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FAITH AND SCIENCE

Ultimo Aggiornamento: 20/04/2012 21:52
28/01/2007 20:38
 
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Utente Master
I think John Thavis did a very good overview of the right-to-die issue in Italy, as precipitated by the Welby case and Cardinal Martini's intervention.

I must point out, however, that Cardinal Barragan and Bishop Sgreccia - who according to this story, said they cannot decide if Welby in effect was a suicide, as Ruini did - should have simply looked at it from the standpoint of Italian law today, which does not allow what Welby did, and that is why the anesthesiologist who disconnected his respirator is now being investigated criminally.

And Thavis's article also omits this point. Welby first got into the news because he wrote an open letter to the president of Italy, 3 months before he finally died, to make an exception to the law and allow him to, in effect, pull the plug on his own life. The government refused because an exception to the law is not lightly made, even if the media subsequently carried on a three-month campaign to pressure the government into doing something.

In that period, the campaign turned anti-Church as it was bound to do, because everyone in Italy who considers himself liberal and progressive is also usually anti-Church, so what better target could there be than their usual punching bag and scapegoat?

If the government of Italy was in no hurry to change the law (which has been there probably less than 50 years) to accommodate Mr. Welby, why should his supporters expect the Catholic Church to change its bimillennary doctrine overnight?

Ruini's decision was both common sense as well as an affirmation of Catholic principle. Because to have given Welby a Catholic funeral would have been immediately interpreted, even if very wrongly, by the media and worse, by many Catholics, as church sanction for any patient who decides he wants to end his life the way Welby did!

The interviewers should have asked Barragan and Sgreccia whether they would have sanctioned a Catholic funeral if they were in Ruini's place, and then, what the consequences would be of something as rash and expedient. How can the Church be rash and expedient in any way with doctrine? Even Martini himself was very careful not to make any direct theological argument about Welby's right to die, concentrating on the practical and juridical aspects of it.

What most news items on the Welby case also omit is that the Church asked everyone to pray for Welby, and Masses were offered for Welby in his parish church [which I understand he never attended, as he was a nominal Catholic only]. There was no lack of charity here.

The lack of charity was in the hypocritical media and euthanasia advocates who feigned outrage over not having a religious rite for someone who was not even a practising Catholic and who knowingly went on to end his life the way he did.

If they do not believe that the Church has any right to uphold its doctrine on life by saying it is not man's place to decide when to end his life, then why should the performance or non-performance of its rites make any difference to them? It's the usual pick-and-choose mentality: 'I cannot be Catholic about taking my own life, but I want a Catholic funeral - it will be uncharitable to deny me a Catholic funeral!'

And I am truly sad that some words John Paul II said before he died are now being misused to justify ending one's life wilfully! Excerpts from Cardinal Dsiwisz's memoir show the dying Pope said those words shortly before he breathed his last - not weeks, days or even hours before. It was a spiritual statement, "Let me go to the house of the Lord!" - not a 'living will' to 'end my life now'!

[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/01/2007 20.44]

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