Send an urgent message to Canadian legislators urging them to stop expanding assisted suicide
(LifeSiteNews) – On the day our lives changed forever, my husband was diagnosed with a tumor on his brain stem. The tumor had caused blockage of cerebrospinal fluid, and he was in immediate danger of death. We were told to go to another hospital at once to prepare for an operation. The healthcare worker had already called a taxicab to take us there.
We refused the cab. Instead, we asked our friend Angela to drive us to the home of our Traditional Latin Mass chaplain. There, my husband had the Last Rites, and then we went to the hospital to wait for our next instructions.
We sat alone in a waiting room for what seemed a long time. Our situation was surreal. The day had begun with a minor squabble about where to buy coffee and his appointment at Edinburgh’s Eye Pavilion. It was apparently to end with brain surgery.
“I guess we should talk about your end-of-life wishes,” I said — or words to that effect. How my husband replied is clearer in my memory.
“I want what the Church teaches,” he said.
“OK,” I said, although, to be honest, I couldn’t remember exactly what the Church teaches. I remembered from the Terri Schiavo case that Pope John Paul II was adamant that food and water, even when administered artificially, is ordinary care for a disabled, sick, or terminally ill person and must not be removed to cause his or her death.
Unfortunately, clinically administered nutrition and hydration (CANH) is not considered “ordinary care” in the United Kingdom. The possibility of having to fight the National Health Service to get food and drink to my husband, should he end up in an irreparable coma, loomed before me. But I didn’t want to think about that, so I just asked him what he thought about “extraordinary measures.”
“What are those?” he asked.
“Well, I don’t know,” I replied. “I once asked (a family member) what (they) would want, and (they) said (they) wouldn’t want ‘extraordinary measures.’”
“I just want what the Church teaches,” my husband repeated.
Here, I will break off the narrative to note that in the course of my duties for LifeSiteNews I have met a British psychologist who is adamant that everyone should think about their end-of-life care preferences, discuss them with their families, and write them down BEFORE any of them are in a hospital waiting room. She was pleased to hear that I am committed to convincing you all to do that.
My acquaintance is not a Christian, and her principal concerns are that individuals should not be given medical care — including clinically administered nutrition and hydration — that they do not want and that they should not be refused life-extending treatment that they do want. Like many unchurched people, she is all about autonomy. What God wants is not within her scope of interest, but it certainly is in mine and, I hope, in yours.
Thus, let’s look at what the Catholic Church has to say about that. According to the UK’s Anscombe Bioethics Centre, this can be found in the Vatican’s Declaration on Euthanasia (1980), John Paul II’s Evangelium Vitae (1995), the Catechism of the Catholic Church (1997), and John Paul II’s address “On Life-Sustaining Treatments and the Vegetative State”(2004).
Central to the discussion is the dignity of the human person and his or her right to life. The Catholic Church upholds human life as the primary earthly value.
Human life is the basis of all goods and is the necessary source and condition of every human activity and of all society. Most people regard life as something sacred and hold that no one may dispose of it at will, but believers see in life something greater, namely, a gift of God’s love, which they are called upon to preserve and make fruitful. (Declaration on Euthanasia)
That God has a plan for every human being must never be discounted. We all have a moral obligation to preserve and care for human lives, for they are gifts from God. Murder, suicide, and euthanasia are all violations of this duty. The Declaration on Euthanasia, approved by Pope John Paul II, is very clear that the practise is a serious evil
No one is permitted to ask for this act of killing, either for himself or herself or for another person entrusted to his or her care, nor can he or she consent to it, either explicitly or implicitly. nor can any authority legitimately recommend or permit such an action. For it is a question of the violation of the divine law, an offense against the dignity of the human person, a crime against life, and an attack on humanity. (Declaration on Euthanasia)
This includes both active euthanasia — like the use of lethal medications now so commonplace in Canada — and passive euthanasia, like the withholding of nutrition and hydration to deliberately end a person’s sacred human life.
Often, suffering is used as an argument for euthanasia, but Catholics believe that suffering is, to a certain extent, holy and meaningful because Christ Himself suffered. This is not to say that people should suffer needlessly. Both the Declaration and Evangelium Vitae are clear that suffering can and should be eased, even if that means a person’s reason is impaired.
According to Christian teaching … suffering, especially suffering during the last moments of life, has a special place in God’s saving plan; it is in fact a sharing in Christ’s passion and a union with the redeeming sacrifice which He offered in obedience to the Father’s will. Therefore, one must not be surprised if some Christians prefer to moderate their use of painkillers, in order to accept voluntarily at least a part of their sufferings and thus associate themselves in a conscious way with the sufferings of Christ crucified (cf. Mt. 27:34). Nevertheless, it would be imprudent to impose a heroic way of acting as a general rule. On the contrary, human and Christian prudence suggest for the majority of sick people the use of medicines capable of alleviating or suppressing pain, even though these may cause as a secondary effect semi-consciousness and reduced lucidity. (Declaration on Euthanasia)
In Evangelium Vitae, John Paul II adds that painkillers can be used even in doses that may shorten the suffering person’s life, as long as this is not the aim. Interestingly, though, we are also asked to respect the human faculty of reason and taught that even the very sick may have moral duties to perform.
Pius XII affirmed that it is licit to relieve pain by narcotics, even when the result is decreased consciousness and a shortening of life, “if no other means exist, and if, in the given circumstances, this does not prevent the carrying out of other religious and moral duties.” In such a case, death is not willed or sought, even though for reasonable motives one runs the risk of it: there is simply a desire to ease pain effectively by using the analgesics which medicine provides. All the same, “it is not right to deprive the dying person of consciousness without a serious reason”: as they approach death people ought to be able to satisfy their moral and family duties, and above all they ought to be able to prepare in a fully conscious way for their definitive meeting with God. (Evangelium Vitae)
Meanwhile, death is inevitable; eventually God will call every one of us. Although we may not deliberately hasten the hour of our going to Him, we are not duty-bound to interrupt our journey with needless, perhaps experimental, treatments that will merely delay our departure and even cause us unnecessary pain. These are the so-called “extraordinary measures” that we are free to accept — if we feel called to fight to the last — or reject — if we just want to go home.
The Declaration on Euthanasia says:
When inevitable death is imminent in spite of the means used, it is permitted in conscience to take the decision to refuse forms of treatment that would only secure a precarious and burdensome prolongation of life, so long as the normal care due to the sick person in similar cases is not interrupted. In such circumstances the doctor has no reason to reproach himself with failing to help the person in danger.
And here is how John Paul II developed those ideas in Evangelium Vitae:
Euthanasia must be distinguished from the decision to forgo so-called “aggressive medical treatment,” in other words, medical procedures which no longer correspond to the real situation of the patient, either because they are by now disproportionate to any expected results or because they impose an excessive burden on the patient and his family. In such situations, when death is clearly imminent and inevitable, one can in conscience “refuse forms of treatment that would only secure a precarious and burdensome prolongation of life, so long as the normal care due to the sick person in similar cases is not interrupted.” Certainly, there is a moral obligation to care for oneself and to allow oneself to be cared for, but this duty must take account of concrete circumstances. It needs to be determined whether the means of treatment available are objectively proportionate to the prospects for improvement. To forego extraordinary or disproportionate means is not the equivalent of suicide or euthanasia; it rather expresses acceptance of the human condition in the face of death.
Six months later after our short end-of-life conversation, my husband was in no state to discuss the Declaration on Euthanasia or Evangelium Vitae. All the various interventions the doctors had tried to stop the tumor from hurting him had not worked. By mid-October 2017, and after four surgeries, he was sliding into a coma. Asked to sign off on the radical operation his surgeons had not wanted to do, he scrawled a signature so long and illegible, I had to take the pen away and then (as directed) sign myself.
The list of things that could go wrong was dire. He could be left in a coma, in a vegetative, or in a minimally conscious state. He could be left quadriplegic. He could die. But without the operation, he would certainly die. This time, our priest came to the hospital, and my husband — devout even in delirium — beat his emaciated chest in excited anticipation of the Blessed Sacrament. I was very much comforted by this. If he died, it would be a good death.
But he did not die. He was not left in a coma, quadriplegic, or even with facial paralysis, something his surgeon deemed “almost a miracle.” Post-surgery, I did not have to fight with the National Health Service to keep him fed and hydrated, he was on a ventilator no longer than 12 hours, and if he was doped up to keep him quiet, at least it was only for a short time. My resolve to stick by him through thick and thin, fighting for his life and his human dignity no matter what horrific injury he was left with, was never tested. For this I thank Almighty God.
However, he’s going to die sometime, as am I, and as are you. And depending on where we live, there will be more or less understanding of the dignity of the dying person and the sacredness of human life, let alone the teachings of the Catholic faith so many of us profess. Therefore, I encourage you to read the documents I have linked to above, to discuss them with your families, to write down your wishes, and to choose a “health care agent” who shares your beliefs and values in case you are ever unable to make your own decisions.
Send an urgent message to Canadian legislators urging them to stop expanding assisted suicide
