Jesuit seeks to encourage a counter-cultural movement
By Agnieszka Krawczynski
The B.C. Catholic

An internationally known priest is coming to Vancouver hoping to inspire a new culture against assisted suicide.

Father Robert Spitzer, SJ, of California’s Magis Center of Reason and Faith, believes Catholics need to rise up and oppose the dark practice.

“I’m trying to answer the question that people have: if this is an option, this is a freedom the state has given us, why should the Church care if someone wants to commit suicide?”

The Church has a long tradition of helping and fighting for the poor and disabled. “We have always championed people who were unintended victims of the callousness of the state,” Father Spitzer told The B.C. Catholic.

Now that assisted suicide is legal in Canada, and as well as in several U.S. states, the “right to die” has produced unintended victims, he said. Those include people with disabilities or depression, or those who can’t afford expensive medical treatment.

The practice gives “the idea that asking for help is a less good option than committing suicide. The obvious implication that people with disabilities feel is that their life is something inferior,” Father Spitzer said.

“We want to restore the dignity of the disabled in the face of a torrent of criticism that is likely to be unleashed against them.”

The priest will speak at the John Paul II Pastoral Centre in Vancouver Sept. 2. He hopes his presentation will help Catholics and non-Catholics understand why the Church opposes assisted suicide and how they can help the disabled, poor, and elderly by building a pro-life culture in their homes and other circles.

“We’re going to have to create, as a Church, an internal counter culture (in response to) what has been done by the state, to resist the whole burden of unintended consequences,” of legal assisted suicide.

“We should always affirm the goodness of the lives of the elderly and disabled.”

His talk will begin at 7 p.m. More information and tickets are available at www.rcav.org/assisted-suicide.