Malcolm Muggeridge, the legendary English author and journalist, knew Svetlana Stalin, the daughter of Soviet dictator, “Uncle Joe,” Stalin. It was through Muggeridge that it came to be known that on his deathbed, Stalin was plagued with terrifying hallucinations when suddenly, he sat up halfway in bed, clenched his fist and shook it towards heaven, before falling back down, dead. The last gesture of this murderous, sadistic loser was to defy and curse God.
As Catholics, we know that the only sin that God cannot forgive and will not forgive is the sin against the Holy Spirit – that is, final impenitence and an utter rejection of His Divine Mercy. While we cannot state with knowing certainty, based upon known knowns, it is likely that Joseph Stalin is in Hell.
In 1938, John Terrance Shields was born in New York City. The Irish-American Catholic became a priest sometime in the 1960’s probably around 1965. His formation would have been prior to, and during, the Second Vatican Council. Shields became "disillusioned" with the Church after the death of John XXIII particularly over what he saw as a rejection of the liberality of John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council by Paul VI. He was particularly disturbed by the Pope's affirmation of Original Sin, the theology of which Shields abhorred. He left the priesthood, and came to Canada in 1969. We assume that he was “laicised” by the Church. Eventually he married, a woman and then another woman.
Just like Stalin, Shields was a darling of the political Left. Alas, if only the similarity ended there.
In his book, The Priest Who Left His Priesthood in Pursuit of Cosmic Spirituality, Shields wrote, "I have drawn great personal strength from knowing that my conscious energy will persist beyond the moment of my death."
What arrogance. What hubris.
Euthanasia is now the law of the land in Canada and the cause has been led for years by those living on the west coast. Having left the priesthood and married, Shields was dying and chose, as did Stalin, to shake his fist at God and take his own life, with the aid of the doctor who murdered him, the nurses who assisted and the politicians, lawyers and judges who enabled it.
“Two days before he was scheduled to die, John Shields roused in his hospice bed with an unusual idea. He wanted to organize an Irish wake for himself. It would be old-fashioned with music and booze, except for one notable detail — he would be present. The party should take up a big section of Swiss Chalet, a family-style chain restaurant on the road out of town. Shields wanted his last supper to be one he so often enjoyed on Friday nights when he was a young Catholic priest — rotisserie chicken legs with gravy.” John Shields, who had a rare and incurable disease called amyloidosis, was relieved to discover he qualified for medical assistance in dying. John Shields would have his “last supper.”
The link to the whole, original article in the New York Times follows. Catholics with faith will find it chilling.
A supper like the “one he so often enjoyed on Friday nights when he was a young Catholic priest — rotisserie chicken legs with gravy," on a day when Catholics, priest and laity alike, are to do penance and refrain from flesh-meat.
He was as defiant in his priesthood as he was on his deathbed actively shaking his fist at heaven and mocking the Church in exchange for a rotisserie chicken dinner.
Catholics can have hope that if John, before taking that final breath, before the brain waves flattened and his heart ceased to beat, called out from his mind to the LORD whom he abandoned for his Divine Mercy, he would have been heard.
Because of John Shields' example, how many others will choose to follow his path where more than the chicken is on the rotisserie.