Papal All Souls’ Day Mass will be at cemetery for American war dead

Adam Smith-Connor was fined for “praying for [his] son, who is deceased” near an abortion facility in Bournemouth, England. / ADF UK

St. Louis, Mo., Aug 4, 2023 / 13:00 pm (CNA).
Local authorities in Bournemouth, England, have filed criminal ch… […]

London, England, Nov 8, 2019 / 12:09 am (CNA).- An anti-euthanasia group in the UK is calling for the continuation of laws against assisted suicide, as the family of an elderly woman acquitted of murdering her husband wants the laws relaxed.

“It is sad to see this case being used to try and justify a campaign to rip up long held universal protections, by treating those who are terminally ill, disabled, or have chronic conditions differently in law,” said Dr. Gordon Macdonald, chief executive of Care Not Killing.

“We know from the handful of places that have made such a change vulnerable people often feel pressured into ending lives prematurely.”

A jury cleared Mavis Eccleston, 80, of the murder and manslaughter of her husband Dennis, 81, in September, the BBC reports.

Mavis was accused of giving her husband a lethal dose of prescription medicine without his knowledge in a February “mercy killing.”

The Suicide Act 1961 makes it illegal to encourage or assist a death in England and Wales, the BBC reports. In 2015 the U.K. parliament rejected a bill that would have legalized assisted suicide for patients with a terminal diagnosis.

Mavis told jurors that she and her husband had both intended to take their lives with the medication, and that they had decided to do so after Dennis’ diagnosis of terminal cancer.

The couple was found in their apartment by family members on Feb. 19, 2018, after they had taken the drugs. The couple was rushed to the hospital and given an antidote to the medication. Mavis survived; Dennis did not.

The couple’s daughter Joy Munns said her mother “should never have been charged with murder,” and is calling for a change in the UK’s so-called assisted dying laws.

“My dad wanted to die at home with his family around him. He wanted to go and not suffer the pain that he did,” Munns told the BBC.

Other countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands and Canada have legalized assisted suicide, and Macdonald notes that negative effects of these legal decisions are already being demonstrated there.

In Canada, he said, which only changed the law in 2016, improvements to palliative medicine have not materialised, courts have extended assisted suicide to those with chronic conditions that are not terminal, and some patients are denied medical care and instead offered lethal drugs.

He also highlighted the case of a Belgian woman, Godelieva De Troyer, who was physically healthy but suffered from depression for a majority of her life and the Belgian state euthanised her in 2012 “without consulting either her son, or the psychiatrist who had cared for her for more than 20 years.”

A Belgian report on euthanasia in 2016-17 suggests that an estimated six people are euthanized daily in the country, where the practice has been legal since 2002.

“In the Netherlands, there was a case of a 74-year-old who was suffering from Dementia who was killed in 2016. The doctor allegedly failed to verify that the woman wanted to end her life, sedated the woman and asked her family to hold her down as she administered the lethal drug,” Macdonald said.

“These cases and many others show how assisted dying laws are operating way beyond their original remit and how patients who are not mentally competent are being killed on a regular basis.”

According to the U.K.’s National Health Service, euthanasia could be prosecuted as murder or manslaughter and carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, while physician-assisted suicide carries with it a maximum punishment of 14 years imprisonment.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that suicide and cooperation in suicide are morally unacceptable, though it notes that: “We should not despair of the eternal salvation of persons who have taken their own lives. By ways known to him alone, God can provide the opportunity for salutary repentance. The Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives.”

“Those whose lives are diminished or weakened deserve special respect. Sick or handicapped persons should be helped to lead lives as normal as possible. Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable,” the Catechism states.

“Thus an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator. The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded,” it adds.

The Eccleston case is similar to a 2017 case in which an English chemist was cleared after administering lethal drugs to his 85-year-old father, who had reportedly wanted to die. A judge at the time ruled that the chemist’s actions “were acts of pure compassion and mercy.”

A terminally ill man, Noel Conway, who wanted a doctor to be able to prescribe him a lethal dose, challenged the Suicide Act 1961 in High Court in 2017, but his case was dismissed.

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Rome Newsroom, Dec 10, 2020 / 08:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis has decreed a Year of St. Joseph in which Catholics will have the opportunity to obtain a special plenary indulgence.

Until December 2021, there are many new ways that Catholics can receive an indulgence, including entrusting their daily work to the protection of St. Joseph the Worker or reciting the rosary with their families.

These acts must be accompanied by sacramental confession, Eucharistic Communion, and prayer for the pope’s intentions, the usual conditions to obtain any plenary indulgence.

Plenary indulgences remit all temporal punishment due to sin and must be accompanied by full detachment from sin. 

According to the decree issued by the Apostolic Penitentiary on Dec. 8, there are 15 ways to receive an indulgence in the Year of St. Joseph:

1) Participate in a spiritual retreat for at least one day that includes a meditation on St. Joseph. 

2) Pray for St. Joseph’s intercession for the unemployed that they might find dignifying work.

3) Recite the Litany of St. Joseph for persecuted Christians. Byzantine Catholics have the option of an Akathist to St. Joseph.

4) Entrust one’s daily work and activity to the protection of St. Joseph the Worker.

5) Follow St. Joseph’s example in performing a corporal work of mercy. These include feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, sheltering the homeless, visiting the imprisoned, visiting the sick, and burying the dead.

6) Perform one of the spiritual works of mercy, such as comforting the sorrowful, counseling the doubtful, instructing the ignorant, admonishing the sinner, bearing wrongs patiently, forgiving injuries, and praying for the living and the dead.

7) Pray the rosary together with one’s family in order that “all Christian families may be stimulated to recreate the same atmosphere of intimate communion, love and prayer that was in the Holy Family.”

8) Engaged couples can also receive an indulgence from praying the rosary together.

9) Meditate for at least 30 minutes on the Lord’s Prayer, because St. Joseph “invites us to rediscover our filial relationship with the Father, to renew fidelity to prayer, to listen and correspond with profound discernment to God’s will.”

10) Pray an approved prayer to St. Joseph on St. Joseph Sunday, the Sunday after Christmas in the Byzantine Catholic tradition.

11) Celebrate the feast of St. Joseph on March 19 with an act of piety in honor of St. Joseph.

12) Pray an approved prayer to St. Joseph on the 19th of any month. 

13) Honor Joseph with an act of piety or approved prayer on a Wednesday, the day traditionally dedicated to St. Joseph.

14) Pray to St. Joseph on the Feast of the Holy Family on Dec. 29.

15) Celebrate the feast of St. Joseph the Worker on May 1 with an act of piety or prayer.

“All the faithful will thus have the opportunity to commit themselves, with prayers and good works, to obtain with the help of St. Joseph, head of the celestial Family of Nazareth, comfort and relief from the serious human and social tribulations that today afflict the contemporary world,” the decree signed by Cardinal Mauro Piacenza said.

The elderly, the sick, and the dying who are unable to leave their homes due to the coronavirus pandemic also have special permission to receive an indulgence by “offering with trust in God the pains and discomforts” of their lives with a prayer to St. Joseph, hope of the sick and patron of a happy death.

The decree noted that in this instance the person must have the intention of fulfilling, as soon as possible, the three usual conditions for an indulgence, as well as a detachment from sin.

The Apostolic Penitentiary permits any prayer to St. Joseph approved by the Church, mentioning in particular the “To you, O blessed Joseph” prayer composed by Pope Leo XIII:

“To you, O blessed Joseph, do we come in our tribulation, and having implored the help of your most holy Spouse, we confidently invoke your patronage also. Through that charity which bound you to the Immaculate Virgin Mother of God and through the paternal love with which you embraced the Child Jesus, we humbly beg you graciously to regard the inheritance which Jesus Christ has purchased by his Blood, and with your power and strength to aid us in our necessities.”

“O most watchful guardian of the Holy Family, defend the chosen children of Jesus Christ; O most loving father, ward off from us every contagion of error and corrupting influence; O our most mighty protector, be kind to us and from heaven assist us in our struggle with the power of darkness.”

“As once you rescued the Child Jesus from deadly peril, so now protect God’s Holy Church from the snares of the enemy and from all adversity; shield, too, each one of us by your constant protection, so that, supported by your example and your aid, we may be able to live piously, to die in holiness, and to obtain eternal happiness in heaven. Amen.”

[…]