Europe

Portsmouth, England, Mar 26, 2018 / 06:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Legalizing assisted suicide is a false solution to the sufferings of the terminally ill, an English bishop has said in a Palm Sunday letter addressed to the faithful of the Channel Island of Guernsey.

“Someone near the end of life needs emotional support, comfort and care, good pain control, respect and loving communication – not suicide on prescription,” said Bishop Philip Egan of Portsmouth. “Let us redouble our efforts to offer this support, not least to anyone tempted to suicide or a hurried death.”

“I appeal to Catholics to mobilize,” he added in his Palm Sunday letter to the Parish of Our Lady and the Saints of Guernsey. “Speak out against this proposal. It is never permissible to do good by an evil means.” He asked everyone in Guernsey to overturn this “grim proposal” and to “redouble the compassionate care of those who are frail and terminally ill.”

Guernsey, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of Normandy, is a Crown dependency for which the U.K. is responsible. It is part of the Diocese of Portsmouth.

Its chief minister, Gavin St. Pier, has proposed allowing terminally ill patients to commit suicide in a state-funded program with what he says are strict guidelines, the U.K. newspaper The Sunday Express reports. Those eligible under the proposal would include those who are mentally competent, diagnosed with a terminal illness, and given less than six months to live.

St. Pier cited his father’s death at age 77 after heart disease left him bedridden and unable to move, speak, eat, or drink. The minister said his father would have wanted an assisted suicide two to three weeks before his death.

The proposed change aims to give people choice and a sense of control over their death, St. Pier said. The Suicide Act 1961 bars euthanasia, with a maximum sentence of 14 years in prison.

<blockquote class=”twitter-tweet” data-lang=”en”><p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”>As we prepare for the Palm Sunday Mass, let’s pray for the people of Guernsey that, along with their doctors and other civilised people, they will robustly reject the push from secularists and liberals for assisted suicide and death-clinics.</p>&mdash; Bishop Philip Egan (@BishopEgan) <a href=”https://twitter.com/BishopEgan/status/977819241712939008?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>March 25, 2018</a></blockquote>
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Bishop Egan wrote that assisted suicide is “fundamentally incompatible with a doctor’s role as healer.”

“It would be difficult or impossible to control and it would pose serious societal risks,” he said. “Let there be no death-clinics in Guernsey.”

Bishop Egan said the proposal to legalize assisted suicide is “fundamentally subversive, horrific and dangerous, however well-intentioned.” Invoking the expansion of Belgium’s legal assisted suicide to include children, he said “the right to die would soon become the duty to die.”

“It would be an intolerable and utterly immoral demand to ask medical staff, doctors and nurses dedicated to preserving life, to extinguish the life of another human person,” the bishop added. “However carefully crafted the laws might be, assisted suicide would place medics in an impossible dilemma.”

Dr. Brian Parkin, a Guernsey representative of the British Medical Society, told The Sunday Express he was concerned about the proposal.

“Safeguarding the vulnerable is paramount in such a debate,” Parkin said. “The continued investment and development of the high-quality palliative care services in Guernsey involves all health care professionals – and their focus on end of life care plans should be prioritized.”

The local branch of the British Medical Society said that support for aid in dying could have an impact on recruiting and retaining doctors to the island, home to about 63,000 people.

The national organization has opposed assisted suicide since 2006 and supports the current law. The U.K.’s General Medical Council is also clear that encouraging or assisting in a suicide is illegal.

Because the council registers doctors to practice medicine, it is unclear how legal assisted suicide in Guernsey could be carried out by registered doctors, the Jersey Evening Post said.

For Bishop Egan, the proposal was an opportunity to reflect on the hardships at the end of life and what Christians believe about suffering and death.

“Frailty, pain and infirmity are a difficult trial for anyone,” he said. “Those who are mentally ill may experience despair and gloom at the problems they face. Others, the terminally ill, become anguished at the loss of function and mobility, feeling keenly a sense of burden on family and even a financial burden on society.”

“Yet let us thank God for the amazing advances that medical science has made and the level of true loving care that can now be given,” Egan added, noting advances in palliative care and pain management.

Further, the bishop said Christians believe in “assisted living, not assisted dying.”

“Death is not pain relief but the beginning of a new, resurrected life with God our Father and Creator,” he said. “This future depends on the state of our soul when we die and this perspective rightly affects our decisions on end of life care and how best to uphold a patient’s personal dignity.”

To help someone to commit suicide or to die prematurely, even when they request it, “can never ever be a compassionate action,” he emphasized. “It is a grave sin.”

Egan’s Holy Week letter stressed the importance of uniting one’s suffering with Christ and finding in him “all the strength, patience and energy we need to sustain our suffering – to ‘carry the cross’ and to turn it to a positive good for others. That is the meaning of Holy Week, when Jesus Christ willingly underwent death at the hands of those who had decided it was better for society for Him to be extinguished.”

“We must not yield to the temptation to apply rapid or drastic solutions, moved by a false compassion or by criteria of efficiency and cost-effectiveness,” he said.

The seriously ill deserve respect, understanding and tenderness “so that the sacred value of their life can shine forth with splendor in their suffering.”

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Carcassonne, France, Mar 26, 2018 / 03:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia has penned a column for Holy Week highlighting the sacrifice of French policeman Arnaud Beltrame, comparing his death to save a stranger to the sac… […]

Rome, Italy, Mar 25, 2018 / 03:02 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As the Vatican gears up for the Synod on youth in October, Pope Francis has chosen a group of Italian high school students to write the meditations for his Good Friday Way of the Cross at the Colosseum.

The Pope tasked religion teacher Andrea Monda with choosing and coordinating the 15 students, who attend a classical high school in Rome.

Marta Croppo, 18, is writing the meditation for the 14th station, when Christ’s body was laid in the tomb.

She told CNA March 23 that she thinks Pope Francis wanted young people to write the meditations because of their simplicity and their ability “to communicate another type of message to the world.”

“We are not scholars, and we do not have a theological degree or something like that,” she noted. Therefore, this is “a great occasion for us to talk with simplicity,” relying on our experience of faith and religion in daily life.

Croppo said that in her meditation she did not want to speak about a social problem or “send a message to youth,” but to reflect on more existential themes. “I wanted to emphasize the human side of Jesus, because he is God, but he is human as well,” she said.

“He has suffered, and he has died just like us, so I wanted to talk about this aspect and the fact that he’s very near, [that] he comprehends deeply our condition of suffering and of sorrow.”

In the 10th station Jesus is stripped of his garments. Greta Giglio, 18, said that in her reflection on this station she tried to address present issues, such as immigration, because “immigrants, like Christ in that specific moment, come lacking everything.”

Monda said that he sees the Pope’s choice to entrust young people with the Via Crucis reflections as being in line with the greater focus of his pontificate, “trying to give a voice to those who have no voice.”

In Monda’s view, young people are also often at the peripheries. But Pope Francis says not to speak only about youth or to youth, but to “let the youth talk and then listen to them.”

The last time the reflections for the Via Crucis were written by young people was in 2013, when Benedict XVI asked youth from Lebanon to write them after visiting the country the previous September.

Those meditations were written by 45 young Lebanese between the ages of 17 and 30 and were focused on unity and peace between Christians and Muslims.  

In 2017 the meditations were written by French biblical scholar Anne-Marie Pelletier, who was the fourth woman to do so after St. John Paul II first started the practice, inviting Mother Anna Maria Canopi from the Benedictine abbey “Mater Ecclesiae” in 1993.

In recent years they have mostly been penned by Italian bishops; notably, in 2015, they were written by Bishop Emeritus Renato Corti of Novara, who preached the final Lenten spiritual exercises for St. John Paul II the week before his April 2, 2005 death.

The Roman tradition of holding the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum on Good Friday goes back to the pontificate of Benedict XIV, who died in 1758.

After dying out for a period, the tradition was revived in 1964 by Bl. Paul VI, while under St. John Paul II the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum became a worldwide television event; the Pope himself used to carry the cross.

Now the cross is usually carried by individuals and families – including religious and laity – from around the world.

The Pope personally selects who writes the meditations for the stations, and the choice can indicate issues the Pope wants to zero in on.

In 2017, the Via Crucis at the Colosseum was attended by around 20,000 people.

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Denver, Colo., Mar 22, 2018 / 12:00 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The French documentary “Summer in the Forest” depicts the lives of four disabled men and their unlikely friend: a philosopher born into a powerful and distinguished Canadian family, J… […]

London, England, Mar 22, 2018 / 03:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Young Catholics in Europe live in a culture where religious affiliation, church attendance, and regular prayer are generally at low levels, according to a sociological study of their demographi… […]

Glasgow, Scotland, Mar 21, 2018 / 12:38 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Scottish authorities’ move to allow at-home administration of abortion drugs violates the law and will allow more pressure on women to have abortions, critics said.

“Many vulnera… […]

Stockholm, Sweden, Mar 20, 2018 / 03:48 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholic educators in Sweden have denounced a political party’s promise to ban all religious schools as a political maneuver capitalizing on people’s fears in order to obtain votes.

The Social Democratic Party in Sweden has proposed banning all religious schools (known as “confessional schools”) in the country, in what the party says is an attempt at better integration of students.

The party has formed a coalition government with the Green Party, and a general election is to be held in September.

The Social Democrats have expressed concern that confessional schools contribute to the segregation of students, by religion and gender, and that they don’t teach children democratic values.

“In our schools, teachers and principals should make the decisions, not priests or imams,” Minister for Upper Secondary School and Adult Education and Training Anna Ekstrom said at a press conference.

The Social Democrats said last week that the proposed policy would be a priority were they re-elected in September.

But Catholic educators in the country are concerned that the proposal would constitute a wide-ranging infringement on religious freedom and on already-restricted religious education in the country. Religious schools cannot charge tuition, and receive government funding.

“…there is a very negative public debate with a lot of pre-judgements against us and religion in general. We are very worried of course as the proposal is an aggressive assault against our Catholic community,” Paddy Maguire, principal of Notre Dame Catholic School in Gothenburg (located fewer than 300 miles southwest of Stockholm), and Daniel Szirányi, a board member of the same school, said in a joint statement.

Religious education in the country is already under strict restrictions. Current law in Sweden does not allow for catechesis or prayer to take place during regular school hours – it must take place either before or after school, on a voluntary basis.

However, Maguire told CNA that most people in Sweden are unaware of this law, that religious schools also follow the state-issued curriculum, or how religious schools are run in general.

“We have to (abide by) Swedish law, they don’t understand that. They just think we’re run by priests and imams, as they put it,” Maguire said.

Maguire added that the issues that the Social Democrats want to solve are problems that are occurring in Muslim schools, “but they are too cowardly to say so.”

Sweden, which has a historically open-door policy for asylum seekers, saw a dramatic increase in Muslim refugees from countries such as Syria, Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan in the past few years, with numbers more than doubling between 2014 and 2015 alone.

This dramatic increase in the number of Muslims in Sweden, and practices of some of their schools – such as sex segregation – is the primary motivation behind the religious school ban, Maguire said.

Rather than fixing individual problems, however, “they want to throw the baby out with the bath water,” she said.

Kristina Hellner, communications officer for the Diocese of Stockholm, told CNA, “It’s presented as a quick and simple solution to a problem that is quite limited.”

“The absolute majority of the religious schools in Sweden show excellent results but a small number of them (and these are Islamic schools) have had different kinds of problems. Instead of doing something about these specific schools, certain politicians would like to solve it by closing all religious schools,” she said.

There are 71 religious schools in the country, of which 59 are Christian, 11 are Muslim, and one is Jewish.

Hellner added that Cardinal Anders Arborelius of Stockholm will be working closely with other Christian groups in Sweden to oppose this proposal “with one voice through the Christian Council.”

If the ban were to be enacted, the Socialist Democrats have said that they would make the religious schools into secular schools. However, Maguire noted that most Christian schools would be forced to close, as they are tied to trust funds, through which the schools promised to provide a Christian education.

This would leave approximately 10,000 students without a school, a number the public school system is not adequately prepared to absorb, she said.

“It’s a badly sorted out policy, it’s just a play for populism as we see it,” Maguire said.

Thus far, the proposal is supported by the Social Democrats, the Left Party, and some of the Liberals. The Moderate Party and the Christian Democrats support confessional schools. Some among the Liberals support a policy that would maintain existing religious schools, but would prevent new ones from being founded.

The Green Party and the Centre Party have remained neutral on the issue.

Maguire said she didn’t believe the policy would ultimately pass, because the Social Democrats are losing political power, while right wing parties are gaining power. The Social Democratic Party has lost support in recent polls to the Moderate Party, the largest group in the opposition.

However, she added that educators and Catholic leaders in the country are prepared to fight the proposal all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, and to fight for the rights of parents, designated by the United Nations, to send their children to schools with distinct religious or philosophical leanings.

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Krakow, Poland, Mar 20, 2018 / 12:51 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As pro-life legislation moves forward in Poland, the nation’s Catholic Bishops’ Conference applauded the measure, stressing that every human person has the right to life.

On Monday,… […]

Rome, Italy, Mar 20, 2018 / 10:04 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Continuing his custom of saying Holy Thursday Mass outside a sacred place, Pope Francis this year will visit one of Rome’s most well-known prisons, the Regina Coeli, located in the historic Trastevere neighborhood.

The Pope will celebrate the Mass of the Lord’s Supper March 29. During the ceremony he will wash the feet of 12 inmates. He will also meet with prisoners and visit sick inmates in the prison’s infirmary.

Originally the site of a 17th-century convent, from which it gets its name, the Regina Coeli prison was constructed in 1881 by the Italian government after the country’s unification. A women’s prison, called the Mantellate, was later built nearby, also on the site of a former convent.

The prison has been visited by popes on three former occasions: by St. John XXIII in 1958, by Bl. Paul VI in 1964, and by St. John Paul II in 2000.

Like most prisons throughout Italy, Regina Coeli has had issues with overcrowding and inmate suicide in recent years.

For Pope Francis, this will be the fourth time during his pontificate that he has celebrated Maundy Thursday Mass at a prison. The first was in 2013, just after becoming Pope, when he visited the Casal del Marmo youth detention center.

This occasion was notable for being the first time a Pope included females and non-Christians among those whose feet he washed. At the time, liturgical law permitted only men’s feet to be washed in the Holy Thursday ceremony.

In January 2016, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments modified the Roman Missal to allow for women’s feet to be washed at the Holy Thursday Mass, though it added that those chosen are to be “from among the People of God.”

The Roman Missal’s text was modified to say that “those chosen from among the People of God are accompanied by the ministers,” while it had previously read: “the men chosen are accompanied by the ministers.”

“People of God” is an ecclesiological term adopted by the Second Vatican Council’s dogmatic constitution on the Church, Lumen gentium, to indicate the Church of Christ, which “subsists in the Catholic Church.”

Pope Francis said Holy Thursday Mass at a center for asylum seekers in Castelnuovo di Porto, a municipality just north of Rome, in 2016. There he washed the feet of refugees, among whom were Coptic Orthodox, Muslims, and Hindus.

In 2015 the Pope went to Rome’s Rebibbia prison, and in 2017 he visited Paliano prison located south of Rome.

In 2014 he visited people with disabilities, saying Mass at the Don Gnocchi center for the disabled.

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London, England, Mar 19, 2018 / 03:13 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A bill in the British Parliament would clarify the rights of conscientious objection for medical professionals, protecting them from participating in medical procedures to which their beliefs a… […]