QUEBEC – Christians are called to be “audacious witnesses” against the evil of euthanasia, the Canadian bishops’ life and family organization said in the wake of Quebec’s passage last week of Bill 52.
“This event represents a call of unprecedented urgency, a call to take a stand in defense of those groups who will resist and challenge this new law,” said the Catholic Organization for Life and Family (COLF) in a statement.
The organization, co-founded by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Knights of Columbus, called the day of the bill’s passage, last Thursday, “one of the saddest days in the history of La belle province.”
“Like the first Christians,” COLF stated, “we must be audacious in speaking with our family members, friends and colleagues at work on the subject of euthanasia; we must also make ourselves more available to walk with and support the vulnerable people God places on our path.”
COLF said Christians, and all citizens who respect the dignity of every human person, must “demand quality palliative care for all Quebecers who need to be accompanied with compassion until their natural death.”
“We must always remember that – even from a narrowly humanistic point of view – that which is legal is not necessarily moral,” they stated.
In a statement on behalf of Quebec’s bishops, Rimouski Archbishop Pierre-André Fournier said the law’s passage “is a source for us of deep disappointment and keen anxiety.”
Fournier, who serves as president of the Assembly of Quebec Catholic Bishops, said that there is no consensus in Quebec society that the ability to demand a lethal injection is a right, as evidenced by the vote in the National Assembly where 94 MNAs voted for the legislation, but 22 stood against it.
“Of course we understand the anguish and sorrow of everyone who has ever heard a loved one ask for death during a difficult end-of-life phase,” he said. However, he added, “the authentic response of society and of medicine to such a situation is palliative care. Palliative care is the best way to allay the suffering of a person who is approaching the end of her life, and to help her to live this final step with humanity and dignity.”
“Euthanasia, even if legal, is utterly contrary to the dignity of life and of the person,” he said, emphasizing the conviction of the Church “that human life must be protected and respected until its natural end.”
McGill Professor Douglas Farrow, writing in the journal First Things, likened the passage of the euthanasia bill on the day before the 70th anniversary of D-Day to a reversal of the sacrifices of those who fought Nazism.
“Quebec’s Bill 52 … passed 94–22, a strong majority of the National Assembly endorsing the thesis of the Parti Québécois MNA, Véronique Hivon, that “Dying with dignity” means dying with the least amount of suffering,” Farrow wrote.
“What this absurd thesis does to the very concept of dignity few seem to have pondered. Or for that matter what it does to the concept of sacrificial suffering and death – ironically this vote took place on the eve of the 70th anniversary of D-Day. Nor should it be forgotten that it was with similar falsehoods that the Nazis embarked on the road on which we have now embarked.”
LifeCanada, a national association of local and provincial educational pro-life groups, said the pro-euthanasia legislation in Quebec “guts the soul of medicine.”
“The passage of Bill 52 is a corruption of medicine, that will force doctors to abandon an age-old oath they took to protect the life of every patient, namely the Hippocratic Oath,” Natalie Sonnen, executive director of LifeCanada, said in a press release. ”This decision by the Quebec government has gutted the soul of medicine in that Province, and will have a lasting impact on the rest of Canada.”
Sonnen pointed out that the elderly and disabled are particularly affected by this legislation because Bill 52 states that those eligible must be in “an advanced and irreversible decline of function.”
Moreover, she said the legislation has blurred the lines between palliative care and euthanasia, by referring to euthanasia as “continuous palliative sedation.” Palliative care, Sonnen noted, is a vital service that truly helps patients die with dignity, and which is currently available to only 16 percent of the Canadian population.
“When a doctor kills a patient, implicit in that act is the notion that the patient’s life was not worth living, and that is a powerful and destructive message that is sent to the sick, elderly, disabled, and mentally ill of our society,” said Sonnen. “No safeguards can protect us against the message that some lives will be worth fighting for and some will not.”