most often by administering lethal drugs, and 5,941 of these were performed without the patient’s consent. Only 400 patients opted for assisted suicide. An additional 13,506 patients were denied “nonfutile medical treatment with intention to terminate life,” a practice the Dutch call “euthanasia by omission” because it denies lifesaving treatment.
The great majority of these cases, 64%, involved persons who had given no prior consent to such a fate.
A Dutch physician, Richard Fenigsen, in the Journal of ISSUES AND LAW AND MEDICINE states, “Euthanasia is not just changing medicine; it is replacing medicine. This suppression of traditional medical thinking, medical working habits, and the medical way of reacting to events has an impact on both the emergency care and the long term care of patients,” he writes.
Fenigsen describes several case studies. In one teaching hospital, anesthetists stopped providing anesthesia for cardiac surgery involving Down’s syndrome patients. In other cases, hospitals and doctors refused to apply simple, lifesaving measures to patients whose lives they determined were “unlivable.”
In one case, a physician did not administer insulin to a 6-year old, mildly retarded boy who developed juvenile diabetes, thereby causing his death. In another, a doctor persuaded an elderly woman to stop taking medicine needed to treat an enlarged heart because she was living a “limited life” – she depended on several medications, needed help cleaning her house, and could walk only a few blocks at a time.
In all, 65% of Dutch doctors believe that physicians may propose active euthanasia to patients who do not ask for it themselves, according to Dutch surveys.
A study recently published in the British medical journal Lancet involved patients who expressed a desire to end their own lives — the sort of patients who would be most likely to seek a physician’s help in committing suicide. Doctors at the Dana-Farber cancer institute found that 80 percent of such individuals were suffering primarily from clinical depression, rather than from unendurable pain. With the help of modern pain-killing medication,
most terminal cancer patients can be spared from extreme suffering, the researchers point out.
Since clinical depression can be treated successfully through the use of medication and counseling, the Lancet report suggests that four out of five potential candidates for physician-assisted suicide may change their minds with appropriate medical diagnosis and treatment.
More to the point, if 80 percent of the people who opt for suicide are clinically depressed, it follows that an overwhelming majority of such individuals are not able to make clear and logical decisions. Thus, prudent lawmakers should protect these vulnerable patients from the potential
consequences of a decision they might make under the influence of an emotional disturbance.
The movement to make assisting suicides legal was made virtually inevitable by the Supreme Court’s creation of a right to abortion with abortion being nothing more than pre-natal euthanasia and euthansia being post-natal abortion.
Since we have made it legal to destroy human lives for the convenience of others via abortion, what’s to stop us from terminating dear ole Mom and Dad when they become inconvenient? After all, isn’t inconvenience, situated on the extreme ends of the bell curve of life, defined by those currently in power! Minus a moral compass rooted in recognizing universal truths, the answer is nothing.
As Judge Robert Bork has pointed out in SLOUCHING TOWARDS GOMORRAH, “It is ironic that our supposed ‘freedom’ to choose death has made it far easier for others to choose our death as the autonomy is often theirs, not ours.”
Honest question. Wouldn’t “non serviar” be simpler? “Non servietur mihi” looks like “he will not be served to me.”
And yes, the point of your article is excellent. Well said.
Thanks Robert. That seemed the obvious choice, but I’m no Latin scholar so I requested help from my son, who has studied Latin at Christendom College and will graduate in May. He in turn engaged the help of one of his professors, Andrew Beer, Ph.D, last summer (I’d been ruminating on this column for a while). The exchange is certainly worth sharing:
Dear Dr. Beer,
Salve, Magister! I hope your summer has been going well.
I have a
quick question for you about a latin phrase/translation.
I am sure you are familiar with the Latin phrase “Non
Serviam”,
Lucifer’s words of rebellion. My dad is writing an
article about
euthanasia. He is trying to make a point about how while
the Baby Boomer
generation issued its own “non serviam” in the 60’s with
the sexual
revolution, now now they are instead making a statement
of “I will not
*be* served.” He thinks that many people from that
generation basically
request euthanasia in their living wills so that they
will not have to let
themselves be taken care of when they are ill and dying.
Given this context, he asked me how you would say “I
will not be
served” in latin, so he could
use it in his article. That proved trickier
than I thought it would be. First I thought that you
would simply use the
passive form, and say “Non Serviar.” However, one
dictionary said that
there are no first or second person passive forms of
Servio. So I thought I
could say “Nemo Serviet Me”, but then another dictionary
said that servio
is intransitive.
Do you have any tips? Am I
using the words correctly? My Dad would
like to retain the word servio, to keep the relation to
the traditional
phrasing. Only the dictionary on wikipedia said anything
about there being
a restriction on the passive use of the verb servio, so
I might just go
with “non serviar”.
Thanks for your time on this rather silly matter. I look
forward to seeing
you around campus this fall.
God Bless,
Mike Kopp
Dear Mike,
I’m glad you wrote. I’ll
use this for the rest of my career as an
illustration of the
practical utility of learning Latin!
The problem is that
intransitive verbs like *servio* have no accusative
direct object that can
become the subject when you use the verb in the
passive voice. So if
Lucifer had said “I will not serve *you*”, the Latin
would be “Non serviam
*tibi*,” where *tibi* is a dative indirect object. A
more literal translation
is “I will not render service to you”. When you
use these verbs in the
passive, you still use the dative indirect object
together with what’s
called the impersonal passive (i.e. a passive verb
that has no personal subject). So “I will not be served”
is *mihi non
servietur *or *non
servietur mihi*, literally “service will not be rendered
to me”.
Your description of your
confusion on this matter and your diligence in
searching for an answer
was beautiful. I really do intend to mention it
when the topic comes up
in Latin classes. I hope you don’t mind. I’ll be
forever grateful for
this pedagogically-valuable anecdote.
God bless,
Dr. Beer
*****
And in an effort at full disclosure, my own Latin skills, despite two years of HS Latin, probably rank right up there with Steve Skojec’s, given his column here today.
Thanks very much for sharing this story! I suspected I was simply ignorant of
some grammatical nuance and I’m glad you were able to explain it to me.
My Latin improves very slowly.
Thank you again for taking
the time to address such a trivial issue, peripheral to the main point
you were trying to make. I apologize for that, my only excuse being that
I agree with everything you have to say and I think you said it very
well. Not long ago I was talking with a coworker about the work involved
in caring for new-born babies. I made the mistake of suggesting that we
leave this life much the same we come into it – having others feed us
and wipe our bottoms. The look of horror on his face as he strenuously
denied this brought that conversation to a quick end.
I also intend to cut out that lovely section beginning “Please Lord let this cup pass me by.” and save it to use as a prayer when that becomes necessary, probably sooner than I think.