Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Catholic Book Review: Never Let Me Go...(Part II)

If the book came across to you as depressing and positively horrifying, let me show you why I felt necessary to review this book in particular.


The whole essence of the book centers around a single theme, 'what makes us human?'


Is it our progeny? Is it our consciousness? or maybe our intellect?


No, it is our souls...it is the divine within us which gives us the inviolable dignity and sanctity being a human being. Acknowledging God as our Father and creator gives us a sense of peace of knowing where you come from and to whom you are going to. You are safe in the knowledge that your purpose remains above the manipulative influence of man because it was ordained by a higher power.




The book explores the desperate attempts of the teachers to prove that 'clones' have souls. They chose art as an expression of it and that is not such a bad start. Art is supposed to manifest beauty and Beauty is Truth as Truth is Beauty...


But they miss the bigger picture or maybe not so. For man has his Creator but in this case, man is the creator. 


Our creative skills and wondrous achievements are only possible if we were to view them through the glasses of God's express command to subdue the earth as stewards. Else, like the clones were treated, we dominate, abuse and ruin the beauty and goodness in pursuit of our selfish needs.


In this case, the very humanity of those three characters were questioned. 'Do they have a soul?' Science ahead of Ethics, Need before Good. 


Sounds familiar? Remember the aborted unborn, the euthanized sick and the aged, prenatal testing for Downs syndrome children, patients in vegetative state whose organs are harvested for another, human embryos who are created only to be killed for their stem cells...all for a 'greater good' I'm sure; but who are still human beings and have their humanity stripped of them.


I leave you with a beautiful line from Father John Flynn, LC article.


"No matter how lofty the motivations, once the principle of the sanctity of life is lost then eventually everything becomes negotiable."