Vatican City, Sep 22, 2020 / 03:45 am (CNA).- In a new document released Tuesday, the Vatican’s doctrinal office reaffirmed the Church’s perennial teaching on the sinfulness of euthanasia and assisted suicide, and recalled the obligation of Catholics to accompany the sick and dying through prayer, physical presence, and the sacraments.
The document also addressed the pastoral care of Catholics who request euthanasia or assisted suicide, explaining that a priest and others should avoid any active or passive gesure which might signal approval for the action, including remaining until the act is performed.
Samaritanus bonus: on the Care of Persons in the Critical and Terminal Phases of Life is a new document by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), published Sept. 22.
The 45-page text, approved by Pope Francis on June 25, is signed by CDF prefect Cardinal Luis Ladaria and secretary Archbishop Giacomo Morandi.
The letter presents Catholic teaching on a range of end-of-life issues, affirming the intrinsic value and dignity of every human life, especially for those who are critically sick and in the terminal stages of life.
The document’s introduction noted that “it is widely recognized that a moral and practical clarification regarding care of these persons is needed.”
Pastoral accompaniment of those who expressly request euthanasia or assisted suicide “today presents a singular moment when a reaffirmation of the teaching of the Church is necessary,” Samaritanus bonus said.
It explained that closeness to a person who has chosen euthanasia or assisted suicide is necessary, but must always be ordered toward the person’s conversion.
The document recalled that a person who has made this decision, “whatever their subjective dispositions may be, has decided upon a gravely immoral act and willingly persists in this decision.”
This state “involves a manifest absence of the proper disposition for the reception of the Sacraments of Penance, with absolution, and Anointing, with Viaticum.” In this situation, the congregation explained, the priest must withhold absolution.
“Here it remains possible to accompany the person whose hope may be revived and whose erroneous decision may be modified, thus opening the way to admission to the sacraments,” it continued.
It added that “to delay absolution is a medicinal act of the Church, intended not to condemn, but to lead the sinner to conversion.”
The Church’s position in this situation “does not imply non-acceptance of the sick person,” the letter emphasized. Withholding absolution “must be accompanied by a willingness to listen and to help, together with a deeper explanation of the nature of the sacrament, in order to provide the opportunity to desire and choose the sacrament up to the last moment.”
“The Church is careful to look deeply for adequate signs of conversion, so that the faithful can reasonably ask for the reception of the sacraments,” it said.
The purpose of the new letter, the CDF explained in the introduction, is to enlighten pastors and the Catholic faithful “regarding their questions and uncertainties about medical care, and their spiritual and pastoral obligations to the sick in the critical and terminal stages of life.”
It said that there were particular situations today which require “a more clear and precise intervention on the part of the Church,” to reaffirm the message of the Gospel and its expression in the basic doctrinal teachings of the Magisterium, especially for the sick and dying and those who come into contact with them.
Euthanasia, the CDF letter affirmed, is “an intrinsically evil act, in every situation or circumstance” and “any formal or immediate material cooperation in such an act is a grave sin against human life.”
“Euthanasia and assisted suicide are always the wrong choice,” it said, because, as St. Pope John Paul II wrote in Evangelium vitae, “euthanasia is a grave violation of the Law of God, since it is the deliberate and morally unacceptable killing of a human person. This doctrine is based upon the natural law and upon the written Word of God, is transmitted by the Church’s Tradition and taught by the ordinary and universal Magisterium.”
There is also “no right to dispose of one’s life arbitrarily,” it continued, which is why “no health care worker can be compelled to execute a non-existent right.”
It is also “gravely unjust to enact laws that legalize euthanasia or justify and support suicide,” the congregation stated, and “such laws strike at the foundation of the legal order: the right to life sustains all other rights, including the exercise of freedom.”
“The existence of such laws deeply wound human relations and justice, and threaten the mutual trust among human beings,” the document continued. “The legitimation of assisted suicide and euthanasia is a sign of the degradation of legal systems.”
The CDF explained that according to Church teaching, euthanasia “is an act of homicide that no end can justify and that does not tolerate any form of complicity or active or passive collaboration.”
It said: “Those who approve laws of euthanasia and assisted suicide, therefore, become accomplices of a grave sin that others will execute. They are also guilty of scandal because by such laws they contribute to the distortion of conscience, even among the faithful.”
To take one’s own life breaks one’s relationship with God and with others. “Assisted suicide aggravates the gravity of this act because it implicates another in one’s own despair,” it said.
The Christian response to these actions is to offer the help necessary for a person to shake off this despair, it emphasized, and not to indulge “in spurious condescension.”
“The commandment ‘do not kill’ … is in fact a yes to life which God guarantees, and it ‘becomes a call to attentive love which protects and promotes the life of one’s neighbor,’” the letter said.
“The Christian therefore knows that earthly life is not the supreme value. Ultimate happiness is in heaven. Thus the Christian will not expect physical life to continue when death is evidently near. The Christian must help the dying to break free from despair and to place their hope in God.”
The letter affirmed that it is “a supreme act of charity” to spiritually assist the Christian at their moment of death.
“Death is a decisive moment in the human person’s encounter with God the Savior. The Church is called to accompany spiritually the faithful in the situation, offering them the ‘healing resources’ of prayer and the sacraments.”
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An “official visit” between abortion-defender, gender-theory-promoter and head-of-state Joe Biden–and the pope. Great!
We are reminded of equally primitive times when another barbarian and cultural leader, Attila, was met by Pope Leo I in A.D. 452, in the River Mincio near Mantua, in an earlier official visit of sorts. And for some reason it was Attila who decided to reverse course, and not to sack Rome or violate the population.
It is recorded that Pope Leo came in grand procession, including a monstrance containing the Real Presence. “A procession of priests and monks…approached. It was being led by an old man with a white beard, dressed in white, upon a white steed.”
How might Catholicism be self-understood–or, instead, be compartmentalized and redefined–by the current visit? Will Eucharistic coherence be dissolved into the modernday monologue called dialogue? No record of Pope Leo giving or enabling Communion to Attila.
A non-event if ever there was one.
Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone wasn’t going to act – but bluster only – before Pope Francis meets Biden and certainly won’t act subsequently.
Pelosi vindicated.
Meanwhile, the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ continues to be received in any manner under the guise of indifferent bishops…1Cor. 11:27 be damned.
Liberal meets Liberal.
Pope Francis should be warned ahead of time That all Catholic Art,Icons,Statues,Cross’s and other images of the faithful. Be covered up or removed to the basement at wherever they meet.Nothing has changed since May 27th,2009 When Father Jenkins at Notre Dame set the templet on how Catholics behave when “The One We’ve Been Waiting For” enters the room.Obama/Biden Evil rolls on unabated.It’s how they roll.
If Pope Francis doesn’t talk to Biden about his sanctioning and funding the murders of the unborn, the Catholic Church is done. Jesus promised to be with us to the end of the age, and this will either signify that end or will confirm that Jesus isn’t with the Church. Please, God, even a Jesuit could understand the teaching Your Son gave us.
I can now hear the lamentations – or the silence – of the extremist rightist Catholics who feel they are the only Catholics and President Biden and Pope Francis are not.
“Extremist rightist Catholics”…oh you must be referring to those who are normal and trying to survive your Woke World.
Who are these ‘extremist rightist Catholics’ you claim in comments but don’t actually identify?
Is it extreme to demand that the Catholic president avoid the Holy Eucharist when he not only talks but uses his power to clearly destroy the Catholic Church’s infallible – by the Ordinary Magisterium-teachings on morality? Either the Church has the objective truth or it doesn’t. What of the grave sin of Scandal???
Pope Francis refuses clarity -and is proud of it- in not clarifying Church doctrine on morality. Confirmation of this is the self-determination of the Church in Germany as the most extreme example.
How about asking the Pope to be a Pope as understood in the Catechism of the Catholic Church?
You apparently have no idea how silly that is.
How sad.
Birds of a feather…
Optics are understood by CNA’s Gagliarducci, why his sources are necessarily secondary informants on both sides. Vatican and Washington seek to avoid an embarrassing, hypersuspect nullification of such a grand political religious encounter. Leo the Great and Attila nicely analogized by Beaulieu inspire added comment. How do they match Biden and Francis? Perhaps an answer might start with faithful Pope Francis devotees both modernist and ultramontanist, Pope Saint Francis I meets Emperor Constantine. For the devilish traditionalist [the Pope said so] devilishly rigid ideologue [similarly] we might imagine something similarly foolish, Leon Trotsky meets Martin Luther. Realistically, for those who love the Church we want, pray for a different outcome. Pope Francis today met President Biden with remarkably wonderful results. In a joint announcement to the world Francis first said due to the very favorable response to his recent comments condemning the sins of abortion and euthanasia, he was compelled by the Holy Spirit to urge the President to reconsider his in effect duplicitous position on the practice of Catholicism and political expediency. After long discussion on the primacy of revealed truth compared to human law, that the inviolable sanctity of human life, a religious issue that is primarily a natural law first principle, and that the right to life is therefore a first principle justice issue and the basis of any and all jurisprudence – the President changed his previous views and agreed with the Pontiff assuring him he would no longer promote or advance abortion, euthanasia, and also transexuality [now pansexuality] since human life is sacred and inviolable. As ordained by God.
In yet another historic meeting, St. Francis confronted the Sultan Malek al-Kamil at Damietta on the Nile Delta, then under siege by an army of the Fifth Crusade. His message was the peace of Christ, more than the halfway house of humanistic fraternity…
In the Paradiso, Canto XI, Dante says that St. Francis actually sought martyrdom and, that failing this, he left. In the mid thirteenth century, fearful of the Mogul invasions, other Franciscans made their way to Mongolia in unsuccessful efforts to convert the Khan, and with the remote possibility of even joining in an alliance against Islam. One of these (John of Pian de Carpine, 1180?-1252) had been a companion of St. Francis (See Daniel Boorstin, “The Discoverers,” 1983).
But today, with the meetings of the perennial Catholic Church with Islam, China, and now the banner-carrier puppet for the abortion culture and gender theory—-already we have the betrayal of China, politic “pluralism” with Islam, and amnesiac sleep-walking with what’s left of the West.
How will any focus on such historic catastrophes—-also “seeds of truth”!—-survive the continental and yet internally fragmented note-taking of the Synod on Synodality (“walking together”)—-if the successor of the Apostles (!) remain cast only or “primarily as facilitators”?
Fraud meets fraud.
How does a Pope confront an evil ruler who was not even elected legitimately and supports the murder of babies in the womb? We shall see, and it will tell us everything we need to know about Francis.
They are bound at the ideological hip. Tragically what is about to be boldly illustrated before our eyes will only serve to confirm what we already know. Shamelessness reigns.
I already know everything that I need to know about Francis. There’s enough history already.
The leftists are trying to use this exposure to the Pope to prove how much of a faithful Catholic Biden really is. When he is NOT. It would be smart of some Cardinal to clue in the Pope to this reality. They seek to get his approval in even a tacit way in order to move on along their own disordered agenda. This is not unlike the VERY poor deal the Vatican made with the rulers of China. This has benefited the Chinese church not at all. THIS visit will only do more damage to the Church in the US. Its a faint hope that maybe the Pope will tell Biden in no uncertain terms to shape up in regards to abortion. But I would not make any bets on that happening.
Transcript of the secret Biden – Francis Social Justice Warrior meeting:
“C’mon man! I’ve already pushed the most liberal abortion agenda, threw our borders wide open, and committed scandal in receiving the Eucharist. What more do you want?”
Hoping for an on-spot excommunication. The “why” list is really long.
I am certainly glad I embraced Catholicism before reading some of these responses to this article. Sad