Regardless of the reason or method, the Catholic Church considers euthanasia to be an intrinsically evil act since it involves purposely killing an innocent person. Catholics may never allow or participate in euthanasia.
Man was created in God’s own image and likeness, with a special dignity above all of God’s other creatures. His life is sacred, having received it as a gift and a blessing from God.
People are stewards of their lives but not owners. No life, including the one entrusted to them, is theirs to take away, even when accelerating the inevitable seems like the compassionate thing to do.
Instead of offering mercy, allowing personal freedom, or preserving dignity, euthanasia is actually part of a culture of death that eliminates any sick, elderly, or disabled people who are considered useless or inconvenient.
Not to be confused with assisted suicide, where a doctor or other individual helps a person take their own life, euthanasia intentionally causes the death of someone else in the name of reducing their suffering.
Voluntary euthanasia causes a person’s death at their request. Involuntary euthanasia kills a person without, or even against, their will while they are unconscious or when their wishes are unknown.
Active euthanasia involves taking action to intentionally end the life of a person, such as lethal injection. Purposely ending a life by not taking necessary action, such as withholding life support, is referred to as passive euthanasia.
Palliative care that provides companionship, hydration, nutrition, clean bedding, and pain management should be provided to all people in the final stages of life.
Allowing death to occur naturally when treatment is dangerous or burdensome, or when resuscitation is not warranted is not the same as willfully ending the life of a person.
The Catholic Church offers courage and provides hope in the promise of the Resurrection and Everlasting Life. Dying Catholics are encouraged to join their pain and suffering to Jesus who suffered on the Cross.
Committed to helping people to experience life in its fullness, the Catholic Church defends life from the moment of conception until the moment of natural death.
Every moment of a person’s life is purposeful:
Kill the pain and not the patient:
Distinguishing between ordinary and extraordinary care:
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”
Matthew 11: 28-30
Euthanasia is morally unacceptable:
Euthanasia is not mercy killing:
Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2277
It is morally unacceptable.
Thus an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator.
The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded.
Human beings have dignity that other creatures do not:
Spreading Christian hope to those who are dying:
On a more general level, there exists in contemporary culture a certain Promethean attitude which leads people to think that they can control life and death by taking the decisions about them into their own hands. What really happens in this case is that the individual is overcome and crushed by a death deprived of any prospect of meaning or hope. We see a tragic expression of all this in the spread of euthanasia-disguised and surreptitious, or practised openly and even legally. As well as for reasons of a misguided pity at the sight of the patient’s suffering, euthanasia is sometimes justified by the utilitarian motive of avoiding costs which bring no return and which weigh heavily on society. Thus it is proposed to eliminate malformed babies, the severely handicapped, the disabled, the elderly, especially when they are not self-sufficient, and the terminally ill. Nor can we remain silent in the face of other more furtive, but no less serious and real, forms of euthanasia.
Pope John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, 25 March 1995
Death should be welcomed but not administered:
Preserving dignity in the process of dying:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
Baking the bread that will become the Body and Blood of Christ:
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