To take one’s own life breaks one’s relationship with God and with others. “Assisted suicide aggravates the gravity of this act because it implicates another in one’s own despair,” it said.
The Christian response to these actions is to offer the help necessary for a person to shake off this despair, it emphasized, and not to indulge “in spurious condescension.”
“The commandment ‘do not kill’ ... is in fact a yes to life which God guarantees, and it ‘becomes a call to attentive love which protects and promotes the life of one’s neighbor,’” the letter said.
The 45 page document (Samaritanus bonus: on the Care of Persons in the Critical and Terminal Phases of Life) is all over the news. Probably the least biased place to read about it is at the Catholic News Agency which does a straight forward reporting job.
As CNA points out, this is a reaffirmation of classic Catholic teachings. In fact, looking around I found this Declaration on Euthanasia from 1980. However, the attention the new document is receiving means it was high time to spell things out again.
The reaffirmation came to mind strongly when I was reading this morning's commentary from In Conversation with God.
Whether we are dealing with children in the womb, old people, accident victims, the physically or mentally ill, we are always dealing with our fellow human beings whose credentials of nobility are to be found on the very first page of the Bible: "God created man in his own image" (Gen. 1:27). On the other hand, it has often been said that it is possible to judge a civilization by the way it deals with the defenseless, with children, with the sick, etcetera. Wherever you have a sick person, there has to be a supremely human environment where each one is treated with dignity. One experiences in such circumstances the closeness of brothers and friends.
Paul VI, Address, 24 May 1974, italicized
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