New York and Massachusetts legislatures are preparing to join ten states in legalizing assisted suicide. Others are likely to follow. As Cardinal Seán O’Malley predicted in January, “There’s no doubt that the next major assaults in the next twenty-five years are going to come from those pushing physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. A society that allows parents to kill their children will eventually allow children to kill their parents.”
Catholic and secular organizations in both states have joined forces to defeat these odious bills. In the public square, arguments against assisted suicide are typically secular rather than religious, including those offered by the New York State Catholic Conference and the Massachusetts Catholic Conference. The arguments, all practical in nature, center on what the bills fail to prevent, on negative outcomes for individuals and society, on the potential for bad actors to coerce innocent people.
These responses are all relevant and important. But it is fair to ask if they alone are powerful enough to change minds, or, more urgently, to capture imaginations and hearts. These secular, practical arguments are akin to a boxer throwing only jabs at a taller opponent: their effectiveness is limited, and they have no chance of knocking him out.
Practical arguments also have limited impact because they fight in the opponent’s ring, where he sets the parameters and dimensions for the contest. In this case, as the heroic Dr. Wesley J. Smith, who has given his whole career to fighting euthanasia, explains, the opponent has selected a “quality of life” ethic for the match. When the “quality” of a person’s life wanes due to age or illness—when living life as one wishes is no longer practical—it is right to throw in the towel.
By emphasizing quality of life, the opponent can land his most fearsome punch: generating pity for the terminally ill cancer patient, whittled to skin and bones, whose suffering is unbearable and whose death is imminent. The voter reacts viscerally to the image; uncatechized, he sees no real difference between letting nature takes its course versus hastening the inevitable with a cocktail of pills. He stops thinking about practical counter arguments such as what legal euthanasia can do to society or how it can be abused. He then pulls the lever in favor of assisted suicide.
The “quality of life” ethic has seized the popular imagination as the dominant worldview. It is repulsively utilitarian, as it instrumentalizes human life to what a human being can produce and endure. When productivity halts or pain spikes out of control, the reason for living vanishes. Each person who says, even jokingly, “If I lose my marbles when I get older, just shoot me,” is unwittingly promoting this perspective.
In this ethos, arguing on practical grounds that the ninety-four-year-old suffering with Alzheimer’s should continue living will not persuade most adults. The only counterpunch that has a prayer of knocking out this worldview is the ethic that the doyens of progress have rejected: the sanctity of life ethic born of the Judeo-Christian worldview.
Life is sacred because it comes from God, the loving and beneficent creator, who made us for the purpose of living in His love for all eternity. This fact does not eliminate suffering or alleviate the physical and mental plights of cancer and Alzheimer’s patients. It rather puts suffering and life into a context that makes sense, and that makes life worth living—all the way to the bitter end.
Does the sanctity of life ethic, which hinges on God’s existence, stand a chance as America grows more post-Christian by the year?
Yes. First, God alone elevates human life to transcendental status whereby life receives more meaning than merely living for survival’s sake. Life is sanctified in Him. Consequently, God is the guarantee that prevents human beings from turning against one another. In Cardinal O’Malley’s words, “Once human life is no longer sacred and the government can continuously move the goalpost, more and more people are in danger.” This same thought was expressed in different words 248 years ago: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
Second, the decline in religious practice does not coincide with losing a vision of life as purposeful—or even sacred. The Pew Research Forum’s latest survey indicates that nearly three-quarters of “Nones,” those without religious affiliation, prize a connection to something bigger than themselves. In their hearts, most people do not think their lives are meaningless, nor do they live as if they and their children are Darwinian accidents.
Life is worth living because it participates in the life of God, who is love itself. This vision once held the imagination of citizens in the same lands that now seek euthanasia as the most ironic kind of “lifestyle choice.” And it can do so again because it lifts us out of the depressing malaise that secularism offers. When everything we do and endure has eternal value, then, and only then, can we muster the strength to watch our loved ones suffer, and suffer a similar fate ourselves.
The sanctity of life ethic attracts. If we are going to halt the euthanasia menace, then we need to offer this ethic as our leading argument. Haters of religion have convinced us to keep religious arguments out of the public square. If we do, we play right into their hands, because God alone has the power to halt the Culture of Death.
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Prof. Bonagura makes an excellent point.
All of these cultural issues — abortion, euthanasia, same-sex attraction, transing — should be argued from principle.
Otherwise, there is a danger of people settling for a compromise. And no compromise should ever be made with sheer evil.
We read from 248 years ago: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
The cultural drift began at the very beginning. Even the more rationalistic term “unalienable” was an edit supplied by Benjamin Franklin, replacing Jefferson’s originally proposed/drafted “sacred and undeniable” (Paul Johnson, “A History of the American People” [New York: Harper Perennial, 1999], 155).
“The sanctity of life attracts”.
It should but it’s an uphill climb these days.
I’m with Cardinal O’Malley re the next major assaults for the next twenty-five years. We’re already well on the way.
The root cause issue is truly the choice between The Objective Truth or subjective truthiness. When Jesus stated that He did not come to divide the world, He contended the world would converge upon His Truth (Way and Life) in fulfillment of
His desire that all men come unto Him.
I’m a prairie Grandpa NOT in touch with ALL the goings-on in education
and medicine. But —being a “long-range”, multi-change WWII vintage cradle
Catholic, I can EASILY still ask the question: “Where are the Priests —
young, in-“retirement” [ a Priest NEVER “retires” from his calling !] —
who have committed themselves to BE BESIDE the bed of a dying person?
And if these actually exist and remain active, please, speak out on
behalf of these souls “just this side of Eternity”.
Assisted suicide is not ONLY a “secular” issue. It touches on the moral,
metaphysical, and Spiritual/ Eternal dimensions of a person’s human existence and that person’s “last breath”.
But Secular thinking excludes these other dimensions, thus effectively
dehumanizing and de-peronalizing the individual, because having
“cancelled” the Sacred, i.e. the Holy TRINITY [ God the Father, God the
Son, God the Holy Spirit ] as Source of all Creation and Salvation from Sin.
Therefore, PURELY SECULAR arguments cannot stop assisted suicide.
There are people who are gravely ill and in great pain. The answer is not assisted suicide, but adequate pain medication. Hysteria over opiates have made many doctors reluctant to administer the necessary pain meds. We need to alleviate suffering.
Well, Will it works both ways. True, some doctors now are leery of prescription pain meds but morphine drips, not so much. There’s a difference between chronic pain control & terminal illness care.
In principle Bonagura’s sanctity argument is superior to the secular. Practically, apparently not, because of the affective prejudice of a largely godless culture. There is another tack argued by jurists that relies on traditional reasoning, that is, the unwritten common law.
Two cases are examples of arguments worthy of consideration, those of circuit court justice Robert Beezer in Compassion in Dying v State of Washington 1994, and Chief Justice William Rehnquist in Casey 1992. Chief Justice Rehnquist in his dissenting opinion questioned the fundamental right to an abortion as a right to privacy because it involved the life of another human being. Justice Beezer argued in his dissenting opinion on the traditional common law tenet that an individual owes his existence to the common good, an ancient principle as part of the fabric of a society.
Both arguments appeal to common law reasoning that has roots in natural law. Otherwise, or in any instance our global culture increasingly secular and individualistic requires a moral awakening to respond to reason or the spiritual sanctity approach.
I believe that at least a significant part of the problem is in the terminology we use, and don’t use, with regard to Euthanasia, and other moral issues.
The USCCB site, under the heading of Euthanasia has a seven-page document “To Live Each Day With Dignity” that mentions such things as violation of Hippocratic Oath, but nowhere in the document is the word sin used.
The CCC (#2277) calls euthanasia “Morally Unacceptable” but does not use the word sin.
There seems to be an extreme reluctance, at the national level, the diocesan level and the parish level to use the word sin, and to say that people are jeopardizing their eternal salvation with mortal sin.
When was the last time anyone heard St. Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians, ” Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor [a]homosexuals, nor [b]sodomites, 10 nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God.”
This is not to advocate “Fire and Brimstone” homilies and documents, but to merely state the truth.
Alas, most people these days will not be persuaded by religious arguments on this issue and will react with angry cries of Christians trying to impose their morality on the state. Euthanasia proponents have always argued the issue in emotional terms, all the way back to “Life Unworthy of Life.” I can recall pro-death propaganda in media all the way back to newspaper stories about “mercy killings” in the 1940s. Even appeals to better medication and support for the suffering will not suffice now. Notice the growing numbers of people seeking euthanasia to preserve their: “autonomy.” That recent report on the assisted suicide of a (Catholic) Christian Democrat politician and his wife in their 90s is a sign of how far attitudes have already changed in Europe.
The game is over; our side lost. Prepare to defend your own lives.
There is an overlooked key here that always has application.
Atheist and non-natural law positions are never universal and always carry on with their integral inseparable and irreparable flaws. The attempts to impose as universal what is not universal and also flawed, is always complicated and always gets into trouble. They do not pre-qualify for good law or good society or good politics.
Then there is the practical play out how things are set in motion.
Putting these things squarely in view is a serious challenge. People are not fully prepared to elucidate the issues and they have difficulty exposing the minorities involved and protagonist roots, pushing alternative “conclusions” and modalities. It’s hard to tell “what’s coming next”. The debate is slowed and hampered by tactical arguing defying reasoning, where, eventually, the bad idea wins out by a kind of attrition and the marginal extra votes.
Or else, here is an example from Michigan of a total mobbing of a meeting. No-one could have provided for the unexpected. The common commitment to a democratic way is not shared. “Why debate anything?” If that is really the approach, anyone could have achieved the coup!
Michigan was the State that fought Kervorkian.
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/a-total-coup-michigan-activists-upset-over-replacement-of-gop-chairwoman-with-ex-congressman/
Freemasonry – Fr Mitch Pacwa SJ
ParousiaMedia – Sep 16, 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fx7b3hiXdgw
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/lifesite-league-democrat-power-grab-indiana/?utm_source=most_recent&utm_campaign=usa
Per Fr. Morello above- Ideally the religious argument but in practical terms doubtful. (My uphill climb). Yes, natural law arguments may take us further.
Yes Cleo. Reason and the will are inclined by nature toward what is true and good, the natural law within. Our difficulty is in the effect of original sin, and the willful misdirection of our thoughts, acts etc to a due [good] end. Anyone has the potential to choose good, prayer for those we deal with can have its good effect.
Neither the secular nor the religious arguments will work with those who are already morally corrupt, that is, those in power in society. They hate their lives and the lives of others. We are fooling ourselves to think these are people of good will. They have lost all hope in the value of God’s gift if they ever believed in. We must look out for our loved ones and ourselves and not expect help from at large.
I note that the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition does not argue against euthanasia on religious terms. I believe Margaret Somerville took the same stance.