Tag Archives: euthanasia

Better Off Dead?

Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, , , ,

One of the greatest challenges confronting the Church today is embracing the realization that the majority of people, including most Christians, think with a post-Christian mindset.  The opposition to the Terminally Ill (End of Life) Bill in England comes to mind as the most recent example.  The Catholic Bishops of England vociferously opposed the bill, even though the passage of the bill was fully expected.  Yet their reasoning would really only be convincing to someone deeply rooted in a Christian culture.  That is why they are forced to keep saying “The Catholic Church teaches…”  To use language that speaks of the dignity of the human person, while true, falls rather flat in a culture of death.   In fact, you could argue that it is really at the crux of the issue.  When people no longer practically believe in God, there is little interest in protecting His image in man.  My proposal then is to update our approach by going backwards.

In many ways St. Augustine is a perfect model for our times.  He lived in an era when Christianity was mostly tolerated but the Christian mindset was nowhere to be found.  What he did was to address social evils using the examples and thought patterns of the day.  He would then show how they fit with the understanding of the Church.  In fact he was so good at it, that he wrote a thousand+ page book that has remained intact for nearly 1500 years that uses this technique throughout called The City of God.

Augustine on Suicide

What makes his approach especially relevant is that he tackles the question of suicide in Book I.  The Romans tended to view suicide as something noble.  Augustine examines two famous examples to make his point.  The first was Lucretia who was a Roman noblewoman who had been raped.  After her brother and husband exacted revenge on the offender, she killed herself to avoid the shame.  The second was Marcus Cato who strongly opposed Julius Caesar so that once Caesar came into power, he killed himself rather than submitting.  The Romans looked to both of them as models of nobility.

Rather than leading with the dignity of the human person or the Commandments, Augustine first attacks the value the Romans found in suicide, namely its nobility.  He shows how it is anything but noble.  He calls Lucretia weak and a coward: “it is not even right to call it greatness of soul when someone kills himself because he is not strong enough to endure hardships or other people’s sins.”  Because he is questioning whether or not it is truly noble to run away from hardship, he now has the Romans’ ears.  They value nobility and Augustine has called into question what is truly noble.

Likewise, he calls Cato a coward especially because he and his friends admitted that when his son killed himself it “was an act showing weakness unable to bear adversity rather than honor on guard against disgrace.”  He then goes on to say he prefers a different Marcus, one surnamed Regulus, whom the Romans “offer none better for their outstanding virtue”.  He, rather taking his own life after losing to the Carthaginians, remained patient and bore the shame and bad fortune.  Only then does he offer up the example of Job asking the reader whether he would prefer to be Job or Cato.

Challenging on Their Terms

All of this is pertinent because one of the arguments in favor of assisted suicide is that, just as in the propaganda ad above, there is something noble in taking one’s life.  In order to meet the anti-lifers on their terms we must call it out for what it is; it is most decidedly an act of cowardice on the part of the person and those who surround him.  We all know this, but very few are willing to say it and call it out.  We may think we are being kind by not pointing out the obvious, but it is a false compassion.  There is true nobility in bearing suffering well and facing it head on.  There is true nobility in being Simon of Cyrene and courageously allowing another’s suffering to spill over onto you.  The false compassion that leads to silence is not much better than the false compassion that leads to support of deadly bills like this.

Imagine the difference between offering a person facing suffering and death a pill versus offering them support to lean into it.  When given the choice, wouldn’t any one of us rather be St. Paul than King Saul?  We cannot be afraid to challenge people directly, especially when they have suffering in front of them.  Ask them how they want to be remembered: as someone who went out on their own terms or someone who fought to the very end?  Telling the stories of great saints who endured suffering, especially modern day examples like St. Maximillian Kolbe, St. John Paul II and St. Teresa Benedicta, can be sources of inspiration.  It is a natural transition from them as sources of inspiration to their Source of inspiration. 

Part of the dignity of the human person and a sign of man’s greatness is the fact that he can see suffering coming and can plow right into, and Lord willing, through it.  The reason many will choose to end their lives is because they have not met Christ crucified.  We must not be afraid to preach the truth that because He suffered, suffering now has eternal value.  The Lord suffered so that no suffering is ever meaningless, and the only real “sweet death” is the one that He has set aside for each of us.

Politcal Parties and Cooperation with Evil

Abortion, Conscience, Culture, Culture of Life, , , , , , , ,

At the beginning of 1931, the German Bishops collectively excommunicated members of the Nazi party and barred all Catholics in Germany from joining.  The excommunication did not extend to those who voted for Nazis, but only those who joined the party.  This ban was put in place even though not all the party platform was evil.  In fact, there were certain policies that were in accord with the Common Good.  Nevertheless, the party protected and promoted certain intrinsic evils that could never be overlooked and washed away in the political give and take that is inevitable in a party system.    Although the ban was walked back slightly after the election of 1933, the German Bishops demonstrated a long-standing Catholic belief that political party affiliation can put one’s soul in jeopardy.

Party Affiliation and Formal Cooperation

Why this is the case can be seen once we examine the principle of formal cooperation.  Recall that the principle of cooperation acknowledges that a number of people often participate in bringing about some evil action.  Moral philosophy makes the distinction between formal and material cooperation.  Formal cooperation means that a person aligns their will with the intention of the principal moral agent.  Material cooperation means that a person offers some material support in the carrying out of an action, even if, they may not be willing participants in the evil itself.

The act of abortion offers an illustrative and relevant example.  Suppose a woman is pondering an abortion so she seeks counsel with a friend.  The friend says she should do it but says she cannot help her get one.  The friend has formally cooperated in the abortion and thus bears the guilt of the act itself in uniting her will to the will of the woman.  She did not, however, offer material support and thus her material cooperation is minimal if non-existent.  When the woman gets to the abortion mill, she is greeted by the janitor outside who is emptying mop water.  He hates abortion but only works here because he needs to feed his family and is unable to find another job currently.  His cooperation too is material, he provides a clean environment for the abortion, but it is remote since it is not vital to the carrying out of the abortion (which is truer than most people would like to admit).  Finally, she enters the abortion mill and is greeted by the nurse.  The nurse too hates abortion (thus no formal cooperation) but her material cooperation is so proximate and vital to the act that she is guilty of cooperation with the evil of abortion.

In summary, because guilt lies in the will, a person is always guilty of sin when they formally cooperate with evil.  A person who formally cooperates with a grave evil bears a proportionate level of guilt for that evil.  They may or may not be guilty when they cooperate materially, depending on their role and their proximity to the act itself.  Related to the topic at hand, a person who is Pro-Choice, even if they never directly assist or counsel a person to get an abortion, simply by making their position known, has formally cooperated with that evil and bear culpability.

The Democratic Party platform, in no uncertain terms, promotes and protects the evil of abortion: “Democrats…believe unequivocally…that every woman should be able to access…safe and legal abortion.”  And because political party affiliation is a free association, any person who joins the party consents to all of the party’s platform.  There is no “I am personally opposed, but …” type logic because of the principle of formal cooperation.  A member of the Democratic Party is aligning their will with that of the other members of the Party.  Why else would they join?  If they did not believe in any of the tenets, they simply need not join.  This was the logic of the German Bishops in 1931, a logic that can likewise be applied to members of the Democratic Party today.

An All-Important Distinction

Please note what has been said and what hasn’t.  The contention is that because joining the Democratic Party constitutes formal cooperation, it is gravely sinful.  This does not mean that voting for a Democrat is always and everywhere gravely sinful.  To extend the arm of sin beyond formal cooperation is a bridge too far.  This was the point that Cardinal Ratzinger made when in 2004 he said,

“A Catholic would be guilty of formal cooperation in evil, and so unworthy to present himself for Holy Communion, if he were to deliberately vote for a candidate precisely because of the candidate’s permissive stand on abortion and/or euthanasia.  When a Catholic does not share a candidate’s stand in favor of abortion and/or euthanasia but votes for that candidate for other reasons, it is considered remote material cooperation, which can be permitted in the presence of proportionate reasons.”

The key word related to material cooperation is proportionate.  There must be not only a good reason to vote, but a proportionate reason.  On this level this means that if Candidate A is in favor of one intrinsically evil action and Candidate B supports a different intrinsically evil action, then we might vote so as to limit the amount of overall evil present in society.  For example, suppose Candidate A supported abortion but was against Euthanasia and Candidate B supported Euthanasia but was against abortion, you might vote for B because abortion constitutes a greater evil on society as a whole.  The point is that you cannot simply perform moral calculus adding up the evil on each side, but instead the proportionately is related to the presence of intrinsically evil actions, or as the Church has put it, “non-negotiables”.

But just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.  In fact, it is really a natural outlook that would motivate a Catholic to vote for a Democrat.  A supernatural outlook of the world would never allow us to vote for someone who we know to be in an objective state of grave sin.  The reason for this is simple—a person in a state of mortal sin is the Devil’s pawn.  Mortal sin places a person under his dominion and they are very likely to commit further evil.  If Christ is not King of their heart, then most assuredly they will be working against making Him King of our Country.  This principle really goes for any politician.  If the person is known to be in a state of grave sin then you should never vote for them.

This sounds “judgmental” to modern ears, but it is simply a statement of fact.  A person who directly wills that abortions be provided remains in a gravely sinful state until such time as they repent.  Because the support of abortion was public, true repentance would have to be public, causing the person to separate themselves from the sinful Party.  A person who remains in the Party has thus remained in their sinful state.

As the November election is fast approaching, we must as Catholics, come to understand that voting is not just a political action, but a moral one and thus we must shine the light of Catholic morality on our voting decisions.    

On Divine Judgement and the Coronavirus

Culture of Life, Suffering, , , , , ,

As punishment for their idolatrous worship of the Golden Calf, God sent a plague among the Israelites (c.f. Ex 32:30-35).  Serving as a bookend to this event, St. John tells us that the fourth rider of the Apocalypse brings with him plague “by means of the beasts of the earth” to punish mankind.  And between these two instances, Scripture is replete with many cases in which mankind suffers a plague in punishment for sin.  The point is that it is a common means that God uses in order to punish wayward mankind and, we ought not be surprised that in our age of decadence that we are once again witnessing the rise of a new plague.

At the outset it must be admitted that the notion that anything that happens is associated with Divine retribution is hardly ever discussed.  It is usually embarrassingly glossed over so that only those “fire and brimstone preachers” animated with a punitive view of God that speak of it.  Nevertheless true Christians must see it and call it what it is. 

Calling it what it is

It is helpful first to examine why we are so hesitant to call something like the Coronavirus a tool of Divine punishment.  This reticence is rooted in a grave misunderstanding of punishment in general and God’s punishment in particular.  For us, punishment is always viewed as an evil, a lack of some good that becomes a penal act inflicted on us when someone in authority is fed up.  For God punishment is only a relative evil deprivation of some good. 

For men, good comes in three forms—external goods, the good of the body and the good of the soul—that form a hierarchy in which a lesser good may be sacrificed for a higher good.  The evil of punishment then is always relative because it contains a medicinal value.  A man may give up his money (external good) in order to feed his body (a good of the body).  That same man may later fast and deprive himself of food so as to grow in virtue (a good of the soul).  Whenever God punishes then he will allow the deprivation of some lower good for the good of the soul.

Here again we bump into a profound conflict with the spirit of the world.  All of this only makes sense if you believe in the hierarchy of the manifold goods of man such that every punishment has a specific meaning.  It is never inflicted haphazardly or indiscriminately but always with some good in mind.  Justice and mercy are never separated.  The good includes not only a repayment of the debt to justice, but also contributes, when willingly accepted, to the healing of the person. 

For each sin not only offends God, but also warps our souls in some way by turning us away from what we were made to be.  Each time we sin, we do so by abusing some good, by taking pleasure in something the wrong way.  To fix the damage that is done, we have to submit to the deprivation of some pleasure that would result from the correct use of some good.  By accepting punishment as a means of repaying that stolen pleasure, it actually heals us as well.

In short if we do not call it what it is, then the only other option is to conclude that it is completely meaningless.  If plagues like the Coronavirus are not punishment then they are just accidental occurrences without any real meaning.  This ultimately makes life itself meaningless and thus suffering becomes an absolute, rather than a relative, evil.  By not calling it a punishment we are depriving the world of its meaning and it becomes in a very real sense useless suffering.

Admittedly we are also reluctant to call it a punishment because it feels like we are being judgmental.  And this is the unforgivable sin of our age.  But again it is Christ who judges the living and the dead that is being judgmental.  And His judgment is not definitive but instead a call to repentance and healing, a call to peace and joy.  His judgment is that “you are going to wrong way, turn around now because you are headed into an abyss.”  Or, using His own words, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Instead, fear the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell” (Mt 10:28).  If no one echoes that call, then many souls will be lost, including those whom He has called to speak His truth.

What It Means

We should be slow to say how the punishment applies to each individual man, but quick to point out how it applies to mankind as a whole.  It seems that the meaning of the Coronavirus as a punishment for all of mankind is relatively clear.  For Rome, the Coronavirus appears to be a Divine Judgment upon the sin of the idolatrous attachment to Pachamama.  They must receive their deprivation of the Eucharist and offer it in reparation for the sin of idolatry.  Setting that unique situation aside, the Coronavirus also offers an opportunity of reparation for our treatment of the most vulnerable among us.

The full effect of the virus is still unknown, but what is clear is that it is particularly deadly for the most vulnerable among us.  In this way, the Coronavirus is not much different than the sins of abortion and euthanasia which attack those same people.  It is because of the most vulnerable that all of the rest of us must now suffer.  This suffering may be as simple as remaining in isolation for a fortnight or as devastating as losing a fortune.  The point is that we are being made to make sacrifices in order to keep those same people we want to throw away safe.  All of us can accept those sufferings and offer them in reparation for those grave sins.

In a Twitter post a couple of days ago, Conservative pundit Ann Coulter said that Americans were being manipulated by stories of the deaths in Italy.  She made a point to say that the average age of the victims was 81.  In essence she was saying “you shouldn’t be scared because it is just a bunch of old people dying.”  Now most people wouldn’t so callously say that, but many people are thinking along the same lines.  We shouldn’t fear because it only attacks the vulnerable.  This survival of the fittest mentality is exactly why we need to Coronavirus right now—as an opportunity to make reparation for so savagely treating the very ones we should be protecting as mere useless beings.  Fear not the one who gives you the Coronavirus, but instead fear the one who can destroy both body and soul.

Augustine and the Culture of Euthanasia

Bioethics, Culture of Life, End of Life, Human Dignity, , ,

Nearly sixteen centuries after its publication, St. Augustine’s City of God remains a seminal text in Christian political philosophy.  With the Fall of Rome as his backdrop, the Doctor of Grace contrasts the forces at work that seek to claim men’s souls.  History, from the Fall of the Angels to the Fall of Rome, has consisted of battle between the City of God and the City of Man.  From the vantage point of over a millennium and a half, one can see how, using the Augustine’s principles, Christendom emerged as the City of God dominated the City of Man.  But we seem to be living in a time where the transition is going in reverse and the weeds of secularism are choking out the wheat of Christendom so that Augustine’s text can serve as a blueprint of sorts for restoring the City of God and rebuilding a Christian society.

Without diving into all of the themes Augustine presents, the focus will be on his opening theme: suffering.  Why, in introducing the two cities, would Augustine choose to focus on suffering?  As he points out, the sack of Rome led to seemingly indiscriminate sufferings; both the good and the bad, the Christian and the Pagan suffered.  Suffering doesn’t seem to distinguish them at all.  But when we look not at the nature of the sufferings, but the response of the sufferer, we find great differences.  He says, “though the sufferings are the same, the sufferers remain different.  Virtue and vice are not the same even if they undergo the same treatment…What matters is the nature of the sufferer not the nature of the sufferings.”  So then suffering becomes like a great identification card enabling us to determine residency in either of the two cities.  

The Two Cities

Why this is so becomes apparent once we grasp that ultimately, the two cities are distinguished by their loves.  The “two cities were created by two kinds of love: the earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point if contempt for God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self…The one city loves its own strength shown in its powerful leaders; the other says to its God ‘I will love You, my Lord, my strength.”  For Augustine suffering is brought about when men love the world more than God, the City of Man more than the City of God.  The good and bad suffer together because even the good (even if to a much lesser degree) love this world rather than despising it.

Both the Christians and non-Christians were equally affected but the sufferings of the Christians have “tended to their moral improvement because they are viewed through the eyes of faith.”   For the residents of the City of God suffering becomes an opportunity for growth in virtue and holiness.  “Viewed through the eyes of faith,” sufferings become necessary because they are the most expedient (i.e. most gentle and most merciful) way that God naturalizes us as residents in the heavenly city.  They may be free from criminal and godless wickedness they still see that they are not so far removed as to not to deserve to suffer temporal ills for them.

The residents of the City of Man see suffering as the greatest of all evils.  Rather than viewing them as opportunities, they see them as something to be avoided at all costs, even to the point of self-inflicted death.  From within this context Augustine visits the question of noble suicide within Roman culture.  Drawing from two historical examples at key turning points in Roman history, Augustine shows why suicide is always wrong.  His first case study is Lucretia.  After becoming a victim of rape she killed herself and Rome celebrated the nobility in doing so.  Augustine asks why should she, who was innocent, have suffered a worse punishment than the offender?  “One does not take vengeance on oneself for another’s crime.”  To suffer some injustice and then commit another injustice, even against oneself, is like killing the innocent.

His second example is Cato who killed himself as a political act, a steady refusal to live in a Rome led by Caesar.   As the prototypical Stoic, he thought happiness was only to be found in escaping the body and not something that was achieved in the soul through the body.

The City of God and the Culture of Euthanasia

But he does more than simply prove the immorality of suicide.  He also shows how one might argue against a suicide culture.  In this way he provides us with a blueprint for overcoming a Culture of Euthanasia.  In both of his case studies Augustine chose to focus on “cold-blooded” suicides.  Both Lucretia and Cato were deliberate suicides, not merely acts of impassioned despair.  Augustine thinks there is nothing noble about killing oneself and a culture that elevates it as such is a culture that bestows victimhood on its members.  He wants to empower men and women so that they can be truly noble in facing their sufferings, even the final ones, head-on.

Augustine’s argument and ours as well depends upon strong Christian witness.  If we are to overcome the Culture of Euthanasia we must preach that the only “sweet death” is one that opens wide the door to eternal life.  We cannot “accompany” someone who chooses to kill themselves because it is accompanying a lie that says that God does not use the death He has chosen for us as a means to bring about life.  Instead we should accompany them in their sufferings by encouraging them to dying with true nobility, the nobility of Christ.  Dying with dignity is dying as conformed to Christ.  We will never overcome the emerging Culture of Euthanasia until we suffer like true Christians and encourage others to do the same.  This was Augustine’s way and it needs to be ours too.   

A Right to Die

End of Life, Human Dignity, Suffering, , , ,

Ambiguity is the mother of all social ill.  The less clear we are in our social discourse, the easier it is to pull a fast one on society at large.  Many states across the country have fallen victim to this through the “Death with Dignity” movement.  “Right to die” legislation has been either been accepted or introduced into legislation in 28 states in our country.  With this issue being raised with such regularity, it is worth investigating the merit of a so-called “right to die.”

Before we can even approach the question of whether there is a “right to die”, we need to examine what a right is.  Despite all of the talk we hear about rights in our country, few can actually define what a right is.  It is the steady refusal to examine rights philosophically that leads to all the muddle-headed discussion surrounding rights.  A right is the moral power to possess, do, or exact something that is due to the person.  Within this definition we find that there are three components.  First, there is the person who owns the right.  Second, there is the person who has the duty to respect the right.  This can be either passive, as in a duty of non-interference, or active, as in the duty to satisfy the right, or both.  These two are bound together morally by the final component, the thing in question.

One of the great dangers that our culture’s obsession with rights poses is that there are always those who will use the language of rights to mask something far more nefarious than it appears to be.  Nowhere is this more obvious than in the “right to die” or “death with dignity” movement.  This is why having clarity about rights in general can protect many innocent people from suffering at the hands of those who are fighting for our “right to die.”  It will remove any doubt that there is such thing as a “right to die.”

Flatlines

First we can look at the holder of supposed right.  Is death something that is due to a person?  In the strictest sense, no, it is not something that is owed to someone.  Rights flow either directly or indirectly from human nature itself.  Ultimately any rights claim is based upon the assumption that the thing being claimed is a good.  As John Paul II said many times the right to life is the “fundamental right and source of all other rights” (EV, 72).  Even if you look to the foundations of modern liberalism rooted in the works of Hobbes and Locke, you will find that because all rights are given by nature, they assume that we all by nature have a self-interested attachment to our own lives.  In other words, the right to life is inalienable in that it flows from the fact that life is a good by nature.  This becomes clearer when we look at the person whose duty it is to respect the right.  If life is an “inalienable” right then this means that there is a corresponding duty to protect life.  Practically speaking, there is an obligation to protect another’s life when it is in jeopardy.

While this may appear to be quite cut and dry, reality is more complicated than that.  The question of a “right to die” arises not just because autonomy has run amok in the West.  Medical technology has made it so that we now have more control than ever over when and how we die.  Thanks to some medical interventions, patients can be kept alive long after nature would have taken its course.  From within this setting, we have to ask whether a person has a “right to be let to die.”

In essence the “right to be let to die” means that a person has the right to choose not to receive life-sustaining medical treatment.  In order not to interfere with the obligation of others to protect life, the treatment must be excessively burdensome in that its benefits are outweighed by its burdens.  Those responsible for taking care of the person still have the obligation to provide routine attention to the patient by bathing them, keeping them warm, controlling pain and providing food and water.

So while this means no one has the “right to die” per se, it is reasonable to assert that they do have a “right to be let to die.”  The problem at this point is that people who label themselves as “Death with Dignity” advocates have piggybacked onto this legitimate right and wedded it to something else, namely a “right to be made dead.”  By hiding behind a sweet sounding name, Euthanasia (which literally means “good death”), what is being claimed is a right to positive assistance in bringing about death.  This means that what appears on the surface to be a mere personal freedom is really about placing an obligation to kill on another person.  This obviously contradicts one’s obligation to protect life.  This self-contradictory aspect of the “right to be made dead” shows why it is not a true right.  It also helps to reveal what this is really about.

This movement has very little to do with medical technology or terminal illnesses.  What is really being sought is acknowledgment of a right to commit suicide.  Given the will, there are very few people who could stop someone that wanted to kill themselves, so why would we need legislation for a right to commit suicide?  The answer is all about money and power.  First, in the states where it is legal, insurance companies must pay out when someone commits suicide.  This means that previously what was a deterrent, namely the financial well-being of a family, is taken out of the equation.  In fact the family may end up better off financially when their loved one is dead.  One can easily see that there could be familial encouragement to end it all based on a monetary windfall.

Second, this is ultimately about some people having the power to determine who lives and who dies.  If we recognize a “right to be dead” then there is a corresponding “duty to make dead.”  Who is the one who must exercise this duty and when should it be exercised?  Already we can see how the person and the proxies could be compromised, but what if they are not coming around to what is obvious to doctors and other “experts”?  While no one likes slippery slope arguments, this is precisely what has happened in places where a “right to die” has been recognized like the Netherlands.  The emphasis is no longer on the right to die, but the obligation to take the life that has been deemed unworthy of life.

What makes this particularly evil is that it plays into people’s emotions.  No one wants to be a burden to their loved ones, especially when there seems to be a painless way to avoid that.  As usual though, it is not enough to have our hearts in the right place; we must get our heads their too.  Demanding clarity when it comes to rights, especially the “right to die,” is a good place to start the journey from our hearts to our heads.