“Without truth there must be a dissolution of society. As it is there is so little truth, that we are almost afraid to trust our ears;

but how should we be, if falsehood were multiplied ten times?”

—Samuel Johnson quoted in Boswell’s Life of Johnson

In the Oxford English Dictionary, the word Truth is defined as “conformity with fact; agreement with reality.” It is also defined as “disposition to speak or act truly or without deceit; truthfulness, veracity . . .” and illustrated by a quotation from Shakespeare: “Love is all truth, lust full of forged lies.” Montaigne, speaking of lies, confirms the primacy of truth by reminding his readers that:

Lying is a villein’s vice, a vice which an ancient [Plutarch] paints full shamefully when he says that it gives testimony to contempt for God together with fear of men. It is not possible to show more richly the horror of it, its vileness and its disorderliness. For what can one imagine more serflike than to be cowardly before men and defiant towards God?

For Montaigne, the betrayal of truth wreaks particular havoc on language. Why? “Our understanding is conducted solely by means of the word; anyone who falsifies it betrays public society. It is the only tool by which we communicate our wishes and our thoughts; it is our soul’s interpreter: if we lack that, we can no longer hold together; we can no longer know each other. When words deceive us, it breaks all intercourse and loosens the bonds of our polity.” Montaigne’s celebrated skepticism might have put “saucy doubts and fears” into a generation desolated by the Church’s “bare ruined choirs,” but he knew the difference between truth and lies.

Francis Bacon, with Montaigne in mind, regarded truth as peculiarly susceptible to lies not only because of “the difficulty and labour men take in finding out of truth” but because of what he called the “corrupt love of the lie itself.” We prefer lies to truth because of our fallen nature. Our vanity also disposes us to love lies. Swift mocked the irreligion of his age by arguing that if his contemporaries were ever to restore belief in Christianity it would “destroy at one blow all the wit and half the learning of the kingdom.”

Yet Bacon also understood that “despite men’s depraved judgments and affections,” truth remains central to human wellbeing. Indeed, the scholarly Christian in him knew this in his very bones, because, as he says, “the inquiry of truth, which is the lovemaking or wooing of it, the knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human nature.” Conversely, for the lawyer and statesman in Bacon, “There is no vice that doth so cover man with shame as to be found false and perfidious,” for such “winding and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent ” This is why Bacon agreed with Montaigne about the profound wickedness of lies. They disposed men to be “brave towards God and a coward towards men”—brave here meaning bold, with the implication of defiant audacity.

Moreover, Montaigne and Bacon recognized the vitality of truth because they recognized the vitality of Christ’s words to Thomas: “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me,” while never forgetting, like Jeremiah, that to be “not valiant for the truth,” was “to proceed from evil to evil ”

Now with AI knocking on the door, and the prospect of so influential a technology falsifying language to an extent scarcely imaginable, these old truths assume new force. Christ’s insistence that we follow Him as “the way, the truth, and the life” has never had so urgent an import, especially at a time, when, being so long cowardly, not valiant for truth, we have indeed proceeded from evil to evil.

The murders that have been committed in America recently as the result of the abominable lie of transgenderism certainly bear this out. The equally flagitious lie of abortion—against which the Human Life Review has fought with such valiant fidelity to God’s laws, not God’s scofflaws—is another example. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill—the bill to legalize assisted dying in England and Wales—is yet another example, which, at time of writing, is being debated in the House of Lords after the House of Commons, in two readings, voted in favor of it. Even if the Lords were to reject the Bill, the House of Commons could still invoke the Parliament Act to override them. Thus, England’s voting in favor of allowing doctors to help its ancientry commit suicide is now a likelihood. Surely there could be no better evidence of a society going from “evil to evil” than that.

Madeline Grant, the Spectator’s wittiest columnist, had praise for many of those peers opposed to the Bill’s passage:

Baroness Butler Sloss, still formidable at 92, completely dismantled the fantasy of the proposed Death Panels as a safeguard with a series of barked questions: ‘Will they meet in public? Will they meet at all? Why no Coroner? There was a good bit of Latin from the Bishop of Chichester, this debate he said, was full of ‘lacrimae rerum,’ the things of which tears are made. He also reminded the House that contra the arguments of the lobbyists for the bill, sanctity of life was not some monstrous conspiratorial Christian imposition but the basic assumption that underpins all of our law Baroness Fox of Buckley warned that there would inevitably be legal demands to expand the law; ‘God help us once human rights lawyers get involved.’ Meanwhile Lord Frost offered a philosophical critique of the bill, reminding peers that it essentially enshrined utilitarianism as the guiding ethical principle for the law, and that this would lead to very dark places indeed.

Yet it is heartening that one of the most eloquent voices opposed to the Bill was not that of any prolife peer but a former prime minister better known for her faddish environmentalism than her solicitude for the sanctity of life. “Plastic waste is one of the greatest environmental challenges facing the world,” Theresa May, now Baroness May of Maidenhead, told the press in 2018, after praising the U.K. government, without the least facetiousness, as “a world leader on this issue.” However, this same lady, a vicar’s daughter, stood up in front of the Lords and defended the sanctity of life with splendid cogency by calling attention to the lies not only of the framers of the bill but all those misguided souls throughout England and Wales who have convinced themselves that the macabre bill actually has something to do with the dignity of dying.

My Lords, I declare my interest as an ambassador for Thames Hospice, but the views that I express today are my own. I recognise that across this House there will be very firmly held views on both sides of this argument, some coming from personal experience, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Forsyth. [The suffering experienced by Lord Forsyth’s dying father changed his longheld opposition to assisted dying.]

However, I oppose this Bill and wish to set out my main reasons. First, I do not believe that the safeguards in the Bill will prevent people being pressurised to end their lives, sometimes for the benefit of others. I worry that, as we have seen in countries where there is such a law, people will feel that they must end their lives simply because they feel that they are a burden on others.

I worry about the impact that it will have on people with disabilities, with chronic illness and with mental health problems, because there is a risk that legalising assisted dying reinforces the dangerous notion that some lives are less worth living than others. Again, as we have seen in other countries, once a law like this is passed, the pressure grows to extend the scope of it. I also oppose the Bill because I believe that, by disapplying the default of a coroner’s report, there is a danger that this could be used as a coverup for mistakes made in hospital or for a hospitalacquired infection which has led to an increased likelihood of death. I have a friend who calls it the “License to Kill Bill.”

This is not an assisted dying Bill but an assisted suicide Bill. As a society, we believe that suicide is wrong. The Government have a national suicide prevention strategy. We bemoan the number of young people who are lured into committing suicide by social media and by what they read on the internet. This week, we had World Suicide Prevention Day. Suicide is wrong, but this Bill, in effect, says that it is okay. What message does that give to our society? Suicide is not okay. Suicide is wrong. This Bill is wrong. It should not pass.

What is striking about the reference here to the Bill’s safeguards is that it warns against the very same “slippery slope” inherent in David Steel’s Abortion Bill of 1967, which may have passed initially with a few well-meaning safeguards but now allows for abortion on demand. The Baroness’ warnings also recall what Lord Alton of Liverpool had to say when he spoke on the issue of “incrementalism” in 2006. “Much has been made of the experiences in Holland and Oregon,” he reminded his fellow peers. “In Holland, it started with turning a blind eye; then voluntary euthanasia; and then involuntary euthanasia, with 1,000 deaths now occurring each year. As others have said, that has led to the killing of spina bifida children. It has happened already at Groningen Hospital where it was done in order to push the law further. That is what happens when we move in that sort of direction.” [Groningen devised guidelines for the euthanasia of newborns and infants in the Netherlands that make a mockery of medical ethics.]

Of course, the Baroness is no papist, but she does nevertheless uphold the same case against euthanasia that can be found in the Roman Catholic Catechism, which states with unambiguous clarity:

Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable. Thus, an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator. The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded.

Here, indeed, is what Hamlet styles the “Everlasting’s canon ’gainst self-slaughter,” which another life peer, Lord Roberts of Belgravia, invoked to argue that, in the case of assisted dying, as in the case of war, there might be morally permissible exceptions to the sixth commandment, a piece of unpersuasive special pleading. Roberts, a friend of mine as it happens, should consider looking at the second edition of John Keown’s classic study, Euthanasia, Ethics and Public Policy: An Argument Against Legalisation (Cambridge), first published in 2002 and revised in 2022. Richard Myers, writing in The Ave Maria Law Review, wrote of the book: “In the new edition, Keown does an admirable job of updating the earlier work. The second edition provides a wealth of information and critical analysis of the issues involved. The work is marked by a sophisticated analysis of the legal issues and by an acute understanding of the actual practice of assisted suicide and euthanasia in those jurisdictions that have legalized these practices. His analysis should inform the ongoing debate about these practices.”

How to conclude? If Baroness May of Maidenhead can find her voice in defense of life, so can the rest of us, and not just when it comes to euthanasia and abortion but also the equally pernicious lie of transgenderism. For prolifers, despite the savagery and mayhem we continue to witness in a world sworn to lies and contemptuous of the truth, this should be a time of renewed hope, renewed pertinacity, renewed courage. We have not looked on truth askance and strangely. We have been sounding the tocsin of truth about the evils of killing innocent life in and outside the womb for over five decades. We must continue ringing that tocsin on behalf of the life of all those threatened by the “winding and crooked courses,” the “goings of the serpent” so indicative of the culture of death. After all, we are a pilgrim people, the people of life and for life, and we must continue to rebuild the culture of truth, in caritas and joy, in order to reclaim the culture of love.

__________________________________________________

Original Bio:

Edward Short is the author of Newman and his Critics, the third volume of his trilogy on St. John Henry Cardinal Newman, as well as What the Bells Sang: Essays and Reviews, both published by Gracewing.