Faith and Euthanasia

Comment: 'Care not Killing' welcomes a letter in The Times pointing out that 'faith' is not the only or the main reason against legalised euthanasia. Lord Joffe claims that it is, perhaps with a view to the argument that opponents are trying to impose their religious commitments on everyone else, certainly in order to ignore the reasoned arguments against his position.

While it might seem ungracious for our non-religious allies against euthanasia to wish to repudiate our religious motivation, Catholics can understand this point better than many non-Catholic Christians. Euthanasia is an offense against Natural Law. It is not a matter of ritual obligations, revelation, faith, or the life of grace. It is a matter of the obligations we have to each other as human beings, obligations which can be grasped by all men of good will on the basis of natural reason alone. The fact that many non-Christians have been so corrupted by modern currents of thought that they shut their eyes to these obligations does not change the point. Catholics, and the Church, in arguing as they do, are defending not faith but reason.

From Care not Killing: In a robust letter to the Times, Lord Carlile QC has taken issue with Lord Joffe’s recent accusations that religious leaders are largely responsible for the opposition to assisted suicide. Carlile asserted, This is not about religion or autonomy or medicine: it is about public safety, legal certainty and the protection by the law of the vulnerable.’ Lord Joffe has meanwhile threatened to bring his assisted dying bill back in to the House of Lords.