Lisbon, Portugal, Feb 19, 2021 / 02:01 pm (CNA).- Portugal’s president on Thursday requested a constitutional review of a recently-passed bill to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide in the country.
Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa wrote Feb. 18 to the country’s Constitutional Court, laying out concerns that the proposed law, passed late last month, is vague enough as to not be in accord with the Portuguese constitution, which describes human life as “sacrosanct.”
The bill would apply to patients over 18 who are “in a situation of extreme suffering, with an untreatable injury or a fatal and incurable disease.”
He pointed to the bill’s provision that allows terminally ill adults experiencing “intolerable suffering” to end their own lives, and noted that it “seems to inculcate a strong dimension of subjectivity” and wondered how physicians were expected to measure pain as “intolerable.”
The question is not over the constitutionality of euthanasia, he wrote, but whether the specific regulation is in conformity with the constitution.
“It does not seem that the legislator provides the physician involved in the procedure with a minimally secure legislative framework that can guide his performance,” Rebelo de Sousa wrote.
“This insufficient normative densification does not seem to comply with the constitutional requirement regarding the right to life and human dignity, nor with the certainty of the Law.”
Rebelo de Sousa, a Catholic who was reelected in a landslide vote Jan. 24, is a former law professor who helped to draft Portugal’s constitution in 1976.
Portugal’s parliament passed the bill to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide Jan. 29 by a vote of 136-78-4.
Upon a bill’s passage the president has three options: giving the bill assent, sending it for review to the constitutional court, or employing his veto. Parliament can override a presidential veto by backing legislation a second time.
Portugal’s bishops expressed “sadness and indignation” at the bill’s passage.
They criticized both the content and the timing of the bill; the bishops were recently forced to suspend public Masses amid a surge in COVID-19 deaths.
“It is a contradiction to legalize death in this context, rejecting the lessons that this pandemic has given to us on the precious value of human life, which the community in general and health professionals in particular are trying to save with extraordinary efforts,” the bishops said Jan. 29.
If the bill is signed into law, Portugal will become the fourth country in Europe to legalize euthanasia, alongside the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Around 81% of Portugal’s 10 million population are baptized Catholics.
The bishops said that accepting the law would “convey the erroneous idea that life marked by illness and suffering no longer deserves protection and becomes a burden to oneself, to those around them, to health services and to society as a whole.”
They added: “The response to illness and suffering should rather be the protection of life, especially when it is more fragile, by all means, and especially by access to palliative care, which the majority of the Portuguese population is still deprived of.”
Portugal, while still a Catholic-majority country, has legalized same-sex marriage and abortion in the past several decades.
The Socialist Party, one of the left-of-center parties leading the charge to push the euthanasia legislation in Portugal, also led proposals to permit same-sex marriages and abortion in Portugal, the AP reports.
Portugal’s parliament failed to pass several proposals to legalize euthanasia and assisted suicide in mid-2018.
When lawmakers began debating five pieces of legislation in February 2020 to decriminalize euthanasia and assisted suicide, doctors in the country joined with the Catholic Church in opposing the potential change.
The Portuguese Doctors’ Association says the legislation violates key principles of the medical profession.
“Doctors learn to treat patients and save lives. They are not prepared to take part in procedures leading to death,” PDA president Miguel Guimaraes said after meeting with President Rabelo de Sousa.
Pro-life groups protested the euthanasia bills in the weeks leading up to the vote in Lisbon, where they held signs saying, “We demand palliative care for ALL” and “Euthanasia is a recipe for elder abuse.”
If you value the news and views Catholic World Report provides, please consider donating to support our efforts. Your contribution will help us continue to make CWR available to all readers worldwide for free, without a subscription. Thank you for your generosity!
Click here for more information on donating to CWR. Click here to sign up for our newsletter.
Members of the Sts’ailes First Nation at Holy Rosary Cathedral last year for the first Mass to integrate a First Nation language. A Cardus report presents the voices of Indigenous Canadians speaking about their faith and distinguishing it from the traditional spirituality they’re often associated with. / Photo courtesy Nicholas Elbers, 2022
Vancouver, Canada, May 17, 2023 / 14:15 pm (CNA).
A groundbreaking report published by the Ottawa-based Cardus Institute has given voice to Indigenous Canadians who are frustrated by secular society’s unawareness of — or unwillingness to accept — the fact that almost half of them are Christian.
“I find that insulting to Indigenous people’s intelligence and freedom,” Catholic priest Father Cristino Bouvette said of the prejudice he regularly encounters.
Bouvette, who has mixed Cree-Métis and Italian heritage and now serves as vicar for vocations and Young Adults in the Diocese of Calgary, was one of 12 individuals interviewed by Cardus for the report “Indigenous Voices of Faith.”
Father Deacon Andrew Bennett, left, leads a post-production discussion by Indigenous Voices of Faith participants. Photo courtesy of Cardus
Prejudice against Indigenous Christians has become so strong, even inside some Indigenous communities, “that Indigenous Christians in this country right now are living in the time of new martyrdom,” Bouvette said.
Although that martyrdom may not cost them their lives, “they are ostracized and humiliated sometimes within their own communities if they openly express their Christian or Catholic faith.”
Statistics Canada reported last year that the 2021 census found that 850,000, or 47%, of Canada’s 1.8-million Indigenous people identify as Christian and that more than a quarter of the total report they are Catholic. Only 73,000, or 4%, of Indigenous people said they adhere to traditional Indigenous spiritual beliefs.
In a new report, Cardus wants to “amplify the voices of Indigenous Canadians speaking for themselves about their religious commitments, which sometimes clash with the typical public presentation of Indigenous spirituality.” Photo courtesy of Cardus
Ukrainian Catholic Deacon Andrew Bennett, program director for Cardus Faith Communities, conducted the interviews for the think tank last fall. He published his report in March at a time when Canadian mainstream media and many political leaders continued to stir division and prejudice through misleading commentary about abandoned cemeteries at Indian Residential Schools.
The purpose of the report, he writes, “is to affirm and to shed light on the religious freedom of Indigenous peoples to hold the beliefs and engage in the practices that they choose and to contextualize their faith within their own cultures.”
Too often, however, “the public narrative implies, or boldly declares, that there’s a fundamental incompatibility between Indigenous Canadians and Christianity or other faiths,” Bennett said. “[M]any Indigenous Canadians strongly disagree with those narratives.”
Father Bouvette is clearly one of those.
“We did not have Christian faith imposed upon us because of [my Indigenous grandmother’s] time in the residential school or her father’s time in the trade school that he was sent to,” Bouvette said. “No, it was because our family freely chose to receive the saving message of Jesus Christ and lived it and had continued to pass it down.”
Bouvette said his “grandmother was not tricked into becoming something that she didn’t want to be, and then tricked into staying that way for 99 years and 11 months of her life. She was a Christian from the day of her birth, and she remained a Christian until the day of her death. And so that was not by the consequence of some imposition.”
Nevertheless, Canadians continue to labor under a prejudice holding the opposite view. “I do believe that probably the majority of Canadians at this time, out of some mistaken notion of guilt for whatever their cultural or ethnic background is, think they are somehow responsible for Indigenous people having had something thrust upon them that they didn’t want,” Bouvette said.
“We did not have Christian faith imposed upon us,” Father Cristino Bouvette says in a Cardus report on Indigenous faith. Photo courtesy of Cardus
“But I would say, give us a little more credit than that and assume that if there is an Indigenous person who continues to persevere in the Christian faith it is because they want to, because they understand why they have chosen to in the first place, and they remain committed to it. We should be respectful of that.”
The executive director of the Catholic Civil Rights League, Christian Elia, agrees and says society should grant Indigenous Catholics the respect and personal agency that is due all Canadians.
“Firstly, I am not an Indigenous person, so I cannot speak for our Indigenous brothers and sisters, but neither can non-Indigenous secularists who choose to ignore that Indigenous people in Canada continue to self-identify as Christian, the majority of these Catholic,” Elia said in an interview with The B.C. Catholic.
He said his organization has heard from many Indigenous Catholics who are “growing weary of the ongoing assumption that somehow they have been coerced into the faith, that it is inconceivable that they wish to be Catholic. This condescending attitude must stop.”
Deacon Rennie Nahanee, who serves at St. Paul’s Indian Church in North Vancouver, was another of the 12 whom Bennett interviewed. A cradle Catholic and member of the Squamish First Nation, Deacon Nahanee said there is nothing incompatible with being both an authentic Indigenous person and a Catholic.
“I’m pretty sure we had a belief in the Creator even before the missionaries came to British Columbia,” he said. “And our feelings, our thoughts about creation, the way that we lived and carried out our everyday lives, and the way that we helped to preserve the land and the animals that we used for food, our spirituality and our culture, were similar to the spirituality of the Catholic Church.”
“I believe that’s why our people accepted it. I don’t think anybody can separate themselves from God, even though they say so.”
Interviewed later by The B.C. Catholic, Nahanee said he is not bothered by the sort of prejudice outlined by Bouvette. “People are going to say or do what they want,” he said.
Voices of Indigenous Christianity
Bennett, program director of Cardus Faith Communities, interviewed 12 Indigenous Canadians, most of them Christian, about their religious commitments, “which often clash with the typical public presentation of Indigenous spirituality.” Here is a selection of some of their comments:
Tal James of the Penelakut First Nation in Nanaimo spoke about the relationship between Indigenous culture and his Christian faith:
Tal James and wife Christina. Photo courtesy of Project 620 – James Ministry
“I think … that our [Indigenous] cultures were complete, and in Jesus they’re more complete. I think that’s a big thing and a big step for a lot of us. You’re going to have a lot of non-Indigenous people look at you and question your actions based on your Aboriginal heritage. Don’t take that to heart. They’re the ignorant ones who don’t want you to flourish. Those of you who are Christians, First Nations Christians, you come to the table with the same gifting that non-Aboriginal people have. For them to say, ‘We want to make room for you at the table,’ correct them. You are already at the table, and encourage them to step back and allow your gifts to flourish. Because it’s one in the same spirit.”
Rose-Alma McDonald, a Mohawk from Akwesasne, which borders New York, Ontario, and Quebec, talked about re-embracing her Catholic faith:
Rose-Alma McDonald. Photo courtesy of Cardus
“I surprised everybody, including myself, in terms of embracing Catholicism after 20 years away. So I’ve had a few epiphanies in the sense that this is why my mother made me do so much in the church growing up. When I’m working, volunteering, and doing stuff in the church, I remember that. I keep remembering I’m Catholic and I’m still Catholic. I will stay Catholic because of the way I was raised.”
Jeff Decontie, a Mohawk from the Algonquin First Nations who lives in Ottawa, talked about being a person of faith in a secular world:
Jeff Decontie. Photo courtesy of Cardus
“Secular worldviews can sort of eat up everything around them and accept a whole wide range of beliefs at the same time. For example, you have the prevailing scientific thinking alongside New Age believers, and people in society just accept this, saying, ‘Oh, whatever it is you believe in, all religions lead to the same thing.’ No one questions it. How can these contradictions coexist? … Then we ask an [Indigenous] elder to lead prayer? Any other religion would be a no-no, but you can ask for an elder who’s going to pray a generic prayer to some generic Creator, and it’s not going to ruffle any feathers. I think that’s the danger of secular thought creeping into Canada: It goes unnoticed, it’s perceived as neutral, but at the same time it’s welcoming a whole wide range of beliefs. And it doesn’t just influence Indigenous thought. It’s influencing Christianity.”
Rosella Kinoshameg, a member of the Wikwemikong Reserve on Manitoulin Island in Ontario, spoke about being Indigenous and Catholic:
Rosella Kinoshameg. Photo courtesy of the Catholic Register
“Well, I can’t change being Indigenous. That’s something that is me. I can’t change that. But to believe in the things that I was taught, the traditional things, the way of life and the meanings of these things, and then in a church, well, those things help one another and they make me feel stronger.”
This article was originally published May 10, 2023, in The B.C. Catholic, a weekly publication serving the Catholic community in British Columbia, Canada, and is reprinted here on CNA with permission.
Leave a Reply