Re “Government takes St. Paul’s property for MAiD,” Dec. 4:
My concern centres on the providing of a passage from St. Paul’s to the adjacent Coastal Health death facility.
This is even more problematic than the current situation, in which St. Paul’s facilitates the transfer of patients to a completely separate facility for MAiD. Did Providence Health cave to the government on facilitating MAID in this new way? Is it not better to lose our hospitals than to lose our souls?
If the MAID room does go through with a handy corridor from St. Paul’s, what should be our Catholic response?
Hospital staff need to be educated to stand strong against any compliance with this evil and know their right to conscience protection.
They must educate the families of the most vulnerable (with flyers, words, actions) about choosing a natural holy death for their loved ones.
All patients need to be warned about this nefarious death room to be set up next August so in their sickness, pain, vulnerability, and confusion they are not tempted to choose euthanasia, (a mortal sin), which could damn their souls for eternity.
We have a duty to resist this so that suicidal persons will never be escorted to the death room. Those patients who are depressed and hopeless need to be shown the love of Christ and extra compassion, never abandoned to MAID.
Our bishops need to call everyone to urgently fast and pray for the end of this scourge of MAID happening in most Canadian hospitals now, or adjacent to them.
We must pray that a death room is never facilitated at St. Paul’s Hospital. The holy sisters who founded St. Paul’s would turn in their graves to lose even one soul like this.
Elizabeth Loch
Maple Ridge
What can a Christian give to any suicidal person? The love of Christ; authentic compassion, a commitment to remain with, not abandon, that person. How does discharging and arranging for the transfer of a suicidal patient (who has succumbed to the offer of the sanitized suicide euphemistically called MAiD) manifest this love and compassion? Rather, is this not precisely abandoning the patient?
How devastatingly ironic that compassion- “to suffer with”- has been twisted into conveying the opposite of what it means.
“Why are you hurting me?” This is what Our Lady asked abortion doctor Dr. John Bruchalski while he sat in the Mexican basilica, gazing at the nearly 500-year-old tilma bearing her image.
He was deaf to her words at the time and spiritually blind; in the name of what he considered “good medicine,” he “maimed women and murdered their unborn children,” (his words), even after she spoke these words to him. However, Our Lady continued to pursue him. He now runs a Catholic medical centre in honour of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
There are now plans to prepare a “corridor” at St. Paul’s to make it easier to carry out abetted suicide, to kill the patients whom Providence has received, while “respecting Providence’s position of not allowing MAiD to be performed within the walls of a Catholic facility....” The line drawn in the sand here suggests a foundation of sand, and that the structure is collapsing is clear for so many of us.
Will this plan come to fulfillment? Please, will those responsible for Providence Health Care receive the courage, the grace, to say “No”? Please God, help us. Mary Our Mother, help us to love.
Mary Wagner
Ladysmith
The decision to allow MAID beside St. Paul’s Hospital is devastating to our faith roots. The government pressure was expected. They were not satisfied with merely transfering patients from St. Paul’s to hospices that would carry out the euthanasia. This had been a principled stand by a Catholic hospital not to accommodate MAID on its own premises and should have been our line in the sand.
Now we read that it will be available on the premises but under Vancouver Coastal, not Providence, a technicality bowing to the NDP again. Catholic teaching is compromised and we are complicit with MAID. We lost our religious freedom during COVID when Catholic obligations received less status than Costco and little resistence encouraged.
What about the effect of this accommodation on Providence staff and on other care centres? We could have built up our courage to support a challenge if Catholic parishes had timely communication lifelines on faith issues. Where now?
Cecilia von Dehn
Vancouver
Thank you for the excellent article about Annika Van Vliet at Star of the Sea Parish in the Jan. 1 issue. I hope you’ll share some additional information about Star of the Sea, in particular its music ministry.
Leading the parish music ministry for more than two decades, Trudi Stammer has amassed a group of vocalists and instrumentalists of varying abilities, all of whom volunteer their time and talents to the church and its congregation.
Lately, as people retire from active involvement, recruitment of new singers has become a major issue. Ongoing notices in the weekly parish bulletin have had little effect.
So those of us who remain committed to providing music for Masses and parish events are hoping that B.C. Catholic readers in Surrey will give serious consideration to – and act on – joining the music ministry by contacting Trudi at 604-531-5739, ext. You will not regret it!
Penny Oyama
Burnaby
Re Israel and Hamas: just war in an age of terrorism (Oct. 16):
There can be no such thing as a just war, especially when innocent men, women and children by the thousands have died. Israel’s prime minister narrowly escaped prosecution and has used the ghastly Hamas invasion as a convenient excuse to show his power and control over Israelis as well as Palestinians.
How much blood will it take to satisfy his thirst for revenge? As of today, an estimated tens of thousands, including children, have been killed to avenge the murder of 1,200 Israelis.
Yes, it’ll stop and we’ll have time to breathe easier. Then Israel will continue to encroach on Palestinian territory and the fireworks and slaughter will be renewed.
This has been going on since 1947 and it is not the fault of Palestinians, but the Israelis. When are we ever going to learn?
Bob Scott
Chilliwack
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