Promoting a Culture of Life
Pope St John Paul II, in his 1995 encyclical letter, The Gospel of Life, (Evangelium Vitae) raised his concern that our society, while considering itself to be progressive in promoting human rights, was embracing what he called a “culture of death”.
His concern was that societies, despite what they may say, were in practice forsaking the ideals of human dignity and equality and reverting “to a state of barbarism” (EV 14).
We are again confronted by the culture of death in Tasmania with the End of Life Choices (Voluntary Assisted Dying) Act 2021, which was officially passed by the Tasmanian Parliament on 22 April 2021, and comes into operation on 23 October 2022.
At this very challenging time for Tasmania we need to be witnesses to life, we need to be champions of a “Culture of Life” in our society. When speaking to our friends and family we must try to remind them of the preciousness and value of human life.
The Catholic health and aged care sector has been reassured by the Premier of the day, Peter Gutwein, when he stated during the debate, that “Different health services are under no obligation to participate in or support voluntary assisted dying” (Hansard, Thursday 4 March 2021).
If a sick or elderly person wants to end their life through assisted suicide, many do ask: isn’t it respect for their personhood and autonomy that should allow them to grant their wish? If autonomy is really the issue, why do we not respect every suicidal person’s wish for death?
A young person, for instance, who has no illness but has lost the will to live. Regardless of health condition or life expectancy, there are always people who wish to die, for reasons that seem compelling to them. Why continue to insist on suicide prevention for such people while offering suicide assistance to the terminally ill?
In the end the euthanasia and assisted suicide campaigns are not really based on an appeal to autonomy. In reality they are based on a view that some human lives have less value, are less worth protecting, than others. By legalizing assisted suicide for one selected class of vulnerable citizens, society makes its own judgment that some people’s suicidal wishes are inherently reasonable and justifiable because they have the kind of lives that society sees no reason to defend.
Pope St John Paul II taught that, “Freedom negates and destroys itself, and becomes a factor leading to the destruction of others when it no longer recognizes and respects its essential link with the truth” (EV 19). When freedom forgets its roots in absolute respect for the life of every human person, it takes on “a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others” (EV 20).
Paradoxically, a society dedicated to such rootless freedom, to such selfish and elitist progress, “is transformed into a tyrant State, which arrogates to itself the right to dispose of the life of the weakest and most defenceless members, from the unborn child to the elderly, in the name of a public interest which is really nothing but the interest of one part” (EV 20).
For a person of faith, life is not just a “given”, it is our first and most basic gift from a Creator who loves us with an unsurpassable love. Pope John Paul II reminds us that it is “a manifestation of God in the world, a sign of his presence, a trace of his glory… in man there shines forth a reflection of God himself” (EV 34).
The coming into force of the so-call VAD legislation is a truly sad and disturbing moment in Tasmanian history, it sends a message to our society that some lives are not worth living. Our Catholic health services – hospitals and nursing homes – have taken the clear stand that they cannot co-operate with euthanasia or assisted suicide. It is important that we stand with them and defend the infinite value of human life.