Q: What is the Church’s position on euthanasia?

The word “euthanasia” literally means “good death”. Every responsible person should hope to die, when the day comes, in a good way. But the Church maintains that dying by way of an act of another person which terminates one's life is anything but good.

The crux of the Church's opposition to euthanasia is that the good of the sanctity of human life, that life which God has bestowed on each one of us, can never be sacrificed for the sake of the good of self-determination.

In Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II wrote about the present attitude towards death: “When the prevailing tendency is to value life only to the extent that it brings pleasure and well-being, suffering seems like an unbearable setback, something from which one must be freed at all costs. Death is considered ‘senseless’ if it suddenly interrupts a life still open to a future of new and interesting experiences. But it becomes a ‘rightful liberation’ once life is held to be no longer meaningful because it is filled with pain and inexorably doomed to even greater suffering.” (n64)

The decision to request that one's life should be ended by means of an active intervention by another person rests on a misconception that a human life can be not worth living. People have made that judgement about themselves and about others for centuries, many choosing to take their own life.

Today, with advances in medical technology, the possibility exists for others to intervene to assist people to end their lives, relatively painlessly. But this doesn't make that judgement morally right. On the contrary, it is a clear violation of a principle which all civilised societies have recognised and defended throughout human history.

And from the point of view of Christian teaching it contravenes the commandment of God, “Thou shalt not kill.”

The Church reminds us that euthanasia must be distinguished from the decision to forego so-called ‘aggressive medical treatment’, in other words, “medical procedures which no longer correspond to the real situation of the patient, either because they are by now disproportionate to any expected results or because they impose an excessive burden on the patient and his family. In such situations, when death is clearly imminent and inevitable, one can in conscience ‘refuse forms of treatment that would only secure a precarious and burdensome prolongation of life, so long as the normal care due to the sick person in similar cases is not interrupted’.”(Evangelium Vitae, n65)

Christians have been at the forefront of caring for the sick and dying for centuries. Inspiring that service has been a reverence for human life and a love for the God who has created that life and who has sovereignty over it.

And the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry of healing leave us in no doubt of how he respected human life when many of his generation did not. One only needs to recall his healing of the ten lepers and of the blind man by the Pool of Siloam, whom others had bypassed for many years.