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Dave A.
wrote:
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Hi guys,
There's another question I wanted to ask you:
- Isn't making (or keeping) euthanasia illegal, solely on religious grounds, an
infringement
of the free will God has given us?
Thanks in advance for your answer(s).
Hope to hear from you soon.
Take care,
Dave
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{
Isn't
making euthanasia illegal solely on religious grounds
a breach of the free will God's given us? }
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Mary Ann replied:
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Hi Dave,
You said:
- Isn't making (or keeping) euthanasia illegal, solely on religious grounds, an
infringement of God's given free will?
There is no difference. Murder itself is immoral on religious grounds,
and the secular grounds for the wrong of murder do not differ
from the secular grounds for the wrong of euthanasia.
Now if you mean assisted
suicide, that's a bit different, but not for the assister who is still
helping to kill someone.
As for the person who wants assistance with suicide:
it has always been illegal because of the presumption, now proven, that
such a person is too depressed or impaired to make a free decision and suicide, itself, has been illegal so that people can legally prevent it for
the sake of the presumably ill or crazed person.
That said, those who frame the
debate in terms of euthanasia are using words to deceive.
- Euthanasia
means good death and it refers to putting someone to death
in order to put them out of their misery.
- Assisted suicide is a distinct matter
that overlaps — someone wants to be euthanized and wants doctors to do
it (who, since Hippocrates, have sworn never to do that so that we could
trust them not to kill us, for hire or otherwise, which they often did
before Hippocrates).
Hope this answers your question,
Mary Ann
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Dave replied:
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Hi Mike,
Thanks for sending me Mary Ann's reply.
There's a huge difference between euthanasia and murder. For example, the Baltimore
Catechism says this about the Apostle's Creed:
"We say died, because Our Lord is the Giver of Life, and no
one could take His life away unless He allowed it. Therefore we say He died,
and not that He was killed,
to show that He died by His own free will and not
against His will."
I know the context is very different but what I mean is that even the author
of the Baltimore Catechism could tell the difference between:
- being [killed/murdered],
and
- dying by one's own free will.
I have been thinking about this issue today. I live close to the Belgian border
and I know euthanasia is allowed in Belgium, and in some other countries in western
Europe. From a secular point
of view, murder is a cause of unrest that would threaten
the very existence of society if it were allowed. Nobody wants to be killed or
robbed or raped or hurt etc. People — no matter what they believe in — want to
be protected from crime. That's why these laws exist in most countries — not because
these crimes are immoral.
Free will is defined like so in the Baltimore Catechism:
"My soul has free will. This is another grand gift of God,
by which I am able to do or not do a thing, just as I please. I can even sin
and refuse to obey God."
Euthanasia is defined as a sin by the Church so, logically, it should be up to
every individual to decide for themselves whether or not they will follow
the Church's guidance — whether they will obey God or whether they will
choose to sin. After all, when
God put the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden of Eden, He didn't
built a huge fence around it so that neither Adam nor Eve would be able to eat
of its fruit. The same thing applies here: euthanasia (unlike abortion) seems to be only a
matter of free will to me.
Besides, forbidding euthanasia on moral ground doesn't seem to make any sense
because if a man is in such excruciating pain that he asks his doctor for a quick
and painless death, this man has already committed the grave sin whether or not
the doctor agrees to perform the illegal act!
The fact that the man is
to be granted
his wish is irrelevant from the [religious/moral] point of view. And if the doctor
wishes there were a way to give the dying man a shot without being caught red-handed,
well, he has already committed that sin too, (Matthew 5:28).
Though I may have thought about this issue a lot, I still don't understand why
some groups militate against euthanasia. After all, our countries are not theocracies
like Ancient Israel used to be.
- Would these groups have militated in order to build
a wall around the tree of knowledge
of good and evil if we were still living in
the garden of Eden?
I hope you find my argument interesting even though you may not agree with it.
Take care,
David
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Mary Ann replied:
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Hi Dave,
My point was that euthanasia is not dying by one's own free will. It is
dying by the will of another. Euthanasia is defined as the killing of another to end his suffering. Voluntary euthanasia, or assisted suicide,
is when someone desires someone else to kill him. No one else has the right
to do that. As for the dying of one's own free will, that refers to self-sacrifice:
- willingly accepting death when it comes, or
- willingly offering one's life
for others, as in combat or in martyrdom.
The only person who has the
right over life and death is God. Christ, as God, can will His own death,
but even did not, as a man, will His death. He accepted His Father's will
that He sacrifice Himself by accepting the death sentence imposed by evil
men.
All evil acts are a matter of free will and your argument about the sin of
the intention has two flaws.
- First, the law does not refer to the intention
and the purpose of the law is not to protect us from committing sin.
- Second,
the argument you propose could be absurdly applied to any evil. Anyone
can wish evil, so therefore, you would say, it's foolish to outlaw anything
because the person has already committed a sin. Reductio ad absurdam. Latin: reduction to absurdity.
Mary Ann
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Eric replied:
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Dave —
One of the biggest reasons why euthanasia should not be legal, if you
don't want to relate it to morality, is because the legality of euthanasia
puts immense pressure on the sick to commit suicide.
Both hospitals and
family members may subtly (or not so subtly) hint that the person is costing
money and would be, frankly, better off dead. It may be considered voluntary euthanasia
but often it is coerced.
If it's illegal, there is no pressure (or at least
very little pressure) to give into it. It protects patients. In today's
world of insurance companies trying to squeeze the most out of health care
and denying coverage for all sorts of things, the last thing we need is
people pressured to voluntarily commit suicide.
Eric
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John replied:
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Dave,
Look at it this way: society creates laws, not only based on morality,
but on what is the perceived common good of society. By legalizing euthanasia,
one can reasonably argue that society is devaluing human life. Hence, euthanasia
does not just effect the person being euthanized but the rest of society.
Even though all the people involved in a plural marriage
do so of their own free will, it is still illegal in most western countries
because of the societal effects.
Hence all laws which prohibit:
- conduct
- tax income, or
- somehow control
behavior
encroach on free will. Nevertheless, they are just because, in
certain instances, the good of society supercedes the right of the individual
to make a certain choice.
John DiMascio
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Dave replied:
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Hi Eric —
Thank you for your answer.
About the immense pressure put on the sick to commit suicide:
I think this problem
exists mostly in the United States, not in western Europe or in Canada since the sad situation
you describe (insurance companies trying to squeeze the most out of health
care and denying coverage for all sorts of things) doesn't exist in our countries
because health care is paid by tax-payers — in France, we call this system health
care by solidarity.
Besides, pressuring someone to commit suicide is already condemned by the law
in most civilized countries so there's really no need to keep euthanasia illegal
on secular grounds.
Dave
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Dave replied:
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Hi John —
Thank you for your answer.
Indeed, society creates laws based on what is the perceived common good of society
and the particular good of every individual, however, legalizing euthanasia doesn't
mean that society is devaluing human life. It rather means that society is valuing
the individual's will which is the very essence of democracy. The value of human
life is a purely religious concept.
- Law forbids murder in order to protect people
from malevolent men.
- Law forbids polygamy to protect children from the ill effects
such a familial context would have upon them.
In both cases, innocents are protected.
That's also why, in my opinion, abortion should be forbidden on secular grounds.
In the case of euthanasia, no innocent person is threatened by the ill will
of another person. For example, the Belgian law allows euthanasia under the following
circumstances:
- The patient is suffering from an incurable illness.
- The patient must be in unbearable physical or psychological pain, or
- The patient repeatedly asked freely for euthanasia to be performed.
Thus both the patient and the performing medical doctor are using their God-given
free will and no innocent person is being hurt by a malevolent person so a secular point
of view doesn't provide adequate grounds for keeping euthanasia illegal.
Having
said that, from a [religious/moral] standpoint, both the patient and the doctor fall
under the divine law and thus they will be judged accordingly. Besides, it seems
to me that a religious standpoint provides adequate grounds in order to secure everyone's
right to exercise their free will as long as:
- it doesn't interfere with another
person's God-given rights, and
- it doesn't infringe another person's secular
rights.
The papacy's duty is to assert Church Teaching. When the pope explicitly reiterates
and asserts unchanging 2,000-year-old Catholic teaching on moral matters like euthanasia,
he's publicly setting a moral standard so that people will know what they have
to do in order to find favor in God's eyes but — it's not the Church's duty to try
actively to influence national legislation in order to make everyone follow Catholic
moral rules. The Kingdom of Heaven is not going to come thanks to human laws. God's Kingdom is a divine gift to be prayed for, not a human achievement.
The Church's
duty is to preach divine truths and to let people exercise their right to obey
or disobey God so it only makes sense to me that a Catholic shouldn't militate against someone's
right to require euthanasia.
I hope I'm making my point clearer.
David
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Mary Ann replied:
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Dave,
I can't find it now but there was a previous article on the Genethique web site that discussed how much assisted suicide in Europe
is involuntary. The law has been unwilling to prosecute even
patently obvious cases.
The National
Catholic Bioethics Center many have
some information as well.
Government health care has even more reason to save money by eliminating
the very sick or killing people off early and there is no accountability
when the government does it.
The individual human will is not the essence of democracy, nor is the
collective human will the essence of democracy.
- One leads to violent anarchy.
- the other leads to totalitarianism.
The foundations of self-government
are the natural rights human beings have prior to government — the primary
one being the right to life.
A Creator is the only logical foundation of the natural rights of man,
as the founders of the United States knew, but even the new secular societies (since 1789)
have an innate sense of these rights.
Mary Ann
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John replied:
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Hi David,
You said:
Indeed, society creates laws based on what is the perceived common good of society
and the particular good of every individual, however, legalizing euthanasia doesn't
mean that society is devaluing human life. It rather means that society is valuing
the individual's will which is the very essence of democracy. The value of human
life is a purely religious concept.
- Law forbids murder in order to protect people
from malevolent men.
- Law forbids polygamy to protect children from the ill effects
such a familial context would have upon them.
In both cases, innocents are protected.
That's also why, in my opinion, abortion should be forbidden on secular grounds.
In the case of euthanasia, no innocent person is threatened by the ill will
of another person.
Euthanasia by definition devalues human life. It allows for both the victim
and those who assist in euthanasia to say this life is no-longer worth living. That sort
of thinking effects society as whole.
You said:
The papacy's duty is to assert Church Teaching. When the pope explicitly reiterates
and asserts unchanging 2,000-year-old Catholic teaching on moral matters like euthanasia,
he's publicly setting a moral standard so that people will know what they have
to do in order to find favor in God's eyes but — it's not the Church's duty to try
actively to influence national legislation in order to make everyone follow Catholic
moral rules. The Kingdom of Heaven is not going to come thanks to human laws.
The Church of Christ and the Pope as His vicar have every right and
obligation to influence legislation according to the mind of Christ.
The Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus said, is in the hearts of men. Such men
write laws for the benefit of society.
The idea that religion should not
influence laws is rooted in secular fundamentalism. This is nothing
more than a non-theistic religion which worships man and his own will.
Hope this helps,
John
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