[ggreer]

Funny, I had the opposite reaction when reading A Canticle for Leibowitz. There's one scene near the end where a refugee mother and baby are dying. They are crippled, burned, and suffering radiation poisoning. Both are in great pain, and the mother wants euthanasia for herself and her baby. A priest first tries (and almost succeeds) to talk her out of it. He then resorts to force, trying to kidnap the baby and eventually punching a doctor. When stymied by police, he is let off with a warning instead of being jailed.

I'm pretty sure that scene was supposed to make the reader feel sympathetic towards the priest. Instead, I felt disappointment toward the author.

The preservation of knowledge across civilizational collapses was neat, and the writing was good, but I would have enjoyed the story more if it had been about a less dogmatic order.

[akkartik]

I thought the point was to show a full cycle, from collapse to collapse. In times of collapse the church was useful in preserving knowledge and supporting the spirit. In times of hubris (ie just before collapse) it subsides to dogma. We don't know how to separate the benefits from the dogma. At least that was my interpretation..

[fractallyte]

Walter Miller was a firm Catholic, and thus was opposed to the idea of suicide or euthanasia.

* SPOILER *

Later, as the priest lay dying himself, again the moral argument was raised; but this time (with the reader identifying more closely with the protagonist) Miller wrote eloquently about the importance of 'natural' death.

I didn't necessarily agree with his point of view while I was reading it, but (like the best science fiction) it became something I thought deeply about for a long time afterwards.