Republican convention night three: God, country, and Notre Dame

Washington D.C., Feb 20, 2019 / 06:30 am (CNA).- The Supreme Court has rejected an appeal in the case Whole Woman’s Health v. Texas Catholic Conference et al, in which the abortion provider sought to force the Catholic bishops of Texas to hand over all internal communications related to abortion.

The Feb. 19 decision was the last in a series of setbacks for Whole Women’s Health as they tried to compel a massive disclosure of in-house documents by the Church in Texas, in response to the bishops’ support for a law which would require the burial or cremation of all aborted children.

In a statement released to CNA, the Texas Conference of Catholic Bishops welcomed the decision by the Supreme Court which, they said was a vindication of their religious freedom rights.

“The bishops are very grateful the Supreme Court has upheld the ruling of the Fifth Circuit, which protects the private religious communications of the bishops from a fishing expedition by abortion providers seeking access to our ministry information,” said the statement.

A 2017 law passed in Texas required that the remains of unborn children must be buried or cremated rather than disposed of by other means, including be flushed into the sewer system or sent to landfills.

At the time the law was passed, the Texas Catholic Conference of Bishops (TCCB) voiced their support for the legislation and offered free burials for the remains of aborted babies.

Whole Woman’s Health responded by subpoenaing the bishops and demanded access to all internal communications regarding abortion, including any theological and doctrinal debates on the issue. The subpoena was filed despite the bishops not being party to the suit.

The Texas bishops released more than 4,000 pages of external communications on abortion, but applied for emergency relief to preserve their private correspondence.

In July 2018, a three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overruled the trial court’s application of the subpoena, and the full court declined to hear the case in August. Whole Women’s Health then applied to the Supreme Court, which rejected the appeal on Tuesday.

In the Fifth Circuit Court’s decision, the judges described the subpoena as going “to the heart of the constitutional protection of religious belief and practice as well as citizens’ right to advocate sensitive policies in the public square.”

The court said that the Catholic bishops were left with a “Hobson’s choice” of either “retreating from the public square or defending its position.”

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which represented the Texas bishops in the case, released a statement praising the outcome.

Eric Rassbach, vice president and senior counsel at Becket said in the statement that the court “saw this appeal for what it was: a nasty attempt to intimidate the bishops and force them to withdraw their offer to bury every child aborted in Texas.”

“Abortion groups may think the bishops ‘troublesome,’ but it is wrong to weaponize the law to stop the bishops from standing up for their beliefs,” he said.

In an earlier comment on the Fifth Circuit’s decision, Rassbach noted that “Constant surveillance of religious groups is a hallmark of totalitarian societies, not a free people.”

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Washington D.C., Jul 31, 2023 / 11:00 am (CNA).
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Bishop Robert Barron speaks to EWTN’s Colm Flynn about evangelizing the culture today in October 2023. / Credit: Word on Fire

CNA Staff, Jan 8, 2024 / 15:00 pm (CNA).

Winona-Rochester Bishop Robert Barron is urging Catholics to oppose an effort to make assisted suicide legal in Minnesota — one of an increasing number of states seeking to legalize the practice, which goes against the Catholic Church’s teaching on the sanctity of all human life. 

Minnesota is considering a bill (SF 1813/HF 1930) to legalize the practice of assisted suicide. In an article on the website of Word on Fire, Barron — who founded that ministry in 2000 and who previously ministered as an auxiliary bishop in California — noted that Minnesota is his home state. The bishop said the proposed law caused him to reflect on a billboard he saw in California when that state was considering legalizing assisted suicide in the mid-2010s: “My life, my death, my choice.”

The bishop wrote the billboard caused him to think of St. Paul’s exhortation to the Romans in which the saint writes: “We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.”

“Did the billboard get it right, or did St. Paul? Does my life belong to me, or is it a gift from God? Is my death a matter of my personal choice, or is it under God’s providence and at his disposal?” Barron asked. 

Barron wrote that the premium placed on bodily autonomy in modern society misses the point that the intentional taking of an innocent life is always wrong, no matter what the perceived benefits may be. 

Instead of assisted suicide or euthanasia, the Catholic Church has long supported palliative care, which means accompanying patients toward the end of their lives with methods such as pain management and not accelerating the process of death. 

“Some advocates of physician-assisted suicide will argue that autonomy over one’s body is of utmost importance for those who face the prospect of a dreadfully painful demise,” Barron wrote. “But this consideration is largely beside the point, for palliative care is so advanced that in practically all cases, pain can be successfully managed.”

“The deeper point is this: Even if a dying person found himself in great pain, actively killing himself would not be morally justifiable. The reason is that the direct killing of the innocent is, in the language of the Church, ‘intrinsically evil’ — which is to say, incapable of being morally sanctioned, no matter how extenuating the circumstances or how beneficial the consequences.”

“Though we place a huge premium on it in our culture, I don’t consider autonomy the supreme value. Authentic freedom is not radical self-determination; rather, it is ordered to certain goods that the mind has discerned,” he continued. 

“If I speak obsessively of ‘choice’ but never even raise a question regarding the good or evil being chosen, I find myself in a moral and intellectual wasteland. True freedom is ordered toward moral value and ultimately to the supreme value who is God.”

The current version of Minnesota’s bill contains several “safeguards” designed to ensure that only autonomous adults with a terminal illness will be able to die by assisted suicide. Barron wrote that he is “skeptical” that such safeguards will remain in place, given the erosion of similar measures in recent years in several European countries and in Canada. 

“In many of those places, the elderly, those with dementia, those experiencing depression or severe anxiety can all be candidates for this form of ‘treatment.’ Though the advocates of medically assisted suicide will deny it until the cows come home, this law places the entire state directly on the slipperiest of slopes,” Barron said.

Minnesota is one of at least a dozen states currently considering a liberalization of its assisted suicide laws. As of last year, almost a quarter (21.6%) of the U.S. population lived in a state that has legalized physician-assisted suicide.

Barron in his article urged Catholics to speak out against the bill, which is being sponsored by 24 Democratic Minnesota lawmakers and is currently in committee. 

“[C]all your representative or senator, write to the governor, talk to your friends and neighbors, circulate a petition. And to those in other parts of the country, I would urge vigilance. If this legislation hasn’t come to your state yet, it probably will soon enough. If you stand for the culture of life, fight it!” Barron concluded. 

Euthanasia and assisted suicide are not the same, although the two terms are often used interchangeably. Assisted suicide is the act of making the means of suicide — such as a lethal dose of medication — available to the patient, who subsequently acts on his or her own. 

Euthanasia, in contrast, refers to the practice of a medical professional or other person directly acting to end the life of a patient, a practice that remains illegal across the entire U.S.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “intentional euthanasia, whatever its forms or motives, is murder” and “gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and the respect due to the living God, his Creator” (No. 2324). This teaching was reaffirmed in the 2020 Vatican document Samaritanus Bonus. Pope Francis has spoken frequently against euthanasia and assisted suicide and in favor of palliative care. 

Catholic teaching states that patients and doctors are not required to do everything possible to avoid death, but if a life has reached its natural conclusion and medical intervention would not be beneficial, the decision to “forego extraordinary or disproportionate means” to keep a dying person alive is not euthanasia, as St. John Paul II noted in his encyclical Evangelium Vitae.

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