The pope garners the headlines he seems to relish and desire as he continues to make pronouncements that are seemingly turning the Roman Catholic Church into a den of politically correct activism.
It’s no wonder the heads (and hearts) of traditional Catholics are spinning.
Now it’s the death penalty. The pope wants capital punishment eliminated. He says it’s vengeance, not justice, and is inadmissible, no matter what the crime.
Never mind that there are passages in the scripture in both the Old and New Testaments that have always been interpreted by theologians to mean capital punishment is permitted.
In fact, the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the death penalty is morally permissible.
Now what?
If you think that confusion is making things difficult for Catholics, consider that a group of Catholic psychiatric hospitals in Belgium is allowing euthanasia for non-terminal patients.
That’s right. Catholic hospitals.
The Brothers of Charity is the largest single provider of psychiatric care in Belgium, and when euthanasia was legalized there in 2002, it was boldly resistant to it.
But now, as the Wall Street Journal reported, they’ve gone along with more than 80 percent of Catholic hospitals and nursing homes in the country permitting the legalized killing and more than 40 percent permitted it for non-terminal conditions.
Essentially what has happened is that legal killing in these facilities is common and easily accomplished, regardless of what the Church says.
Patients with terminal conditions and non-terminal conditions can be legally killed, apparently with or without their consent.
So far, I haven’t seen any specific response by Pope Francis to this situation. He also has essentially stayed out of the situation in the Netherlands where euthanasia is legal and easily obtained – for adults and for children.
The statistics on total deaths keeps increasing as patients and physicians are on the same track of putting people out of their misery – whether or not they are really miserable. The one common factor is that they are alive and the system has made it legal for them to be killed.
It’s interesting that as the capital-punishment movement progresses, the pro-euthanasia movement moves along.
As quoted in the East Bay Times, in its article on euthanasia, Shelley Siegel said, “It’s something we are all going to have to get used to, because it’s a new and more honest way of dealing with death.”
She’s a neighbor of the woman who killed herself.
But it’s not quite that simple. We’ve been fed a consistent line that euthanasia is a painless and peaceful way “to go.”
Not so.
There are “botched” executions and euthanasias. Keep in mind that the same chemicals that are used for capital punishment drugs in prisons are essentially the same as those for hospital-caused deaths.
There have been many instances of criminals being executed who have suffered long and painful deaths that many states, California included, have stopped executions.
It has become nearly impossible to get the chemicals used for executions. When you speak of physician-assisted euthanasia, you have the same issues.
According to Sean Riley, an end-of-life-researcher who works in the Netherlands, these drugs do not cause a peaceful death. He says, “Modern medicine cannot yet achieve this.”
As reported by LiveNews, Riley quotes data from Oregon, where state-approved euthanasia is legal: “Five percent of patients experienced difficulties, such as regurgitation or seizures after ingestion of the medication.”
He said details were reported in only 51 percent of the cases, but he added, “[T]here are six reported incidents where patients ingested the lethal medication, went unconscious and awoke days later.”
Read that again!
It seems to me there is a dedicated intention to keep information like that from the general public as we are constantly fed the line that euthanasia is a calm and peaceful and painless way to die.
The politicians tell us that. The euthanasia advocates do it, too. And the public is buying the line because it sounds so nice.
Imagine state-sanctioned killing with the assistance of men and women who were trained to maintain life, not end it.
So where does all this leave Catholics and their Church?
The leader of their Church – Pope Francis – is essentially telling them that what they had long believed and faithfully followed – that capital punishment is licit – is being changed. Now. Because he says so.
Catholics aren’t given a choice or a chance to question. They’re not given the opportunity to ask for some basic understanding of what is going on.
Francis speaks, and so it is. Even if it doesn’t make much sense and even if it doesn’t fit into the historical positions of the Church.
Francis’ activism is “in your face” – and there’s no doubt many Catholics are not comfortable about it.
Looking at the decreased number of Catholics in this country who don’t go to church any longer or who pick and choose what tenets they decide to believe – cafeteria Catholics – you can see they’re gaining on the mainstream.
And that isn’t good. But recall that a year ago, the pontiff said he “has no intention of launching a crackdown,” but he added that he won’t be slowed down by “ultra-conservatives.”
So stop capital punishment and yet permit Catholic hospitals to kill their patients with essentially the same drugs used in criminal capital punishment.
Is your head spinning yet?
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