Bishop prefers palliative and home care to euthanasia
OTTAWA (CCN)
The president of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops urges Catholics to reflect over Lent on mitigating the impact of legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada.
“During this Lenten season, together with my brother bishops, I invite our community of faith and all its members to ponder deeply on this important and crucial juncture which our country is facing,” says Bishop Douglas Crosby of Hamilton, the president of the CCCB, in a Feb. 10 Message for Lent.
“Will we prefer palliative and home care, or assisted suicide and euthanasia? The choice is simple.”
“Do we collaborate as communities of loving concern, supporting and encouraging one another to live our lives fully and in Christ’s footsteps until God calls us to our heavenly reward?” he asked.
“Or do we abandon the vulnerable, the elderly, the sick, the handicapped, the dying, and the depressed, leaving them to stumble through loneliness and despair into the tragedy of dying by suicide?”
“Do we defend health-care practitioners and institutions from being forced into becoming collaborators, obliged to condone or administer death by suicide? Or do we instead provide a system of social wellbeing and health care that protects the dignity of human life and the inviolability of conscience?
Bishop Crosby noted the Old Testament reading for the day after Ash Wednesday from Deuteronomy: “I call heaven and earth to witness … that I have set before you life and death…. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live.”
This, he said, has “particular significance this year for us as God’s people and as a country.”
“The Supreme Court of Canada a year ago, in its decision in the case of Carter v. Canada, invited those in our land to choose death,” he said, noting the Carter decision gives adults the option of a physician-assisted suicide, but already some are calling for children to be included.
“Appalling as that is, it is not surprising,” he said. “Children as well as incapacitated adults are being euthanized in the handful of other countries where assisted suicide and euthanasia are now legal.”
Bishop Crosby urged Catholics to pray for political leaders at all levels of government and for those involved in health care “so the lives of all the vulnerable are protected from conception to natural death.”
He asked Catholics to become informed about the potential negative impact of euthanasia and assisted suicide on society and on individuals. He also urged them to let their political representatives know they want palliative care and suicide prevention strategies put in place.
“My brothers and sisters, as with Adam and Eve at the beginning of time, ours is the choice of eating of the tree of life, or from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil which will surely lead to death,” Bishop Crosby concluded.
“Just as Moses put before the Hebrews entering the Promised Land the life-altering choice of deciding to live as children of the living God, the One Who is Lord, so we too, at the brink of such societal change, are called to choose life, truth, goodness, and true mercy. The choice is set before us.”
