Eat the Disabled?  Follow the Science? by Francis X. Maier

By Francis X. Maier, The Catholic Thing, July 24, 2021

Francis X. Maier is a senior fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a senior research associate in Constitutional Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He served as senior aide to Archbishop Charles Chaput for twenty-three years.

Note: Given some unfortunate past experiences with texts like this one, a warning before we move into today’s column: the careful reader may detect a hint of satire at various points below, and find a fuller explanation in the concluding paragraph. -The Editors

It’s curious how the mind works; how memories and ideas intersect, leading one to the other. Here’s a case in point. I love science fiction.  And so I found myself, on a recent afternoon, re-watching Soylent Green, the 1973 film with Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson. The story is set in an overpopulated, ecologically wrecked future. With animal and plant life ravaged, people subsist on organically based wafers – Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow – manufactured by the transnational giant, Soylent Industries.

Life is hard and grim. People are encouraged to choose assisted suicide at their local euthanasia centers rather than die on the streets. And if they do, before being terminated, they’re rewarded with a brief, breathtaking panorama of the planet’s beauty before it was ruined. There’s some good news, though. Soylent Green, a new and improved product, far tastier and more nutritious than its predecessors, has just come on the market. The secret, as the hero – played by Heston – discovers, is the source of the new product: human corpses. …

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