On Friday
the Supreme Court of Canada struck down the section of the Criminal Code that
outlawed physician assisted suicide. It is now up to Parliament to provide some
kind of regulatory statutes to permit doctors to end the lives of their
patients.
Simply,
euthanasia has arrived in Canada—as always in these matters, not by a process
of public consultation and the expression of democratic will, but by court fiat. And I have no great optimism that
we will be able to turn back this tide or do much to roll back the inevitable
progression every other country has experienced whereby it is applied to
broader and broader categories of vulnerable people (children! infants! the clinically depressed! the lonely!) with less and less true
consent involved.
It is
difficult for me to write about these life issues, because of my passion for
them. That fact is, if I said what I really thought about the Supreme Court and
the general ‘progressive’ movement in society (why is it seemingly always a
progress in finding more people to kill, or forcing more people to participate
in the killing?), I would use language that is both unsuitable for a priest and, ummm, unhelpful for advancing public discourse.
No, it
appears that euthanasia is a fact of life in Canada for the foreseeable future.
May God have mercy on our souls. I will confine myself in this blog post, since
it is Sunday and time for our weekly catechism lesson, to giving the Church’s
teaching on the matter, so that Catholics at least may form their consciences
accordingly and we ourselves may make the decisions that are in accord with God’s
laws and right reason.
So here it
is, the radical and bizarre Catholic teaching on end of life issues and care of
the sick and dying: ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Wild, eh? Those wacky
Catholics—where do we get this stuff? It is one the most tragic signs of our
times that we need to state that it is wrong for one human being to take
deliberate steps to end the life of another human being. That this has become
an odd doctrine that needs some kind of intellectual defense, rather than the
very underpinning that makes it possible for human beings to live together in
any kind of social unity. If my doctor can legally kill me, how can I really
trust myself to him or her at the time when I am most vulnerable and helpless, when I find myself in the situation where I most need to make that act of trust?
Human life
is not given to human beings to end at will. The exceptions to this rule—immediate
and necessary self-defense, the very specific cases of soldiers in a just war
or the state executing criminals—are well established, rigorously limited, and
not to be expanded. There is nothing new here—people have always grown old,
become sick, and died—and the Church has never taught that we have the
authority to either end our own lives or the lives of another because of that
perennial fact.
What is new
is the radical expansion of medical technology allowing the extension of old
age and illness to hitherto unexperienced prolongation. And the Church does
indeed offer a very careful and nuanced teaching here. We are not ‘vitalists’,
believing that human life must be extended at all costs and no matter what the
burden of suffering upon the patient. We do believe that human life has a
beginning (conception) and an end, and this end is the naturally occurring death of the
person. It is perfectly moral—in fact it may be in a specific situation immoral
not to do so—to suspend further medical interventions in a case where the
burdens these are imposing outweigh any possible benefit to the person.
The Church
no longer uses the language of ‘ordinary vs. extraordinary means’, as this has not
proven to be a helpful tool for moral medical decision making. Rather, it is a
matter of ‘benefits vs. burdens’, always understanding that we are not doing
anything to cause the death of the person, but rather choosing not to impede
the actual dying process that is happening.
The Church
also has no difficulty with the managing of pain and other symptoms that
detract from the patient’s quality of life, even if the medical intervention
has the effect of shortening the person’s life. Here we have the principle of
double effect—a single action with two effects, one good and one bad. As long
as the intention is to reduce pain and not to kill, this is a perfectly moral
course of action.
So that is
the basic moral doctrine of the Church: no direct killing of a person is ever
permissible, but withdrawal of medical treatment may be, as is appropriate care
to reduce suffering even if that hastens death. The application of this rather
simple teaching to specific situations does get complex, because human life is
complex, and it is wise to seek counsel in these matters.
So that is
all I have to say on the subject, at least for now. Since our medical system is
in the process of adopting an ethos so radically opposed to the sanctity of
human life, it behoves us Catholics and other people of good will to at least
know ourselves what our right relationship is to questions of life and death.
I ask my
many non-Canadian readers to pray for my home country of Canada which is so in
love with death, seemingly, and let us pray for the world which holds human
life so cheaply, so much of the time. May our good and merciful God have mercy
upon us all.
Perhaps it is time for Catholics in Canada to offer some more active (while still non-violent) resistance to the regime of death which is our nation-state. What are your thoughts Father?
ReplyDeleteI think anything non-violent we can think of doing is good. I'm pretty radical in my convictions, really, so am open to all unreasonable suggestions! Non-violence has to be the key, though, eh?
DeleteThe Paper Clip Project seemed to me an excellent way to show how these numbers of deaths too large to really visualize made the numbers real to people. I always thought something similar to this would be a great way to show just how many "x" millions is when wanting to show the real effects of abortion. Could be a good tool for pro-life groups to illustrate based on a simple school project in a tiny town in Tenn.,USA. Read more at http://oneclipatatime.org/paper-clips-project/
ReplyDeleteSometimes things get warped in the chaos of democracy.
ReplyDeleteI have for sometime been considering these end of life questions in medicine.
We have become so sophisticated in our technology. ...that we can in some ways abuse life by carrying it on. Our technology is so supportive that it can blur the lines between life and death. Can blurr life and blurr death.
Is a person on ECMO for heart and long support really alive after a week? What is the right treatment for cancer after multiple surgeries and chemos? We known certain diseases present these questions. We have traveled very far down a very sophisticated path for some of these problems in medicine...and we have drug our patients with is. We have given them no other choices.
I do not support or promote euthanasia. But we as a church as a culture as a medical profession have done a very poor job of use tying the real question.
The real question is not about euthanasia at all.