Imagine being bumped off in hospital just so that **** ***** or ***** ******** can have their existence prolonged.

Much later than usual, I have just got round to obliterating the "organ donor" declaration in my Catholic diary. I had forgotten to do this until the realisation woke me from an unpleasant dream.

I remember that Pope John Paul II urged all Catholics to donate their organs to demonstrate their solidarity with the human race.

Round objects. (I am very fond of Mr Round: he and I are in constant agreement.)

Why do I object to "donating" my organs? Because organs have to be "harvested" (ugh!) while the "donor's" heart is still beating. Some unprincipled and ambitious quack may have pronounced the "donor" to be "brain-dead" (too many quotation marks here), but such patients have revived, and I have no trust in a profession which kills the unborn.

As to the idea of "solidarity", I cannot chose the beneficiaries of my corporeal largesse and there are too many people with whom I deny solidarity and whose lives I would not wish to prolong for even a fraction of a second. 

In fact, the whole idea of the "common good" sickens me. I desire, and work for, the good of the poor, the weak, and those who help them. The good of the unjustly rich, the perverter of morality or justice, the aborter and his supporter, and the corrupter of the young, I do not wish for, but hope with all the fervency of a Pol Pot (whose politics I do not share) for their ruin.

Rot 'em!

They won't get my vodka-pickled kidneys or liver.