Ichabod

In the first centuries of the Church, Christians used to rescue and raise infants that had been abandoned to die by the pagans of Rome. This story from England just goes to show how far we've fallen in 1600 years:

The Church of England has broken with tradition dogma by calling for doctors to be allowed to let sick newborn babies die.

Christians have long argued that life should preserved at all costs - but a bishop representing the national church has now sparked controversy by arguing that there are occasions when it is compassionate to leave a severely disabled child to die.

And the Bishop of Southwark, Tom Butler, who is the vice chair of the Church of England's Mission and Public Affairs Council, has also argued that the high financial cost of keeping desperately ill babies alive should be a factor in life or death decisions.

[Full Story]

The early faithful used to save the lives of babies because those babies were made in the image of God. They were worth saving because they had intrinsic worth. God alone, not the paterfamilias who left the child outside in the cold, had the right of life or death. What it is determines what we may do with it.

Today, it's bad enough that "ethicists" like Princeton philosopher Peter Singer apply their own man-made calculus to decide who lives and who dies. But for the church, which claims to have the message of life, to advocate death? That's downright repugnant.

(H/T: Centuri0n.)