We have all seen many striking television images over the past year but perhaps none have been as profound as the pictures of Pope John Paul II and Terri Schiavo, often shown during the same news broadcast.  For weeks, almost nightly, we witnessed through the media, an elderly man with seriously compromised health, feeding tube inserted, to which he gave consent, and a much younger woman pictured as neurologically damaged, who was denied essential hydration and nutrition.  The two circumstances were, of course, not identical, yet the images left the observer lost for words, so strong were the contrast and similarity between these two very ill people.

As we stand on the verge of a new year and a probable federal election in 2006, Canadians come once again, face to face, with the difficult realities of sickness, suffering and death.  This time however, it is not through the televised images of a suffering Pope and an incapacitated young woman, but through a renewed effort to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada.  Bill C-407, the Private Member’s Bill, introduced on June 15, 2006, and designed to legalize both euthanasia and assisted suicide, is destined to be put out of its misery with the impending collapse of the 38^th Parliament in Ottawa.  So notoriously open ended and potentially dangerous is this Bill that even if the Liberal government were to survive a non-confidence vote, it would not have the support of the Minister of Justice, the Honourable Irwin Cotler, a man who desires to open up the debate on euthanasia and assisted suicide once again.

It is quite safe to say that there is a growing pro-euthanasia sentiment in western democracies that will not leave Canada unaffected.  The political climate in the western world seems more and more open to the so-called “Death with Dignity” movement.  For example, a euthanasia bill has been introduced into the British Parliament with debate scheduled for January 2006 and debate on this question is also occurring in the Supreme Court of the United States.  The State of Oregon has permitted euthanasia for some time now and three European countries have liberal laws permitting euthanasia and assisted suicide.  There is pressure in the Netherlands to widen the “Death with Dignity” laws to include infants born with severe malformations or terminal or excruciating illnesses.  Two questions need to be asked:  Are Canadians familiar with the contents of Bill C-407?  How are Christian people to view not only this bill but similar legislation?

In answer to the first question, legislation such as the ill-fated Bill C-407 and the more successful European models, do not seek to alter the respective Criminal Codes but rather desire to insert subsections which provide a way around the Code.  In Canada, Section 222 of the Criminal Code states very clearly that a person commits a homicide when he or she, directly or indirectly, causes the death of another human being.  In Section 241, referring to suicide, it states that anyone who counsels another person to commit suicide or aids or abets a person to commit suicide, whether suicide occurs or not, is guilty of an indictable offence.  A Bill such as C-407 seeks to simply add further words to the Code making euthanasia or assisted suicide legal if performed under the circumstances defined by the Bill C-470.  So now we suddenly have exceptions to our Criminal Code, that outline the “elastic” procedures by which a man or woman can either be euthanized or assist someone in committing suicide.  The only requirement being, that one has a chronic physical or mental pain, is over 18 years of age and “appears to be lucid”.  No definitions or guidelines are offered to explain mental pain or lucidity.

Now why does the Canadian Criminal Code currently read as it does?  The answer is that the ethical thinking behind our laws can be traced back through western civilization to our Judeo-Christian heritage.  This ethic has always held that life comes from God and is intrinsically sacred.  Such a Judeo-Christian background has been recognized time and time again by the medical profession.  For example, in 1970 the California Medical Association stated in California Medicine: 

“The traditional western ethic has always placed great emphasis on the intrinsic worth and value of every human life, regardless of stage or condition.  This ethic has had the blessing of the Judeo-Christian heritage and has been the basis for most our laws and much of our social policy.” (Volume 113, No. 3, Sept. 1970)

This great ethical tradition is still dominant but there is clear evidence to suggest that it is being eroded at its very core and even abandoned.

At the very heart of this changing attitude towards human life is the trend among some people, both within and outside the medical establishment, not to believe that membership in the human race necessarily confirs an intrinsic moral worth, a life to be preserved, protected, repaired and enhanced.  We, as Canadians, should be aware that it is never right for one person to kill another, even if that person asks to die.  Once society allows one person to kill another, it becomes increasingly difficult to protect persons who are vulnerable, weak, very ill or advanced in age and are seen as burdens to society.  Given the huge ageing population in Canada and the resulting strain on the medical system and the economy, we should be truly alarmed by the possibilities opened up by legislation such as Bill C-407 or even the more modified versions likely to come.

Archbishop Adam Exner, now Bishop Emeritus of the Vancouver Archdiocese, in a verbal presentation to the Senate Special Committee on Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide on September 27, 1994, referred to medical ethicist Leon Kaas’ statement that the question of euthanasia “puts the soul of medicine on trial”.  He went on to say:  “For more than 2,000 years medicine had the vial of death removed from its grasp; it has only carried the vial of life.  Now there is the prospect of its carrying the vial of death once more”.  The Archbishop referred to the fact that, just as the Hippocratic tradition marked a decisive turn towards the value and protection of every human life, so the modern movement toward euthanasia and assisted suicide marks a turning towards a devaluing of human life.  This brings into clear focus, Pope John Paul II’s teaching on the subject in his Encyclical, the Gospel of Life:

“Euthanasia must be called a false mercy, and indeed a disturbing ‘perversion’ of mercy.  True ‘compassion’ leads to sharing another’s pain; it does not kill the person whose suffering we cannot bear”.  (#66)

The whole question of euthanasia and assisted suicide is a difficult one for us because it appears under the guise of progress and freedom.  It seems to be something reasonable and compassionate because it holds up human freedom to be masters of our lives and deaths.  In other words, to be a sort of god ourselves.  The British Lord who introduced the new Euthanasia Bill to be debated in January, said:  “I feel strongly about assisted dying.  It seems to me to be a human right to make a decision in relation not only to how you run your life, but how and when you die”.  The current president of the Association for the Right to Die with Dignity, based in Brussels, recently stated:  “People are feeling:  who is the master of my life?  It’s not God.  It’s not the State.  It’s not the physician.  I am the master of my life.  And I am the one to decide if I have to suffer or not.  This feeling of the right to self privacy to decide one’s own destiny is growing in the population.”  Thoughts such as these often have great emotional appeal and they seem reasonable, but they fail to reflect reality. 

Who of us, for example, has control over our lives?  We try to run our lives and we constantly make decisions, yet life is full of unforeseen events which alter the course of our earthly hopes and dreams.  Furthermore, there is no choice on our part about coming into the world.  Both our origin and our dying lie beyond us, in the hands of the one who made us.  As the scriptures say, God is the Master of Life and Death:  “I alone am God; there is no God beside me.  It is I who bring both death and life.”  (Dt. 32)  To ignore the moral standard not to kill, very quickly leads to problems in society as the Dutch physician Karl Gunning, President of the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Life, reminds us:  “Once you start looking at killing as a means to solve problems, then you will find more and more problems when killing can be a solution.”  We have sadly seen this situation develop before in the Europe of the 1930’s and 40’s.  The recent history of Europe should never be forgotten.  The desire to build a master race found its seeds in the early euthanasia policy which was enacted out of compassion to ease the suffering of the most vulnerable who were of no use to society.  And it was the loss of the unconditional value of human life that preceded such totalitarian legislation.  The Bishops of Canada, in October of this year reminded the Canadian Parliament and Senate that:  “Assisted suicide and euthanasia are founded on an erroneous understanding of compassion and freedom.  It poses an extremely serious threat that concerns all citizens but especially the most vulnerable.”

The whole question of the desire to be masters of life and death is an old story.  In the Book of Genesis, a book not meant to be a scientific treatise, yet a book rich in religious truth about creation and ourselves, we see the primordial example of Adam and Eve seeking to be like God.  There is, in fact, a recurring temptation in the human race to disregard the order of truth established by the Creator and to claim the power to determine what is good and what is evil.  It was a deception then and it is a deception now.

Now for the second question posed at the beginning of this article:  How are Christian people to react to such proposed legislation as a Bill C-407?  First of all, we should realize that euthanasia is defined as the deliberate killing of someone by an intended action or omission, with or without that person’s consent.  A lethal injection would be an example of an action and the withholding of medically indicated treatment would be an example of omission.  Euthanasia does not include respecting a person’s refusal of treatment, letting a person die naturally by withholding medical treatment when its burdens out weigh its benefits nor does it include giving drugs to relive pain even if the unintended consequence is to shorten life.  Assisted suicide refers to another person who provides the means for a person to end their life.  Providing pills would be an example.  The Christian view of these activities to intentionally end life can be summed up in the Catechism of the Catholic Church #2258:

“Human life is sacred because from its beginning it involves the creative action of God and it remains forever in a special relationship with the Creator, who is its sole end.  God alone is the Lord of Life from its beginning until its end:  no one can under any circumstances claim for himself the right directly to destroy an innocent human life.”

The essence of this statement is that there is an intrinsic value to each human life and because of this there is a mutual responsibility to care for each other.  There is no ethical difference between euthanasia and assisted suicide.  The moral responsibility to reject both is deeply imbedded in our Judeo-Christian heritage.  There is in fact a moral obligation to care for oneself and to allow oneself to be cared for by others, but this duty must take into account our concrete circumstances.  It needs to be determined whether the means of treatment are proportionate to the real possibility of improvement:  “To forego extraordinary means is not the equivalent of suicide or euthanasia, it rather expresses acceptance of the human condition in the face of death.”  (Gospel of Life #65)

As an alternative to euthanasia and assisted suicide, we must realize our true relationship with the sick person.  It is a relationship which should seek to journey with the person so that they do not feel abandoned and turn to a quick easy means to end life.  This journeying with the sick person includes our efforts to achieve the best home care or palliative care along with the best pain control and alleviation of suffering.  This involves the greatest respect for all the needs of the person who is suffering or dying – the emotional, physical, social and spiritual – until natural death occurs.  Dr. Romayne Gallagher M.D., an expert in palliative care explains that this medical science is really the total care of the person:

“If people have pain or psychological issues, they can benefit from palliative care … Palliative care is, to me, about really good medical care.  We should always look at a person as having a physical, emotional and spiritual self.” (BC Catholic Nov. 18’05)

The Christian person, in fact any caring Canadian who believes in the unconditional intrinsic value of every human person should become active in encouraging governments to devote more resources towards palliative care in hospitals, homes and hospices and also to develop educational opportunities for health care professionals and indeed for the public at large.

Fr. Ronald Rolheiser O.M.I., adds a useful perspective in looking at this question of end-of-life treatment.  He reminds us that the process of dying has great importance for each of us:  “We don’t prepare for death by withdrawing from life rather the opposite is true”.  In effect he states that the last mile of our lives is an opportunity to live our lives as we should have been living them all along.  To do this means to have the kind of heart and kind of openness that makes it possible to love and forgive:

“ … the best way we can prepare to die is to begin to stretch our hearts to love wider and wider, to begin to love in a way that takes us beyond our natural narrowness and discrimination that exists in our hearts because of personal temperament, wounds, timidity, ignorance, selfishness, race, gender, religion, circumstance and our place in history.”  (BC Catholic November 14, 2005)

Although palliative care cannot eliminate all suffering in all cases, it is an excellent way of affirming life of the person who is dying.  This is what is really meant by Dying with Dignity.

The question of euthanasia and assisted suicide is, at its heart, a question of social justice because it deals with the most basic of all human rights, the right to live.  It is most interesting that the euthanasia movement lacked popular appeal years ago when pain control was less effective.  Today, however, when medicine is making great strides in this area, we hear loud voices calling for euthanasia.  What has changed?

The well known social justice formula applies very well in this case:  act, reflect and transform.  We must not skirt our responsibilities to act vigorously against all legislation such as a Bill C-407 in whatever form; we also need to reflect deeply on how we as a society arrived at this point in our moral development; and finally we must work to transform our society through social action to educate on the question of the value of each human life and the process of dying with true dignity.  If there is to be a federal election, we can work towards transforming our society through the way we vote and how we challenge our politicians.

Perhaps the best example of end-of-life care has been given to the world by the death of Pope John Paul II.  He showed us how to die in a courageous moral manner.  He personally endorsed a program of treatment which offered some hope of improvement but was open to assessment as things changed from week to week.  He respected the sacred gift of life but in the end he refused disproportionate care.  In a very real way he lived the Catholic teaching on palliative care for those suffering from incurable or terminal illness.  He died surrounded by loved ones, open to their presence as much as he could with his last words being:  “Let me go to the house of my Father”.  We were all served well by Pope John Paul’s example and let us pray that his death will inspire us to value life.