So how about making it illegal for Catholics to benefit from assisted suicide and leave the rest of us to a choice?
Have you had the benefit of watching a loved one dye a painful death when the drugs don't work? If suffering is the currency of redemption then why use pain medication as a reason to avoid assisted suicide?
That kind of capitulates to the moral relativism that has gripped Western Civilization and is drawing it into a New Dark Age.. one similar to the collapse of Rome with dramatic de-population brought on by disease, famine, conflict.. and fragmentation of learning and science. The fact of the matter is the West is built on Christian values. You can look to Oswald Spengler's
Decline of the West to see how integral that faith is in the formation and foundation of the culture.. and how its demise will bring down the superstructure which has been built on it.
We seem to have moved away from the original question. That is should the State and Medical profession be murdering the helpless and terminally ill. I've said before that Suicide is not viewed as a crime, these days anyway.. it is viewed by ALL faiths as a sin. So the decision is still with the patient and with the patient alone.
Death and disease has been with us since the start of time, yet this question of 'assisted' suicide is barely a generation old.. brought into the realm of a 'compassionate and tolerant' Culture of Death that informs all aspects of our society now.. in questions of abortion, euthenasia, homosexuality and many other dilemmas. It forms a weave that systematically expels the founding thread of faith of the West from of its legal fabric.
As an aside to your comments of the WTC jumpers, i'd note that there was a previous instance in New York of a catastrophic fire in a high rise that led to people jumping to their deaths. That was the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911 At that time, those caught on the roof, mostly young immigrant women, were encouraged or helped to jump by an unknown man who became known as the Angel of Death. There's a real question, whatever you think of the decision to jump, as to whether it is in any way ethical to counsel, encourage and push those in that predicament. And yet that is the role you are imposing on the State and the medical profession.
Both of my parents died after somewhat lingering illnesses. An uncle died of a wasting disease, pancreatic cancer. All had natural deaths, were made comfortable in their last hours, and did not impose the crises of conscience on family members that would have resulted from an unnatural death by lethal injection.
Suffering as such is something that follows all of us throughout are lives.. often of emotional or physical causes.. iterated with the joys and triumphs of life. We are well equipped, by God to deal with it.. And God never gives us more than we can handle. So what is the rush. It is caused by fear, i believe. We all have that.. but it is the response to that fear, in capitulation, that is troubling. That smacks of cowardice.
My parents, uncle i believe had brave, noble and serene deaths. Who knows what their final hours brought.. maybe some grace. I could not say the same for someone who has given up and had a lethal injection to avoid that 'unknown and fearful' end.
