Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira

O Legionário, No. 212, October 4, 1936

For the first time since the principles of the civilization of Jesus Christ have governed the world, a father has killed his son for health reasons.

He is Mr. Sullivan, from Perth, Australia. He took his three-year-old for a walk and suddenly shot him dead. He then took the boy’s corpse to the police and said he killed his son because he suffered from an incurable disease.

No matter what his pretext might be, it was not lawful for this unnatural father to kill his son. Let us leave this aside and consider the question from another standpoint. Mr. Sullivan is a driver and thus relatively under-resourced. Is the diagnosis of the likely second-class physician Mr. Sullivan consulted so safe as to warrant infanticide? Was the boy’s disease really incurable? Would it not be possible with medicine’s progress to cure the boy in a few years?

Mr. Sullivan reflected about none of this. Yet, as such, Mr. Sullivan does not matter. His attitude is a telltale sign of the state of civilization.

Our de-Christianized world is losing the sense of charity to such an extent that many European writers already contend that care facilities for sick children are not only useless but also harmful.

If a sick child is an inferior being, why should the State carry the burden of his education? Would it not be better to let these almost dry branches die so the sap would flow more abundantly into healthy ones?

If this way of thinking ever conquers the world, cases like Mr. Sullivan’s will be numerous.

On that day, the Church will have returned to the catacombs. And in Brazil, people will kill their children no longer on medical advice but at the recommendation of Satanists.

Many things are changing. Thus, it will be no wonder if one day we see Satanists play the role of masters of the life and death of children.

The world is undergoing such a change that the modern mentality—friendlier to light and picaresque things than to learned and substantial demonstrations—is conquering even the last strongholds of science and intelligence.

(*) Excerpt from the “7 Days in Review” section, title added.