A Swiss bishop has instructed Catholic priests not to give last rites
to people suspected of seeking assisted suicide, following a sharp rise
in the practice in his country.
“It is increasingly difficult to take the right decisions in the face
of death – there’s even a sense of helplessness,” said Bishop Vitus
Huonder of Chur.
“The readiness of a suffering patient to commit suicide with help
from a bystander places any priest in an impossible situation if called
to administer sacraments. Under such conditions, their reception is
impossible – all a priest can do is offer a prayer of intercession and
commend the dying to God’s mercy.”
In a pastoral message for Human Rights Day the bishop said
contemporary society was “showered with random data” and often showed a
“frightening superficiality towards moral issues.”
However, he added that Church teaching was clear that medical
treatment should “respect life as well as death,” and not “impair the
natural process of dying.”
“Medicine’s modern possibilities have made us increasingly dependent,
especially if no longer capable of judgment, on qualified persons in
the last stage of our existence,” said Bishop Huonder, who is also
apostolic administrator of Zurich.
“But from a Christian viewpoint, life and death are in God’s hands –
we do not decide about them for ourselves. Suicide, like murder,
contradicts the divine world order.”
Catholics traditionally make up 44 per cent of the 7.1 million
inhabitants of Switzerland, whose six dioceses combine German, French
and Italian speakers.
Euthanasia is permitted under Swiss law, if “not motivated by
egotistic considerations,” and has increased rapidly, according to a
report by Neue Zurcher Zeitung. The daily said 999 euthanasia deaths
were legally recorded in 2015, up 35 per cent from the previous year,
adding that a “change of values in society” had made the practice “a new
normality.”
In his message, Bishop Huonder said improved palliative care had
raised “medical, social, humanitarian, religious and pastoral
questions,” while death should not be “delayed irresponsibly” through
“therapy at any price.”
However, he said a “widespread change of attitudes in society” had
created pastoral difficulties for clergy, as euthanasia organisations
stressed the right of patients to choose when to die.
“The administration of sacraments of penance, anointing and the
Eucharist is a source of comfort to the seriously ill and dying,” said
Bishop Huonder. “However, it is the grave duty of a priest in pastoral
charity to discourage self-destructive projects outside the scope of
eternal salvation, and to help patients to understand and obey the will
of God.”
Assisted dying and voluntary euthanasia have also been legalised in
Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg and are the subject of
legislative initiatives in several other European countries.
In a statement, Switzerland’s Zurich-based Dignitas clinic, which
gives lethal injections to fee-paying customers, accused Bishop Huonder
of “spreading contradictions” and said many terminally ill patients
would “die much earlier” if their fate was left to “God’s omnipotence.”
The company added that the European Court of Human Rights had ruled
in 2011 that individuals had a right, if “able to form an opinion freely
and act accordingly,” to decide “how and at which time their life is to
be ended,” and said Dignitas allowed patients of all faiths to “involve
clergy in their personal process toward dying.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church says medical treatment can be
legitimately withdrawn when “burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary or
disproportionate.”
It notes, however, that intentional euthanasia, “whatever its forms or motives, is murder.”