Alfie Evans has sadly passed on. Amidst all the ethical, religious, and political wrangling that has been going on regarding this poor boy’s life, we must take a moment to remember that though there is evil in the world, God remains. Alfie is now in God’s loving arms, where there is no pain, where there are no tears, only joy and everlasting life.
On behalf of the community at AATW, I extend our condolences to Alfie’s family, and pray that God will comfort them at this time. As the perfect Father, who beheld the suffering of His Son, Jesus Christ, and has been witness to all of mankind’s sufferings, He knows our sorrow. But He also extends hope that death will not be a final separation: Jesus died in order to defeat death and break its hold on all of us. For those who put their faith in Jesus, death is not the end, but a doorway to eternal life. In Jesus, all loved ones will be together for eternity, and our life here on earth, in this valley of tears, is but a blink in comparison with that.
In the here and now, there are lessons to learn, however. Alfie and his parents fought bravely for his life, because they valued the gift of life, however short, that God has bestowed on us all. For those who are not tragically impaired, that life involves the gift of free will, a gift of choices. Alfie’s parents put themselves through much suffering because they valued life and chose to fight on life’s behalf. For that, we honour them and remind them that God has seen their labours.
Nothing of value comes easily: it has to be won with toil and perseverance. Though we can take nothing with us when we finally depart this life, we leave much behind, gifts for those who come after. The world we live in today is the product of our ancestors’ work. It was they who first built the railways, first developed vaccines, first celebrated birthdays, first composed funeral dirges. They valued life, and fought in the dust and grime to preserve it, extend it, and give it purpose and meaning. We should too.
All Along the Watchtower 
It is a tragic case – but I deplore the ‘narrative’ put out by some elements in the (seemingly) pro-life lobby: that the doctors wanted to ‘kill’ the baby and are therefore evil and that the parents must always be in the right. The English bishops and the Archbishop of Liverpool supported the hospital: does this make them evil too? The doctors had cared for the baby for over 14 months, using all their skill and compassion. When they finally said ‘Enough is enough; we should now let nature take its course’ they were instantly vilified. But they were NOT advocating euthanasia as pro-lifers assumed – without any evidence. Almost all parents would have agreed with the doctors in a sad situation like this. When parents refuse to accept doctors’ views, the law has to be called in to arbitrate. The law was not ‘pro-death’ – but it did listen to the medical case – which the media has not been prepared to do. Alfie could have been kept alive on machines for years, given modern technology. The Church does not say this is always right; such treatment can be burdensome and in its own way cruel. I feel disheartened by the way pro-lifers have reported this sad case; they have sometimes succumbed to violence and hysteria – which makes those outside the Church think we are violent fanatics. Mark Shea, a Catholic commentator and blogger, has written well about this case. I feel the parents were manipulated by the media and by so-called Catholic legal ‘advice’ – which even wanted the doctors to be prosecuted for ‘murder’. Catholics should step back and examine all the facts before they leap to judgement.
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Indeed, this was a complex case, and we need to exercise our empathy in trying to understand how each of the players understood what they were trying to achieve and why they thought what they were doing was conducive to that end. The fact is that all our judgments are coloured by the inherent tragedy in the death of a child. There are no easy answers to these questions.
I think what many were afraid of here was the precedent it set. The fact that the parents were denied the liberty of taking their son to Italy casts a worrying shadow over how that doctrine might be expanded in other cases. Certainly in England – I don’t know about Ireland – there is a great deal of distrust towards the state at the moment.
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Yes there is distrust. Some of it justifiable – but some of it unjustifiable. The same distrust might be applied to doctors/judges/bishops. We have to avoid the sweeping, virtue-signalling judgements made by self-righteous pro-lifers here. I think a new law is needed; to work out the limits of parental ‘rights’ and to work work out the limits of doctors’ ‘rights’. Parents are not always right about their children. e.g. there was a case in the US some years ago when the parents of a seriously disabled (but not dying girl) applied to the courts to have her deliberately mutilated and given drugs so that she would not develop adult female characteristics. Unfortunately they won. It hardly needs to be said that doctors are not always right in their judgements either. But to speak of the Nazis, Hitler, eugenics, euthanasia and so on in the case of Alfie Evans was simply hysterical and irrational. My bedridden mother is 94 and very frail. She has a Do Not Resuscitate notice at the end of her bed so that if she has a heart attack paramedics won’t leap on her, break her ribs and subject her to a frightening and invasive procedure to keep her alive at all costs. Is this notice wrong? Is it wanting to ‘kill’ her? Of course not. The same reasoning could be applied to Alfie Evans; to keep a baby in his tragic and irremediable situation alive ‘at all costs’ is not just bad medicine; it is also bad theology. The Italian doctors had already admitted they couldn’t help Alfie. All they could do (if he had survived the journey which the English doctors had doubted) would have been to re-insert all the tubes keeping him alive. At some stage, even in Italy, the question would have to be raised: how long do they keep this up? For months? years? The parents would have been faced with the same tragic dilemma and acceptance of death – which, understandably, given their age and their manipulation by the media and others, they simply could not face.
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I’m sorry but you and Mark Shea have the wrong slant on this entire thing Francis. It is often the case that a single hospital in a single country has not the expertise to diagnose nor treat an illness whereas hope is offered from other institutions and hospitals. A number of countries, hospitals and doctors weighed in on this offering their help; they were not witch doctors but qualified medical doctors.
Now should it not be ‘choice of the parents’ of this child (their rights as parents) to investigate and to make the best decision that might give hope to the life or death of their child. Or is it that as soon as one checks into a government hospital one has relinquished all rights to the outcome of the patient? It is what the US has always been so suspicious of socialized medicine. What is the down side of exercising the hope offered by the Italian hospital? That they may succeed where the UK hospital failed?
But I, and many knew, that once they fought and won in court to be in charge of Alfie and to strip the parents of their parental rights that this child was doomed; for if nothing else, if you do not feed someone they will die in a short time. In a way it is worse than euthanasia as starvation is one of the cruelest deaths. Their first choice of putting him to death by lethal injection (which is euthanasia) would have been far less painful and agonizing.
And if you do not see politics raising its ugly head in all of this seems at least on the surface a willful bias toward the hospital. What is the downside of letting the parents and Alfie board a plane to a last ditch effort to get a second opinion.
Here in the US we often get 2nd, 3rd, and 4th opinions on medical diagnoses. They sometimes differ and we choose between them the diagnosis and the treatment that seems to offer the most hope. You do not have that. The parents should have been able to take their son in their arms and go to the airport and fly him to another facility for evaluation. But it is your laws that prevented this.
You answer to create new laws is the problem this world has with everything; too many government regulations and laws. As soon as they get involved in anything it is only their way as final arbiter and the individual or guardian has no rights at all.
If this case were reversed and the hospital was keeping Alfie alive by machine in a vegetative state and the parents couldn’t enact a Do Not Resuscitate order then you would be outraged. It is the same problem. Hospitals (which in the UK is the Govt.) trumps the rights of legal guardians and no longer have the choice of looking for another outcome for their child.
I pray to God that our country does not let Obamacare lead us on this same trajectory and loss of liberty that apparently is common in much of Europe and the UK.
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Death Panels, for real, just as Sarah said. Not in my country, as long as I live.
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Amen, my friend. This is simply another case of rights being violated and too much government and too many government regulations and laws. I will always stand on the side of liberty in such situations.
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Us hospitals may be different to those in the UK. At no point was there any question of giving the baby a lethal injection. That would have been murder. The doctors in Liverpool had already done all they could – with advice from other doctors around the world (as doctors generally do). I think you are making too many assumptions unwarranted by the facts. The Charlie Gard case and Great Ormond Street Hospital endured a similar scenario last year: the same claims – by a US doctor – that he could ‘treat’ Charlie (he later admitted he couldn’t), the same press hysteria. Reporting on the pro-life side was entirely unbalanced then and it is now. That is partly why I, a pro-life Catholic who takes part in a monthly pro-life prayer vigil outside a UK hospital, decided to support he Hospital in this case. Are you, an American, quite certain that the English bishops and the Archbishop of Liverpool were wrong in this case, for their support of the Hospital?
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Yes, I am sure, just as many other bishops around the world were sure including the Pope. The rights of God’s appointed guardians from having the ‘human right’ to take their child to another hospital is not something that the government or the courts of the UK should have any say in. It is not the place of government to strip people of their God-given rights.
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Bingo! Scoop, what Francis fails to mention in his apology for the doctors of the state is that The greatest evil here is the State taking away, if I am so bold to say, the INALIENABLE RIGHTS AND DUTIES granted to the parents when they in fact become parents of their child. In this particular case, there is no abuse by the parents when qualified professionals have offered their services to these parents. I would certainly asset that it is the abuse by the state to the dignity of the parents and life when they take away the sovereignty away for of the most basic societal structures in the history of mankind. It has always been the goal of those loyal to the growing of state to break down the barriers of the family because the family has always been the Achilles heal of loyalty to the state.
I’m sorry Famphillipsfrancis but this is gross example of tyranny and it sickens me you feel the need to be an apologist for it.
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Indeed there is a simple thing that should be asked here: Who did God appoint as the guardian of Alfie?
The answer of course is the parents. At what point did we allow the state to tell us that they are a better choice and advocate as guardians for Alfie than the parents? Human dignity may be argued for the child in this case but it is a slam dunk that the human dignity of the parents was stripped by the state. I hate big government just for things like this.
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God rest his soul.
Perhaps there are two sides. With Charlie Gard, there was a diagnosis, and other doctors admitted they could do little. And so it was justifiable, kind of. And I note that Charlie’s parents are working to change the law, in the wake of Alfie. But there are American cases where the changing of the treating hospital has led to a full recovery, several of them, and here, as near as I can tell, there was not even a reliable diagnosis. Francis states what the English bishops said truthfully, it was decidedly not what either the Pope, the Polish Archbishop, or the American Bishops stated.
It is interesting, that this appeared to be much more of a cause in other than in the UK. Both the US and Australian Speccie’s have deplored it, And mainstream conservatives, not all pro-life, but including all that are pro-life, are appalled, that includes me.
For me, there was a Tweet the other day, that sums up my considered reaction
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
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I agree. Ultimately, I agree with you and Scoop, but I understand some of what Francis is saying. The difficulty in understanding comes in the patchy reporting, amongst other things.
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And that is a problem, wise people always distrust the press, so we end up acting on incomplete or inaccurate information. I doubt there is a cure, short of believing our so-called elites, I dealt with such a one the other evening on Twitter, NHS doctors and jurists are gods, can never do wrong, well, it strikes as an idiotic belief, we all make mistakes.
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Indeed. In general, I am a sceptic. Christianity, Descartes, Hume, and Kant have done that to me: people are fallible, people are weak, people are part of a bigger game involving spiritual agents. We’re not supposed to passively accept death, either. Death is an evil: God wanted Adam and Eve to eat of the tree of life. Death sucks.
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Indeed so, and parents are designed to fight for their children. One of the most troubling things here to my mind, is that both Charlie and Alfie had strong parents (and both a father and mother present) that are what the brits would call, lower class. One makes ones calls based on the best information available, always been that way, always will be, but that is no reason not to seek more information. In the US, a doctor making that diagnosis, would often suggest the parents get a second opinion, which is just common sense.
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Death is an evil – but for Christians (and baby Evans was baptised) it is the gateway to God and to Heaven. Christians are meant to focus on the Resurrection, not death – otherwise as St Paul wrote, “Our faith is vain.’
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I think you can easily go a bit far for you are entering slippery territory with such an answer. For if death is but a gateway to Heaven then we should have no objection to euthanasia; especially if we allow the agnostic or atheist to give the injection. Why not? We go to heaven, they go to hell as long as the state has ordered this and we had no say in it. Its simply indifference to the human dignity of the parents or guardians who object. And who cares? That has already been taken away by the state anyway. The future is bleak if this is a stepping stone to our future.
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Absolutely. I went to pick my second child and my wife up from the hospital after he was born. I took one look at the child and said that I would not take him until they got his bilirubin down. Now the doctor and the nurses had signed off on his release but guess what? They are human and make mistakes. His bilirubin was through the roof and had not been treated. Thank God I did not blindly trust the doctors and nurses but went with my experience of being able to see jaundice in the skin tone of the child. I did the same with my father before he died: nobody, noticed anything until I called the doctor and told him my father had obviously had some mini-strokes and had no feeling in his left side. Now he had doctors and nurses around him day and night and nobody noticed this. People make mistakes and that should not come to anybodies surprise. The people who pay the most attention to those things are often the loved ones of the patient. Another reason why I fight for parental rights and/or guardian’s rights and do not think it wise to wrest those away to a bureaucracy or a government run hospital.
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Completely agree, the loved ones have information simply from observing for years, that cannot be matched. I will admit to being impressed though when a 4 am, after my dad’s stroke, from his doctor, in person, that I had best get to the hospital. But Doc was also old school and dad’s friend.
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Indeed so. So much for the advantages of socialized medicine’s benefits.
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Part of it, of course was simply rationing, he was going to be expensive all his life. So what, that is the mission.
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True and another reason why the involvement of the government needs to be restricted to what they were supposed to be doing instead of letting them make a mess out of things that they have no business being in.
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Indeed so, but the British lost sight of that long ago.
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. . . and so are we. This is just another one of those canaries in the mine. This is what we can expect if we start letting the government into every aspect of our lives.
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Yessir.
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Neo and Scoop: the doctors in the Evans case and the Gard case sought multiple opinions, not just a ‘second’ opinion. Doctors who work in paediatric medicine want tiny babies to live and they do all they can to help them do so. Sometimes even doctors have to say ‘There is nothing more we can do.’ This is hard for parents to accept – though most do cooperate with their paediatric teams.
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And the parents have rights that should not be abrogated by the state and their courts. What was the harm if Italy wanted to give this case a look? Is is pride or trying to save face? The government does not always have our best interests at heart. It is necessary, if you want to try to keep a government from becoming completely corrupt, to be skeptical of them and question their decisions. They have invaded our privacy to unacceptable levels and this was just a gross example of exactly that overreach.
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I would also add another consideration since we Catholics believe in miracles. Would you have blocked the parents from taking their child to a shrine or a living saint that was known for their miracles rather than to seek another hospital’s health care? Seems to me that should be the right of the parents.
Take for instance the case of the youngster who visited Padre Pio without a bladder. The medical doctors were sure there was no help for her as her bladder had been removed in surgery. But she grew another bladder. Here is a snippet of the miracle as reported:
Veramarie was a sickly child, born with many urinary tract defects, who lost her entire bladder in one of many surgeries done by the well-known Dr. C. Everett Coop at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. In a desperate measure after hearing her young daughter had no chance at survival, Vera traveled to San Giovanni Rotonda where Padre Pio lived in a Friary to bring the child to him. When she returned, doctors discovered little Veramarie had a bladder inside her. The doctors were flabbergasted and called this nothing short of a miracle.
In the UK, it seems, such a privilege (really a right) has been irrevocable rescinded and the parents have not the right to question their abilities. We are to salute them and say the Government has spoken. There is nothing more to do.
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And isn’t the hypocrisy obvious to people? A woman has the “right to choose” to have here perfectly healthy baby murdered even if it does not threaten the life of the mother. Yet, a mother and father who choose to try another hospital and get another diagnosis or treatment are barred by British law. It is Government Law in both instances and yet there is not a common ethic. One gives rights where they do not belong and the other takes away rights where they do belong.
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Agreed.
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I can even relate another story that does not have to do with a human patient. I had a dog that I took to a vet after an accident and I suspected a broken leg. The vet took X-rays and told me that there was nothing wrong with the dog and that sometimes new owners are overly worried about their pets. I politely told her that I had owned dogs all my life and that I know that the dog is seriously injured. I then said to her, ‘may I see the X-ray’? She walked me back to the room with the X-ray in bit of a huff. I took one look and pointed to a broken bone chip floating near the front leg. I said, ‘What is that’? It was a piece of bone. They treated him and never charged me. That is why we need to pay attention to our loved ones (and even pets) instead of simply accepting their expert opinions as fact.
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Always, Always, Always. Often it can be something as innocuous as they are tired after a long day. Nobody care as much as those you love the patient, human or even dog.
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Yes indeed. I was no expert in anything other than I am more observant of that which I love that that which merely a subject of my observations. It is not their fault . . . they do it everyday and it becomes routine. It is human and they are not to be criticized too harshly. That said, it is up to the guardians and those who love the patient the most to make their own observations and speak up regardless of their non-medical expertise. You’d be surprised to know how often your gut will tell you what the medical professional did to see.
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Yes, I suspect it has happened to us all.
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Patchy? Entirely biased and hysterical; full of virtue-signalling (as Mark Shea rightly pointed out.)
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Only if you take the other side, surely? And what is all this ‘virtue-signaling’ talk but projection that makes the attacker the true bearer of virtue in all of this. It is an empty phrase that was coined by our progressive leftists to counter any outrage that people feel that they are engaged in. It is conversation stopper and are empty words meant to silence; nothing more and nothing less. And Mark Shea is a rather shallow thinker and shows little fear of governments that have become nothing less than totalitarian oligarchies. He is probably the last person in the world I would quote as an expert in this or any other case that involves rights of the individual or rights for the Catholic laity. And he had me fooled for a short period of time; I must confess. He’s lost his credibility with me, at least, until he starts singing another tune.
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Don’t you think that the English bishops and the Archbishop of Liverpool are more likely to know the intricacies of this case better than the US and Polish bishops? The Pope was quite careful not to take sides, though he did offer prayers (as he should) and bless the father (as he should)
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Sadly, I think they are too closely aligned to the political elite to be objective, we have the same problem, as Scoop and I have discussed often with the USCCB on domestic issues. That said, I don’t think it intentional, in either case, but I think it shows in their thinking. I could easily be wrong, I think.
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Something worth reading by Fr. Dwight Longenecker.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2018/04/what-alfie-evans-unlocked.html
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To say that death is the gateway to Heaven is NOT to advocate euthanasia! I think you have all gone insane in your commentary and I shall bow out of it as you don’t seem amenable to any reasonable discussion. The State is always seen as evil, the Doctors always want to kill sick babies, parents always know what is best…None of this is rational.
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So you admit that it is proper for the bureaucracy to suspend the rights of the parents who have the greatest interest in the outcome. It is just one more attack against the family, Francis, and it is irrational to willingly allow this without a protest at the very least.
Let it be known that it is you who is breaking off reasonable discussion. I have given you reasonable answers and asked reasonable questions but you refuse to speak to them directly. It is just countered by “you are irrational” or you are “virtue-signalling” which are specious and meant to demean the answers and questions you have been given. Fair enough if you no longer wish to hear or read things that disagree with your premise; which, according to you, is the only rational way to look at things.
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What Francis just ran into is the quintesional American distaste for authority, especially of government, but for many of us Protestants even for ecclesiastical authority, unless it is in accord with the Bible. It is what drove us in the Revolution, and has kept us free, since.
It is something I often notice in the British, and this case. Francis is correct, there has been an uproar on the American right, and much of it was about the parent’s rights. There is a surfeit, in my opinion, of respect for authority in the UK, and it often works against individual rights.
And while not wishing to even think that it is an explicit thought, it remains true, that with the NHS, these children were going to be a lifetime drain on their resources, and that can easily color thinking. That does not mean that anyone even thought it out loud, but…
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And even if they are not thinking that way now, the path is set for that type of thinking in the future especially as their government goes deeper and deeper in debt. I am in complete accord, my friend, this is simply another attack against the family as was stated by Our Lady of Fatima as the last great battle to be fought.
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Quite. And others have been far more blunt than we. Mundabor and Bruvver Eccles amongst them. I first wrote about Alfie last August first, following an article from Caroline Farrow, a few days earlier. Which she had to revise to hide the names of the official actors.
Much of the problem here is that, while he was very likely to die, regardless, it would have cost the NHS absolutely nothing to call an ambulance and let the Italians and the Church deal with it, but they had to maintain control. And so they deserve the opprobrium they are receiving — Sow the wind…
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Very true.
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Some would say the difference of opinion is between subjects and citizens… …
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I am one who usually says so. I was being kind, not wishing to raise still another point.
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Sometimes, it becomes glaringly obvious, but you DID say it when you explained to Francis that as Americans we have an innate rejection to authority. In regards to this subject of the dignity of the parent in support of the well beings of their child; it wasn’t a matter, and will never be, a matter of politeness for me.
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I agree, and my only excuse is that I was emotional, this story deeply disturbed me, and so, I back off a bit.
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There is a difficulty with controlling our emotions; but that being said, we should not negate them entirely. For example, if you were walking down the street and you saw a man strike a woman, I would hope your emotion will spur you into defense of her! Naturally, this is what St. Paul means, as I’ve heard from theologians, of righteous anger.
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Correct, of course.
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Francis is also strawmanning our position;
“ The State is always seen as evil, the Doctors always want to kill sick babies, parents always know what is best…None of this is rational.”
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True. Nobody made their claims extremist and beyond the rational.
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No, but viewing death as a “gateway” or rather an escape of the soul from the prison of its body is rooted in Gnosticism.
Furthermore, parents may not always “know what’s best” but so long as their decisions are ordered to the preservation of life, or not towards the abuse of a hold, they are the authority granted by God of their child—never the state! How is that not reasonable as it is result of the order of nature?
The difference is that I can say with some confidence that if myself, scoop, or Neo were in this situation they’d have to take any of us away in chains my friend or bury me to deny me from intervening for my child.
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Indeed it is an abuse or denial of natural law itself.
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